Journal of Technology and Information Education 2017, 9(2):128-143 | DOI: 10.5507/jtie.2017.021

THE INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES ON TECHNICAL CREATIVITY IN SLOVENIAN K-9 STUDENTS

Stanislav AVSEC, Klavdija MODIC
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education, Slovenia

This study aims to verify and understand the effect of individual differences on technical creativity in Slovenian K-9 students.  Students' learning styles and their attitudes towards technology and engineering, which might have implications in students for teaching and developing creativity, were investigated. Despite of several approaches to teaching and of curriculum learning standards in technical creativity, technology education courses still suffer from creativity development needed for future creation of new technologies, and  for inventions of products. For the purpose of this study, an effective sample of n=177 secondary school students in grade 6 and in grade 9 was collected. An empirical research design was followed. A recently developed DSLI learning style inventory was used for measuring learning styles, while student attitude towards technology and engineering was surveyed with 25-item test. Students' creative potential was measured with a standardised test of creative thinking-divergent production. The results of the study on creativity show no significant (p>0.05) differences in creative potential between sixth- and ninth-graders. Moreover, interest for technology is not particularly positive for both groups of students, when a lack of technology identification in sixth-graders appears significantly (p<0.05). Students' learning styles were found as significant (p<0.05) predictors in students creative potential. Students still feel perplexed with technology and the current design and technology curriculum might not markedly influence student decision to pursuit careers in technology and engineering.

Keywords: Technology education, technical creativity, learning styles, attitude.

Received: June 26, 2017; Accepted: September 24, 2017; Published: December 12, 2017  Show citation

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AVSEC, S., & MODIC, K. (2017). THE INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES ON TECHNICAL CREATIVITY IN SLOVENIAN K-9 STUDENTS. Journal of Technology and Information Education, 9(2), 128-143. doi: 10.5507/jtie.2017.021
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