Diagnosing the levels of development of creative abilities of junior schoolchildren. Methods and techniques for studying creative abilities. J. Chris' Musical Ability Structure
It has been proven that creative abilities are closely connected with other mental processes (memory, thinking, attention, perception) that serve educational activities. Thus, without paying enough attention to the development of creative abilities in primary school, the quality level of education decreases.
Based on the above, during pre-graduation practice, a system of circle classes in fine arts was tested, dedicated to performing decorative work with the aim of developing imagination. Experimental work can be divided into 3 stages:
1) ascertaining;
2) main (formative);
3) analytical (control)
At the first stage, an entrance diagnostic was carried out to determine the level of students’ creative abilities.
In pedagogy and psychology, many scientists have been involved in research in the field of children's drawings. As a result, many artistic and graphic tests have been developed that assess creative imagination according to certain criteria.
At A.L. Wenger has a test called “Non-existent animal”. The child is invited to draw an animal that he has never seen in life, and come up with his own. The less the created animal resembles something that really exists (in nature or in culture), the higher the level of imagination is assessed. The level of development of imagination is determined by the number of various details [Psychological Dictionary: http://www.edudiс.ru/psi/348/].
E. Torrance developed the “Picture Completion” creativity test.
The proposed version of the Torrance test is a set of pictures with a certain set of elements (lines), using which subjects need to complete the picture to some meaningful image. This version of the test uses 6 pictures selected from 10 original ones. According to A.N. Voronin, these pictures do not duplicate each other in their initial elements and give the most reliable results.
The diagnostic capabilities of the adapted version of the methodology allow us to evaluate the following 2 indicators of creativity:
- originality;
- uniqueness.
Indicators of “fluency” of execution, “flexibility”, “complexity” of the image available in full version Torrance’s “Picture Completion” test are not used in this modification. In the course of adapting this methodology, norms and an atlas of typical drawings were compiled for a sample of young managers, which made it possible to assess the level of development of creativity in this category of people. The “originality” indicator is calculated using the formula. The test can be carried out either individually or in a group.
On the Internet you can also find many tests to identify the level of creative abilities (without the author’s name). But they have more of a game form and do not provide a clear gradation of levels. Test “I made him out of what was there.” The child is asked to make some kind of craft from plasticine in 5 minutes. Points are awarded based on originality, elaboration and number of details. But there is no clear affiliation with a certain level of development of creative abilities. In addition, such techniques are difficult to carry out in a large group of people (in a secondary school).
Many methods for assessing creativity can be divided into several groups. One of them includes approaches aimed at studying divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is examined using tasks where respondents are required to generate ideas in response to a verbal or figurative stimulus. These ideas are then rated on four grounds - originality (rarity of the answer), number of answers generated, flexibility (how different the ideas are made) and elaboration of the answers (how applicable they are to reality).
The following well-known methods can be included in this class: J. Guilford's creativity test, E. Torrance's creativity test, which have a well-known modification - the Torrance and Guilford test, tested on a Russian sample, created by E. Tunik. The Wallace and Kogan method of assessing the level of creativity should also be included in the list of approaches to assessing creative thinking [Tunik E., 2004].
There are various modifications of these methods that have been used in modern research. For example, E. L. Grigorenko and R. J. Sternberg measured creative thinking by asking participants to describe the world through the eyes of insects and imagine who might live and what might happen on a planet called “Priumliava.” Another study by Sternberg used cartoons. Participants were offered five cartoons from which the characters' lines were cut out, and from them they had to choose three to think through the lines and names. Scientists also used the method of writing essays, which could be created under one of the given headings: “Fifth Chance”, “2983”, “over the edge”, etc.
The final type of Sternberg modification is the "oral history" method, in which participants were presented with five sheets of paper, each containing a set of 11 to 13 images related by a common theme. After selecting one of the pages, participants were given 15 minutes to formulate the story and also to dictate it into the recorder within a limited time. Another method that can also be classified in this group is the method of free associations by Z. Siewert. It includes an instruction in which the respondent is asked to give several interpretations for the pictures (by Fantalov) as quickly as possible.
The next group of methods was developed to assess convergent thinking, or “the ability to narrow down the number of possible solutions to a problem using logic and existing knowledge.” S. Mednik's verbal creativity test can be an example of this type of technique. The test contains three words and respondents must be offered one word that unites the data. It was adapted to the Russian sample by T. B. Galkina, L. G. Alekseeva and L. G. Kusnutdinova.
A widely known group of methods is one in which respondents are asked to draw something. This approach is reflected in the Barron-Welsh test, based on the theory of S. Freud. In it, respondents are asked to draw pictures, which are rated on scales depending on the degree of expression in the pictures of primary processes, such as ego functioning and libidinal drives, as well as symbolization and substitution. The images are also used to build the creative thinking test “drawing creation”, developed by Y. Urban. The test consists of five fragments of figures located in a large square, with a small unmarked area on the side. Participants are asked to imagine that the artist began a drawing but was interrupted, and respondents are asked to continue this incomplete drawing.
Close to this class is the “individual photography” method developed by Ziller and modified by Dollinger and Clancy. It asks respondents to select or take 20 photographs that answer the question “Who am I?” and provide verbal and written descriptions of the reasons why these photographs answer the question.
Another important group of methods involves assessing creative behavior. Often, all points of these methods contain descriptions of types of behavior that are associated with creativity. The respondent must indicate which of the proposed types of behavior he uses, or how typical each type is for him. A method belonging to this group is the Creative Behavior Scale, which consists of 93 items related to the attitudes of “openness to divergent thinking” that accompany creative behavior.
Another method in this group - Creative Behavioral Dispositions Scale, a multi-indicator instrument based on the concept of transactualization, which expands the concept of self-actualization in terms of creativity and personal space design.
The Creativity in Everyday Life scale measures 5 dimensions of creativity: expressive creativity, characterized by spontaneity and freedom of expression; technical creativity, characterized by professionalism and skill; inventive creativity as the manifestation of ingenuity in the convenient combination of materials; innovative creativity, or modification and development of ideas; urgent creativity, including the development of vital ideas.
This group also includes a questionnaire of creative activities, which has been modified. This questionnaire consists of a scale of four components of creativity, peak creativity and the degree of involvement in creative activity.
The Creativity Questionnaire suggests seven of them: performance, science (mathematics), problem solving, artistic-visual, artistic-verbal, entrepreneurial, and interacting with others. A more modern version of this questionnaire, the New Domains of Creativity Questionnaire, consists of 21 items based on four factors: drama (acting, singing, writing), mathematics (science) (chemistry, logic, computers), arts (crafts, drawing). , design) and interaction (learning, leadership). Each item on this questionnaire must be rated on a six-point scale from “Not creative at all” to “Very creative.”
The last group of methods makes it possible to study human behavior associated with creative activity, which is influenced by the socio-cultural context (demography, religiosity, ethnic identity, values). Let's consider this group of methods in more detail.
The Creative Achievement Questionnaire (CAQ), developed by Carson, measures creativity in 10 areas: visual arts, music, dance, architectural design, creative writing, humor, inventions, scientific discoveries, theater and film and culinary arts. For each area, the questionnaire contains eight items reflecting the content of certain creative behavior.
These items are numbered from 0 to 7, which reflects the increasing level of creative activity shown in them. For all fields of activity, the first item (numbered 0) indicates a lack of training, experience or achievement in the field. The remaining points offer increasingly rare types of creative activity, which are logically interconnected in such a way that the choice of each subsequent point also implies the choice of the previous one. In this methodology, a certain weight is intentionally assigned to each item, and they are not considered as interchangeable elements. In addition, the eight points are not independent: if the respondent does not select the zero point (aka the first point), which indicates a lack of achievement in this area, then other points in this area of activity are also scored zero points. Likewise, if someone selects a “high” item, then all previous items should also be marked as characteristic of the respondent. Thus, a study of Cronbach's Alpha within each domain does not seem necessary.
This questionnaire has been widely used in various studies, which have shown that the scale does reflect differences in creativity achievement. Carson and his colleagues, in the first paper on the technique, note that people with higher overall scores on the technique find more interesting collage solutions, have higher scores on divergent thinking, and are also more open to new experiences. Openness to experience has been a reliable predictor of Creative Achievement Inventory scores in several more recent studies.
Overall scores on this measure do not show significant correlations with anxiety, depression, or social anxiety symptoms, but do correlate with the Creative Behavior Assessment described below, the Everyday Creative Activities Assessment, and divergent thinking.
Another method that we included in this category is the method of biographical analysis of creative behavior BIСB. This instrument contains 34 items assessing everyday creativity across a wide range of possible domains, such as arts, crafts and creativity, but also covers social creativity as expressed in leadership and mentoring. This scale uses a yes/no response format. The instructions ask respondents to select from a given list those activities in which he or she was actively involved during the past 12 months. In terms of reliability evidence, recent studies have found Cronbach's Alpha scores of 74, 78, and 76 . As for evidence of the validity of the technique, it positively correlates with divergent thinking and openness to experience, i.e. with factors that are usually markers of creativity.
The last of the methods belonging to this group is the CBI method for assessing creative behavior, which was first developed by D. Hokavar and then modified into a shorter version by S. J. Dollinger. The researcher eliminated the least reliable items and retained the questions whose responses correlated most significantly with the other measures. The short form contains items regarding such behaviors as creating a costume, writing poetry and songs, and drawing sketches. The short form should be considered a measure of everyday creativity, while the long form covers both everyday creativity and extraordinary creative achievement. The instructions ask respondents to indicate their level of involvement in various activities on a 4-point scale ranging from “never done this” (0 points) to “did this more than five times” (3 points).
The original version of the technique was used in the first few years of data collection, which subsequently made it possible to calculate correlations between the results obtained with its help and the short form data.
The internal consistency of the short form is equivalent to that of the long form. For the first and last years of data collection, the short form of this methodology was validated so that it differs from the original version.
To conduct the study, we selected a modified and adapted version of Williams’ set of creative tests (WAT), or more precisely, such methods as the Divergent Thinking Test, the “Questionnaire for Teachers to Assess a Child’s Creative Potential,” and a test for self-assessment of creative abilities.
Let's take a closer look at these methods. The Divergent Thinking Test is aimed at diagnosing creativity and evaluates all characteristics associated with creative thinking. Data are assessed using four factors of divergent thinking: fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration.
P. Torrens also identified the criteria of imagination in the field of diagnosing artistic and creative abilities:
Fluency;
Flexibility;
Originality;
Elaboration;
Characteristics of the main indicators of creative imagination.
Originality characterizes the ability to put forward ideas that are different from the obvious and normative ones. It is measured by the number of extraordinary, non-repetitive answers, images, ideas.
Elaboration - thoroughness, detailing of images - captures the ability for invention and constructive activity. It is measured by the number of essential and non-essential features in developing the main idea.
Fluency is a quantitative indicator that reflects the ability to generate a large number of ideas (associations, images). It is measured by the number of results.
Flexibility – reflects the ability to come up with a variety of ideas, move from one aspect of a problem to another, and use different solution strategies.
Based on the specific criteria listed above, we have selected the following methods that are most suitable for our diagnostics. They are not so difficult to process the results (there are no formulas that take a lot of time to calculate), correspond to the age of the primary school student we have chosen and are closer to visual activities (Table 1).
Research methods Table 1
Poor development of imagination is expressed in a low level of processing of ideas. Weak imagination entails difficulties in solving mental problems that require the ability to visualize a specific situation. With an insufficient level of imagination development, a rich and versatile emotional life is impossible. life plan.
As a rule, we find a high level of development of imagination among people engaged in creative work - writers, artists, musicians, scientists.
It should be noted that a person is not born with a developed imagination. The development of imagination occurs in the process of human ontogenesis and requires the accumulation of a certain stock of ideas, which in the future can serve as material for creating images of the imagination. Imagination develops in close connection with the development of the entire personality, in the process of training and education, as well as in unity with thinking, memory, will and feelings.
Description of the research program and methods
The first stage was testing according to the method of diagnosing the development of creative abilities by E. Tunik (Appendix 2).
The second stage was testing students using the classical method of diagnosing creativity by E. Torrance (Appendix 1).
The third stage is obtaining expert assessments from teachers regarding the development of the creative abilities of their students.
The fourth stage is testing teachers using the D. Johnson questionnaire (Appendix 5).
The fifth stage is interviewing teachers regarding the level of development of creative abilities that manifests itself in the everyday life of children.
Currently, there are a huge number of different methods for psychodiagnostics of human creative abilities. E. Torrance developed 12 tests grouped into a verbal, visual and sound battery. He preferred not to use the term “creativity” in the names of his methods, designating them as batteries for verbal, visual and verbal-sound creative thinking. To relieve anxiety and create a favorable creative atmosphere, E. Torrence called his methods not tests, but classes.
The test is intended for subjects aged 5 years and older. This test consists of three subtests. Answers to all tasks are given in the form of drawings and captions.17
Each subtest is given 10 minutes to complete, but, according to many psychologists, the time for completing the task can not be limited, since the process of developing creative abilities presupposes the free organization of the temporary component of creative activity. The artistic level of execution in the drawings is not taken into account.
The test allows you to assess: verbal and figurative creativity, as well as individual creative abilities: fluency, flexibility, originality of thinking, the ability to see the essence of the problem, the ability to resist stereotypes; forecast of school adaptation of creative students, examination and identification of training programs that promote the development of creative thinking and the realization of the creative potential of the individual.
As experimental practice has shown, the test is informative and allows you to solve various problems, including in the field of diagnosing artistic and creative abilities. Torrance's model for the development of creative abilities is universal and corresponds to psychological realities in any sphere of human activity. And the main indicators of the development of creative abilities - fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration - are clearly manifested in artistic activity at various periods of personality development.
Another technique we used was the technique of E. Tunik (Appendix 2).
To process the research materials and extract information from quantitative data, we conducted a correlation analysis.
Correlation analysis was carried out between the indicators:
- 1. Results according to the method of P. Torrens and E. Tunik;
- 2. Results of P. Torrance and expert assessments of teachers;
- 3. Results of E. Tunik and expert assessments of teachers.
Correlation analysis was carried out using the MS Excel 2003 program. We calculated the Mann-Whitney coefficient using the Statistica Base program.
Analysis of the results of diagnostics of the development of creative abilities of primary schoolchildren
Assessing the correlation of tests through the correlation coefficient, we found that the correlation of the Torrance and Tunick methods was 0.51, while the correlations of the Torrance method with expert ratings and the Tunick method with expert ratings were 0.47 and 0.10, respectively. This indicates that the assessment of the level of development of creative abilities is more adequate using the combination of the Torrance and Tunick methods, since they are closely interrelated, as evidenced by the correlation coefficient.
On the day of testing, after introducing us to the students, we asked the teachers to sit in the back desks, got gifts for the children - sweets, the children relaxed and were happy. Our further communication continued in a fun, informal atmosphere, which increased the chances of developing creative abilities in tests. Therefore, another conclusion can be drawn that authoritarian style teaching takes place and influences the manifestation and development of creative potential.
That is why we took the Torrens and Tunick methods as a basis for assessing the level of development of creative abilities in junior schoolchildren and, in the process of analysis, compared them with expert assessments of teachers.
The indicators that characterize creative thinking and which we relied on in our research are the following: fluency, flexibility and originality of thought. Fluency includes two components: ease of thinking, that is, the speed of switching text tasks and the accuracy of completing a task. Flexibility of the thought process is switching from one idea to another. The ability to find several different ways to solve the same problem. Originality is the minimum frequency of a given response to a homogeneous group. Analyzing the testing results using the Torrens method, you can see that the results were distributed as follows (Appendix 3).
