Impact of Brainstorming on Creativity among Middle School Children
Creative thinking is a crucial life skill and the outcome of creative thinking (innovative ideas or an innovative solution) makes it an important skill worth developing. Creative thinking helps in all areas of one's life personal, familial, career, societal and even in the cultural dimensions (Lee Kim,2007).The need for creativity is biologically, physically, and psychologically an essential part of human nature, and is necessary for human reproduction, growth and cultural striving (Cantella, 2004) It has been found by Bono (1995) that when school students were taught to think creatively, their ill temper and aggressive tendencies reduced significantly. It was also found that people with neuroticism scored significantly lower in decision making, problem solving and creative thinking. Interestingly, when they were taught to think effectively, they showed a remarkable reduction in their neurosis. Thus, it is evident that creativity contributes to physical health, psychological health (Eisemnman 1991, Runco 1994, Pennebaker et al. 1997, Runco Richards 1997) as well as in optimal human functioning (Bloom, 2001) According to Dudek (2003) creativity plays an important role in technological advancement, in social and behavioral sciences and in humanities and arts. In addition, it enhances individuals and also advances the society and culture.There is a fairly common belief that creativity can be developed by providing interventions. Various recent studies that have assessed the effects of interventions for stimulating creativity, confirm this belief (Antonietti, 2000; Baer,1996; Caf, Kroflic, Tancing, 1997; Curnow T Fleith, Renzulli, Westberg, 2002; Komarik Brutenicova, 2003; Kurtzberg Reale,1999; Parker, 1998; Saxon, Treffinger, Young, Young, Wittig, 2003) However, hardly any study has focused on providing interventions during the development stage of creativity. Higher level thinking/abstract thinking /creative thinking is at its best during the middle school age, ranging from ten to twelve years of age (Erikson, Heider, Paul Gardner,1959; Piaget 1983).Thus, when these techniques are provided to the individual during sensitive periods of development it may lead to maximum development of creative thinking skills. Hence, the present study focuses on providing intervention for middle school children to enhance creativity.With regards to intervention, previous studies have given inconsistent results on the efficacy of brainstorming in enhancing creativity (Nemethetal, 2004; Olin Wickenberg, 2001) Some studies point out that the rules of brainstorming itself can inhibit creativity (Hill Amabile, 1993; Sternberg Lubart, 1993) while other studies report that brainstorming has enhanced the levels of creativity (Al blwi, 2006; Al qarni, 2011) With contradictory evidences on the efficacy of brainstorming in enhancing creativity, the present study attempts to verify its effectiveness following all rules of brainstorming in a sample that is in the critical stage of development of creative /abstract thinking.MethodObjectives1. To find out the impact of brainstorming on creativity and its components.2. To find out if any significant gender difference exists with regard to the impact of brainstorming on creativity and its components.Based on the objectives the null hypotheses were proposed for the study.Hypotheses1. There will be no significant impact of brainstorming on creativity and its components.2. There will be no significant gender difference with regard to the impact of brainstorming on creativity and its components.Design of studyThe present study adopts a pre post test experimental design with a control group.Operational definitionsBrainstorming: Here, brainstorming refers to a group technique by which efforts are made to find a solution for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members without passing any critical comments on any ideas.