Can a creative interpersonal problem solving program improve creative thinking in gifted elementary students?

Abstract

Enhancing problem solving skills of gifted students provides them with essential tools for encountering future situations. Due to the necessity of problem solving skills in the lives of the gifted students, and inspired by the CPS model, along with parents need assessment surveys, a creative interpersonal problem solving training program was developed. Furthermore, its effectiveness on creativity of the elementary gifted students was evaluated. The design of the study was semi-experimental with pretest-post-test and control group. 125 female elementary students were screened by Raven Progressive Matrix of Intelligence and Persian version of Stanford-Binet test of intelligence. Those who qualified as gifted were randomly assigned into the experiment and control groups. The experimental group participated in the creative interpersonal problem solving program, and the control group did not receive the training, but was scheduled to receive the training program after the end of the research. While Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (Torrance, 1990, standardized Persian version, 1993 & 2008) was administered to measure creative thinking, creative performance was measured through Teacher Creativity Checklists (Proctor & Burnett, 2004). The obtained data were analyzed using Repeated Measures Analysis of the Variance. The findings showed significant differences (p<0.05) between the experimental and control groups in all sub-variables of creativity, and the results were maintained in the two-month follow up evaluation. In the end, applying creative interpersonal problem solving program for improving creativity in elementary gifted girls was discussed.