On average, according to the Torrance method, students scored 153.91±10.98 points, which indicates an average level of development of creative abilities in the class. The exception is the four students mentioned above, whose level of development of creative abilities is above average.
Next, we carried out an analysis of testing using the method of E. Tunik (Appendix 3). The percentage of children who scored above average is more than 50%. The average score using this method is 235.24±12.65.
Next, we analyzed the relationship between expert assessments and testing results using the Torrance and Tunick methods. As a result of the analysis, we can say that the range of scores for students with a high level of development of creative abilities varies from 3 to 5. It can also be noted that the same students scored a high number of points using both methods (Torrance and Tunick), which confirms the high connection between by these methods, marked by a correlation coefficient.
It can be noted that most children have difficulty answering questions related to modeling a situation. The same can be said for improvement tasks. Children with a high level of development of creative abilities coped well with these tasks. Analyzing the structure of factors for the development of creative abilities (Appendix 4), it can be noted that among the factors for the development of creative abilities studied using the Torrance method, the flexibility factor predominates (51%). Next comes the factor of fluency (24%), accuracy (15%) and originality (10%).
Table 3 presents an analysis of the distribution of factors for the development of creative abilities according to the methodology of E. Tunik. (Appendix 4)
As can be seen from Table 4 and Figure 5, the distribution of factors for the development of creative abilities among students according to the Tunik method is exactly the opposite. Here the leading factor is accuracy (50%), followed by the factor of originality (26%), fluency (15%) and flexibility (9%). (Appendix 4)
Analyzing the distribution of these same factors according to expert assessments (see Table 4), we can say that the factor of fluency prevails among students (4.09±0.13), followed by the factor of originality (3.99±0.14), accuracy (3 .92±0.14) and flexibility (3.74±0.13).
Initially, we believed that indicators such as fluency, flexibility and elaboration are directly dependent on each other, that is, directly proportional. However, after conducting a correlation analysis of the data, we found that there is a direct relationship between fluency, flexibility and elaboration (Appendix 4).
Thus, second-graders solve the problem quickly, while the ideas they propose are original. But this does not mean that the problem will be solved correctly. That is, second-graders, when solving a problem, do not pay special attention to the quality of the work performed.
The subjects' teachers were also tested according to J. Johnson's method for creativity (see Appendix). And expert assessments were taken for each criterion for the development of creative abilities.
We found that the teacher of grade 2 “B”, where children have a higher level of development of creative abilities, herself has a high level of development of creative abilities (a total of more than 34 points on the D. Johnson questionnaire corresponds to a very high level of development of creative abilities). While teacher 2 “D” scored 30 points, which corresponds to a high level of development of creative abilities, but still it is lower than that of teacher 2 “B”. Having compared the test scores, it turned out that the higher the level of development of a teacher’s creative abilities, the higher it is in his students.
Afterwards, we interviewed teachers about the manifestation of the development of creative abilities in the learning process - in the classroom:
- · activity,
- frequency of raising hands,
- · expressing original ideas,
- · behavior during recess, etc.,
The teacher’s personal opinion about each student, behavior during breaks and in extracurricular activities was analyzed.
As a result of the analysis of the survey, we found that children who are characterized by a high level of development of creative abilities according to the methods of E. Torrence and E. Tunik were characterized by teachers as “always having their own opinion,” “restless,” “inattentive.” Upon further questioning, it turned out that “inattention” and “restlessness” are explained by the fact that these children quickly solve the task and begin to mind their own business, distracting those around them. The higher the result according to the method, the more children were rated as “hyperactive, like to play pranks, can make the whole class laugh in class and disrupt discipline,” however, in ordinary life these children were rated by the teacher as “artistic, open, dreamers.” If teachers overcome the difficulties associated with misunderstanding a child with a high level of development of creative abilities and create the right atmosphere of upbringing and learning, then they will have a better chance of raising highly creative individuals. If the teacher does not understand the child, cannot step beyond stereotypes and conditioning, and the child is perceived by him as “difficult and undisciplined,” then the teacher puts a stamp on him and the child closes down, becomes aggressive, as a result of which his creative potential may not be revealed.
In the process research work What attracted attention was the existence of a pattern in the area of high values of integral indicators of the development of creative abilities: high values of integral indicators of the development of creative abilities do not always, but quite often correspond to high values of indicators of school success. We can conclude that a child with high creative potential will most often study well, i.e., a sufficient condition is met. The converse statement is false (the necessary condition is not met), i.e. high values of the indicator of success in studies do not always correspond to high values of the indicator of the development of creative abilities; they can also be very low, which indicates that to achieve success in studies it is not necessary to have creative potential. Those. there is no two-way connection, but only a unidirectional connection, and then only in the area of high values of the indicator of the development of creative abilities. This conclusion is consistent with many data from foreign authors and confirms the need to include tests of creative thinking when selecting gifted children, since creative thinking is not synonymous with academic success.
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Introduction
1.1 Concept of creativity
1.3.5 Concept of A. Mednik
Conclusion
Applications
Introduction
People solve a lot of problems every day: small and large, light and heavy. And all these tasks are obstacles that require a more or less complex solution.
Problem solving is carried out through a creative process, a new path or the creation of something new. This is where special qualities of the mind are needed, such as observation, knowledge of how to compare and analyze, find connections and dependencies - all of this together is creative abilities.
One of the first researchers of creativity is L. Thurstone. He turned his interest to the difference between creativity and learning ability.
J. Guilford founded a concept based on a significant difference between two types of thought processes: convergence and divergence. Guilford represented the operation of divergence as the basis of creativity, which he interpreted as “a type of thinking that goes in different directions.”
J. Guilford's concept was developed by E.P. Torrance, who believed that creativity is a natural process that is generated by a person’s high need to relieve tension that has arisen in a situation of discomfort caused by ambiguity or incompleteness of an activity.
S. Mednik believes that the creative act has both components, both convergent and divergent. The essence of creativity, according to Mednik, is not the uniqueness of the operation, but the ability to overcome stereotypes.
The area of creativity is difficult to study and causes a lot of controversy, since the empirical field of facts related to this problem is very extensive. Creativity, viewed in different concepts, represents pieces of a puzzle that no one has yet been able to put together.
Diagnosis of creative abilities is the least developed area of psychodiagnostics, this is due to the multicomponent nature of the phenomenon being studied. And yet, there are a number of methods for diagnosing creativity, derived within the framework of various scientific paradigms.
Scientists have concluded that creativity is not the same as learning ability and is almost not reflected in tests designed to determine IQ. Experimental studies of personality abilities have contributed to the identification of a special kind of ability - to generate unusual ideas, to deviate from standard thinking patterns, to quickly find solutions to problem situations. This ability was called creativity.
Creativity involves a certain set of mental and personal components that determine the ability to be creative. Based on scientific literature, it has been established that creativity, as a personality characteristic, is a complex integrative formation. The composition of creativity determines the totality of various abilities on which the course of the creative process depends. Based on the conducted studies of the structure of the creative process, it was revealed: in the dynamics of the creative process, phases or stages can be distinguished when the development (further implementation) of creativity depends to a greater extent on any dominant ability. This means that, in the process of creativity, the abilities that make up the content of creativity are alternately updated, while remaining one system.
The formation of creativity implies the creation of diagnostic techniques that make it possible to determine creative potential.
Recently, among practical psychologists there has been an increased tendency to use various psychodiagnostic tools, which are also aimed at identifying creative potential. According to a number of scientists (B. Simon, M. Wallach), traditional tests do not provide a complete picture of the creative capabilities of the subjects. When studying creativity, it is impossible to avoid a collision with a psychological phenomenon characterized by uncontrollability and spontaneity of manifestation.
Among other things, creativity, according to researchers, V.N. Druzhinina, Ya.A. Ponomarev, depends on inappropriate activity, motivation for self-expression, the main role is played by unconscious processes (intuition), this greatly complicates the diagnostic procedure. In this regard, the question acquires a certain importance: what should be the procedure for diagnosing creativity, which would allow assessing the actual creative capabilities of a person in the conditions of real activity.
It follows from this that the importance of studying the issue of diagnosing creative abilities is hampered by insufficient processing, a lack of diagnostic tools that make it possible to identify a person’s creative potential.
The object of research is creativity and creativity.
The subject of the research is methods and techniques for diagnosing creative abilities.
Purpose of the study: to analyze theoretical concepts on the problem of creative abilities.
1. Theoretical analysis of literature on the problems of creativity and creativity;
2. Study and analyze the basic concepts of creativity.
3. Explore methods and techniques for diagnosing creativity.
Research methods: theoretical analysis of literature.
Chapter 1. Psychological approaches to the study of creativity
1.1 Concept of creativity
Today, there are many interpretations of this concept, which is directly related to creativity and giftedness.
Creativity as a designation for a phenomenon considered most often from a psychological point of view and understood as a vital, creative core of abilities for fruitful activity: fantasy, intuition, improvisation in thinking, originality, talent, personality flexibility, constructive scientific and technical thinking, inspiration, artistic abilities and etc. Although Freud also called creativity a psychological mystery, it, while remaining to this day mainly the subject of psychology, has, in all likelihood, deeper roots.
In the Dictionary of a Practical Psychologist, edited by S.Yu. Golovin gives the following definition:
Creativity - the creative abilities of an individual - the ability to generate unusual ideas, deviate from traditional thinking patterns, and quickly solve problem situations. It is characterized by a readiness to produce fundamentally new ideas and is included in the structure of giftedness as an independent factor. Among intellectual abilities, it is singled out as a special type.
Zhmurov V.A. gives his definition of the concept of “creativity”:
Creativity (Latin creatio - creation) is the ability for creativity in its various manifestations, based on the need for self-actualization, imagination and divergent thinking.
In a large explanatory psychological dictionary edited by Arthur Reber, the following definition is given:
Creativity is the mental processes that lead to solutions, ideas, conceptualization, creation of artistic forms, theories or any products that are unique and new.
IN last years this term has become widespread in Russian psychology. And in order to understand it as best as possible, you should define a few more terms:
“Personality” is a person as a bearer of some properties. Personality is the result of the process of education and self-education. “One is not born a person, but one becomes one,” wrote A.N. Leontyev.
Personality is a person who is aware of his uniqueness, originality, individuality (individuality is the characteristics of character and mental make-up that distinguish one individual from another).
Personality is a set of developed habits and preferences, mental attitude and tone, sociocultural experience and acquired knowledge, a set of psychophysical traits and characteristics of a person that determine everyday behavior.
“Abilities” - in V. Dahl’s explanatory dictionary, “capable” is defined as fit for something or inclined, dexterous, suitable, convenient; in S. Ozhegov’s explanatory dictionary, “ability” is natural giftedness, talent. However, it is a mistake to consider abilities as innate, given by nature - only anatomical and physiological characteristics, i.e., inclinations that underlie the development of abilities, can be innate. Arising on the basis of inclinations, abilities develop in the process of human life; outside of activity, no abilities can develop. No person, no matter what inclinations he has, can become a talented film director, actor, journalist, musician or artist without doing a lot and persistently in the relevant activities. Based on the same inclinations, unequal abilities can develop, depending on the nature of the activity, living conditions, surrounding people and many other factors and nuances of the individual. Abilities are individual psychological characteristics of a person.
“Creativity” is the process of creating cultural and material values that are new in design.
A “creative personality” is a person with a certain set of moral, emotional and volitional qualities, as well as inclinations, abilities and talents.
There are two main points of view on a creative personality:
1. “Creativity” (creative ability) is characteristic of everyone to a normal person. It is as integral to a person as the ability to think, speak and feel. At the same time, the value of the result of creative activity is not particularly important, the main thing is that the result is new and significant for the “creator” himself. An independent, original solution by a student to a problem that has an answer will be a creative act, and he himself should be assessed as a creative person.
2. According to the second point of view, not every person should be considered a creative person. Since the determining factor of a creative act is the value of a new result, it must be universally significant and certainly be a cultural, technological or some other value for humanity as a whole.
1.2 Concepts of divergent and convergent thinking
Thinking is the highest level of human cognition, a process of reflection in the brain of the surrounding real world, based on two fundamentally different psychophysiological mechanisms: the formation and continuous replenishment of the stock of concepts, ideas and the derivation of new judgments and conclusions. Thinking allows you to gain knowledge about such objects, properties and relationships of the surrounding world that cannot be directly perceived using the first signal system. The forms and laws of thinking are the subject of consideration of logic, and psychophysiological mechanisms are the subject of psychology and physiology, respectively. From the point of view of physiology and psychology, this definition is the most correct.
The American psychologist J. Guilford, summarizing the research carried out in this direction, identified two types of thinking: convergent, necessary to find the only accurate solution to a problem, and divergent, thanks to which original solutions arise.
By convergent (from the Latin convergere - to converge) thinking is meant the search for a single solution. “In short, convergent thinking refers to linear, logical (discursive) thinking that involves one single correct solution to a problem. It is this type of thinking that is associated with IQ and the classical teaching method.”
Divergent thinking (from Latin divergere - to diverge) is one of the types of thinking characterized by the creation of a subjectively new product and new formations in the very cognitive activity of its creation. These new formations relate to motivation, goals, assessments, meanings. Creative thinking is distinguished from the processes of applying ready-made knowledge and skills, called reproductive thinking.
Let's explain with an example. Some people believe that there is only one right solution and try to find it using existing knowledge and logical reasoning. All efforts are concentrated on finding the only correct solution. This kind of thinking is called convergent thinking. Others, on the contrary, begin to look for a solution in all possible directions in order to consider as many options as possible. Such a “fan-shaped” search, which most often leads to original solutions, is characteristic of divergent thinking.
Unfortunately, almost all of our training is aimed at activating convergent thinking. Such a bias in pedagogy is a scourge for a creative person. For example, it is known that A. Einstein and W. Churchill found it difficult to study at school, but not because they were absent-minded and undisciplined, as the teachers believed. In fact, this was far from the case, but the teachers were simply irritated by their manner of not answering the question directly, but instead asking some “inappropriate” questions like “What if the triangle was upside down?”, “What if we replace water on...?”, “And if you look from the other side””, etc.
Creative people usually tend to think divergently. They tend to form new combinations of elements that most people use in a certain way, or to form connections between two elements that at first glance have nothing in common. Try to come up with some kind of drawing based on a circle. Well, what comes to your mind?, Man?, Tomato? Moon? Sun? Cherry... These are the standard answers that most people give. How about “a piece of Cheddar cheese” or “a footprint of an unknown animal” or “a swarm of viruses under a microscope in a drop of water.” This is already non-standard. In other words, these are creative responses.
Factors that interfere with creative thinking: uncritical acceptance of other people's opinions (conformism, agreement), external and internal censorship, rigidity (including the transfer of patterns, algorithms in solving problems) desire to find an answer immediately, laziness.
For the study of divergent thinking, the theoretical principles of Academician A.M. are essential. Matyushkin, who believes that the complete structure of a productive mental act includes the generation of a problem and the formulation of a mental task, as well as the search for a solution and its justification. Moreover, the link in generating the problem is considered as the most specific characteristic of the creative thinking process.
1.3 Basic concepts in creativity research
Various people have conducted many studies aimed at creating the concept of creativity, below are some of them.
1.3.1 The concept of reducing creativity to intelligence
Let's consider the point of view according to which the level of creative abilities is determined by the level of intellectual development.
