• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.89-101
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• 2001

The purpose of this study was to develop the elementary school science instructional material for nurturing students' creativity and to analyze the effects of this material on the changes of students' creativity. This material was composed of student's worksheet and a teacher's guidebook, in which are relevant to the elements of creativity and creative activities that can be applied to elementary science curriculum of 5th and 6th grades. Student's worksheets include various creative activities: imagination, guided imagery, experimental activity, mind mapping as wrap-up, and 'let's think' as an extended activity, game, puzzle, making a cartoon, to be, role playing, and so on. These materials were applied to 5th grade science class, 156 students. They were divided into two groups: the treatment group to which developed material was applied and the control group which was a traditional lecture-centered class. After this material had been applied for 3 months, students of both groups took a test of creativity. Interviews and observation were also carried out with three level groups (higher, medium and lower level) which were divided within the treatment group based on their creativity score. The results of this study were as follows: The treatment group showed higher score on creativity than that of control group(p<0.01). In the result of interviews and observation, the students of the higher and the medium level accomplished their tasks by themselves better than those on lower level.All of them took an interest in visual activity. In a wrapping-up step, the higher level students made mind map more systematically and the medium students improved as time goes on, but low level students feel constrained. In totally, they used various expression methods and were interested in making drawings and cartoons creatively.