Evaluation of the effectiveness of problem solving training on creativity and cognitive flexibility in teachers of work and technology

The education system must make fundamental changes within itself in order to be able to cope with the rapid changes in the information society, and on the other hand to be able to respond to the needs of creative society and creative people in society.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of problem solving training on creativity and cognitive flexibility among teachers of work and technology.

This research was conducted in a quasi-experimental manner with a pretest-posttest design with a control and follow-up group. The statistical population of the study included all female teachers of labor and technology in District 1 of Rasht in the academic year 2019-2020 in the number of 146 people. For sampling, 30 qualified volunteer teachers who scored less than 120 on the Abedi creativity questionnaire (1993) and less than 80 on the Dennis and Vanderwall (2010) cognitive flexibility questionnaire were identified and then randomly assigned. They were included in 2 study groups. The experimental group underwent 10 sessions of Dezorilla and Goldfried (1971) problem-solving training intervention. In order to evaluate the stability of the results, a follow-up test was performed 1 month after the post-test of the experimental groups. Data were analyzed by repeated measures analysis of variance and Beferroni post hoc test using SPSS software.

The results showed that for the creativity variable the effect of group (P˂0.001 and eta= 0.571), the effect of time (P˂0.001 and eta= 0.613) and the interaction of group × time (P˂0.001 and eta=0.608) was significant. Also for the cognitive flexibility variable group effect (P˂0.001 and eta= 0.609), time effect (P˂0.001 and eta= 0.653) and group × time interaction (P˂0.001 and eta= 0.612) ) was significant. On the other hand, the results of benfroni post hoc test indicate a significant difference between the means of the experimental group in the pre-test with post-test (P˂0.001) and pre-test with follow-up (P˂0.001) for the variables of creativity and cognitive flexibility was.