Eysenck (1995) suggested that creativity is a component of general mental ability, based on significant (but still low) correlations between IQ and Guilford tests of divergent thinking.
Be that as it may, theoretical reasoning must be supported by facts. Followers of the reduction of creative abilities to intelligence are based on the results of empirical research, which includes the classic work of L. Terman (Terman L.M., 1937).
In 1926, he and K. Cox analyzed the biographies of 282 Western European celebrities and tried to estimate their IQ based on their achievements between the ages of 17 and 26. However, Eysenck relied on the Stanford-Binet scale to assess their intelligence in childhood.
Moreover, during the assessment, not only intellectual, but also creative achievements were taken into account, which theoretically calls into question the correctness of the conclusions.
The results obtained in this study became generally accepted and were included in many psychology textbooks.
A comparison was made of age-related indicators of the acquisition of knowledge and skills among famous people with similar data from a sample of ordinary children. It turned out that the IQ of celebrities is significantly above average.
From this, Theremin concluded that geniuses are those people who, according to testing data, in early childhood can be classified as highly gifted.
1.3.2 "Investment Theory" by R. Sternberg
One of the more recent concepts of creativity is the so-called “investment theory” proposed by R. Sternberg and D. Lavert (Sternberg R., 1985). These authors consider a creative person to be someone who is willing and able to “buy ideas at low prices and sell them at high prices.” "Buying low" means pursuing unknown, unrecognized, or unpopular ideas. The challenge is to correctly assess their development potential and possible demand. A creative person, despite environmental resistance, misunderstanding and rejection, insists on certain ideas and “sells them at a high price.” After achieving market success, he moves on to another unpopular or new idea. The second problem is where these ideas come from.
Sternberg believes that a person may not realize his creative potential in two cases:
1) if he expresses ideas prematurely;
2) if he does not bring them up for discussion for too long and then they become obvious, “outdated”. It should be noted that in this case the author replaces the manifestation of creativity with its social acceptance and evaluation.
According to Sternberg, creativity is determined by six main factors:
1) intelligence as an ability;
2) knowledge;
3) thinking style;
4) individual traits;
5) motivation;
6) external environment.
Intellectual ability is basic. The following components of intelligence are especially important for creativity:
1) synthetic ability - a new vision of the problem, overcoming the boundaries of ordinary consciousness;
2) analytical ability - identifying ideas worthy of further development;
3) practical abilities - the ability to convince others of the value of an idea ("selling").
If an individual has too much analytical ability to the detriment of the other two, then he is a brilliant critic, but not a creator. Synthetic ability, not supported by analytical practice, generates a lot of new ideas, but not substantiated by research and useless. Practical ability without the other two can lead to the sale of "poor quality" but clearly presented ideas to the public.
The influence of knowledge can be both positive and negative: a person must imagine what exactly he is going to do. It is impossible to go beyond the field of possibilities and show creativity if you do not know the boundaries of this field. At the same time, knowledge that is too established can limit the researcher’s horizons and deprive him of the opportunity to take a fresh look at the problem.
Creativity requires independence of thinking from stereotypes and external influence. A creative person independently poses problems and solves them autonomously.
Creativity presupposes, from Sternberg's point of view, the ability to take reasonable risks, the willingness to overcome obstacles, internal motivation, tolerance for uncertainty, and the willingness to resist the opinions of others. Creativity is impossible if there is no creative environment.
The individual components responsible for the creative process interact. And the cumulative effect of their interaction is not reducible to the influence of any one of them. Motivation can compensate for the lack of a creative environment, and intelligence, interacting with motivation, significantly increases the level of creativity.
1.3.3 Concept of creativity by J. Guilford and E.P. Torrance
The concept of creativity as a universal cognitive creative ability gained popularity after the publication of the works of J. Guilford (Guilford J.P., 1967).
Guilford pointed out the fundamental difference between two types of mental operations: convergence and divergence. Convergent thinking (convergence) is actualized in the case when a person solving a problem needs to find the only correct solution based on many conditions. In principle, there may be several specific solutions (many roots of the equation), but this set is always limited.
Divergent thinking is defined as “a type of thinking that goes in different directions” (J. Guilford). This type of thinking allows for varying ways to solve a problem and leads to unexpected conclusions and results.
Guilford considered the operation of divergence, along with the operations of transformation and implication, to be the basis of creativity as a general creative ability. Intelligence researchers have long come to the conclusion that creativity is weakly related to learning abilities and intelligence. Thurstone was one of the first to draw attention to the difference between creativity and intelligence. He noted that in creative activity an important role is played by such factors as temperamental characteristics, the ability to quickly assimilate and generate ideas (and not be critical of them), that creative solutions come at the moment of relaxation, dispersion of attention, and not at the moment when attention consciously concentrates on solving problems.
Further advances in the field of creativity research and testing are associated mainly with the work of psychologists at the University of Southern California, although their work does not cover the entire spectrum of creativity research.
Guilford identified four main dimensions of creativity:
1) originality - the ability to produce distant associations, unusual answers;
2) semantic flexibility - the ability to identify the main property of an object and propose a new way of using it;
3) figurative adaptive flexibility - the ability to change the shape of a stimulus in such a way as to see in it new signs and opportunities for use;
4) semantic spontaneous flexibility - the ability to produce a variety of ideas in an unregulated situation.
General intelligence is not included in the structure of creativity.
1.3.4 Concept of M. Wollach and N. Kogan
According to Wollach and Kogan, as well as such authors as P. Vernon and D. Hargreaves (Vernon R.E., 1967), creativity requires a relaxed, free environment. It is desirable that research and testing of creative abilities be carried out in ordinary life situations, when the subject can have free access to additional information on the subject of the task. Thus, they came to the conclusion that achievement motivation, competitive motivation and social approval motivation block the self-actualization of the individual and complicate the manifestation of his creative potential. Wallach and Kogan changed the system of creativity tests in their work. First, they gave subjects as much time as they needed to solve a problem or formulate an answer to a question. Testing was carried out during the game, while competition between participants was reduced to a minimum, and the experimenter accepted any answer from the subject.
1.3.5 Concept of A. Mednik
The concept developed by Mednich underlies the remote association test (Mednich S.A., 1969). The process of divergent thinking proceeds as follows: there is a problem, and the mental search follows, as it were, in different directions of the semantic space, starting from the content of the problem. Divergent thinking is like lateral, peripheral thinking, thinking “around the problem.”
Convergent thinking connects all the elements of the semantic space related to the problem together and finds the only correct composition of these elements.
According to Mednick, the creative process involves both convergent and divergent thinking. According to Mednick, the more distant the elements of a problem are taken from, the more creative the process of solving it is. The point is not in the particularity of the operation, but in the ability to overcome stereotypes at the final stage of the thought process and in the breadth of the field of associations.
Mednik's assumptions: 1. People - "native speakers" get used to using words in a certain associative connection with other words. These habits are unique in every culture and every era. 2. The creative thought process consists of forming new associations with meaning. 3. The distance between the subject’s associations and the stereotype measures his creativity. 4. Each culture has its own stereotypes, so template and original answers are determined specifically for each sample.
1.4 Features of a creative personality
Many researchers, combining the problem of human abilities with the problem of a creative personality, say that there are no special creative abilities, but there is a personality with certain motivations and traits
Possessing knowledge about the characteristics of a creative personality, psychologists owe not only to their own efforts, but also to the work of philosophers, art critics, literary critics, cultural historians who, undoubtedly, in one way or another intrigued the problem of a creative personality. By summarizing this kind of material and analyzing it, signs of genius were identified, expressed in the peculiarities of perception and motivation of the individual, intellectual abilities, and character. Such materials were largely supplemented by the opinions of various researchers and writers.
1.4.1 Qualities of a creative personality according to G.S. Altshuller
G.S. Altshuller identifies a whole complex of creative qualities, which soon form a derivative analysis of the lives of many inventors.
1) A worthy goal, which is, to a large extent, a new social benefit for the individual.
2) A set of work plans to achieve the goal and monitoring the implementation of these plans (Allocating time and acquiring the necessary knowledge)
3) High efficiency in implementing planned plans.
4) Rational technique for solving problems (systematic search for solutions to problems)
5) Ability to defend your ideas
6) Effectiveness, i.e. system or sequence, each indicator must participate in order to achieve high results.
1.4.2 Abilities of a creative personality according to R. Stenberg
R. Sternberg also dealt with describing the properties of a creative personality:
1. They do not depend on external motivation, because they know how to motivate themselves;
2. Learn to control their impulses;
3. They know when to be persistent and when to change goals;
4. They know how to make the most of their abilities, that is, they play their cards well;
5. Translate thought into action; 6. set specific goals for themselves;
7. They finish the job;
8. Initiative;
9. They are not afraid of failures;
10. They don’t postpone today’s affairs until tomorrow;
11. Accept fair criticism;
12. Never complain;
13. Independent;
14. They strive to overcome personal difficulties;
15. Concentrate on their goals;
16. They don’t take on a lot of things at once, but they don’t limit themselves to a minimum of tasks;
17. Ready for delayed rewards;
18. They are able to simultaneously see not only the trees, but also the forest behind them;
19. Have a reasonable level of self-confidence;
20. Able to combine analytical, creative and concrete thinking.
1.4.3 The problem of generalizing various lists of traits (properties) of a creative personality
Various authors - scientists and psychologists - have repeatedly compiled various lists of traits/properties of a “real scientist”. The number of these lists could be continued for a very long time, but the detailed lists of qualities provided probably already make it possible to evaluate both the intention and the nature of the conclusions obtained in such studies. Anyone who would like to create a complete and consistent portrait of the scientist’s personality based on these data , would be at a dead end.
Firstly, the number of qualities characteristic of a creative scientist, identified by different researchers, is very large. If you make a general list of them, it turns out that there are many incompatible and even contradictory characteristics in it.
Secondly, the identified qualities represent a variety of aspects and levels of personality: among them are intellectual, motivational, and characterological. However, they are usually viewed as side by side, equivalent, without any hierarchy. In this case, it is not clear whether every productive scientist must necessarily possess all these properties, whether half of them or a few of the most important ones are enough...
Thirdly, in psychology, as well as in everyday life, there is no strictness in the use of concepts describing personal characteristics. Therefore, when using the same term, different authors sometimes give it different meanings, while different designations often hide the same feature.
Fourthly, behind most of the listed qualities there is not an “elementary trait”, but a rather complex phenomenon, the nature of which is not always easy to understand, much less measure it experimentally or in tests. For example, by what criteria should such a seemingly understandable quality as passion for work be assessed: by the amount of time devoted to it, by the degree of emotionality of stories about it, by place on the list of preferred activities, or something else?
The assertion that similar traits of outstanding scientists are the reason for their success in the scientific field remains unproven. It is possible that similar qualities develop as a result of success, as a reaction to a special, favorable social situation. Finally, the basic assumption that outstanding scientists must be similar to each other is being questioned.
After all, the specificity of a discipline, the specialization of activities within it, as well as a specific problem objectively requires the scientists working in them to display different qualities: from some - scrupulousness, patience and conscientiousness for conducting experiments, double-checking facts; from someone, on the contrary, a flight of fancy, impulsiveness; from someone - enormous self-confidence, allowing you to take risks; from someone - constant doubt in conclusions and search for new arguments.
Problematic situations in science, despite all their external similarities, are fundamentally unique (the last statement is a typical factual mistake of psychologists, caused by the fact that they operate with a small statistical sample - I.L. Vikentyev) and each time require diverse properties from the one who deals with them. At the same time, not only personality traits influence the choice of problem and the manner of interaction with it, but also the content of the activity performed has a powerful effect on the formation of personality.
As it may seem, such numerous lists of properties and traits of a creative personality can probably give us the opportunity to describe her complete and unambiguous portrait. But, if you try to summarize them into a general list, you will find that there are many points that are not equivalent.
Chapter 2. Methods for diagnosing creativity
The problem of abilities has been and remains one of the most important problems in psychology. This is to a large extent due to the fact that its great practical significance, there is an interest in it from society, since abilities are associated with a person’s capabilities in performing certain types of activities, the success of his self-realization, and life achievements. Thus, the words of S.L. are known. Rubinstein that the question of a person’s abilities and gifts is a question of what he can do, what his capabilities are. Thus, the relevance of identifying and measuring abilities is obvious, i.e. their diagnostics.
2.1 Williams creative test battery (WAT)
The Williams Creative Tests (WAT), or more precisely, his methods such as the Divergent Thinking Test and the Personality Creativity Questionnaire, were originally developed to select gifted and talented children for schools that worked under federal, state and local programs for the development of creative abilities. The CAP is now available to measure creativity in all children. The Williams test set can undoubtedly be used to assess the creative abilities of adults as well.
2.1.1 Divergent thinking test
The divergent thinking test is aimed at diagnosing a combination of left-hemisphere verbal indicators and right-hemisphere visual-perceptual indicators. Data are assessed using four factors of divergent thinking: fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. You can also get a title score that reflects verbal ability. Thus, the full test reflects the cognitive-affective processes of synchronous activity of the right and left hemispheres of the brain.
The test book consists of three separate sheets, standard A4 format, each sheet of paper depicts four squares, inside of which there are stimulus figures. The subjects are asked to complete the pictures in the squares and come up with a name for each picture. Under the squares there is a figure number and a place for a signature. Test takers are given instructions, after which they begin working on the test.
As a result, we get five indicators expressed in raw points:
Fluency (B);
Flexibility (G);
Originality (O);
Elaboration (R);
Name (N).
1. Fluency - productivity, is determined by counting the number of drawings made by the subject, regardless of their content. Rationale: creative individuals work productively, which is associated with more developed fluency of thinking.
2. Flexibility - the number of changes in the category of a drawing, counting from the first drawing.
· Living things - a person, a person, a flower, a tree, any plant, fruit, animal, insect, fish, bird, etc.
· Mechanical, object - boat, spaceship, bicycle, car, tool, toy, equipment, furniture, household items, dishes, etc.
· Symbolic - letter, number, name, coat of arms, flag, symbolic designation, etc.
· View, genre - city, highway, house, yard, park, space, mountains, etc.
3. Originality - the place (inside-outside relative to the stimulus figure) where the drawing is made.
Each square contains a stimulus line or shape that will serve as a constraint for less creative people. The most original are those who draw inside and outside a given stimulus figure.
4. Elaboration - symmetry-asymmetry, where the details are located that make the drawing asymmetrical.
5. Name - wealth vocabulary(the number of words used in the title) and the ability to figuratively convey the essence of what is depicted in the pictures (direct description or hidden meaning, subtext).
2.1.2 Test of creative personality characteristics
This is a 50-item questionnaire that measures how curious, imaginative, able to understand complex ideas, and risk-taking people consider themselves to be.
The material of the method consists of a sheet with questions and a table of answers, in which the subject must select the most appropriate item in his opinion - “mostly true (YES)”, “partly true (maybe)”, “mostly false (NO)” , or “I can’t decide (I don’t know).”
When assessing the questionnaire data, four factors are used that are closely correlated with creative manifestations of personality. These include: Curiosity, Imagination, Complexity and Risk Taking.
2.2 Diagnostics of non-verbal creativity (method of E. Torrance, adapted by A.N. Voronin, 1994)
Conditions
The test can be carried out individually or in a group. To create favorable testing conditions, the manager needs to minimize achievement motivation and orient test takers to freely express their hidden abilities. In this case, it is better to avoid open discussion of the substantive focus of the methodology, i.e. there is no need to report that it is creative abilities (especially creative thinking) that are being tested. The test can be presented as a technique for “originality”, the ability to express oneself in a figurative style, etc. If possible, testing time is not limited, approximately 1-2 minutes are allocated for each picture. At the same time, it is necessary to encourage test takers if they think for a long time or hesitate.
