Ying-Yao Cheng
Institute of Education National Sun Yat-Sen University
Wen-Chung Wang
Department of Psychology National Chung Cheng University
“Innovate or fall behind” （Leonard & Straus, 1997）. The purpose of this study is to explore personal, family, and school factors that influence creativity development. Thirty-six primary and secondary school teachers who guided students to win scientific competitions more than three times in five years were interviewed. These award-winning teachers as along with other 224 non-award-winning teachers were administered with an inventory of 51 items pertaining to factors deemed helpful to creativity development. Results show that there were some commonalities as well as uniqueness in terms of personal, family, and school backgrounds among these award-winning teachers. Both groups of teachers regarded the 51 items very helpful to creativity development. In addition, the award-winning teachers possessed more personal, family, and school （organization） characteristics that were deemed helpful to creativity development than the non-award-winning teachers.
Keywords: creativity behavior, scientific competitions, award-winning teachers