学思维网络活动对小学生创造性的影响:认知风格的调节作用

以89名小学生为被试,采用实验组对照组前后测实验设计,考察学思维网络活动对培养小学生创造性思维和创造性倾向的影响,以及认知风格的调节作用。结果发现：（1）学思维网络活动能有效促进小学生创造性思维以及创造性倾向的想象力和好奇心的发展;（2）学思维课堂活动和学思维网络活动对于培养小学生的创造性思维和创造性倾向具有一致的效果;（3）认知风格在学思维网络活动和学思维课堂活动对小学生创造性思维的影响中起调节作用：对于场依存学生,学思维网络活动能更大程度地提高其流畅性和独创性的表现。     

Exploring the Effect of Perceived Teacher Support on Multiple Creativity Tasks: Based on the Expectancy–Value Model of Achievement Motivation

The present study explores the effect of perceived teacher support on three forms of thinking related to creativity. Tests of convergent thinking (by means of the Remote Associates Test), insight thinking (explored through a brain‐teaser test), and divergent thinking (by means of a verbal creativity test) were given to 512 middle school students in China, along with assessments of their perceived teacher support and creative self‐efficacy. The results of this study indicate that perceived teacher support positively predicts convergent thinking and insight thinking, with creative self‐efficacy playing a partial mediating role between perceived teacher support and convergent thinking. However, no significant relationships were found between perceived teacher support and divergent thinking. The findings partly lend support to the expectancy–value model of achievement motivation that teacher’s behavior influences student performance through self‐belief pathway.     

Critical Thinking Disposition and Scientific Creativity: The Mediating Role of Creative Self-Efficacy

This study explores the relationship between critical thinking disposition and scientific creativity and examines the hypothesized mediating role played by creative self-concept (trait-like creative self-efficacy). A large sample (N = 1,153) of Chinese high school students filled the Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory and revised trait-like creative self-efficacy scale, and then solved Scientific Creativity Test for Adolescent. Structural equation modeling has demonstrated that students’ critical thinking disposition was positively related to their creative self-concept and scientific creativity, and creative self-concept fully mediated the link between critical thinking disposition and scientific creativity. We discuss these findings in terms of the hypothetical role played by creative self-concept for creative functioning.     

Effects of a ‘Learn to Think’ intervention programme on primary school students

Background. Methods for teaching thinking may be described as out‐of‐context or infusion. Both approaches have potential to raise students’ general cognitive processing ability and so raise academic achievement, but each has disadvantages. Aims. To describe and evaluate a theory‐based learn to think (LTT) curriculum for primary school students, which draws on the strengths of both out‐of‐context and infusion approaches. Sample. One‐hundred and sixty‐six students in three classes of Grade 1 (6+ years old), Grade 2 (7+ years old), and Grade 3 (8+ years old) in a primary school in Shanxi province, China, randomly ascribed to experimental (90) and control (76) groups. Methods. All students were pre‐tested for non‐verbal intelligence and academic achievement. Experimental students followed the LTT curriculum (one activity every 2 weeks) for 4 school years. All were post‐tested on three occasions for thinking ability and four times for academic achievement. Results. Grade 1 and Grade 2 students showed effects of LTT from 1 year after their start and increasing: on thinking ability d= .78–1.45; on Chinese d= .68–1.07; on maths .58–.87. Grade 3 students showed effects from 6 months after their start: on thinking ability .90–1.37; Chinese .77–1.32; maths .65–1.29. The effects were concentrated in students in the middle band of initial ability. Conclusions. A curriculum for teaching thinking based on a structured theoretical model that combines elements of out‐of‐context and infusion methods has been shown to have long‐term far transfer effects on students’ thinking ability and academic achievement. More work is needed to meet the needs of a wider range of abilities.     

