The Effect of Creative Training Based on Meeker's Method on Divergent Production of Gifted and Ordinary Students

There is no doubt that education has an important role in developing and promoting student''s creative ability. Creativity is an equivalent for divergent production based on Guilford''s theory. He was the first one to propose the concept of creativity in psychology. He believed divergent production is the main characteristic of creativity. Divergent production is one of the basic concepts of operation in Guilford''s cognitive abilities structure and was used in evaluating the educational training by Meeker. Meeker provided subscales for assessing divergent production abilities. She also designed educational packages to strengthen and improve those abilities. These packages are used in institution of Meeker''s cognitive abilities structure located in Los Angeles، USA. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of creativity training based on Meeker''s method on the divergent production rate of junior high school students of Ilam، Iran.

Statistical population consisted of boys and girls in first and second grade of junior high school of Ilam، Iran in 2010-2011. Subjects were selected from 402 first and second grade junior high school students from two gifted and governmental schools. Semi-experimental study، pre-test and posttest with control group were conducted. From each school four classes were randomly selected and assigned to control and experimental group. Experimental group received 36 hours training and posttest was performed for both groups to compare the differences. The data gathering tool was Meeker''s divergent production subscales.

There was a significant difference between experimental and control groups regarding divergent production subscales، semantic units and symbolic relationships. The results also indicated that there was no significant difference between gifted and ordinary students regarding creativity.

The results of this study emphasized the importance of improving creativity among students based on Meeker''s educational packages.