Project-Based Learning to Develop Creative Abilities in Students

Abstract

This article describes project-based learning as innovative pedagogical technology, able to transform the learning process in order to develop creative abilities in students. A survey among Pedagogical Major students of the Kyrgyz National Agrarian University named after K. I. Skryabin (KNAU), Engineering Department, showed that most of the students are not familiar with technologies facilitating creativity and have not enough abilities for creative activities. Among the instructors working more than 3 years, there is only a small part who considers themselves competent in the creative approach to arranging the learning process. At the social-pedagogical level, this defines the significance of researching the creative ability promotion problem via project-based learning in universities. The novelty of this article is that in the current educational condition of the KNAU, there is making an effort to implement into “Rhetoric", a new subject of the teaching package, the elements of the project-based learning to encourage students’ creative abilities. During completing this work authors used a complex set of methods in order to address the objective and ensure results of high credibility such as: theoretical analysis of pedagogical ideas, lessons’ observation, analysis of students’ works, pedagogical experiments, sociological study methods, and mathematical statistic methods. In educational practice, this method was tested and had good responses among the fourth course students on specialty “Professional Education". Using the method of project training, each student developed a scheme for conducting an interactive session individually that provided the creativity approach. Ten out of 16 students participated in this activity. Analytical work included several stages allowing for the improvement of logical thinking, revealing maximum creative abilities and encouraging scientific research.