This study seeks to develop brainstorming activity programs for improving children's creativity and emotional intelligence, to apply them to the real situation of children's education, and then to substantiate their effects for the proposed purposes. ...
This study seeks to develop brainstorming activity programs for improving children's creativity and emotional intelligence, to apply them to the real situation of children's education, and then to substantiate their effects for the proposed purposes. This study was performed through two part :<Part 1> constructing the program, and <Part 2> examining its effect.
It involves 61 five-year-old children at a kindergarten in Gyunggi Do, who are divided into the controlled experiment group of 31 children and the comparative group of 30. The brainstorming programs have been conducted for the experiment group twice a week for ten weeks to find out if they improve the children's creativity and emotional intelligence, while the comparative one has been arranged to do their free talking on the same topic as the experiment one's. To find out the effects of the brainstorming programs, this study has employed TTCT (Torrence's Test of Creative Thinking) (1968) and EIT (Emotional Intelligence Test Operated by Teachers) (Lee Young-Ja, et al. 2000) two times before and after conducting the programs. To verify the effects of these brainstorming programs, it has produced an average and the standard deviation by way of statistical methods of the SPSS/WIN 10.0 program, and analyzed covariance. To know the concrete responses of children, in addition, it has analyzed specific cases. The study shows its results as follows:
First, the brainstorming programs developed in this study, aiming to improve children's creativity and emotional intelligence, are intended to lead children to produce various, unique and systematic ideas when confronting emotionally problematic situations, to understand and use others' emotions as well as his/her own, and to improve the ability to change negative emotions into positive ones. Teaching materials are organized considering their relevance to children's everyday life and emotional situation, their connection with the current Korean National Childhood Education Curricula, and the levels of children's development. Creativity materials comprise 'thinking in various ways', 'thinking in new and unique ways', 'thinking in specific and concrete ways', 'expressing in different ways from the given one', 'seeking ways of solving problems with patience', etc. Emotional-intelligence materials include the four subcategories of 'perceiving and expressing emotions', 'facilitating thought by way of emotions', 'using emotional knowledge', and 'making reflective regulations of emotions'. Teaching-learning methods consist of the three steps of 'introduction', 'development' and 'conclusion', and brainstorming techniques are applied at the stage of development which is divided into three steps: ‘understanding problems', ‘applying problem-solving tactics' and ‘evaluating and modulating the tactics'. And the evaluation step is designed to check up how children's creativity and emotional intelligence work towards the given topics.
Second, this study, applying the programs developed for itself, shows the following results: the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to verify the effects of improving creativity, first of all, is significant in that the experiment group give positively higher performances than the comparative one (F=29.27, p<.001). Likewise, in all the subcategories of creativity such as fluency (F=13.22, p<.01), peculiarity (F=13.68, p<.001), elaboration (F=12.12, p<.001), subject abstractness (F=13.44, p<.001) and resistance to hasty conclusion (F=12.51, p<.001), the experiment group shows significantly statistical differences from the comparative one. It transpires, in analyzing the cases of creativity, that the experiment group, experiencing these brainstorming programs, have made an elaborate improvement of their creativity by solving problems in more fluent and orignal ways.
In the analysis of covariance to verify the effects of improving emotional intelligence, the experiment group also mark positively higher statistical scores than the comparative one (F=530.60, p<.001). That is, in all the subcategories of emotional intelligence such as emotional perception and expression (F=227.87, p<.001), the emotional facilitation of thought (F=219.12, p<.001), the utilization of emotional knowledge (F=228.73, p<.001) and the reflective regulations of emotions (F=122.07, p<.001), the experiment group shows significant statistical differences from the comparative one. As the result of analyzing the cases of emotional intelligence, the experiment group who have experienced the brainstorming programs, turn out to have improved in terms of emotional perception and expression, the emotional facilitation of thought, the utilization of emotional knowledge and the reflective regulations of emotions.
In conclusion, the brainstorming programs developed for this study, having proven to be positively effective in improving children's creativity and emotional intelligence, can serve as efficient tools at the site of children's education. It is suggestive, accordingly, that brainstorming programs are suitable to improve children's creativity and emotional intelligence.