Development of Parent Education Program Combining Art Activities and Thinking Tools to Improve Creativity and Verification of Effects

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop a parent education program by combining art activities and thinking tools, and to verify its effect on parent’s creativity (creative thinking, creative personality), creative home environment, and child's creative characteristics. The subjects of this study were 72 parents of infants attending two kindergartens located in Gyeonggi-do and Chungnam-do, and 36 parents were assigned to the experimental group and the rest to the control group. After developing a parent education program that combines art activities and thinking tools, the experimental group conducted the program twice a week for 6 weeks for a total of 12 hours, and the control group did not receive any treatment. To verify the effects of the program, the experimental group and the control group were tested for creative thinking ability, creative personality test, creative home environment test, and the child's creative characteristics test, one week before the program execution and one week after the end of the program. The collected pre and post test data were verified whether there was a difference between the experimental group and the control group through analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The result was that the creativity parent education program developed in this study had significant effects in improving parent's creative thinking ability, enhancing parent's creative personality, creating a creative home environment, and enhancing child's creative characteristics. The significance and limitations of this study, and future research directions were discussed.