COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS’ USE OF CREATIVE THINKING SKILLS, SELF-REGULATION, AND CRITICAL THINKING STYLE AS POTENTIAL MEDIATORS TO CREATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING.

Abstract

Art and design programs at community colleges challenge students to think of numerous and diverse creative concepts when faced with an assignment that requires creative problem-solving. Concurrently the students are learning to acquire new disciplinary skills and manage the hurdles of various life responsibilities. Thus, it becomes the inspiring role of the art faculty to challenge their students to think creatively and critically about their work. I argue that training focused on creative thinking, self-regulation, and critical thinking in the classroom or through training workshops can improve these latent abilities. This dissertation presents the results of an educational intervention study examining whether undergraduate students in a community college setting who routinely practice and exercise creative thinking skills, self-regulation strategies, and critical thinking can improve their creative problem-solving. Prior research suggests that these skills and strategies can be learned and are critical to a student’s success in college. The sample for this study consisted of undergraduate students at a community college in Southeastern Pennsylvania who were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. Training modules were delivered over ten weeks of the fall semester via the college’s learning management system. Participants could work through the training modules at their own pace. A pre-test/post-test design using divergent and convergent thinking, metacognition awareness, and critical thinking measured participants’ change in the understanding of those constructs. An additional post-test only, final design project, was used as a measure of the constructs. Demographic data were gathered through a questionnaire. The results indicate that there were no positive significant differences in the constructs from pre-test to post-test. The results of the final project post-test measure indicate that the treatment group had marginally higher scores on the design construct, the creative thinking sub-component of the design construct, and the critical thinking construct. The results also suggest that the additional training had little or no effect on the treatment group.