Abstract
Gifted and talented children have in recent decades become visible as students whose primary educational experiences are not always commensurate with their exceptional abilities. Various approaches to educational enrichment have emerged as a consequence, including the strategy of appealing to both the cognitive and affective aspects of the human intellect in an attempt to provide a learning experience that integrates both hemispheres of the brain. Such endeavors have been implicated in the improvement of specific mental processes, among these--creative thinking ability. A weekend environmental awareness experience was conducted in this study using sixth graders randomly selected from among those enrolled in the Vanguard Program for the gifted and talented administered by the Houston (Texas) Independent School District. The research design incorporated experimental and control groups, each taking a pre-test and a post-test. The experimental group consisted of thirty-two children, while twenty-nine served as the control group. Torrance's Tests of Creative Thinking Figural Forms A and B were the measuring instruments. The t-statistic was used to assess mean score changes between each group from pre-test to post-test. The .05 level of significance was established as the acceptance/rejection standard. The project curriculum consisted of fourteen learning sessions whose emphases were intellectual, sensory, or recreational, singly or in combination. Each session had a cognitive element and an affective element by design. The study yielded the following results: (1) Creative thinking was improved significantly in the experimental group as assessed by the average overall scores of the separate scales comprising the measuring instrument. The average overall scores are considered the most representative indicators of the process being investigated. (2) A significant improvement in the originality component of the measuring instrument was noted among members of the experimental group. (3) No significant improvement was shown in the fluency, flexibility, or elaboration scales of the measuring instrument. The researcher concluded that environmental education strategies stressing cognitive/affective integration can result in improvement in certain dimensions of creative thinking ability among gifted and talented children.
Kesgen, Edward Joh (1982). The effect of an environmental awareness experience on the creative thinking ability of gifted and talented sixth grade pupils. Texas A&M University. Texas A&M University. Libraries. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /DISSERTATIONS -513866.