Index

ABSTRACT

The present study was conducted with two major objectives, i.e. to discover the difference, if any, in the parent child interaction with regard to location and gender variation; and to find out the relationship between parent-child interaction and creativity. The sample of the study consisted of 100 higher secondary school students of Aligarh district comprising of 50 girls and 50 boys belonging to both rural and urban area. The data was collected using two scales including verbal and Non-verbal test of creativity developed and standardized by Dr. Baquer Mehdi and Parent-Child Interaction Scale developed and standardized by S.V.Kale. The result of the study showed that Creative thinking and parent-child interaction puts differential impact on both girls and boys; urban and rural area, whereas creative thinking does not differentiate between boys and girls, the students were found to be fairly competent in verbal, non-verbal, originality and elaboration aspects of creativity, and both parent-child interaction and creative thinking ability were significantly related to each other.

Keywords: Parent-child interaction, Creativity, Gender, Thinking, Development, Competent, Flexibility.

DOI: 10.20448/804.5.1.42.49

Citation | Saima Siddiqi (2020). Parent – Child Interaction in Relation to Creative Thinking Ability of Secondary School Students. American Journal of Education and Learning, 5(1): 42-49.

Copyright: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Funding : This study received no specific financial support.

Competing Interests: The author declares that there are no conflicts of interests regarding the publication of this paper.

History : Received: 3 September 2019 / Revised: 7 October 2019 / Accepted: 12 November 2019 / Published: 16 December 2019 .

Publisher: Online Science Publishing

1. INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, it is essential for the coming generation to be more creative for the development and creation of the nation. The developing countries are expected not to underestimate creativity if they want to compete with the developed economic countries. Family is the primary and most important organization of the society, and has an influence on one’s life and in the society. Children are more influenced by the family. The impact of the family on the child and its roles in the development of creativity, social, moral and cultural aspects are very gallant and important. Although children are influenced by society and peers, but balanced parent child relationship would significantly contribute to children’s mental health. Research has shown that reciprocal parent child interaction and parents’ dealing with children are the essential factors contributing to child rearing and the development of bright personality. Therefore the educational system of the country needs to be geared up in developing the creative ability of the future generations of the country.

Mehrafza (2014) and Purabdoli et al. (2008) reported that when parents hold higher expectations, greater responsiveness (warmness, acceptance and commitment) and highly demanding behavior (control and supervision) and tend to deal with their children in authoritative manner, children enjoy greater creativity. Several studies have been conducted on creativity, and behavioral scientists have always paid attention to the factors both contributing to and hindering creativity development. A good deal of research evidence are also there in favor of such environment as a stimulating factor for nurturing creative thinking ability of children as  Albert (1980); Agarwal (1980);  Sekhar (1980); Chaudhry (1983) and Khandwalla (1988) strongly advocated the role of environment in nurturing creativity and proposed a society conducive for creativity. Psychologists believe that family, educational environment and personal factors are the dominant determinants of creativity. The role of child’s family in the development of creativity has been examined in various studies. The relationship between children and their custodians has been discovered as one of the most important factor of future realization of creative potential (e.g. (Goertzel et al., 1978; Albert and Runco, 1986; Albert, 1994)). A significant positive correlation of authoritative parenting style with moral development and creativity was found by Abad et al. (2013). Sandler et al. (2015) in their study found that positive parenting behavior and practices helps in reducing the problem behaviors and increases the capability among children and adolescents- such as self-esteem, coping capacity, educational goals, and job aspirations. Parent-child interactions are among the most important elements that contribute to children’s adjustment and wellbeing (Gilmore and Meersand, 2014; Koehn and Kerns, 2016; Wang and Fletcher, 2016) . Many investigators point out that positive and safe relationships with mothers give assistance to child adjustment and wellbeing in various aspects (Gilmore and Meersand, 2014; Wang and Fletcher, 2016). Zahedani et al. (2016) carried out a research on the effect of parenting style on educational achievement and career track and found a significant relationships between firm parenting style and career path of the students, authoritarian parenting style and career path way of the students, educational success and career path of the learners. Duineveld et al. (2017) in their study found that Autonomy-supportive Parenting style have lessened depressive symptoms and enlarged self-esteem among adolescents. Kwaśniewska et al. (2018) investigated that openness to experience is the key positive forecaster of mother’s activities that form the atmosphere for creativity in her relationship with the child. Suparmi et al. (2018) found that connection of parents and child related discussions, experiences and goals, academic problems in school were needed to raise the students’ creativity. Creative thinking constitutes four key components: Fluency (i.e. the ability to generate ample ideas), Originality (i.e. the ability to generate innovative, unusual ideas), and Flexibility (i.e. the ability to generate diverse ideas), and elaboration (i.e. the ability to notice the details).

Most of the research studies carried out so far has been retrospective in nature and belonging to the familial conditions of professional or distinguished creativity. However not much is known about parents’ intended everyday actions assisting their children’s creative capacities and attitudes. My study mark this feature of the climate for creativity.

1.1. Meaning and Definition of Related Concepts

1.1.1. Creativity

Once the phenomenon of creativity emerged on the horizon of behavioral sciences, researches and explorations on its manifold aspects were slowly to come up.

Creative thinking is elegant, elusive, unique, new and original. Creativity is defined as the propensity to create or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, sharing information with others, and cheering ourselves as well as others.

Guilford (1950) has made a distinction between two types of thinking abilities convergent thinking and divergent thinking. He defines divergent thinking as a kind of mental operation that leads significantly away from the beaten track. Divergent production involves novel responses to a given stimulus unlike convergent thinking where the outcome is conventional.

