Background and Purpose
The success of educational systems fundamentally depends on designing an ecosystem rooted in creativity, capable of maintaining adaptability and flexibility across varied conditions. By nurturing a supportive environment for creativity, educators, particularly teachers, become crucial in equipping students to navigate a rapidly changing world. Robust creativity motivates human resources in educational settings to embrace risk-taking in their teaching practices and to foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills within themselves and their students.
Moreover, openness to experience reflects the extent of individuals’ imagination, curiosity, and open-mindedness. Those characterized by a constant search for novel experiences, profound curiosity about their internal and external worlds, and attributes such as creativity, culture, originality, intelligence, and artistic sensitivity positively correlate with self-perceptions of learning ability, intrinsic motivation to learn, and active involvement in self-development activities.
Simultaneously, feedback-seeking behavior plays a pivotal role in enriching employee engagement and communication. Employees who proactively seek feedback tend to enhance their interactions with colleagues, acquire greater awareness and knowledge on diverse matters, and undertake more effective strategies toward achieving both individual career and overarching organizational objectives.
Despite substantial research on creativity and influencing factors within education, most studies have concentrated on the creative capacities and innovations of sports teachers or assessed creative performance factors among physical education experts via surveys. Notably, comprehensive research exploring these elements concurrently, with an integrative focus on openness to experience, feedback-seeking behavior, and creative performance among physical education experts in education departments remains scarce. This lacuna underscores the necessity and relevance of the present research.
 
Methods
This applied study employed a correlational design to investigate relationships among key variables. The population consisted of all physical education experts affiliated with education departments across the country, totaling 1712 individuals. Using random sampling, 314 elementary physical education experts were selected as the study sample.
Data collection relied on three standardized questionnaires: Openness to Experience (Soto et al., 2008), Feedback Seeking Behavior (Moss et al., 2003), and Creative Performance (Yu and George, 2001).
Five sports management experts reviewed the questionnaires for content validity. Additionally, a preliminary study assessed reliability, yielding Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of 0.78 for openness to experience, 0.79 for feedback-seeking behavior, and 0.77 for creative performance, indicating acceptable internal consistency.
Data analysis encompassed descriptive and inferential statistics conducted via SPSS and Smart PLS software, enabling robust examination of variable relationships and mediation effects.
 
Findings
The research findings substantiated a positive, statistically significant relationship between openness to experience and feedback-seeking behavior among physical education experts. Furthermore, openness to experience exhibited a positive and significant association with creative performance within this cohort.
Crucially, the role of feedback-seeking behavior as a mediating variable was confirmed, indicating that openness to experience enhances creative performance indirectly by fostering feedback-seeking practices.
These results suggest that physical education professionals who are open to new experiences and actively pursue feedback tend to perform more creatively, enriching their teaching efficacy and adaptability.
 
Conclusion
The study's outcomes affirm that openness to experience substantially influences feedback-seeking behavior among physical education experts, facilitating enhanced creative performance.
Openness to experience, often linked to traits such as seeking novel information and engaging with unfamiliar scenarios, motivates experts to improve the quality of their professional actions and performance continuously.
Recognizing feedback-seeking behavior as a collective practice promotes cooperative environments wherein employees feel safe to exchange ideas and opinions without anxiety, thereby enabling more informed and effective decision-making by physical education practitioners and their colleagues.
Moreover, the positive correlation between openness to experience and creative performance emphasizes the necessity for creative action to thrive within the challenging realities facing physical education experts, which include high job demands and limited access to facilities, equipment, and financial resources.
Faced with unforeseen challenges and novel problems, creative physical education experts are more likely to evaluate, integrate, and apply diverse strategies by drawing from accumulated knowledge and experience, ultimately enhancing their responsiveness and adaptability to evolving circumstances.
In sum, feedback-seeking behavior acts as a catalyst linking openness to creative outcomes by establishing a dynamic feedback loop that enriches knowledge exchange and idea-generation.
To nurture this cycle, institutions should promote collaborative opportunities across departments and professional teams, fostering exposure to varied perspectives and innovative solutions. Furthermore, encouraging experimentation with new teaching methods or ideas in a non-punitive environment can empower creative risk-taking.
Finally, it is important to acknowledge limitations inherent in the study, notably reliance on self-report instruments, which may introduce response bias or limit the objectivity of collected data.
Keywords: Feedback Seeking, Openness to Experience, Physical Education Experts, Creative Performance, Educational Environments.
Article Message
Attending to personality traits such as openness to experience among physical education professionals can lead to beneficial outcomes, including increased feedback-seeking and elevated creative performance, meriting enhanced managerial focus within the Ministry of Education and related bodies.
Ethical Considerations
All research was conducted adhering stringently to ethical protocols. Participant informed consent was obtained, and data confidentiality and anonymity were strictly maintained. Researchers upheld participant rights and dignity, following established standards of research ethics.
Authors’ Contributions
Conceptualization: Akram Esfahani Nia, Hamidreza Ghezelsefloo
Data Collection: Maryam Aliabadi, Nasser Bai
Data Analysis: Nasser Bai, Mojtaba Ahmadi
Manuscript Writing: Akram Esfahani Nia, Hamidreza Ghezelsefloo
Review and Editing: Nasser Bai, Mojtaba Ahmadi
Funding: Maryam Aliabadi
Literature Review: Akram Esfahani Nia, Mojtaba Ahmadi
Project Management: Akram Esfahani Nia
Additional Contributions: Full team involvement in theoretical guidance and scientific consultation.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments
The authors express gratitude to all participants whose cooperation was invaluable for the successful completion of this research.