Group Creativity Training for Children: Lessons Learned from Two Award‐Winning Teams

The development of group creativity can be challenging for both young students and their teachers. This study examined the processes and learning outcomes of group creativity training from the perspectives of elementary school students and teachers while identifying critical factors that contributed to the success of the training. Data were collected from two Korean elementary school teams that won the gold (1st) and a special medal at the 2011 Destination Imagination global competition. Both individual and group interviews were carried out with 13 students and two teachers to investigate their perspectives of group creativity training. The analysis of the interview data revealed three major factors and subthemes: group dynamics (conflict and play), individual characteristics of the students (personality and motivation), and teachers’ roles (training strategies, training style, and commitment). In addition, a semi‐longitudinal survey conducted a year after the interviews examined nine skill or competency domains (self‐management, creativity, leadership, interpersonal relationship, patience, cooperation, information processing, communication, and presentation) to evaluate effects of the group creativity training on student learning. Synthesizing the analyses, we addressed the following three topics that arose from the discussions: the Safe Nest Effect, teachers’ training style, and multiple learning experiences derived from group creativity training.     

小学生学习动机的培养:五年追踪研究

采用聚合交叉研究设计,利用"学思维"活动课程,对某小学1～3年级学生的学习动机进行了4年的干预培养,停止培养一年后,再次收集了数据,分析了变化趋势、即时效果及其长时效应。结果表明:(1)随着年龄的增大,儿童的表层动机和成就动机呈下降趋势;深层动机呈先上升后下降的趋势;(2)男生的表层动机和成就动机都高于女生;(3)年级越高,表层动机、深层动机和成就动机越低;(4)培养一年后,实验组学生的深层动机显著高于控制组,且长时效应显著。     

The Benefits of the Learn to Think Program for Preschoolers’ Creativity: An Explorative Study

This paper presents the Learn to Think preschool (LTT-P) program for promoting creativity in preschoolers and reviews its potential benefits. LTT-P was designed within the framework of the successful LTT creativity program for older students and both were developed to fit the Chinese education system. To assess the potential benefits of LTT-P, a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group study was conducted in a preschool in an urban region in the northwest of China, involving 68 middle level and 87 senior level children. The Lines and Circles subtests of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking were used to examine the development of children's creativity on the dimensions fluency, originality, and elaboration between pretest and posttest. The results suggest that the LTT-P program has the potential to promote young children's creative thinking, especially with regard to the aspects of originality and elaboration. The results for fluency are less clear. To the best of our knowledge, LTT-P is the first program, grounded in a structured learning theory and sound curriculum framework, to support children's creativity development in Chinese early childhood education.     

Scientific Creativity: Divergent and Convergent Thinking and the Impact of Culture

This paper examines the contrast and distinction between divergent and convergent scientific creativity, and the paradoxical relationship of scientific creativity with cultural factors in elementary students. With a newly developed measure of potential for scientific creativity, EPoC Science (Lubart et al., in press), students produce ideas in response to scientific problems, and both divergent‐exploratory as well as convergent‐integrative processes involved in scientific creativity are analyzed. An empirical study (n = 118) was conducted in France with elementary school children (ages 7–10). The divergent‐exploratory task was scored for fluency and statistical uniqueness. For the convergent‐integrative task, the number of concepts that a student integrated and synthesized, and the originality of the synthesis were scored. Results showed that divergent and convergent task performances were weakly related to each other. This suggests that divergence and convergence are two relatively distinct processes for scientific creativity, and that the relation is more complex than commonly assumed. In terms of culture‐related variables, immigrant cultural background (number of family members born outside of France) was significantly and negatively correlated with the originality of divergent and convergent scientific creativity. Findings are discussed and educational implications are proposed.     

