Investigation of the development of creativity in secondary school children: A four-year longitudinal study

Abstract

In this study, which is planned to observe the advancement of creativity in secondary school children in the sixth, seventh and eighth classes starting from the fifth class, the relational scanning model which is one of the describe approachs was used. This is as well lengthwise research. The population of the study contained of children attending the first grade of secondary schools in Yozgat (Turkey) city center in 2015–2016 academic year. The sample of the study contained of 154 children (78 girls, 76 boys) attending two fifth grade branches in three secondary schools selected from these secondary schools. In the sixth grade, the number of samples decreased to 147 (72 females, 75 males), 137 in the seventh grade (68 females, 69 males) and 132 (65 females, 67 males) in the eighth grade. The analyzes were performed on data collected from 132 children in the eighth grade. General Information Form and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Figure Form A and Form B) were used as data collection tools. In the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics, frequency, analysis of variance for rehearced measurements and T-Test for unrelated measurements were performed. Hence of the study, it was seen that the creative thinking scores of the children in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth classes differed in all sub-dimension scores and total creativity scores. In the fluency sub-dimension, the scores obtained in the fifth grade and sixth, seventh and eighth classes differed in favor of the sixth, seventh and eighth classes, respectively. In the sixth grade, the difference between the scores received in the seventh and eighth classes advantage of the scores obtained in the seventh and eighth classes, respectively. Moreover, the difference between the scores obtained in the seventh class and the scores taken in the eighth class were found advantage of the scores obtained in the eighth grade. In the sub-dimension of originality, there was a difference between the scores obtained in the fifth grade and the scores obtained in the seventh and eighth classes, respectively, in favor of the scores obtained in the seventh and eighth grades. It was found that there was a differentiation between the scores obtained in the seventh grade, and the scores obtained in the eighth grade in the seventh and eighth classes, respectively. It is seen that there is a statistically significant difference between the scores obtained in the fifth, sixth and eighth grades in the abstraction of headings advantage of the scores obtained in the seventh grade. In the enrichment sub-dimension, it was found that the scores obtained in the fifth and sixth grades differed significantly from the scores obtained in the eighth grade in favor of the scores obtained in the fifth and sixth grades. In the sub-dimension of resistance to early closure, it was observed that there was a difference between the scores obtained in the fifth, sixth and eighth grades and the scores obtained in the seventh grade advantage of the scores obtained in the seventh grade. In the total creativity scores, there was a difference between the scores obtained in the fifth grade and the scores obtained in the sixth class advantage of the ratings obtained in the sixth grade. It was determined that the scores obtained in the fifth sixth and eighth grades differed significantly advantage of the scores obtained in the seventh class (p <.05).