Identifying Dimensions of Creative Thinking in Preschool Children during Implementation of Philosophy for Children (P4C) Program: A Directed Content Analysis

Yahya Ghaedi¹, Mona Mahdian² and Fatemeh Khoshnavay Fomani^3,

¹Associate professor of Educational philosophy Department of Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran

²M.A. in Educational Psychology, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran

³Phd candidate. School of Nursing and Midwifery, Tehran University of medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Cite this paper:
Yahya Ghaedi, Mona Mahdian and Fatemeh Khoshnavay Fomani. Identifying Dimensions of Creative Thinking in Preschool Children during Implementation of Philosophy for Children (P4C) Program: A Directed Content Analysis. American Journal of Educational Research. 2015; 3(5):547-551. doi: 10.12691/education-3-5-2

Abstract

Background: fostering creativity thinking in children needs a program with focusing on process and let children expressing their own ideas and listening to others ideas as well challenging them and creating new ideas. To develop creativity in children teachers should be able to accept children uniqueness and their idea. Before children start the school, they need learning experiences to promote their cognitive, social, moral and emotional development and this lays the foundation for later success at school. One of the programs that developed for enhancing creative thinking alongside other thinking and social skills is philosophy for children (P4C).Implementing this program on school age children have shown effectiveness of P4C on creative thinking but little is known about this related to preschool children. Objectives: The aim of this study is identifying the elements of creativity thinking based on Torrance creative thinking framework during implementing P4C program for preschool children. Materials and Methods: A qualitative design with directed content analysis was conducted to explore four aspects of creative thinking during implementing P4C program. 6 healthy children five to six years old selected from one preschool in Tehran and P4C program conducted for 16 sessions. All of the sessions recorded and after each session all events of the recorded films were transcript. Torrance creative thinking aspects were the framework in this study and data and codes classified into these four elements and their definitions as main criterion. The codes emerged from data, compared to the main framework and if they matched with the definitions and evidences, they classified as a sub group of the themes. Results: All four aspects of creative thinking were seen in codes and categories. Even in first days of running the program there was a little evidence for creative thinking but gradually the related creativity codes emerged. Conclusion: according to finding implementation of P4C program helps preschool children to develop their creativity thinking. More investigation is needed to empower these results and answer to the questions about why and how this is happened.

Keywords:
creativity philosophy for children preschool students

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