METHODOLOGY FOR DEVELOPING THE CREATIVE COMPETENCE OF PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS: THE CASE OF MOTHER TONGUE AND READING LITERACY

The development of teachers’ creative competence is an important condition for improving the quality of primary education, particularly in Mother Tongue and Reading Literacy lessons. Creative competence enables teachers to design learning activities that encourage pupils to generate ideas, interpret texts, communicate independently, compare alternative viewpoints, and produce original responses. Contemporary international frameworks consider creative thinking a developable competence that involves generating, evaluating, and improving ideas [1; 2]. In primary education, these processes are closely connected with reading comprehension, oral and written communication, vocabulary development, interpretation of literary texts, and problem-based learning. This thesis analyzes methodological approaches to developing primary school teachers’ creative competence through Mother Tongue and Reading Literacy instruction. The analysis is based on international assessment frameworks, pedagogical research, methodological literature, and recent studies conducted in Uzbekistan. Particular attention is paid to text transformation, open-ended questioning, alternative endings, collaborative learning, problem-based tasks, reflective practice, and formative assessment. The thesis argues that teacher creativity should not be understood simply as the use of entertaining classroom activities. Rather, it should be considered a professional competence involving pedagogical flexibility, purposeful task design, reflection, adaptation, and the ability to create conditions in which pupils can independently construct meaning.