Open Type Tasks as a Tool for Developing Creativity in Secondary School Students

Abstract

© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media DordrechtThe relevance of the present study is due to the importance of developing creativity which is considered to be the target and the result of education. Modern society demands from individuals non-standard actions and approaches, flexibility, an ability to formulate new ideas and original ways of thinking when solving urgent problems in the course of life. Facilitating the formation of a personality with a strong intellectual potential capable of creative thinking is set as one of the priorities in the federal and regional documents that determine the direction of educational institutions’ development. The generalized cognitive ability to create and solve tasks is the specific feature of intelligence. The tasks are used in the educational process as a means of presentation, consolidation and acquisition of new knowledge. Thus, the aim of our research is to explore whether using the system of open type tasks can be an effective way of improving the level of creativity development in secondary school students. The main methods in this experiment are modeling the system of open type tasks and the system analysis of large samples of experimental data based on assessment according to a two-point scale of four parameters: the optimality of ideas suggested by students, the efficiency of students’ reasoning, the originality of their answers and the degree of the investigation of solutions. Our experimental research made it possible to design new methods of developing creativity in secondary school students.