A study on validating a creative teaching app for early childhood teachers

Objectives This study aimed to develop a mobile application, the Creative Teaching Creative Teacher (CTCT) App, designed to help early childhood educators assess and monitoring their creative teaching competence. Additionally, it sought to evaluate the app's effectiveness in enhancing creative teaching competencies, ultimately supporting the promotion of young children’s creativity in early childhood education settings. Methods The development of the CTCT App was informed by interviews with 10 early childhood teachers to identify their needs and by consultations with three experts in creativity and early childhood education. The app was provided exclusively to the experimental group to assess its effectiveness. Both experimental and control groups completed a pre-test assessing creative teaching competencies before the app's distribution and a post-test three months later. Data from 82 participants who completed both tests were analyzed. A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was conducted, using the pre-test scores as a covariate, to evaluate the app's effectiveness. Results The MANCOVA revealed that the CTCT App significantly improved two subfactors of creative teaching competencies: ‘teacher creativity development efforts’ and ‘evaluation of children’s creativity’. However, no significant effects were found on ‘understanding children’s creativity’, ‘supporting creative environments’, or ‘creative teaching methods and interactions’. Conclusions The findings suggest that targeted professional development through tools like the CTCT App can enhance specific aspects of early childhood educators' creative teaching competence. These results highlight the need for active policy support to foster creative teaching practices among early childhood educators.