The proposed version of the test is a set of pictures with a certain set of elements (lines), using which the subjects need to complete the picture to some meaningful image. This version of the test uses 6 pictures, which do not duplicate each other in their initial elements and give the most reliable results.
The test uses the following creativity indicators:
1. Originality (Op), which reveals the degree of dissimilarity of the image created by the subject from the images of other subjects (statistical rarity of the answer). It should be remembered that there are no two identical images; accordingly, we should talk about the statistical rarity of the type (or class) of drawings. The atlas attached below shows various types of drawings and their conventional names, proposed by the author of the adaptation of this test, reflecting the general essential characteristics of the image. It should be taken into account that the conventional names of the drawings, as a rule, do not coincide with the names of the drawings given by the subjects themselves. Since the test is used to diagnose nonverbal creativity, the names of the pictures proposed by the subjects are excluded from subsequent analysis and are used only as an aid to understanding the essence of the picture.
2. Uniqueness (Un), defined as the sum of completed tasks that have no analogues in the sample (atlas of drawings).
The test materials can be viewed in Appendix "A"
Test instructions
Here is a form with half-drawn pictures. You need to complete them, making sure to include the proposed elements in context and trying not to go beyond the boundaries of the drawing. You can finish drawing anything and any way you want, and the form can be rotated. After completing the drawing, you need to give it a title, which should be signed on the line below the drawing.
Processing test results
To interpret the test results, an atlas of typical drawings of a control sample of managers (23-35 years old) is presented below. For each series of figures, the Or index was calculated for the sample. To assess the test results of subjects belonging to the contingent of managers or similar to it, the following algorithm of actions is proposed.
It is necessary to compare the completed pictures with those available in the atlas, paying attention to the use of similar details and semantic connections; If you find a similar type, assign to this drawing the originality indicated in the atlas. If the atlas does not contain this type of drawing, then the originality of this completed picture is considered 1.00, i.e. she is unique. The originality index is calculated as the arithmetic average of the originalities of all pictures, the uniqueness index is calculated as the sum of all unique pictures. Using the percentile scale constructed for these two indices based on the results of the control sample, we can determine the indicator of nonverbal creativity of a given person as his place relative to this sample:
creativity creativity personality potential
Note:
1 - the percentage of people whose results exceed the specified level of creativity;
3 - uniqueness index value.
An example of interpretation: let the first of the drawings you analyze be similar to picture 1.5 of the atlas. Its originality is 0.74. The second picture is similar to picture 2.1. Its originality is 0.00. The third drawing does not resemble anything, but the elements originally proposed for completion are not included in the drawing. This situation is interpreted as avoiding the task and the originality of this drawing is assessed as 0. The fourth drawing is missing. The fifth drawing is recognized as unique (it has no analogues in the atlas). Its originality is 1.00. The sixth picture turned out to be similar to picture 6.3 and its originality was 0.67. Thus, the originality index for this protocol is:
The uniqueness index (the number of unique pictures) of this protocol is 1. The results of the protocol discussed above show that the subject is on the border between 60 and 80% of people whose results are given in the atlas. This means that approximately 70% of subjects from this sample have higher nonverbal creativity than him. At the same time, the uniqueness index, which shows how truly new a person can create, is secondary in this analysis due to the insufficient differentiating power of this index, so the total originality index is decisive here.
2.3 Diagnostics of verbal creativity (S. Mednik’s method, adapted by A.N. Voronin, 1994)
The technique is aimed at identifying and assessing the existing, but often hidden or blocked, verbal creative potential of the subjects. The technique is carried out both individually and in groups. The time for completing tasks is not limited, but time spent on each three words of no more than 2-3 minutes is encouraged.
The test materials can be viewed in Appendix "B"
Test instructions
You are offered triplets of words, to which you need to choose another word so that it is combined with each of the three proposed words. For example, for the triple of words “loud - truth - slowly,” the answer can be the word “speak” (speak loudly, speak the truth, speak slowly). You can change words grammatically and use prepositions without changing the stimulus words as parts of speech.
Try to make your answers as original and bright as possible, try to overcome stereotypes and come up with something new. Try to come up with the maximum number of answers for each three words.
Interpretation of test results
To evaluate the test results, the following algorithm of actions is proposed. It is necessary to compare the responses of the subjects with the available typical answers and, if a similar type is found, assign to this answer the originality indicated in the list. If there is no such word in the list, then the originality of this answer is considered equal to 1.00.
The originality index is calculated as the arithmetic average of the originality of all answers. The number of answers may not coincide with the number of “word triplets”, since in some cases subjects may give several answers, and in others they may not give any.
The uniqueness index is equal to the number of all unique (not having analogues in the standard list) answers.
Using the percentile scale constructed for these indices and the “number of answers” indicator (productivity index), you can determine the place of a given person relative to the control sample and, accordingly, draw a conclusion about the degree of development of his verbal creativity and productivity:
Note:
1 - percentage of people whose results exceed the specified level;
2 - originality index value;
3 - uniqueness index value;
4 - number of answers.
An example of interpretation of the results: if the subject has a total of 20, 25 original answers and a total of 25 answers in his protocol, then the originality index will be 0.81. Let us assume that the number of unique answers of this subject is 16. Considering that the main indicator is the originality index, we can conclude that this person, in terms of his level of verbal creativity, is between 60 and 80% of subjects from the control sample, i.e. 70% of the sample have a total verbal creativity score higher than his.
The uniqueness index here shows how many new solutions the subject is able to offer in the total mass of completed tasks.
The number of answers shows, first of all, the degree of verbal productivity and indicates the level of conceptual thinking. In addition, this index significantly correlates with achievement motivation, i.e. the higher the number of answers, the higher the subject’s personal motivation to achieve.
Conclusion
In the course of the study, we accomplished the following goal: to analyze theoretical concepts on the problem of creative abilities.
Research in this area has been descriptive in nature.
We set and completed the following tasks:
We analyzed existing approaches to the study of creative personality and creativity, investigated methods and techniques for diagnosing creativity, and we came to the following conclusions:
· By creative activity we understand such human activity, as a result of which something new is created - be it an object of the external world or the construction of thinking, leading to new knowledge about the world, or a feeling reflecting a new attitude to reality.
· Diagnosis of creative abilities is one of the least developed areas of psychodiagnostics, which is due to the complexity of the phenomenon being studied. At the same time, there are a number of methods for diagnosing creativity, created within the framework of different scientific paradigms. Scientists have concluded that creativity is not the same as learning ability and is rarely reflected in tests aimed at determining IQ. As a result of experimental studies, a special kind of ability was identified among the individual’s abilities - to generate unusual ideas, deviate in thinking from traditional patterns, and quickly resolve problem situations. This ability was called creativity.
Creativity covers a certain set of mental and personal qualities that determine the ability to be creative. Based on scientific literature, it was found that creativity, as a personality characteristic, is a complex integrative formation. The composition of creativity determines the totality of various abilities that determine the implementation of the creative process. Based on the reviewed studies of the structure of the creative process, it has been established: in the dynamics of the creative process, phases or stages can be distinguished when the development (further implementation) of creativity is determined to a greater extent by some dominant ability. In other words, in the process of creativity, the abilities that make up the content of creativity are consistently updated, while remaining a single system.
The formation of creativity involves the creation of diagnostic tools that make it possible to identify a person’s creative potential. Recently, in our country, practical psychologists (including school psychologists) have begun to actively use various psychodiagnostic tools, which include creativity tests (foreign methods for measuring creativity by E. Torrance and S. Mednik have been adapted to the Russian-speaking sample and have become widespread). But the problem is that traditional test procedures, according to a number of scientists, do not allow us to present a sufficiently complete picture of the creative capabilities of the people being examined.
Thus, the goal of our work has been achieved, the problems have been solved.
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Applications
Appendix A
Last name, initials _________________________________
Complete the pictures and give them names!
You can finish drawing anything and any way you want.
You must sign legibly on the line below the picture.
Atlas of typical drawings
Appendix B
INCENTIVE REGISTRATION FORM
Last name, initials _____________________________________
Age _______ Group ____________ Date _______________
You are offered triplets of words, to which you need to choose another word so that it is combined with each of the three proposed words.
Write down your answers on the answer form in the line with the corresponding number.
STIMULUS WORD TRIPLES
1. random - mountain - long-awaited
2. evening - paper - wall
3. back - homeland - way
4. far - blind - future
5. folk - fear - world
6. money - ticket - free
7. man - shoulder straps - plant
8. door - trust - fast
9. friend - city - circle
10. train - buy - paper
|
Collocations |
Collocations |
|||||
SAMPLE LIST OF ANSWERS
(answer options and their originality)
Three words No. 1
Random - mountain - long-awaited
|
Climbing |
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| ... |
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“Diagnostics and development of creative abilities”
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………..3
CHAPTER 1. THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT
ABILITIES ………………………………………………….5
1.1 Definition of imagination…………………………………………………….….5
1.2 Predisposition to creativity…………………………………..6
1.3 Basic concepts of creativity research……………………9
1.3.1. General characteristics of the studies……………………………..9
1.3.2 The concept of creativity as a universal cognitive creative ability……………………………………………………….12
1.3.3 Creativity from the standpoint of the uniqueness of the personal characteristics of creatives…………………………………………………………………………………………16
1.4. Problems of development of creativity as a personal ability to create. The concept of creative competence………………………………….17
Conclusions on Chapter 1……………………………………………………….19
CHAPTER 2. DIAGNOSTICS AND DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVE
ABILITIES OF TEENAGERS….………………………………………21
2.1.Analysis of the main problems of creativity development…………………21
2.2. Methods for diagnosing creative abilities……………………30
2.3.Diagnostics and program for the development of creative abilities of adolescents…………………………………………………………………………………...32
Conclusions on Chapter 2……………………………………………………….37
CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………38
LITERATURE…………………………………………………………….38
APPLICATIONS…………………………………………………………..40
INTRODUCTION
Creativity is not a new subject of research. The problem of human abilities has aroused great interest among people at all times. However, in the past, society did not have a special need to master people's creativity. Talents appeared as if by themselves, spontaneously creating masterpieces of literature and art: making scientific discoveries, inventing, thereby satisfying the needs of the developing human culture. Nowadays, the situation has changed radically. Life in the era of scientific and technological progress is becoming more diverse and complex. And it requires from a person not stereotyped, habitual actions, but mobility, flexibility of thinking, quick orientation and adaptation to new conditions, a creative approach to solving large and small problems. All cultural values accumulated by humanity are the result of people’s creative activity.
Creativity is one of the meaningful forms of mental activity of adolescents, which can be considered as a universal means of individual development, ensuring sustainable adaptation to new living conditions, as a necessary reserve of strength for overcoming stressful situations and an active creative attitude towards reality. It is creative activity, according to L.S. Vygotsky, makes a person a being turned to the future, creating it and modifying his present.
Relevance The research of the topic is determined by the realities of the time, by the fact that now Russia needs people who are capable of making non-standard decisions and who can think creatively.
Purpose of the study: Study methods for diagnosing creative abilities. To identify the basic psychological conditions for the development of creative abilities of adolescents.
In accordance with the goal, the following were set tasks:
Study the theoretical foundations of the development of creative abilities.
2. Carry out a theoretical analysis of the problem of diagnosing the creative potential of adolescents in the psychological literature. Analyze ideas about the conditions of their development.
3. Carry out an analysis of approaches to the development of programs for the development of creativity and creative potential, explore and generalize the principles of their construction and the system of psychological conditions implemented in them.
Object of study: creative abilities of teenagers
Subject of study: development of creative abilities in a teenager.
Research methods: analytical research and synthesis of psychological and pedagogical literature, battery of tests by E. Tunik. special attention is paid to the following techniques: The Six Hats of Edward de Bono; mental maps (Tony Buzan); Brainstorm.
Hypothesis: It is assumed that the main feature of a creative person is creativity.
Work structure: The course work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, a list of references and an appendix.
Practical significance The work consists of an attempt to use a set of tasks to develop the creative abilities of adolescents through the concept and study of creative thinking, which has a beneficial effect on the formation of a creative personality.
CHAPTER 1. THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT
ABILITIES.
Definition of imagination
Imagination is a form of mental reflection, consisting in the creation of images based on previously formed ideas. There are involuntary and voluntary, reproductive and creative imagination.
To study the cognitive role of imagination, it is necessary to clarify its features. The difficulty of identifying the specifics of imagination is due to the fact that it is closely intertwined with all types of cognition. This circumstance is the reason for the emergence of a tendency to deny the existence of imagination as a special form of reflection. To solve this problem, it is necessary to identify the actual nature of imagination.
Let us turn to the definitions that are available in the literature. L.S. Vygotsky notes that “the imagination does not repeat in the same combinations and in the same forms individual impressions that were accumulated before, but builds some new series from previously accumulated impressions. In other words, introducing something new into the very course of our impressions and changing these impressions so that as a result of this activity a new, previously non-existent image appears, constitutes, as we know, the very basis of the activity that we call imagination.”
“Imagination,” writes S.L. Rubinstein, “is connected with our ability and need to create new things.” “Imagination is a departure from past experience, its transformation. Imagination is the transformation of the given, carried out in figurative form.”
“The main feature of the imagination process,” writes E.I. Ignatiev, “in one or another specific practical activity is the transformation and processing of perceptual data and other material of past experience, resulting in a new idea.”
A similar thing can be read in the “Philosophical Encyclopedia”, where imagination is defined as a mental activity consisting in the creation of ideas and mental situations that have never been directly perceived by a person in reality.
As you can see, an essential feature of imagination is the subject’s ability to create new images. But this is not enough, because then it is impossible to distinguish between imagination and thinking. Logical activity, human thinking - a specific form of creating cognitive images through logical inference, generalization, abstraction, analysis, synthesis cannot be simply identified with imagination. The creation of new knowledge and concepts in the field of logical thinking can occur without the participation of imagination.
Many researchers note that imagination is a process of creating new images that occurs visually. This tendency relates imagination to forms of sensory reflection. Another tendency believes that imagination creates not only new sensory images, but also produces new thoughts. Understanding imagination as a process opposite to thinking, and thinking that proceeds according to the laws of logic as uncreative, is unlawful. One of the features characteristic of imagination is that it is associated not only with thinking, but also with sensory data. There is no imagination without thinking, but it cannot be reduced to logic, since in it (in the imagination) the transformation of sensory material is always assumed.
Thus, let us take into account the fact that imagination is both the creation of new images and the transformation of past experience, and the fact that such a transformation takes place with the organic unity of the sensory and rational.
Predisposition to creativity
Creation – the activity of a person or a group of people to create new original socially significant values.
Creative imagination – a type of imagination aimed at creating new socially significant images that form the basis of creativity. When considering the process of artistic creativity, psychology cannot ignore its psychological aspects. At one time, Kant spoke about the mystery of the creative process: “... Newton could imagine all his steps, which he had to take from the first principles of geometry to his great and deep discoveries, completely clearly not only to himself, but also to everyone else and intended them for succession; but no Homer or Wieland can show how complete fantasies and at the same time ideas rich in thoughts appear and combine in his head, because he himself does not know this and, therefore, cannot teach this to anyone else.”
A.S. Pushkin wrote: “Every talent is inexplicable. How does a sculptor see the hidden Jupiter in a piece of Carrara marble and bring it to light, with a chisel and hammer, crushing its shell? Why does the thought come out of the poet’s head already armed with four rhymes, measured in slender, monotonous feet? “So no one except the improviser himself can understand this speed of impressions, this close connection between one’s own...”
