A criatividade em redação: uma experiência em sala de aula

Abstract

The objective of the study was to verify whether the ability for creative writing can be developed through specific teaching strategies of an oral character. It also intends toobserve the effect of a treatment with verbal strategies upon non-verbal creative performance (with pictures). The experiment took place in a public school located in an economically deprived area of Fortaleza. It involved eigth grade students averaging 15.3 years of age and belonging to low-middle to the lowest social class. The variables fluency, flexibility and originality, the three components of creative behavior - were tested with an experimental and a control group totaling sixty subjects. The experiment was developed in the period of two months a with a total of sixteen sessions of fifty minutes each - two sessions per week. It involved the application of specific teaching strategies in the regular classroom, under the orientation of the regular Language-Arts teacher, and within the regular class schedule. To evaluate the experiment E. Paul Torrance's Creative thinking test was applied in both A - pre-test, and B - post--test forms. For reasons made clear in the study, the post-test was repeated once in both groups, when a grade was given the subjects. This way, it was also possible to analyse the meaning of a grade in terms of creative performance. The results of the first post-test indicated a non-significant difference both intra-group and inter-group. The second post-test results indicated a significant intra-group çrowth in both groups, which therefore indicated a non significant difference between the two groups. In the second post-test the experimental group scored above the control group in one element alone, that of Flexibility, which indicated that the effects of the creative performance treament should not be generatized.