The purposes of this dissertation were to compare the creative thinking of kindergarten students from three different child rearing backgrounds who participated in two curriculum approaches. Another purpose was to identify suggestions for promoting and developing creative thinking in children. The three child rearing styles examined were: democratic, autocratic and overprotective. The two curriculum approaches were: Readiness Activities Oriented Curriculum and the Academic Oriented Curriculum. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking Figural Form A was translated and adapted to suit Thai students (Rungsinan, 1978). The Torrance Tests yielded three measures: fluency, originality and elaboration. The Kindergarten Curriculum Evaluation Form developed by the researcher was used to identify fourteen kindergarten schools that participated in the study. The Questionnaire Concerning Child Rearing Practices was adapted from the questionnaire developed by Thumnut (1979) and revised by Kiattikul (1988). A total of three hundred and seventeen children participated in the study. The data were analyzed using analysis of variance procedures. The following findings emerged from the study: (1) There were no significant differences in fluency, originality and elaboration scores among students from different child rearing backgrounds. (2) The students in the readiness kindergarten programs scored significantly higher on fluency, originality and elaboration than students in the academic kindergartens. (3) The measure of elaboration emerged as a variable which was highly significant and may be of practical significance. In promoting and developing creative thinking in kindergarten students, the researcher suggests the use of brainstorming, webbing and pretending as techniques to help students produce new ideas and form relationships between concepts, to encourage their imagination and to involve students with minimal amounts of direction, exposition and instruction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-8577 |
| Date | 01 January 1993 |
| Creators | Bhasavanich, Preeyaporn |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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