Artistic genius is a form of mental pathology. C. Lambroso wrote: “No matter how cruel and painful the theory that identifies genius with neurosis may seem, it is not without serious grounds...”.
A. Schopenhauer expresses the same idea: “As is known, genius is rarely found in union with prevailing rationality; on the contrary, individuals of genius are often subject to strong emotions and irrational passions.” However, according to the fair judgment of N.V. Gogol “art is the establishment of harmony and order in the soul, and not confusion and disorder.”
According to I.V. Goethe, the genius of an artist is determined by the power of perception of the world and the impact on humanity. American psychologist D. Guilford notes the manifestation of six artist abilities in the process of creativity: fluency of thinking, analogies and contrasts, expressiveness, the ability to switch from one class of objects to another, adaptive flexibility or originality, the ability to give the artistic form the necessary outlines. Artistic talent presupposes acute attention to life, the ability to select objects of attention, consolidate these impressions in memory, extract them from memory and include them in a rich system of associations and connections dictated by the creative imagination. Many people engage in activities in one or another form of art, at one time or another in their lives, with greater or lesser success. An artistically gifted person creates works that have lasting significance for a given society for a significant period of its development. Talent gives rise to artistic values that have enduring national and sometimes universal significance. A master of genius creates the highest universal values that have significance for all times. There are many scientific approaches to the problem of studying creative abilities. Summarizing the results of numerous scientific research, the creative personality type can be characterized by the following criteria: the ability to see and recognize a creative problem (attentiveness);
the ability to see as many sides and connections in a problem as possible (versatility of thinking); the ability to abandon a typical point of view and accept another (flexibility of thinking); the desire to abandon the template or group opinion (originality of thinking); the ability to multiple regrouping of ideas and connections (variability of thinking); the ability to analyze a creative problem as a system (specific thinking); the ability to synthesize a creative problem as a system
(abstractness of thinking); a sense of organizational harmony and ideological integrity (a sense of harmony); receptivity to everything new and unusual (openness of perception); constructive activity in uncertain situations, tolerance of thinking.
1.3 Basic concepts in creativity research
1.3.1. General characteristics of the studies
Creativity (from the English create - create, create) - the creative abilities of an individual, characterized by a readiness to accept and create fundamentally new ideas that deviate from traditional or accepted patterns of thinking and are included in the structure of giftedness as an independent factor, as well as the ability to solve problems arising within static systems. According to the American psychologist Abraham Maslow, this is a creative orientation that is innately characteristic of everyone, but is lost by the majority under the influence of the existing system of upbringing, education and social practice.
At the everyday level, creativity manifests itself as ingenuity - the ability to achieve a goal, find a way out of a seemingly hopeless situation, using the environment, objects and circumstances in an unusual way. In a broad sense - a non-trivial and ingenious solution to the problem.
Creativity from a psychological point of view.
According to Alice Paul Torrance, creativity includes increased sensitivity to problems, to deficits or inconsistencies in knowledge, actions to identify these problems, to find solutions to them based on hypotheses, to test and change hypotheses, to formulate the result of the solution. Various divergent thinking tests are used to assess creativity, personality questionnaires, performance analysis. To promote creative thinking, learning situations that are open-ended or open to the integration of new elements can be used, and students are encouraged to formulate multiple questions.
Expert and experimental assessments of a person’s ability to produce knowledge show that human creative abilities are not very great. By involving all employees in the continuous improvement of the organization (Kaizen method), the creativity of the organization increases dramatically.
There are psychological tools for measuring creative thinking; The most famous in world psychological practice is the Paul Torrance Test. This test allows you to assess: verbal creativity; imaginative creativity; individual creative abilities.
Creativity criteria:
fluency - the number of ideas arising per unit of time;
originality - the ability to produce unusual ideas that differ from the generally accepted ones;
flexibility. As Ranko notes, the importance of this parameter is determined by two circumstances: firstly, this parameter allows us to distinguish individuals who show flexibility in the process of solving a problem from those who show rigidity in solving them, and secondly, it allows us to distinguish individuals who are original solve problems from those who demonstrate false originality.
receptivity - sensitivity to unusual details, contradictions and uncertainty, willingness to quickly switch from one idea to another;
metaphorical - willingness to work in a completely unusual context, a tendency towards symbolic, associative thinking, the ability to see the complex in the simple, and the simple in the complex.
Satisfaction is the result of creativity. With a negative result, the meaning and further development of the feeling are lost.
According to Torrance:
Fluency is the ability to produce a large number of ideas;
Flexibility - the ability to use a variety of strategies when solving problems;
Originality - the ability to produce unusual, non-standard ideas;
Elaboration is the ability to develop emerging ideas in detail.
Resistance to closure is the ability not to follow stereotypes and to “stay open” for a long time to a variety of incoming information when solving problems.
The abstractness of the name is an understanding of the essence of the problem of what is truly essential. The naming process reflects the ability to transform figurative information into verbal form.
1. From a scientific point of view, creativity is considered as a complex, multifaceted, heterogeneous phenomenon, which is expressed in the variety of theoretical and experimental areas of its study. Over the period from the first attempts to study creative abilities to the present, researchers have created an extensive, detailed picture of the phenomenology of creativity. Such smartest personalities as Sigmund Freud, K. Rogers, J. Guilford, E. Torrance, R. Sternberg, T. Amabile, J.A. are associated with the study of creativity. Ponomarev, D.B. Bogoyavlenskaya, A.M. Matyushkin, S.L. Rubinshtein, A. Maslow, B.M. Teplov, V.F. Vishnyakova, R. May, F. Barron, D. Harrington and others (it is impossible to list them all). The concept of creativity at the moment cannot be called clearly defined and established in both foreign and domestic research.
2. Another direction studies creativity from the perspective of the unique personal characteristics of creatives. Many experimental studies are devoted to creating a “portrait of a creative personality,” identifying its inherent characteristics, and determining personal, motivational and sociocultural correlates of creativity. The most prominent representatives of this (second) direction are: F. Barron, A. Maslow, D. B. Bogoyavlenskaya.
The concept of creativity as a universal cognitive creative ability
The creative components of intellectual processes have always attracted the attention of many scientists. However, most studies of creativity have not actually taken into account individual differences in these same creative abilities, although it has been recognized that different people are not endowed with these abilities to the same extent. Interest in individual differences in creativity has emerged in connection with obvious achievements in the field of testometric research of intelligence, as well as with no less obvious omissions in this area.
By the beginning of the 60s of the twentieth century, large-scale experience in intelligence testing had already been accumulated, which in turn raised new questions for researchers. In particular, it turned out that professional and life successes are not at all directly related to the level of intelligence calculated using IQ tests (IQ - intelligence quotient, read “IQ”) - a quantitative assessment of a person’s level of intelligence: the level of intelligence relative to the level of intelligence of the average person of the same age. Determined using special tests. IQ is an attempt to estimate the factor of general intelligence (g).). Experience has shown that people with not very high IQs are capable of extraordinary achievements, while many others whose IQs are much higher often lag behind them. It has been suggested that some other qualities of the mind that are not covered by traditional testing play a decisive role here. Since a comparison of the success of solving problem situations with traditional intelligence tests in most cases showed a lack of connection between them, some psychologists have come to the conclusion that the effectiveness of problem solving does not depend on the knowledge and skills measured by intelligence tests, but on the special ability to “use the information given in tasks in different ways and at a fast pace.” This ability is called creativity.
Guildford made an irreplaceable contribution to the study of creativity; he identified 16 intellectual abilities that characterize creativity. Among them are fluency (the number of ideas that arise in a certain unit of time), flexibility (the ability to switch from one idea to another) and originality (the ability to produce ideas that differ from generally accepted ones) of thinking, as well as curiosity (increased sensitivity to problems that do not arouse interest). in others), irrelevance (logical independence of reactions from stimuli).
In 1967, Guilford combined these factors into general concept“divergent thinking”, which reflects the cognitive side of creativity: - “Creativity should be understood as the ability to abandon stereotypical ways of thinking. The basis of creativity is divergent thinking...” (divergent thinking is a type of thinking that goes in different directions). The same way Guilford views creativity Taylor- not as a single factor, but as a set of abilities, each of which can be represented to one degree or another.
Torrance defines creativity as the ability to heighten the perception of shortcomings, gaps in knowledge, missing elements, disharmony, awareness of problems, search for solutions, guesses related to what is missing to solve, forming hypotheses, testing and retesting these hypotheses, modifying them, and communicating the results. Torrance's model of creativity includes three factors: fluency, flexibility, and originality. In this approach, the criterion is the characteristics and processes that activate creative productivity, rather than the quality of the result.
But let's return to history again. Guilford was the first to propose studying creativity using ordinary pencil-and-paper tests. One of these tests was his "Unusual Use Test", as well as E. Torrance's "Tests of Creative Thinking". For the first time, it became possible to conduct research on ordinary people, comparing them on a standard “creative” scale. However, there was also a negative effect. A number of researchers have criticized rapid pencil-and-paper tests as inadequate ways to measure creativity. Some believed that fluency, flexibility, and originality do not capture the essence of creativity, and that the study of the creative abilities of ordinary people cannot help understand the nature of exceptional examples of creativity. Initially, Guilford included in the structure of creativity, in addition to divergent thinking, the ability to transform, the accuracy of solutions and other intellectual parameters themselves. . This postulated a positive relationship between intelligence and creativity. But the experiments revealed that highly intelligent subjects may not show creative behavior when solving tests, but there are no low-intellectual creatives. Later, E.P. Torrens formulated, based on factual material, a model of the relationship between creativity and intelligence: with an IQ of up to 120 points, intelligence and creativity form a single factor, with an IQ of over 120 points, creativity becomes a factor independent of intelligence.
In our country, studies conducted by employees of the laboratory of abilities of the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences revealed a paradoxical relationship: highly creative individuals solve problems on reproductive thinking (which include almost all intelligence tests) worse than all other subjects. This, in particular, allows us to understand the nature of many of the difficulties that creatively gifted children experience at school. Since, according to this study, creativity is the opposite of intelligence as the ability for universal adaptation (creativity is anti-adaptive), then in practice there is an effect of creatives’ inability to solve simple, stereotyped intellectual problems. Consequently, creativity and general intelligence are abilities that determine the process of solving a mental problem, but play different roles at its different stages.
In another approach to the concept of creativity as a universal cognitive creative ability Ponomareva, creativity is studied as a process in which different phases, levels and types of creative thinking are distinguished: 1st phase - conscious work (preparing an intuitive glimpse of a new idea); Phase 2 - unconscious work (incubation of the guiding idea); Phase 3 - transition of the unconscious into consciousness (translation of the idea of a solution into the sphere of consciousness); Phase 4 - conscious work (development of the idea, its final design and verification).
As a “mental unit” for measuring the creativity of a mental act, a “quantum” of creativity, Ponomarev proposes to consider the difference in levels that dominate when setting and solving a problem (the problem is always solved at a higher level of the structure of the psychological mechanism than the one at which the means to solve it are acquired) .
Coppersmith also views creativity as a process. According to this concept, creativity is the process of redesigning elements into new combinations, according to the task at hand, the requirements of the situation and some special requirements. The essence of creativity, according to Mednik, lies in the ability to overcome stereotypes at the final stage of mental synthesis and in the breadth of the field of associations.
Creativity from the perspective of the unique personal characteristics of creatives
Many studies of creativity are of a “personal” direction, and among them it is worth highlighting Barron, study the role of motivation in the creative process, as well as the influence of various factors of the social environment on the development of creativity. Since psychological research has not yet revealed heritability individual differences in creativity, environmental factors are called as a determinant of creative abilities, which can have both positive and negative influence on their development. Barron identifies the main parameters of the social microenvironment that contribute to the formation of creativity: low validity of behavior; high degree of uncertainty; presence of a model of creative behavior; creating conditions for imitation of creativity
behavior; subject-information enrichment; social reinforcement of creative behavior.
Another direction, the author of which is Maslow, The ability to be creative is considered as an orientation toward personal self-realization. The main role in determining creative behavior here is played by motivation, values, and personality traits. The creative process is associated with self-actualization, the full and free realization of one’s abilities and life opportunities. According to Maslow, freedom, spontaneity, self-acceptance and other traits allow an individual to realize their fullest potential.
Epiphany defines creativity as a deep personal property, which is expressed in an original formulation of the problem, filled with personal meaning. The study of creativity as a productive and spontaneous phenomenon was carried out using a method called by the author “Creative Field”. In these studies, it was established “that the process of cognition is determined by the adopted task only at the first stage. Then, depending on whether a person views the solution of a problem as a means to achieve goals external to cognition or whether it itself is a goal, the fate of the process is determined. In the first case, it breaks off as soon as the problem is solved. In the second, the phenomenon of self-propulsion of activity arises. Bogoyavlenskaya emphasize that creativity is a general personality trait and affects creative productivity regardless of the sphere of manifestation of personal activity.
The absence of a general major theory, despite the variety of new patterns and factors identified, indicates the difficulty of this topic. Although creativity research has been active for several decades, the accumulated evidence does not so much clarify as it confuses the understanding of this phenomenon. Until now, scientists have not even reached agreement on whether creativity exists at all, or is it a scientific construct? However, the same doubts are expressed about the traditional concept of “intelligence”. It is not surprising that the relationship between these concepts causes even more controversy. According to some American psychologists, most of the data obtained on the relationship between creativity and intelligence make it possible to distinguish creativity “as a concept at the same level of abstraction as intelligence, but more vaguely and indefinitely measured.”
1.4. Problems of development of creativity as a personal ability to create.Concept of creative competence
According to E. Torrance, creativity includes increased sensitivity to problems, to the deficit or inconsistency of knowledge, actions to identify these problems, to find solutions based on hypotheses, to test and change hypotheses, to formulate the result of a solution. Creativity is creative abilities of an individual, characterized by a readiness to generate fundamentally new unusual ideas that deviate from traditional or accepted patterns of thinking, as well as the ability to solve problems that arise within static systems. Many people who have a creative need lack creative competence. Three aspects of such competence can be distinguished: firstly, how ready a person is for creativity in the conditions of multidimensionality and alternativeness of modern culture; secondly, to what extent does he speak the specific “languages” of different types of creative activity, so to speak, a set of codes that allow him to decipher information from different areas and translate it into the “language” of his creativity. figuratively According to one psychologist, creators today are like birds sitting on distant branches of the same tree of human culture, they are far from the earth and barely hear and understand each other. The third aspect of creative competence is the degree to which an individual has mastered a system of “technical” skills and abilities (for example, the technology of painting, a feature of working with photography), on which the ability to implement conceived and “invented” ideas depends.
Different types of creativity make different demands on the level of creative competence. The inability to realize creative potential due to insufficient creative competence gave rise to mass amateur creativity, that is, “creativity at leisure,” a hobby. These forms of creativity are accessible to almost everyone, people who are tired of monotonous or extremely complex professional activities.