Teachers’ Perceptions of Students’ Creativity in China’s Classrooms: The Role of Students’ Academic Achievement and Misbehaviors

Teachers can be biased, especially toward low achievers and students with behavioral issues. However, creative students often appear to be disruptive in the classroom, and many of them struggle academically. The purpose of the present study was to examine the extent to which teachers’ perceptions of students’ creativity is associated with students’ academic achievement and classroom (mis)behaviors, as well as to examine the interaction between these two factors. Three hundred and fifty‐four eighth‐grade students selected from five middle schools in China participated in this study. Using achievement scores, peer nominations, a divergent thinking test, a self‐rated ideational behavior scale, and teacher ratings, the present study found that, whereas creativity has no significant relationship with teachers’ perceptions, academic achievements and misbehavior are significantly associated within structors’ perceptions. The achievement bias resulted in the underestimation of low achievers’ creativity, even when the low achievers were highly creative. More nuances emerged when student misbehaviors were considered. Specifically, misbehaving low achievers’ originality was further underestimated even when they were highly original. In contrast, teachers overestimated well‐behaved high achievers’ creativity, even when the students comprised the lowest creativity group. The results are further discussed from a socio‐cultural perspective.     

Effects of Group Training in Problem‐Solving Style on Future Problem‐Solving Performance

Seventy‐five participants from one suburban high school formed 21 teams with 3–4 members each for the Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI). Students were selected to participate in either the regular FPSPI or an enhanced FPSPI, where multiple group training activities grounded in problem‐solving style were incorporated into a 9‐week treatment period. An ANCOVA procedure was used to examine the difference in team responses to a creative problem‐solving scenario for members of each group, after accounting for initial differences in creative problem‐solving performance, years of experience in FPSPI, and creative thinking related to fluency, flexibility, and originality. The ANCOVA resulted in a significant difference in problem‐solving performance in favor of students in the treatment group (F(1, 57) = 8.21, p = .006, partial eta squared = .126, medium), while there were no significant differences in years of experience or creativity scores. This result led researchers to conclude that students in both groups had equivalent creative ability and that participation in the group activities emphasizing problem‐solving style significantly contributed to creative performance.     

Strategy Induction Enhances Creativity in Figural Divergent Thinking

Instructional effects in creative‐thinking tasks are important to understand in order to promote creative performance of individuals. In divergent‐thinking tasks, for example, instructional and strategic enhancement effects have been extensively studied for verbal tasks. However, while studies on instructional enhancement effects on creative drawing tasks exist, it is surprising that strategy enhancement in figural divergent thinking is still underresearched. In this study, we used a strategy manipulation approach to reassess the role of executive strategy implementation and the moderating role of an indicator of fluid intelligence, figural analogical reasoning, in two types of figural divergent‐thinking tasks (abstract vs. concrete). The sample comprised N = 75 high‐school students. Importantly, we found strategic enhancement effects by combining strategy instructions with a prompt to “be creative.” This combined instruction was contrasted with a standard instruction, and main effects were found for overall, concrete, and abstract creativity. Moreover, we found in a regression analysis a main effect for figural analogical reasoning on overall creativity and creativity for only the concrete object tasks. An expected interaction effect of instruction and figural analogical reasoning was not found. As another addition, the role of current motivation in figural divergent thinking was explored.     

中英青少年科学创造力发展的比较

将中学生科学创造力测验施测于英国6所中学的1190名青少年及中国2所中学的1087名青少年的研究,得出如下结论：第一,青少年的科学创造力存在显著的年龄差异。随着年龄的增大,青少年的科学创造力呈持续上升趋势,但在14岁时要下降;11-13岁、14-16岁是青少年的科学创造力迅速发展的关键时期;第二,青少年的科学创造力存在性别差异。英国女生的科学创造力比男生强,差异显著;中国男生的科学创造力比女生强,差异不显著;第三,中英青少年的科学创造力存在显著的差异。在创造性的问题解决能力方面,中国青少年明显高于英国青少年,但中国青少年在其它方面的科学创造力及总成绩则明显低于英国青少年;第四,中国青少年的科学创造力存在显著的学校类型差异。重点中学学生的科学创造力显著高于普通中学学生的科学创造力。     

Do Traditional Admissions Criteria Reflect Applicant Creativity?

