The importance of creativity education has long been recognized, and its necessity is increasingly highlighted in today's knowledge-based information society. The development of high value-added knowledge industries can be stepped up by creativity tha...
The importance of creativity education has long been recognized, and its necessity is increasingly highlighted in today's knowledge-based information society. The development of high value-added knowledge industries can be stepped up by creativity that engenders new values, and it's consequently needed to pay growing attention to creativity education. Fostering the thinking faculty of students means to improve their ability to survive. Given the uncertainty and diversity of modern society, furthering thinking faculty is more important than anything else. And given the importance of creative problem solving, the application of a creative problem-solving approach is required as one of teaching- learning strategies.
This study attempted to develop a new teaching-learning program by incorporating Gordon's synectics approach, a creative problem-solving teaching method, into existing teaching-learning process in a quest for students to shift their paradigm by solving problems in a novel and creative manner instead of sticking to stereotyped solutions.
The purpose of this study was to apply Gordon's synectics approach, one of creative problem-solving teaching methods, to the painting expression segment of art class in the first year of art high school, to examine the comprehension and satisfaction levels of learners, and to investigate the effect of that approach on their creative thinking faculty and image expressiveness. As a result of applying the synectics program, the experimental group found themselves to think more creatively and better express images than the control group. Therefore this approach is expected to make it easier for learners to take art lessons in the category of expression, and question and answer between students themselves and between them and their teacher would serve as an opportunity for them to facilitate problem solving in a complementary manner, to participate in class more voluntarily and actively and ultimately to boost their creative problem-solving skills.
Relevant theories were investigated to describe the necessity of creativity improvement in art education and the necessity of the kinds of teaching methods that could step up creative problem solving. After painting expression lessons provided by four different art high schools were analyzed, one of the lessons that was appropriate for this study was selected, and then lesson plans were modified to serve the purpose of the study. Teaching strategies about the unit titled 'drawing expression for the expansion of journal image' were prepared by applying the synectics approach. The subjects in this study were 52 boys and girls in the first year of the art department in G art high school. After an experimental group and a control group were made up of 26 students each, they received instruction in nine sessions. The students turned out equivalent in pretests composed of a survey on the level of the learners and of a practice test about image expressiveness. After the experiment was carried out, posttests were implemented: evaluation of the works of the two groups about the expansion of journal image, survey on the satisfaction level of the learners, self-evaluation and peer rating. All the test results were analyzed and compared to find out how much they made progress in creative ideas and image expressiveness. SPSS WIN 13.0 program was employed to analyze the collected data, and x2(Chi-square) test and t-test were utilized. Besides, statistical data on percentage for the questions with yes-no answer choices were obtained.
The findings of the study were as follows:
First, according to the pre-survey on learner awareness and practice test on image expressiveness, there was no statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups, which proved that both groups were equivalent.
Second, according to the posttests, the experimental group that was exposed to the synectics approach made more positive progress than the control group on creative ideas, expressiveness, expression method and learning attitude, and the intergroup gaps were significant.
Third, according to the posttests, the experimental group excelled the control group in class understanding, and the former had greater expectations and expressed more satisfaction than the latter. The intergroup differences were statistically significant.
Fourth, according to the self-evaluation and peer rating, the experimental group viewed their own expressiveness more favorably, and the largest number of the students in that group answered that they liked the way of solving problems by utilizing various figures of speech, and that they realized how to handle a theme in an easier manner.
In conclusion, Gordon's creative problem-solving approach enabled the students to made strides to some extent in creative thinking and expressiveness, and that brought a favorable change to the quality of instruction. But it's not advisable to generalize that approach as a program to foster the creative problem solving of every art high school sophomore, since just 52 sophomores participated in the study. Therefore teachers should select an appropriate teaching-learning program to provide quality education. Prolonged research efforts should be channeled into developing a wide variety of creativity programs by applying and comparing multiple teaching methods and into checking their effects, as creativity is acquired in the course of one's lifetime.