“Creative competence” is just a condition for the manifestation of creative ability. The same conditions include the presence of general intellectual and special abilities that exceed the average level, as well as passion for the task being performed, and, of course, certain life factors called circumstances, which unfulfilled individuals love to hide behind. Creativity in the modern world is beginning to grow more and more considered no longer as a process or even as an activity, but as a characteristic of a person, an image or lifestyle, a way of relating to the world. The fate of creativity in individual development is determined by the interaction and dialogue of the individual with culture. G. Allport, in his first fundamental book “Personality,” wrote: “Every artist has his own style, just like every composer, pianist, sculptor, dancer, poet, playwright, artist, speaker, photographer, acrobat, housewife and mechanic.” . By style alone we can recognize Chopin's sonatas, Van Gogh's paintings and Aunt Sally's pies. Style manifests itself whenever well-integrated and mature behavior of the individual is involved.” In other words, creativity as an expression of one’s individuality in limited areas of practice does not necessarily mean painting, it can also be expressed in such everyday and seemingly mundane activities as cooking dinner , car repairs and even cleaning floors.
Chapter 1 Conclusions
Much is said and written about the problem of the formation and development of the creative potential of adolescents. Various approaches to the study of the problem of creative abilities, their psychological essence, show the existence of different positions, opinions, their heterogeneity and problematic nature. Thus, the study of the problem of creativity is currently becoming complex and represents an important area of research. According to L.S. Vygotsky, creativity is the norm of adolescent development. Manifestations of fantasy in a child are more vivid and unexpected than in an adult, due to the fact that the child trusts the products of his imagination more and controls them less.
Any school subject requires the effective functioning of this mental function.
CHAPTER 2.DIAGNOSTICS and development of creative abilities of adolescents
2.1. Analysis of the main problems of creativity development
Our life is connected with many rules and laws. Some of them are performed automatically and reflexively. Templates of actions, boredom from the repetition and similarity of existence come into conflict with the ability given to a person to be a “creator”. A person strives to resolve any contradiction. In the automaticity of actions and everyday life, this contradiction is resolved by suppressing the ability to create, that is, suppressing creativity (this is one of the most important problems in the development of creativity). Therefore, in order to develop creativity, first of all, you need to learn to see things from a new perspective, that is, for example, look for unusual ways to use ordinary things. At the same time, the ability to be creative flourishes and this gives a strong impetus to further development creativity. There is no need to lock yourself into social stereotypes. And in order for creativity to develop, it is enough to use the game moment: play, invent, fantasize, transfer inventions (positive, of course) into reality.
The makings of creative abilities are inherent in any person, any normal child. You need to be able to reveal them and develop them. The manifestation of creative abilities varies from large and bright talents to modest and inconspicuous ones. But the essence of the creative process is the same for everyone. The only difference is in the specific material of creativity, the scale of achievements and their social significance.
In traditional forms of education, a teenager, having acquired and assimilated some information, becomes able to reproduce the methods indicated to him for solving problems, proving theorems, etc. However, he does not take part in the creative search for ways to solve the problem and, therefore, does not acquire experience in such a search. The more different the problem to be solved is from the familiar one, the more difficult the search process itself is for the student if he does not have specific experience. Therefore, there are often cases when a high school graduate, who has successfully mastered the material of the school curriculum, cannot cope with competitive exam problems, since they require a non-standard approach to solving them.
Creative abilities largely depend and are formed in the activities of the students themselves; teachers should never forget about this. No story about the role of hypothesis can replace the path to research, even a small, independently put forward hypothesis, in the development of human abilities. To solve a number of problems, you have to discard all traditional ways and consider them from a completely new, unexpected angle. However, knowing this does not ensure finding a new angle of view in the process of a specific study. Only practical research experience develops this ability. To convey creative experience, it is necessary to construct special situations that require a creative solution and create the conditions for it. The overwhelming majority of teenagers do not create new values for society. They reproduce values already known to society and only in individual cases, at a certain level of their development and depending on the organizing activities of their elders, can they create new values for society. Therefore, in relation to the learning process, creativity should be defined as a form of human activity aimed at creating qualitatively new values for him, i.e. important for the formation of the individual as a social subject.
Another problem for developing creativity is that problem solving itself is not a priority for most people in their lives. Perhaps because a significant part of our lives we spend relaxing on the couch, in a nightclub, etc., instead of persistently thinking about some problem that requires a creative solution. A creative person may feel a rush of excitement as all the bits and pieces of an idea suddenly fall into place. All relevant ideas are coordinated with each other, and unimportant thoughts are ignored. There are many examples of enlightenment in the history of creative breakthroughs: the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule, the invention of the telephone, the completion of a symphony, the end of a film that was unexpected even for the director, and much more. All these are examples of how, in a moment of enlightenment, a creative solution to an old, annoying problem comes to the mind.
It is precisely because a person does not use even a quarter of his capabilities that we can talk about the existence of such a phenomenon as creative ossification or about people without any abilities, although in reality this cannot be.
The development of creativity has its own characteristics in each age period, and various factors influencing its dynamics, in a particular period, can become of paramount importance. The main problems in the development of creativity as a personal ability to create are: the everyday life of a person, the ossification of social stereotypes, the suppression of creative needs; the typical teaching system is based on stories rather than on providing students with the opportunity to gain knowledge through their own experience; not a priority in finding solutions to problems, or let’s call it a person’s lack of desire to work according to their capabilities. Adolescence is considered a “difficult” age, a crisis in the personal development of a teenager. From 12 to 15 years of age, the leading activity of a teenager is intimate and personal communication. The teenager begins to take himself and his capabilities more seriously; tries to find his niche in the society of his peers, often ignoring the opinions of parents and teachers. There is nothing stable, final, or immovable in the structure of a teenager’s personality. Personal instability gives rise to contradictory desires and actions. The desire to find oneself as a person gives rise to the need for alienation from everything that is familiar. Alienation, externally expressed in negativism, is the beginning of a teenager’s search for his own unique essence. It is at this age that a teenager becomes focused on finding new productive forms of communication with those he loves and respects, and on discovering himself. A person always consciously or unconsciously strives to create. Each of us has enormous creative potential and limitless possibilities for its implementation. Creating something new, changing the world, a person continuously grows and changes himself. Therefore, the search for new ideas and original solutions is one of the manifestations of continuous self-search, self-knowledge and personal growth.
Creative thinking - the key to success in almost all areas of life. The ability to think outside the box opens up wide opportunities for self-realization. So where to start? Some people believe that creativity is just the ability to draw, write poetry or music. This idea is fundamentally wrong, because our perception of the world and how we feel ourselves in it largely depend on the degree of development of creative abilities. The less developed these abilities are in a person, the more prone he is to self-criticism, constant dissatisfaction with himself and others. He himself subconsciously creates barriers to achieving his goals, is afraid to think on a larger scale and implement bold ideas.
So what is the work of developing creativity? According to many psychologists and neurophysiologists, one of the main obstacles to unlocking a person’s creative potential is stress. If a person’s nervous system is in constant tension, then creative impulses simply cannot “break through” the flow of our worries and experiences. Therefore, before you take on intensive work on developing your creative abilities, you need to relax. This, by the way, is true for the development of intuition and other skills. This way, you can move away from your usual thinking patterns and make room for new ideas and possibilities. In addition, you will be able to access internal resources - states of peace, inspiration and lightness.
Creativity requires a certain distance (detachment from the problem). G. Wallace wrote about this in 1926. He identified four stages of creative thinking:
Preparation - formulation of the task; attempts to solve it.
Incubation is a temporary distraction from a task.
Insight is the emergence of an intuitive solution.
Validation - testing and/or implementation of a solution.
One of the keys to unlocking creativity is regular meditation practice.
What else can you do to help unleash your limitless creative potential? Equally important is working with limiting beliefs. Original ideas are slow to come to mind, where thoughts like: “I’m mediocre myself,” “Where am I going to…”, “What will others think?” etc. Therefore, you need to work on your way of thinking. Affirmations can help with this (if you catch a limiting belief, immediately tell yourself something positive in return), psychotherapy (you can work with the reasons for the barriers that we set for ourselves), coaching (we form a winning thinking strategy), etc.
Another important detail in the development of creative abilities is the willingness to accept a new idea at any time of the day or night. To do this, you always need to have paper and pencil at hand (new thoughts can come to you in the most unexpected places!).
Creativity training
You can also “launch” creative thinking through special trainings. There you can learn special techniques for generating creative ideas, ways to quickly access creative resources, and work with blocks and limitations. Despite the fact that specialists work in different approaches and use different techniques, we list the most common approaches and techniques
- Brainstorm. The author of this method is Alex Osborne. The main principle of the method is to separate the generation of an idea and its criticism in time. Each participant puts forward any of the craziest ideas, others try to develop them, and the analysis of the resulting solutions is carried out later. Brainstorming can also be done in a written form(brainwriting), when ideas are written down on a piece of paper, which participants pass on to each other, introducing new ideas that arise.
- Mind maps(Tony Buzan). According to the author, creativity is closely related to memory, which means that strengthening memory allows you to develop creative abilities. The key concept is placed in the center of the sheet, and all associations worth remembering are written down on the branches emanating from the center. You can also accompany your entries with various drawings, magazine clippings, and symbols. In the process of creating a mental map, an unexpected solution to the question posed may come.
- The Six Hats of Edward de Bono. The technique allows you to streamline the creative process by mentally putting on one of six colored hats. So, in white, a person impartially analyzes figures and facts, then puts on black and looks for the negative in everything. After this, it’s the yellow hat’s turn to look for the positive aspects of the problem. Wearing green, a person generates new ideas, and wearing red, he can allow himself emotional reactions. Finally, in blue the results are summed up.
- Morphological analysis. Author - Fritz Zwicky. It is proposed to decompose an object or idea into components, select several essential characteristics from them, then change them and try to combine them again. The result is something fundamentally new.
- Synectics. The main source of creativity, according to William Gordon, is in the search for analogies. It is necessary to select an object and draw a table for its analogies. All direct analogies are recorded in the first column, indirect analogies are recorded in the second (for example, negation of the characteristics of the first column). Then you need to compare the goal, object and indirect analogies.
The proposed methods help to systematize the creative process, removing it from a series of uncontrollable, intuitive, almost mystical phenomena into the category of understandable algorithms of action.
By developing their creative abilities, each person will be able to:
get to know and understand yourself better; find new solutions to standard problems; look at the world in a new way; increase your own efficiency and much more.
Every person has limitless creative potential! A child with creative abilities is active and inquisitive. He is able to see the unusual, the beautiful where others do not see it, he is able to make his own independent decisions, independent of anyone, he has his own view of beauty and he is able to create something new, original. The creative principle in a person is always the striving forward, for the better, for progress, for perfection. It is this creative principle in a person that fosters art, and in this it cannot be replaced by anything.
An analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature has shown that in adolescence, in the development of personality, some features of children of this age are visible, which influence the development of creative abilities. In adolescence, theoretical reflective thinking continues to develop. The teenager already knows how to operate with hypotheses when solving creative problems. When faced with a new problem, he tries to find different approaches to solving it. This is precisely what Doctor of Psychological Sciences, Professor I.Yu. highlights as the dominant development of the psyche in the intellectual sphere. Kulagin in his work “Age Psychology”. Indicates high possibilities for the development of such creative abilities, which are determined by flexibility of thinking and vigilance in searching for problems. The teenager finds ways to apply abstract rules to solve entire classes of problems. This indicates a high potential for developing the ability to transfer experience. During the learning process, a teenager’s mastery of such mental operations as classification, analogy, and generalization contributes to the effective development of the ability to bring concepts together, which is determined by the ease of analysis and the remoteness of the analyzed concepts; the high quality of these indicators is determined by the characteristics of theoretical reflexive thinking, which allow teenagers to analyze abstract ideas. This age is characterized by interest in abstract philosophical, religious, political and other problems. According to I.Yu. Kulagin, considering the characteristics of adolescence, in connection with the increase in the intellectual development of a teenager, the development of imagination also accelerates. Coming closer to theoretical thinking, imagination gives impetus to the development of creativity in adolescents. The imagination of a teenager, as highlighted by I.Yu. Kulagin, “of course, it is less productive than the imagination of an adult, but it is richer than the imagination of a child.” At the same time, Kulagina I.Yu. notes the existence of two lines of imagination development in adolescence. The first line is characterized by the desire of adolescents to achieve an objective creative result. It is not inherent in all teenagers, but they all use the possibilities of their creative imagination, receiving satisfaction from the very process of fantasy.
1. The need for creativity arises when it is undesirable or impossible due to external circumstances, i.e. consciousness in this situation provokes the activity of the unconscious. Thus, consciousness in creativity is passive and only perceives the creative product, while the unconscious actively generates the creative product. Hence, the creative act is a fusion of logical (analysis-synthesis in the process of imagination) and intuitive (insight) levels of thinking.
2. The mental life of an individual is a process of changing two forms of internal and external activity: creativity and activity. In this case, the activity is expedient, voluntary, rational, consciously regulated, stimulated by a certain motivation and functions as a negative feedback: achieving a result completes the activity stage. Creativity is spontaneous, involuntary, irrational, cannot be regulated by consciousness, it is motivated by a person’s alienation from the world and functions on the principle of positive feedback: receiving a creative product only spurs the process, making it endless. Hence, activity is the life of consciousness, the mechanism of which is reduced to the interaction of active consciousness with the passive unconscious, while creativity is the life of the dominant unconscious in interaction with passive consciousness.
3. For the manifestation of creative abilities, a unique environment is required - a creative environment, characterized by the following features: optimal motivation, which assumes an average level of achievement motivation (Yorks-Dodson's law: maximum productivity is possible only by maintaining achievement motivation at an average level), as well as the absence of competitive motivation and motivation for social approval; a relaxed environment characterized by a lack of threat and coercion, acceptance and stimulation of all ideas, freedom of action and lack of criticism.
In the process of creating a creative product, a number of mandatory stages are distinguished: the emergence of a non-standard problem and the emergence of a contradiction between the need and the impossibility of solving it; the emergence and optimization of motivation to solve the problem; the maturation of an idea in the process of rational selection and accumulation of knowledge about the problem; a logical “dead end”, accompanied by obligatory frustration of the emotional-volitional sphere of the individual; insight (intuitive insight); experimental testing of the idea.
2.2. Methods for diagnosing creative abilities
Almost as fierce as the debate about the nature of creative abilities is the discussion about approaches to diagnosing creativity. Having highlighted the general views of several scientific schools on this issue, we can state the basic principles for diagnosing creative abilities. Creativity refers to divergent thinking, i.e. a type of thinking that goes in different directions from a problem, starting from its content, while what is typical for us - convergent thinking - is aimed at finding the only correct one from many solutions. Numerous intelligence (IQ) tests that measure the speed and accuracy of finding the correct solution from a set of possible ones are not suitable for measuring creativity.
In the diagnostic process, creativity is divided into verbal (verbal creative thinking) and non-verbal (visual creative thinking). This division became justified after identifying the connection between these types of creativity and the corresponding factors of intelligence: figurative and verbal. People, using mainly convergent thinking in everyday life, get used to using words and images in a certain associative connection with other words, and stereotypes and patterns in each culture (social group) are different and must be determined specifically for each sample of subjects. Hence, the creative thought process, in essence, is the formation of new semantic associations, the magnitude of their distance from the stereotype can serve as a measurement of an individual’s creativity.
The use of various methods for diagnosing creative abilities made it possible to identify general principles for assessing creativity: productivity index as the ratio of the number of answers to the number of tasks; originality index as the sum of originality indices (i.e., reciprocal values in relation to the frequency of occurrence of the answer in the sample) of individual answers, related to the total number of answers; uniqueness index as the ratio of the number of unique (not found in the sample) answers to their total number.
To improve the quality of creativity testing, it is necessary to comply with such basic parameters of the creative environment as: the absence of a time limit; minimizing achievement motivation; the absence of competitive motivation and criticism of actions; the absence of a strict focus on creativity in the test instructions.
