A Comparative Study of the Attitude of Iranian and Japanese Teachers towards Creativity and its Teaching: A Qualitative Research

The lack of comparative studies on the subject of teachers' attitudes towards creativity in different educational systems and also the need to know about the teachers' attitudes on the subject of creativity, closes the way to determinism and prejudice in thought and the confrontation of people's ideas in social and cultural fields and Different educational systems provide a favorable environment for ideation and innovation in education. Due to the importance of this issue, the present research has studied the comparative study of Iranian and Japanese teachers' attitudes towards creativity and its teaching with the qualitative research method of phenomenology. The data obtained from semi-structured interviews with ۲۰ Iranian and Japanese teachers were subjected to open coding, extracting concepts, and finally compiling categories using the qualitative content analysis technique. The findings show that the nature of creativity for Iranian teachers is close to logical thinking and for Japanese teachers to critical thinking. The approach of Iranian teachers is teacher-centered and the approach of Japanese teachers is student centered. Both groups of teachers count two categories of behavioral-ethical and cognitive characteristics for teachers and creative students. Also, the extraction of findings shows that Iranian teachers consider creativity barriers in three categories: personal-psychological, educational, and social, while Japanese teachers only refer to personal-psychological and educational barriers. In the theoretical position of creativity in the educational system, creativity is explained and developed in both educational systems and they have many similarities, but in the practical position, the Japanese educational system believes in creative content and education, but in the Iranian educational system, the priority is still with the traditional curriculum content. Is. It can be said that there is not much difference between Iranian and Japanese teachers in their attitude toward the nature of creativity in the theoretical field, while in the practical field, there is a significant difference between Iranian and Japanese teachers. This difference is such that in Japanese classrooms you can follow the process of formation of creativity, while in Iranian classrooms this process is very slow and weak.