Effects of learning style based differentiated activities on gifted students’ creativity

Abstract

This study aims to investigate how effective are differentiation and enrichment of an instructional design in revealing and improving creative thinking skills of gifted and talented learners. Pre-test and post-test experiment-control group quasi-experimental design was used in this study. The subjects of the study consisted of 72 students aged 10 to 11 years, who were identified as gifted and talented and who are currently attending the same Science and Arts Center (BİLSEM) in the province of Istanbul. When the findings were interpreted, it is possible to conclude that the instructional design that was differentiated and enriched by means of the Kolb’s learning styles the Bloom’s taxonomy had positive effects on revealing and improving creative thinking skills of gifted and talented learners. Based on the findings obtained within this study, we could recommend that teachers, who would like to support and develop their students’ creative thinking skills, should first start with identifying the potentials, interests and learning styles of their students; then provide them with a learning environment where the students can demonstrate their creativity, defend their ideas freely, and produce unique solutions to the problems that they face; and finally employ the approaches, methods, or techniques that improve creative thinking and whose effectiveness is scientifically proven in the literature.