Consequently, the conditions of a creative environment create opportunities for the manifestation of creativity, while high test scores significantly identify creative individuals. At the same time, low test results do not indicate a lack of creativity in the subject, since creative manifestations are spontaneous and not subject to arbitrary regulation.
Thus, methods for diagnosing creative abilities are intended, first of all, to actually identify creative individuals in a specific sample at the time of testing.
Currently, to assess the level of creativity in our country, the Torrance tests of creative thinking, a battery of creative tests created on the basis of the Guilford and Torrance tests and an adapted version of the Johnson Creativity Questionnaire, aimed at assessing and self-assessing the characteristics of a creative personality, are most widely used.
The Guilford Divirgent Thinking Test is intended mainly for the adult population; the Torrance Creative Thinking Tests are very labor-intensive to administer and process. Therefore, there was a need to develop creative tests designed for a wide age range of adolescents, which are a reliable, valid test that meets national standards, and also does not require a lot of time and effort in testing and data processing. All of the above requirements are met by a set of Williams creative tests. The adapted version of E. Tunik is intended for teenagers from 9 to 17 years old. It consists of 3 parts.
The first part is a test of divergent thinking. This test is figurative in form. Requires 20–25 minutes. for carrying out. The method of administration is group (the test is aimed at measuring the cognitive component associated with creativity).
The second part is a questionnaire of personal and creative characteristics. The questionnaire consists of 50 statements; the questionnaire tasks are closed-type tasks with multiple answer options. The questionnaire is aimed at self-assessment of personality traits that are closely related to creativity.
The third part is the Williams rating scale for teachers and parents, aimed at finding out an expert opinion about the creative manifestations of a given child. This allows for a comparative analysis of the results of all three parts of the test sets.
2.3. Diagnostics and program for the development of creative abilities of adolescents
The main methods for studying creative abilities are: the method of psychometric testing, the method of correlation analysis.
The psychometric testing method is standardized psychodiagnostic methods that allow one to obtain comparable quantitative and qualitative indicators of the degree of expression of the properties being studied. The research uses the following methods
1. Diagnostics of non-verbal creativity (method of E. Torrance, adapted by A.N. Voronin, 1994)
Conditions.
The test can be carried out individually or in a group. To create favorable testing conditions, the manager needs to minimize achievement motivation and orient test takers to freely express their hidden abilities. In this case, it is better to avoid open discussion of the substantive focus of the methodology, i.e. there is no need to report that it is creative abilities (especially creative thinking) that are being tested. The test can be presented as a technique for “originality”, the ability to express oneself in a figurative style, etc. If possible, testing time is not limited, approximately 1–2 minutes are allocated for each picture. At the same time, it is necessary to encourage test takers if they think for a long time or hesitate.
The proposed version of the test is a set of pictures with a certain set of elements (lines), using which the subjects need to complete the picture to some meaningful image. This version of the test uses 6 pictures, which do not duplicate each other in their initial elements and give the most reliable results.
The test uses the following creativity indicators:
Originality (Op), which reveals the degree of dissimilarity of the image created by the subject from the images of other subjects (statistical rarity of the answer). It should be remembered that there are no two identical images; accordingly, we should talk about the statistical rarity of the type (or class) of drawings. The atlas attached below shows various types of drawings and their conventional names, proposed by the author of the adaptation of this test, reflecting the general essential characteristics of the image. It should be taken into account that the conventional names of the drawings, as a rule, do not coincide with the names of the drawings given by the subjects themselves. Since the test is used to diagnose nonverbal creativity, the names of the pictures proposed by the subjects are excluded from subsequent analysis and are used only as an aid to understanding the essence of the picture. Uniqueness, defined as the sum of completed tasks that have no analogues in the sample (atlas of drawings).
2. Diagnostics of verbal creativity (method of S. Mednik, adapted by A.N. Voronin, 1994 )
The technique is aimed at identifying and assessing the existing, but often hidden or blocked, verbal creative potential of the subjects. The technique is carried out both individually and in groups. There is no time limit for completing tasks, but time spent on each three words of no more than 2–3 minutes is encouraged.
Test instructions
You are offered triplets of words, to which you need to choose another word so that it is combined with each of the three proposed words. For example, for the triple of words “loud - truth - slowly,” the answer can be the word “speak” (speak loudly, speak the truth, speak slowly). You can change words grammatically and use prepositions without changing the stimulus words as parts of speech. Try to make your answers as original and bright as possible, try to overcome stereotypes and come up with something new. Try to come up with the maximum number of answers for each three words.
The development of creative abilities must begin with a questionnaire (identifying the level of creative abilities of adolescents).
Then drawing up a program; after classes, another survey (what successes have been achieved); draw a conclusion.
There are many programs for developing creativity. One of them is extracurricular activities. Extracurricular work is a combination of various types of activities and has wide opportunities for educational influence on a teenager.
Firstly, a variety of extracurricular activities contributes to a more diverse development of individual abilities, which are not always possible to consider in class.
Secondly, involvement in various types of extracurricular activities enriches the teenager’s personal experience, his knowledge about the diversity of human activities, and he acquires the necessary practical skills.
Thirdly, a variety of extracurricular activities contributes to children’s interest in various types of activities and the desire to actively participate in productive, socially approved activities.
Fourthly, in various forms of extracurricular work, children not only demonstrate their individual characteristics, but also learn to live in a team, that is, to cooperate with each other, take care of their comrades, and put themselves in the place of another person.
Thus, extracurricular work is an independent sphere of the teacher’s educational work, carried out in conjunction with educational work at the lesson.
The forms of extracurricular work are not the conditions in which its content is realized. There are a huge number of forms of extracurricular work. This diversity creates difficulties in their classification, so there is no single classification. Classifications are proposed according to the object of influence (individual, group, mass forms) and according to the directions and objectives of education (aesthetic, physical, moral, mental, labor, environmental, economic).
firstly, the predominance of the emotional aspect over the informational one (for effective educational influence it is necessary to appeal to the child’s feelings, his experiences and not to the mind, or rather, to the mind through emotions);
secondly, the practical side of knowledge is of decisive importance in the content of extracurricular work, i.e. The content of extracurricular work is aimed at improving various skills and abilities. In extracurricular activities, learning skills are improved (entertaining alphabet, fun mathematics, etc.), independent work skills are developed when searching for information, organizing various extracurricular activities (fairy tale evening, quiz “my favorite city”), communication skills to cooperate (teamwork, KVN, sports role-playing approaches, games).
Cognitive activities of children in extracurricular activities are intended to develop their cognitive interest and positive motivation in learning to improve academic skills. It is a continuation of educational activities using other forms.
Leisure (entertainment) activities are necessary to organize proper rest for children, create positive emotions, a warm, friendly atmosphere in the team, and relieve nervous tension.
Children's health and sports activities in extracurricular activities are necessary for their full development.
Labor activity - reflects the content of various types of labor; household, manual, public, useful, service.
Creative activity involves the development of children’s inclinations, interests, and the disclosure of their creative potential. Creative activity is reflected in such forms as concerts, song competitions, reading competitions, drawing competitions, theater, design club.
Roerich N. noted that one of the most important misconceptions of humanity is the separation of the spiritual from the material; spirituality in general is a connection with the universal, with the inner and outside world person. One of the main parts of spirituality is knowing yourself, discovering your abilities, and self-improvement.
Conclusions on the second chapter
Thus, with all the diversity of psychological theories of creativity, there are a number of fundamental signs of creative activity, by influencing which it is possible, to one degree or another, to increase the productivity of creative thinking and develop the creative abilities of the personality of a schoolchild - teenager. Creative abilities are distinguished for different reasons, but at the same time they all manifest themselves in the success of activities. The quality of creative abilities is determined by the activity for which they are a condition for the successful implementation. The creative abilities of a schoolchild - teenager are the result of the development of inclinations. Arising on the basis of inclinations, creative abilities develop in the process and under the influence of activities that require certain abilities from the child. Any person who uses original ways to solve any problems in life is a type of creative person. The main feature of a creative person is creativity. Creativity provides productive transformations in a person’s activity, allowing him to satisfy the need for research activity. Creativity as one of the types of activity and creativity as a stable set of traits contributes to the search for something new, original, atypical, and ensures the progress of social development. Creative abilities distinguish one person from another. Creativity can be seen as a form of behavior that does not comply with accepted norms, but does not violate the legal and moral regulations of the group.
CONCLUSION
The topic of this work - the study of the creative manifestations of adolescents - for me, as a future psychologist, turned out to be very interesting and significant.
By confronting a person with many new, contradictory life situations, adolescence stimulates and actualizes its creative potential. The most important intellectual component of creativity is the predominance of so-called divergent thinking, which assumes that there can be many equally correct and equal answers to the same question (in contrast to convergent thinking, which is focused on a clear and only correct solution, eliminating the problem as such). This type of thinking is necessary and important not only for a teenager, but also for a person at any age and in any activity. The activity can be creative. If a person introduces elements of the new into his activity, this is creativity. Creativity (creativity) is the highest, most complex, active form of manifestation of a person’s attitude to work. The success of the development of creative abilities depends on the developmental characteristics of children of a certain age. For a teenager, communication with peers plays a leading role; formal thinking is developed throughout adolescence. The teenager begins to value his relationships with peers. As a subject of educational activity, a teenager is characterized by a tendency to assert his position of subjective exclusivity of “individuality”; the desire to stand out in some way. The hypothesis I put forward, that the main feature of a creative personality is creativity, was confirmed.
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APPLICATIONS
TESTS FOR DIAGNOSIS OF NONVERBAL CREATIVITY
(METHOD OF E, TORRENCE, ADAPTED BY A, N, VORONIN,
Subtest 5. Composing images
Task: Draw given objects using a certain set of shapes.
Instructions to the subject: Draw certain objects using the following set of shapes: circle, rectangle, triangle, semicircle. Each shape can be used several times, their size and position in space can be changed, but other shapes or lines cannot be added.
In the first square draw a face, in the second - a house, in the third - a clown, and in the fourth - what you want. Label the fourth drawing.
The subject is presented with a set of figures depicted and an example of completing the task.
The execution time for all drawings is 1 - 8 minutes.
Square side length = 8 cm (for test form)
Evaluation: Evaluation is carried out according to two indicators.
1) Fluency - Flexibility. This indicator takes into account: n1 - the number of depicted elements (parts), 1 part - 0.1 points; n2 - number of used shape classes (out of 4 given ones, a, b, c, d), 1 shape class - 1 point; n2 - varies from 0 to 4; n3 - number of errors, an error is the use of an unspecified figure or line in a drawing, 1 error - 0.1 point
B = EMBED Equation.3 0.1n1i +n2i – 0.1 x n3i)
i - figure number.
Then the B scores (fluency) are summed up across the 4 pictures.
2) Originality. k1 is the number of original elements of the picture.
An original element means an element of an unusual shape or an unusual arrangement of an element, an unusual use of an element, an original arrangement of elements relative to each other. 1 original element - 3 points.
One drawing may contain several original elements
k - originality of Figure 4 (by topic, by content). (Can occur 1 time per sample of 30-40 people), k can take values 0 or 1.
For original story = 5 points (applies only to picture 4)
Op = 5 x k + EMBED Equation.3 x k1i
Or - originality, i - drawing number (from 1 to 4)
T5 = B + Or
B - fluency, Or - originality, T5 - total indicator of subtest 5.
Subtest 6. Sketches
Task: The test squares contain many identical figures (circles); each of the figures must be turned into different images.
Instructions to the subject: Add any details or lines to the main image to create various interesting drawings. Complete these pictures. You can draw inside the circle and outside the circle. Label the title of each drawing.
The task completion time is 10 minutes.
In Fig. Figure 4 shows an unused test form for this subtest.
The test form consists of a sheet of standard paper (A-4 format), which shows 20 squares with a circle in the middle (Fig. 4). The dimensions of the square are 5x5 cm, the diameter of each circle is ~ 1.5 cm.
As an example, a drawn man is presented for the subtest (Fig. 5).
Evaluation: Evaluation is carried out according to 3 indicators:
1) Fluency - the number of drawings adequate to the task.
n - number of pictures (varies from 0 to 20). For 1 drawing - 1 point
B = n
Drawings that exactly repeat each other (duplicates), as well as drawings that do not use stimulus material - circles, are excluded. (ex. Circles are ignored - Fig. 9 - top)
2) Flexibility - the number of depicted classes (categories) of drawings. For example, images of different faces belong to one category, images of different animals also belong to one category.
m - number of categories, for one category - 3 points.
G = 3 x m
List of categories (6 subtest)
1. War (military equipment, soldiers, explosions...)
2. Geographical objects (lake, pond, mountains, sun, moon...)
3. Animals. Birds. Fish. Insects.
4. Signs (letters, numbers, musical notes, symbols...)
5. Toys, games (any)
6. Space (rocket, satellite, astronaut...)
7. Face (any human face)
8. People (person)
9. Cars. Mechanisms.
10. Dishes
11. Household items
12. Natural phenomena (rain, snow, hail, rainbows, northern lights...)
13. Plants (any - trees, herbs, flowers...)
14. Sports equipment
15. Edibles (food)
16. Patterns, ornaments
17. Jewelry (beads, earrings, bracelet...)
If a drawing does not fit into any category, it is assigned a new category.
3) Originality. k - number of original drawings; A drawing whose plot is used once is considered original (in a sample of 30-40 people). 1 original drawing - 5 points.
Op = 5 x k
Or is an indicator of originality.
Rice. 4 Sample test form (subtest 6 - Sketches)
Rice. 5 Example of a drawing for preliminary display (subtest 6 - Sketches)
Rice. 6 (1). Stimulus material for subtest 7 (Hidden form)
Rice. 6(2). Stimulus material for subtest 7 (Hidden form)
Rice. 6(3). Stimulus material for subtest 7 (Hidden form)
Rice. 6(4). Stimulus material for subtest 7 (Hidden form)
Rice. 6(5). Stimulus material for subtest 7 (Hidden form)
Rice. 6(6). Stimulus material for subtest 7 (Hidden form)
T6 = n + 3 x m + 5 x k
where T6 is the total indicator of subtest 6.
When calculating points for subtest 6, all drawings should be taken into account, regardless of the quality of the image. The plot and theme must be judged not only by the drawing, but also the signature must be taken into account (Fig. 8).
After finishing work, young children who cannot write should be asked what is shown in the pictures and sign the names. This mainly applies to the age group of 5-7 years.
Subtest 7. Hidden form
Task: Find various figures hidden in a complex, poorly structured image.
Instructions to the subject: Find as many images as possible in this picture. What is shown in this picture?
Subtest completion time = 3 minutes. Test stimulus materials (images) are shown in Fig. 6 (1-6), a total of 6 different designs. Only one drawing must be submitted. The rest are given so that re-testing can be done at another time.
Assessment: The results of the subtest are assessed in points according to 2 indicators:
1) Fluency - total number of answers - n. 1 answer - 1 point.
B = n
2) Originality - the number of original, rare answers - k. In this case, an answer given once in a sample of 30-40 people will be considered original. 1 original answer - 5 points
Op = 5 x k
where Or is originality.
T7 = n + 5 x k
where T7 is the total indicator of the seventh subtest.
ETWARD DE BONO'S SIX HATS METHOD
The essence of the six hats method
Edward de Bono's method is based on the concept of parallel thinking. As a rule, this or that decision is born in a clash of opinions, in discussion and polemics. With this approach, preference is often given not to the best of the options, but to the one that was more successfully promoted in the debate. With parallel thinking (constructive in essence), different approaches, opinions and ideas coexist, rather than being opposed or butting heads.
