Experimental study on the influence of divergent thinking training on creativity of middle school students

Abstract

Objective: To test the effect of divergent thinking training intervention on the junior's creative personality and creative thinking, explore the effective ways on developing creative ability. Methods: 119 junior middle school students served as subjects. 62 of them in one class were trained for divergent thinking and 57 students of another class without training were chosen as control. Tolance's Test of Creative Thinking, Juniors Test of Creative Personality and Test of Divergent Thinking were carried out pre-test and post-test. Results: Before training, the two groups had no significant difference in the creative personality and creative thinking scores (9.3 ± 2.1/9.1 ± 1.9, t = 1.47, P = 0.293, 9.1 ± 0.8/8.4 ± 0.5, t = 5.21, P = 0.291). After training, experimental class improved on creative personality and creative thinking (10.5 ± 1.9/9.4 ± 2.1, t = 2.96, P < 0.01) as well as on Test of Divergent Thinking (11.0 ± 2.0/8.8 ± 1.8, t = 7.69, P < 0.01). Conclusion: The divergent thinking training is effective to improve the creative ability of students.