College admissions decisions have traditionally focused on high school academic performance and standardized test scores. An ongoing debate is the validity of these measures for predicting success in college; part of this debate includes how success is defined. One potential way of defining college success is a student's creative accomplishments. We tested the hypothesis that traditional admissions criteria fail to capture adequately the creativity of applicants by asking 610 college applicants to complete several creativity tasks. These included divergent thinking, caption‐writing, an essay, and self‐report measures of creativity in numerous domains. Creativity scores were compared to data from the college application, including high school rank, standardized test scores, and admissions interview scores. Results showed that traditional admissions criteria were only weakly related to creativity. Indeed, students who report the highest creative self‐efficacy can be perceived as weaker applicants according to traditional criteria. Findings are discussed in light of the goals of higher education to increase diversity of the student body and the abilities of its students.     

Longitudinal causal impacts of preschool teacher training on Ghanaian children’s school readiness: Evidence for persistence and fade‐out

Preschool programs have expanded rapidly in low‐ and middle‐income countries, but there are widespread concerns about whether they are of sufficient quality to promote children's learning and development. We conducted a large school‐randomized control trial (‘Quality Preschool for Ghana’ – QP4G) of a one‐year teacher training and coaching program, with and without parental‐awareness meetings, designed to improve preschool quality and child development. We followed 3,435 children in 240 schools in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, a country with universal pre‐primary education. A previous study reported positive impacts of teacher training (but not teacher training plus parental‐awareness meetings) at the end of the implementation year on some dimensions of classroom quality, teacher well‐being, and children's school readiness (Wolf et al., [2019] Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 12, 10–37). The present study analyzed a new round of data collected 1 year after the end of implementation to assess (a) the extent of persistence in impacts on child development and (b) whether such impacts vary by select child, household, and school characteristics. We found impacts of the teacher training intervention on children's overall school readiness were sustained (d = 0.13), but were only marginally statistically significant. When broken down by domain, impacts on social–emotional skills specifically persisted. Persistent negative effects of teacher training plus parental‐awareness meetings varied by the literacy status of the male parent such that negative impacts were concentrated in children in households with non‐literate male heads.     

Creativity Profiles and the Role of Interpersonal Relationships in Primary School Pupils: A Person-Centered Approach

This study aimed to investigate the heterogeneity of creativity and the role of interpersonal relationships for creativity subgroups among primary school students. We used latent profile analysis to identify subgroups of creativity among pupils. We then used logistic regression analysis to investigate the role of teacher-student and peer relationships in these subgroups. A total of 1,047 primary school students (M_age = 10.97, SD = 0.91; 47.80% girls) completed the Chinese version of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking Figural Form A, the Teacher-Student Relationship Scale, and peer nominations. First, the results revealed five creativity profiles for pupils in primary school: high-creativity individuals, innovators, medium-creativity individuals, adaptors, and low-creativity individuals. Heterogeneity across the five subgroups was reflected in the differing creativity levels and differences in creativity dimensions. Second, students who had better teacher-student relationships were more likely to be high-creativity individuals and innovators than low-creativity individuals. In addition, students who had higher perceived popularity tended to be high-creativity individuals, innovators, adaptors, and medium-creativity individuals than low-creativity individuals. The results of this study provide a theoretical basis and empirical support for the targeted cultivation of creativity in primary schools.     

高中生创造性思维发展特点的研究

选取110名高中生为被试,采用自编“中学生创造性思维测验”,考察了高中生创造性思维水平的年龄特点、性别差异以及学科成绩与创造性思维水平之间的相关.结果表明:(1)从创造性思维总分上看,高中生的创造性思维水平发展比较平缓,各年级间差异不显著;其中创造性思维最重要的品质——独特性:从高一到高二年级处于较为平稳的水平,二者无显著差异;高三比高二(P<001)和高一(P<0001)有显著提高;(2)高中学生的创造性思维不存在显著的性别差异;(3)中学生语文成绩与创造性思维总得分及部分项目得分有一定相关,与创造性思维的独特性及各项目上的独特性均无显著相关.数学成绩与创造性思维的诸方面均无显著相关.     