Six Thinking Hats in the Solution Process practical problems, help to cope with three main difficulties:
Emotions. Instead of thinking about a solution, we often limit ourselves to an emotional reaction that predetermines our further actions.
Confusion. Not knowing what to do or where to start, we experience uncertainty (this is especially evident either at moments when we are faced with a complex multi-level task, or when we encounter something for the first time).
Confusion. When we try to keep in our heads a large amount of information related to a task, we try to be logical, consistent and creative thinkers, to be constructive, and we also make sure that the people around us (interlocutors, colleagues, partners) are like that, usually all this leads to nothing but confusion and confusion.
The 6 Thinking Hats method helps overcome these difficulties by dividing the thinking process into six different modes, each of which is represented by a metaphorical hat of a different color. Such division makes thinking more focused and stable and teaches us to operate with its various aspects in turn.
Six thinking hats
White hat thinking is a mode of focusing attention on all the information we have: facts and figures. Also, in addition to the data that we have, “putting on a white hat”, it is important to focus on possibly missing, additional information, and think about where to get it.
The red hat is the hat of emotions, feelings and intuition. Without going into details and reasoning, at this stage all intuitive guesses are expressed. People share emotions (fear, indignation, admiration, joy, etc.) that arise when thinking about a particular decision or proposal. It is also important here to be honest, both with yourself and with others (if there is an open discussion).
The yellow hat is positive. When we put it on, we think about the supposed benefits that a solution or proposal brings, we reflect on the benefits and prospects of a certain idea. And even if this idea or decision at first glance does not promise anything good, it is important to work through this optimistic side and try to identify hidden positive resources.
The black hat is the complete opposite of the yellow one. In this hat, only critical assessments of the situation (ideas, solutions, etc.) should come to mind: be careful, look at possible risks and secret threats, at significant and imaginary shortcomings, turn on the search mode for pitfalls and be a little pessimistic.
The green hat is the hat of creativity and creativity, finding alternatives and making changes. Consider all kinds of variations, generate new ideas, modify existing ones and take a closer look at other people’s developments, do not disdain non-standard and provocative approaches, look for any alternative.
Blue hat - the sixth thinking hat, unlike the other five, is intended to manage the process of implementing an idea and working on solving problems, and not for evaluating a proposal and elaborating its content. In particular, using the blue hat before trying on all the others is a definition of what is to be done, i.e. formulation of goals, and at the end - summing up and discussing the benefits and effectiveness of the 6 hats method.
The use of the six thinking hats is reasonable for any mental work, in any field and at a variety of levels. For example, on a personal level, this could be writing business letter, planning important things, evaluating something, solving the problem of getting out of a difficult life situation, etc. When working in a group, the 6 Thinking Hats method can be seen as a form of brainstorming, it can also be used in dispute and conflict resolution, again in planning and evaluation, or used as part of a training program.
By the way, many international corporations, such as British Airways, IBM, Pepsico, DuPont and many others, have long adopted this method.
Pros and cons of the six thinking hats method
Mental activity for most people is abstract, tedious and boring work. The six-hat method can captivate and make mental activity colorful and interesting. In addition, six colored hats is a pretty memorable expression and an easily digestible and applicable technique that can be used both on boards of directors and in kindergartens.
+ 6 hats method recognizes the significance and pays attention to all aspects of working on a solution - facts, emotions, pros and cons, generating fresh ideas.
Statement by Kozma Prutkov, “ A narrow specialist is like gumboil: its completeness is one-sided”, well illustrates this advantage of the 6 thinking hats method. The disadvantage of subject matter experts is that they wear the same hat all the time, and in finding the right solution, these “fluxes” interfere with each other. And the six hats method guides the discussion in the right direction. For example, it helps to neutralize a participant prone to excessive criticism. Having understood the principle of the six hats technique, the critic will no longer arbitrarily kill ideas with his comments and will save his ardor, since he will know that soon it will be his turn to put on the black hat.
The human mind, protecting its integrity and self-sufficiency, often mistakes everything new for something unnatural and false. Using the de Bono method, we are able to consider opinions about things that we previously did not take seriously. This increases the chances of finding the right or appropriate solution to the situation.
Using this technique, we get the opportunity to come to an agreement with the interlocutor, ask the participant to be more compliant and distract from personal preferences, recommend that he not follow everyone’s lead, turn the flow of his thoughts 180 degrees, or you can simply give the person a chance to express everything, that he was “boiling.” This way, you don’t just give the person the opportunity to speak, but make it easier to find a joint solution.
The 6 hats method allows you to attract people who are usually shy and reticent to discuss topics. At the same time, any of the participants, expressing their point of view, does not feel discomfort, despite the fact that his opinion may contradict the opinion of the majority, because he, as it were, speaks on behalf of one of the colored hats, and not on his own behalf.
Thanks to a clearly defined work structure that eliminates empty talk, thinking becomes more concentrated, intelligent and fruitful.
As a result of the fact that when using the six hats technique, polar points of view do not conflict with each other, but peacefully coexist and complement each other, new extraordinary and innovative thoughts and ideas are born.
Another advantage of the six thinking hats is that with the help of this method we learn to manage our attention. After all, if our mind is able not only to react to events happening to us, but is ready to switch from one thing to another, and at the same time can examine an object from six sides, this develops our attention and makes it much sharper.
According to the deep conviction of Edward de Bono, which he described in detail in his book, the six thinking hats are designed to serve as conditioned reflex signals that can affect the balance chemical elements(neurotransmitter ratios) in the brain.
The main disadvantage of the 6 thinking hats, although probably not even a disadvantage, but the complexity, is the technology of the six hats itself, i.e. In order to master this technique and learn how to use it profitably, it takes some time. It’s easier to solve problems using the six hats technique individually, but doing it in a team is much more difficult.
If you are not a direct manager, initiating this method at the enterprise and explaining all its advantages is not an easy task. Most domestic enterprises are not ready to introduce any innovations into the company’s work, in particular collective methods, and especially those requiring personal involvement.
In addition to the need to convince management of the need for this method, there is also a moment of seriousness in its perception by the team itself. Someone may consider him “childish” and refuse to try on colored hats (although you don’t actually need to wear any hats), explaining this by saying that he is not a clown. However, here again the matter is in the professionalism of the presenter (moderator, i.e. blue hat).
To offset the few disadvantages six hat technology To playfully use all the advantages, before starting a collective fitting of hats, it is important to thoroughly study all the rules for carrying out this thinking technique.
Rules of the Six Thinking Hats Method With collective participation de Bono method implies the obligatory presence of a moderator who manages the process and ensures that it does not turn into a farce. All the time, under a blue hat, the moderator writes down everything said on paper and finally summarizes the results obtained (to summarize and visually display it, it is better to use mind maps; you can learn how to compile them by reading the article - “Rules for compiling mental maps”).
First, the facilitator briefly introduces the team to the general concept of the six thinking hats, then identifies the problem or task. Well, for example: “A competing company has proposed cooperation in the field... What should I do?”
The session begins with everyone taking part in it putting on a hat of the same color together and looking at the situation with an appraising glance, one by one, from the angle corresponding to this hat. The order in which hats are tried on, in principle, does not play a huge role, however, some order is still necessary. Try the following option:
Start a white hat discussion on the topic, that is, collect and consider all available facts, figures, statistics, proposed conditions, etc. Afterwards, discuss all available data in a negative way, i.e. in a black hat, and even if the offer is profitable, as a rule, there is always a fly in the ointment. That's what you need to see. Next, look for all the positive aspects of the collaboration by wearing a positive yellow hat.
Once you've looked at the issue from all angles and gathered enough information for further analysis, put on your green, creative hat. Try to find something new in it, going beyond the existing proposals. Strengthen the positive aspects, smooth out the negative ones. Let each participant suggest an alternative path. The ideas that emerge are analyzed again with the yellow and black hats. Yes, and don’t forget to periodically let the participants blow off steam in a red hat (it is worn rarely and for a fairly short period of time, about thirty seconds, no more). So, by trying out the six thinking hats in different orders, over time you will be able to determine the order that works best for you.
At the end of the collective parallel thinking, the moderator sums up the work done. It is also important that the moderator ensures that participants do not wear several hats at the same time. This way, thoughts and ideas are not intertwined or confused.
You can use this method a little differently - have each participant put on a hat of a certain color and play their role. In this case, it is better to distribute the hats in such a way that they do not match the type of person. For example, let an optimist wear black, let someone who constantly criticizes everything wear yellow, let everyone who is not used to showing emotions and always behaves restrainedly wear red, don’t let the main creative person wear green, etc. This will enable those participating to reach their potential.
MENTAL MAPS
Mental maps (mind mapping) are a convenient and effective technique for visualizing thinking and alternative recording. It can be used to create new ideas, capture ideas, analyze and organize information, make decisions and much more. This is not a very traditional, but very natural way of organizing thinking, which has several undeniable advantages over conventional writing methods.
Traditional recording system
Linear writing typically uses text with headings, lists, tables, and diagrams. Things seem simple and logical. However, everyone is familiar with the effort that has to be made when reading a note, even one made personally. Why?
Recorded hard to remember and even more difficult to recall. This happens because visually such a record looks monotonous, with constantly repeating elements - words, paragraphs, lists, etc. And we, when monotonous pictures float before our eyes, easily switch off.
In this summary it's hard to highlight the main thing. Usually we remember the main ideas thanks to special keywords, which for us are carriers of impressions about the idea. These words are few and they are lost in the mass of ordinary words that mean nothing to us.
Time with this recording very inefficiently spent. We first write down a lot of unnecessary things, and then we are forced to read and re-read this unnecessary things, trying to find those very key words and determine the degree of their importance.
The consequences of all this are vast and varied: boredom, absent-mindedness, inability to assimilate information, waste of time, a feeling of one’s own stupidity, a quiet hatred of the subject being studied, and so on. Moreover, it happens that the more diligently we write down, the worse the result, because we are forced to fight with ourselves more, and this is tiring.
Mind maps
Tony Buzan, the author of the mental mapping technique, invites us to stop fighting ourselves and start helping our thinking. To do this, you just need to discover the undeniable connection between effective thinking and memory and ask yourself what exactly contributes to remembering.
Buzan suggests proceeding as follows.
Instead of linear notation use radial. This means that the main topic on which our attention will be focused is placed in the center of the sheet. That is, really in the focus of attention.
Write down not everything in a row, but only keywords. The most characteristic, vivid, memorable, “speaking” words are selected as keywords.
Keywords placed on branches diverging from the central theme. Relationships (branches) should be associative rather than hierarchical. Associations, which are known to be very helpful in remembering, can be reinforced by symbolic drawings.
Tony Buzan's Tips on Mind Mapping Techniques
Gradually you will develop your personal style of mind mapping, but at the first stage, in order to feel the spirit of this technique, which is completely different from what we are used to traditional system recording, you must adhere to the following rules.
It's important to place words ON THE BRANCHES, and not in all sorts of bubbles and parallelepipeds hanging on these branches. It is also important that the branches should be living, flexible, and, in general, organic. Drawing a mind map in the traditional diagram style is completely contrary to the idea of mind mapping. This will greatly complicate the movement of the eye along the branches and will create many unnecessary identical, and therefore monotonous, objects.
Write on every line only one keyword. Each word contains thousands of possible associations, so stringing words together reduces freedom of thought. Spelling words separately can lead to new ideas.
Line length should equal word length. It's more economical and cleaner.
Write in block letters, as clearly and precisely as possible.
Vary the size of the letters and the thickness of the lines depending on the importance of the keyword.
Necessarily use different colors for main branches. This facilitates a holistic and structured perception.
Often use pictures and symbols(for the central theme, a drawing is required). In principle, a mental map can generally consist entirely of drawings :)
Try organize space, do not leave empty space and do not place branches too tightly. For a small mind map, use A4 sheet, for a large topic - A3.
Overgrown branches can outline so that they do not mix with neighboring branches.
Position the sheet horizontally. This map is easier to read.
Pay attention to the shape of the resulting mental map - it expresses a lot. A solid, strong, lively form shows that you have a good understanding of the topic. It also happens that all the branches of the map turn out beautiful, but one is somehow clumsy and confusing. This is a sure sign that this part needs extra attention - it could be a key to the topic or a weak point in understanding it.
Philosophy
The more individual your mental map, the better. After all, it is your personal thinking that comprehends it. This brings us to the question of understanding, which still happens in our heads, and not in books and textbooks. And here the words of Merab Mamardashvili are very appropriate:
“We will try to approach the material in such a way as to feel in it those living things that stand behind the text and because of which, in fact, it arises. These things usually die in the text, they are poorly visible through it, but nevertheless, they are there. And it makes sense to read texts and talk about them when you do not fill yourself with dogmatic scholarship, but restore precisely the living side of thought because of which they were created. […] Only in this case, when we encounter a text two thousand years after its creation, does it appear to us not to be an element of book learning, but rather a construction, penetrating into which we can revive those mental states that lie behind text and arose in people through this text.”
Tony Buzan's idea is to create such a “supporting structure”, designed to help restore living thoughts behind boring text, or create them if you use mind mapping as a tool for creating new ideas. After all, memory and creativity are essentially two sides of the same process: memory recreates the past, and creativity creates the future.
What makes the idea particularly elegant are the parallels between the organization of thinking through mental maps and the structure of the human brain: firstly, the neuron itself looks like a mini-mindmap (a core with branches), and secondly, thoughts at the physical level are displayed as “trees” of biochemical impulses.
As I said at the beginning, the scope of effective application of mind mapping is extremely wide. This includes planning (for example, a day, a meeting, an article, a project), and learning, and organizing information, and a way to understand a problem, and creating ideas, and even writing fairy tales in the family circle (Buzan talks about this very interestingly). Of course, I cannot present here either the entire book (which I highly recommend) or my personal experience. Let me just say that mind mapping is, in a sense, an art, so it takes practice to learn how to draw beautiful mind maps. But this art is natural to our thinking and is accessible to everyone. And it helps to live.
Brainstorm
One of the techniques that helps a seeking teacher involve children in collective creativity is brainstorming (brainstorming, onslaught). Its author is American psychologist A. Osborne. The purpose of the method is to generate ideas instantly. Under the leadership of A. Osborne in 1955, in one of the companies, 46 similar groups at 300 meetings proposed 15 thousand ideas, of which 10 percent were immediately implemented.
This is the result of using the technique! Experience shows the effectiveness of the “action council” in game development if the discussion takes place in the form of brainstorming.
The brainstorming algorithm is simple. The purpose of the discussion is clearly and concisely stated. The manager warns about the need for an absolutely friendly atmosphere. He himself gladly supports and approvingly comments on any proposal, even an absolutely unrealistic one. The main thing is to achieve a state of relaxation, confidence that everyone wants to be listened to. If there is a hitch at first, the leader should have a few proposals in stock that are fantastic enough to provoke a reaction from the board. The main thing is that the leader’s manners should be confident and moderately animated. He himself should not doubt the children’s ability for creative imagination and for a realistic assessment of events.
You can specifically tell teenagers about this method and suggest: “Let’s work on the principle of brainstorming!” (which is what the author did at school). Or you can simply stimulate collective creativity and a gaming atmosphere with your own gaming behavior - this is also a kind of “brain onslaught.”
Of course, in collective discussions of upcoming affairs by teenagers, the central role belongs to an adult. Although, as one gains experience in such discussions, the degree of his open activity may decrease (or rather, should decrease).
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