ART EDUCATION A CONTRIBUTORY FACTOR IN ENHANCEMENT OF PROBLEM SOLVING ABILITY
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Date
2014
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
College of Home Economics, University Of Peshawar.
Abstract
This study provides a baseline analysis of the extent to which the elementary
education system in Pakistan is capable of enhancing or inhibiting children’s
creativity. The present study was designed to examine the impact of elementary
visual art in enhancing problem solving ability of children. The primary aim was
to determine the relationship between visual art and problem solving ability
among students. The predictive relationship between these variables was studied
among elementary school children and young college students. For this purpose,
the study utilized a quantitative approach to measure the difference in problem
solving ability between art students vs. non-art students. Further, the study
examined the role of two visual art instructional pedagogies: student-centered and
teacher centered to evaluate their impact on the two thinking types, i.e.,
convergent thinking and divergent thinking along with the problem solving
performance of the participants.
The research encompassed two interconnected studies. Study I was a retrospective
study concentrating on the long term effects of elementary visual art at the age of
young-adult. While study II was conducted in the present scenario of education
being practiced at the elementary school level in Peshawar. The two studies were
carried out in further two Phases. Phase I consisted of two stages: stage I dealt
with item selection and try out of scales to see if the instruments were
understandable by Pakistani sample, whereas Stage II dealt with the
determination of validity and reliability estimates of all the instruments used in
current research. The instruments finalized in Phase-I were administered in Phase
II on two independent samples, i.e., 150 college students from the National
College of Arts, Lahore and Rawalpindi and 180 students across the elementary
schools of Peshawar, KP to verify the study hypotheses. The Raven’s Standard
Progressive Matrices, Wallach & Kogan’s Creative thinking Tests and Problem
Solving Ability Test were administered to measure the participants’ convergent
thinking, divergent thinking and problem solving ability respectivily.