• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.129-145
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• 2012

This study investigated factors of creativity and interaction between factors that are revealed when gifted students designed scientific experiments. For this, we firstly developed items which required the written process of designing experiments to explore creativity factors. Then, we used these items as a part for letters of self-introduction to students who applied for 2011 correspondence education of general physics for the Korea Physics Olympiad. 513th letters of self-introduction which were analyzed to investigate factors of creativity in view of creativity definition after researchers' consultation, which specifically means a combination of divergent and convergent thinking. The results were as follows; (1) in the step of hypothesis building, we could not only find Originality and the Flexibility & Fluency, which were factors of divergent thinking, but also Coherency and Elaborateness, which were factors of convergent thinking. (2) in the step of the hypothesis testing, we could explore Originality, Flexibility & Fluency in divergent thinking and Coherency, Reliability, Clarity, Elaborateness in convergent thinking. (3) we also figured out three creativity types of gifted students from the viewpoint that creativity is a consequence of interaction between divergent thinking and convergent thinking; a) Type A showed divergent and convergent factors of creativity in the step of hypothesis building. However, type A did not include divergent factors of creativity on the process of the hypothesis testing. b) Type B had divergent and convergent factors of creativity on the process of the hypothesis testing, but it had not convergent factors of creativity on the step of hypothesis building. c) Finally, in Type C, only divergent factors of creativity appeared on the process of the hypothesis testing, but convergent factors of creativity could be found on the step of hypothesis building and hypothesis testing.