The Effect of Steiner,Montessori, and National Curriculum Education Upon Children's Pretence and Creativity

Pretence and creativity are often regarded as ubiquitous characteristics of childhood, yet not all education systems value or promote these attributes to the same extent. Different pedagogies and practices are evident within the UK National Curriculum, Steiner and Montessori schools. In this study, 20 children participated from each of these school systems (N  = 60, aged 6;10–8;11) completing the test of creative thinking—drawing production (TCT ‐DP ; K. K. Urban, & H. G. Jellen, 1996) and a pretend actions task (W. F. Overton & J. P. Jackson, 1973). Overall, Steiner pupils performed significantly higher on the TCT ‐DP than both the Montessori and National Curriculum pupils who performed similarly. Steiner pupils also performed significantly better on the pretend actions task than the Montessori pupils, but no other significant differences were found. Overall, there was also a significant positive correlation between pretence and creativity in the current sample, supporting previous research suggesting that these skills are related (e.g., A.S. Kaugars & S. W. Russ, 2009; P. Y. Mullineaux & L. F. Dilalla, 2009).     

Using Daily Creativity Planning to Promote Creative Behavior

Research has demonstrated that on the path from a creative idea to a creative outcome, high creativity motivation and self-efficacy do not necessarily lead to creative behavior. The present study proposed and examined the notion that daily creativity planning could promote creative behavior and contribute to the cultivation of creativity. A total of 77 middle school students (39 students in the experimental group and 38 in the control group) participated in this study, for which a quasi-experimental design was administered. The experimental group conducted a two-week daily planning for creative activities, while the control group did not conduct any intervention. The results showed that students' creativity motivation and creative self-efficacy were at relatively high levels overall and were positively and moderately correlated with creative behavior. Daily planning could effectively facilitate students' creative behavior. These findings point to a promising and simple creativity enhancement strategy for cultivating students to develop the habit of making creative plans in their daily lives.     

Minding the Dreamer Within: An Experimental Study on the Effects of Enhanced Dream Recall on Creative Thinking

Several studies have found an association between frequency of dream recall and creativity. We tested the hypothesis that training individuals to increase dream recall by means of a daily dream log would increase scores on the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT). One hundred twenty‐five participants completed a baseline measure of creativity (TTCT, figural version) as well as of dream recall, dissociation, thinness of psychological boundaries, mindful‐attention awareness, and well‐being. Participants were randomly allocated to two groups: the experimental group (n = 55) received a daily dream log; while the control group (n = 32) received a similarly phrased log registering memories of a vivid episode from the previous day. After 27 days, all participants completed follow‐up measurements identical to those at baseline. A non‐randomized non‐intervention group (n = 35) was used to test for practice effects on the TTCT. There was significant selective increase for the “creative strengths” component, which was only observed in the experimental group. There were significant correlations between creativity and dissociation as well as between creativity and thinness of psychological boundaries. Enhanced dream recall through daily dream logging fosters aspects of creativity. Associations between creativity, dissociation, and thinness of boundaries, suggest that increased awareness to dreams increases creativity through a “loosening” of stereotyped thinking pattern.     

Is There a Developmental Slump in Creativity in China? The Relationship Between Organizational Climate and Creativity Development in Chinese Adolescents

The major objectives of this study were to determine the characteristics of creativity development of Chinese children, the creative organizational climate of Chinese schools, and the relations among them. The results provided evidence that the creativity scores of children in elementary school were significantly higher than those of children in middle school. The teachers' evaluation of the creative organizational climate of the elementary school was significantly higher than that of the middle school. When the two variables were analyzed together, both the creative organizational climate of schools and the creative thinking development of children decreased during the children's development. Moreover, the creativity and climate scores were highly correlated, and the results from a path analysis suggested that a school's creative organizational climate has a significant impact on all seven dimensions of creativity measured in this study.