In modern society, it is tending to require the man of flexibility who thinks and behaves actively rather than the one who frames his/her own thought and behavior. The creativity holder will be demanded who is apt to the age of limitless competition a...
In modern society, it is tending to require the man of flexibility who thinks and behaves actively rather than the one who frames his/her own thought and behavior. The creativity holder will be demanded who is apt to the age of limitless competition and able to think in innovative and originative way. Accordingly, the promotion of creativity is apparently important, since it serves to individual self-fulfillment as well as the social and national development, and ultimately to reinforcement of international competitiveness.
This study focused on the plan to raise creativity in order to select paper, the material with good accessibility, to investigate various techniques fitting to it, and to help infants' creative activity of expression.
The moulding activity with paper, called paper folding, is a creative work of arts to produce various forms by making a three-dimension and a pattern with two-dimensional planes in an intensional order and a deliberate method. It is applied to plane pictorial expression and craftworks and pliable so that it can be changed into various forms together with other media.
In the respect of raising the creativity, the expression that applies making up, cutting out and folding out of paper folding shows the possibility of various expression by letting infants have interest and experience various expressions, so the necessity of paper folding education is needed more urgently.
The main subject investigated the possibility of various techniques and expressions of paper folding, and analyzed infants(4~7 years old)' works categorized by the basic folding, composition and application in arts class that uses paper folding.
It was found out from analysis of paper folding applied class out of arts programs in infant's facilities that the class relating to paper folding was 14 times of 188 total artistic activities, very little and short of even 1/10, and most artistic activities were inclined to drawing and insufficient to raise infants' creativity by using paper folding.
Also with the subject of 40 infants, an experiment was carried out to see the effect the teacher has on the infants' creativity by the same theme of activity. The experiment group who just followed the teacher's basic folding activity showed similar results among children, while the group of children who were provided diverse information about the theme of activity after the teacher's explanation of folding. It was found out that the imagination and creativity of children can be very diverse depending on how the teacher makes out the teaching plan and how to teach, and the teacher's active application of resources and qualitative teaching plan in artistic activity was an efficient approach to the improvement of infants' creativity.
In the class before the inspection of interest, the basic folding and application was a little easier to express, while making difficult forms, making toys, making provisions and making something with recycling took much time and efforts. It was a personal opinion that infants might be interested in the basic folding class that is easy to represent and able to see the effect in a short time. On the contrary, however, infants are more interested in and immersed in three-dimensional works, though much time and efforts are taken and a little difficult they are, rather than two-dimensional folding or cutting to attach that are too easy to represent.
Infants also concentrated more on making toys fit to themselves or things for their own use.
Followings are the results of study.
First, paper folding is an activity with a material of paper that is easily available anywhere by anybody. Its merit is that anybody can make an access as it is easy to buy material and without regard to time and place. The material is multifarious in size and pattern, so it is possible to experience materials in various quality. Also it is cheap and accessible because it is applied all around living.
Secondly, when the paper folding class was carried out for the first time, infants seemed very familiar to expressional activity as they were chemically attracting to it though short of concept of paper folding.
Thirdly, infants between 4~7 years old were a little short of expressional ability compared to elementary students. However, it was found out that they were very interested in the paper folding and exerted more creativity while feeling satisfaction and pride from the fact that they themselves make and produce something. Those infants who got interested in paper folding showed increased expression and creativity and self-confidence over their own works.
Lastly, those infants, who only knew of paper folding as just 'to fold colored paper', showed a wider understanding of paper folding by experiencing the world of various paper folding, the attitude to apply a specific way of folding to various kinds, and the look to face the class with an active attitude as they felt interesting in class.
In conclusion, this study showed that there is no limit of expression through paper folding after infants experienced various techniques relating to paper folding. It does not mean that only paper folding in all the formative activities guarantee the infants' creativity, but it was found out that the paper folding class properly connected with other formative activity could raise the interest and concentration of infants.
This study has its significance in that paper folding has an abundant possibility to enlarge infants' creativity and the plan of promoting creativity through paper folding began to be researched.
This study, however, was carried out in private institutes with limited numbers of infants, therefore the process of generalization must be required in the field of education by instructing many infants.