Today, creativity is considered a very important personal characteristic for adaptation to the dramatically changing informationalization society of the 21st century and for South Korea's economic, social, and cultural development. As a result, school...
Today, creativity is considered a very important personal characteristic for adaptation to the dramatically changing informationalization society of the 21st century and for South Korea's economic, social, and cultural development. As a result, school education currently takes considerable interest in the issue of improving students' creativity. Accordingly, the first purpose of the present study was to implement integrated arts education on primary school students in lower grades and to verify empirically the effect of this education on creativity. In addition, the second purpose of the present study was to verify whether integrated arts education that used the SCAMPER technique was more effective for creativity than was integrated arts education that did not use the technique or other traditional education.
The subjects participating in the present study were 40 students in the 1st and 2nd grades in primary school. They were classified into three groups. First, experimental group 1, consisting of 13 students, received integrated arts education that used the SCAMPER technique. Experimental group 2, also consisting of 13 students, received integrated arts education that did not use the SCAMPER technique. Forming the control group, the remaining 14 students received traditional art education implemented as after-school classes instead of integrated arts education. Integrated arts education was implemented for 1 hour and 30 minutes per week for four weeks. It proceeded by analyzing the curricula for primary school students in the 1st and 2nd grades regarding four kinds of materials frequently encountered in daily life (glass, wood, paper, and textiles) and inducing the students to think and talk in diverse ways about aspects of artworks created with the four topical materials such as their contents and expressive techniques. In the present study, integrated arts education using the SCAMPER technique was implemented so that the students examined a variety of objects produced by using the four topical materials with magnifying glasses, looked at diverse artworks, played theatrical games that made use of the topical materials, and created artworks themselves. In this entire process, the students were prompted to engage with diverse ways of thinking based on the checklist of the SCAMPER technique including substitution, combination, adaptation, modification, expansion/reduction, other usages, elimination, and reversal and trained to record new ideas that arose in response to such demands.
To verify the effectiveness of integrated arts education and the SCAMPER technique in terms of creativity, the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT shape tests) and the Creative Personality Scale (CPS) were conducted on the students in the three groups as pre-tests and post-tests, respectively, to obtain data, which were then analyzed by using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The major results of the present study are as follow.
First, when the TTCT shape test results were analyzed, integrated arts education was effective for improving creative thinking. The means of the integrated arts education groups' total scores on the TTCT were 106.00 for the pre-tests and 113.96 for the post-tests, respectively. On the contrary, the means of the control group's total scores were 106.14 for the pre-tests and 104.86 for the post-tests, respectively. According to ANCOVA, the means of the two groups' total scores exhibited significant differences on 5% levels (F=5.36, p<.05). In addition, in the case of the TTCT's subordinate factors, there were significant differences in the creativity index (F=5.11, p<.05) and resistance to premature closure (F=4.35, p<.05) factors.
Second, in the analysis of data on the three groups' total scores on the TTCT shape tests, the means of the total scores of the integrated arts education group using the SCAMPER technique were 104.85 for the pre-tests and 116.46 for the post-tests, the means of the total scores of the integrated arts education group not using the technique were 107.15 for the pre-tests and 111.46 for the post-tests, and the means of the total scores of the control group were 106.14 for the pre-tests and 104.86 for the post-tests, respectively. According to ANCOVA, the means of the three groups' total scores exhibited significant differences on 5% levels (F=3.69, p<.05). In addition, in the case of the TTCT's subordinate factors, there were significant differences in the creativity index (F=3.54, p<.05) and originality (F=3.74, p<.05) factors. Such results signify that, from among the three groups, the one to receive integrated arts education using the SCAMPER technique exhibited the greatest improvement in creative thinking. However, in Bonferroni post hoc mean comparison correction, the group using the SCAMPER technique did not exhibit significant differences in the means from the group not using it, exhibiting significant differences in the means only from the control group.
Third, when the CPS data were analyzed, the integrated arts education groups improved significantly only in the scores on the intellectual openness (F=5.48, p<.05) factor from among the sub-fields of creative personality in comparison with the control group. In other words, integrated arts education was effective for improving the tendency willingly to accept new experiences or changes in thinking. However, in the analysis of the three groups, which sought to verify the effectiveness of the SCAMPER technique, there was no significant effect on any of the factors of the CPS.
In conclusion, the present study is significant for empirically elucidating the fact that integrated arts education is effective as education improving the creative thinking of primary school students in lower grades. In particular, integrated arts education using the SCAMPER technique exhibited the greatest improvement in creative thinking, thus implying that the SCAMPER technique needs to be used widely to improve students' creative thinking at schools. In the present study, however, there was no significant difference in creative thinking between the group using the SCAMPER technique and the group not using it, and there was no positive effect on creative personality factors other than the intellectual openness factor with the implementation of the integrated arts education method or the SCAMPER technique. Such points must be further elucidated through future research.