Can an Educational Activity Program Based on Feuerstein’s Program and Gardner’s Theory Increase Excellence and Creativity in Math in Omani Students?

Abstract

Excellence and creativity in mathematics are necessary requirements for the twenty-first century, and some countries have gone to build and develop new curricula for excellence and creativity. We prepared an activity program in mathematics based on Feuerstein's instrumental enrichment program and Gardner's multiple intelligences theory to increase excellence and creativity in mathematics for Omani students.We hypothesized that the success of previous programs based on the same foundations would generalize to Omani students. Inan experiment,the experimental group received a special training and the control group did not. We then checked whether the pretest-posttest gain was larger for the experimental group than for the control group. The study sample was comprised of an experimental group of n= 35 8th-grade girl students of class nr. 8/1 in Aesha bent Abu Bakr school in Salalah, Oman, and a control group of n= 36 of 8th-grade girl students of class nr. 8/3 in the same school.The differences in pretest-posttest gains were analyzed using t-tests, significance levels, correlations, and effect sizes.There were large and significant experimental effects in favor of the experimental group, showing these educational outcomes can be generalized to Oman.We note various limitations of the study and give various recommendations.