Guilford relates divergent thinking to certain well known ability factors which seem to go with creative output. The primary traits, related to divergent thinking and therefore, to creativity, have been enumerated to include: sensitivity to problems, flexibility of thinking, and fluency of thinking, originality, redefinition and elaboration.

There seems to be as many definitions of creative thinking as there are psychologists. Goldman (1965) talks of creativity as an “umbrella term” and points out that it is over used to such an extent that it has come to mean nothing.

1.2. Parent Child Interaction

The parent –child relationship can be defined as the sum total of behaviors, expectations and feelings that are distinctive to a particular parent and a particular child. The parent-child relationship is one of the most effective relationships in an individual’s life. Young children depend on their parents for basic needs, and parents provide for their children in order to sustain them and build towards future generations (Floyd and Morman, 2014).
Parent –child interaction is the basis from which children are able to inquire and experience the world of relationships, cause and effect, objects and problem solving. Parent-Child Interaction has a decisive influence on a child’s functioning and is an important factor in child behavior and development. These interactions affect child’s personality development, educational achievement, behavior, empathy etc.

Positive Parent-Child Interactions are powerful and have protective influence on children. These interactions are distinguished as child focused, warm and sensitive, and are combined with logical consequences, clear expectations, limits and attention to safety. Parent-Child Interactions notably influence social emotional development, physical growth, behavior patterns, early language formation, literacy, and academic outcomes.

1.3. Present Study

Parent child interaction being one such aspect of home environmental factor that supposed to have positive influence on the creative thinking ability of children, which has been the concern of the present investigation. Parenting style is one of the most important topics in this regard. Parenting is a complex practice involving particular methods and behaviors affecting child development either jointly or independently. Indeed parenting styles denote parents’ attempts to control and socialize their children. Ghadimi (2011) reported that authoritarian parenting style exerted a more significant effect on children creativity comparing with other styles. Yusufi et al. (2009) also reported a significant positive correlation between authoritative parenting style and children creativity. Anwar and Sagala concluded that parents are responsible for the education of children. Ki Soeratman reported that the family is the best place to conduct individual and social education. Buck et al. (2014) asserted that parents assistance to increase  child’s creativity by four creativity essentials is (1) failure (2) stress can killing creativity 3)opportunity to create and make 4) play is one way to cultivate creativity. Garcia suggested to parents to develop children’s creative abilities: (1) that of vigilance, 2) inspirational offerings, 3) your child’s interest 4) giving encouragement, 5) get creative. Tartakovsky presented nine styles in which parents can support the creativity of their children: 1) give space to create, 2) spend time 3) keep games and simple activities, 4) discuss creativity 5) expose children to the world 6) give freedom to the child to be creative 7) cultivate creative thinking 8) spend time for your own creativity 9) provide facilities.

2.METHOD AND PROCEDURE

2.1. The Objectives of the Study Were as Follows:

• To find out the differences, between the parent- child interaction in rural and urban areas.
• To find out the differences, between the parent-child creative thinking ability in rural and urban area.
• To find out the differences, between verbal and non-verbal creativity among the students.
• To find out the differences, on the originality and elaboration aspect of creativity among the students.
• To find out the differences between the girls and boys in relation to creative thinking ability.
• To find out the relationship between parent-child interaction and creative thinking ability.

2.2. Hypotheses

• The following are some hypotheses stated in null form for their subsequent testing.
• There does not exist any significant difference in the creative thinking ability of rural and urban students.
• There does not exist any significant difference between the girls and boys on creative thinking ability.
• There does not exist statistically significant difference between the students’ performance on verbal and non-verbal creativity.
• There does not exist statistically significant difference between the students’ performance in the originality and elaboration aspects of creativity.
• There does not exist statistically significant difference on the parent child interaction of rural and urban students.
• There does not exist statistically significant difference between the girls and boys on the parent –child interaction.
• There does not exist statistically significant relationship between the parent child interaction and creative thinking ability.

2.3.The Method

The survey method was adopted. Survey is an approach of descriptive research that is used to discover the opinions of an identified population. This study is descriptive as it strives to test components of creativity such as fluency, flexibility and originality and compares the total creativity between boys and girls students living in both rural and urban areas.

2.4. Participants

The participants of the study consisted of one hundred higher secondary students, selected by lottery approach of simple random sampling method. The participants were selected from both rural and urban areas of Aligarh district. As a whole the sample consists of 50 girls and 50 boys equally distributed in both rural and urban area.

2.5. Instruments

Two instruments were used in this study.

1. Verbal and Non-verbal test on Creativity developed and standardized by Dr. Baquer Mehdi.

This test was administered on the sample in accordance to the instructions given on the test manual for scoring the various components of creativity, namely, fluency, flexibility and originality in verbal test of creativity and elaboration and originality in non-verbal test of creativity.

2. Parent-child Interaction Scale developed and standardized by S.V.Kale.

This test was administered to evaluate the degree of active interaction between parents and children which may help cognitive development and scholastic achievement of students.

2.6. Techniques of Analysis

The statistical techniques adopted in the study are based upon the testing of hypotheses. As such‘t’ test was used to find out the intra-variable differences and Pearson’s coefficient of correlation have been adopted to find out the relationship between parent-child interaction and creative thinking.

After data collection the scores were tabulated and put to analysis. The raw scores acquired from the students on each dimension of creativity were changed into standard scores. The mean and standard deviations for each component was also accomplished using standard statistical techniques like calculation of descriptive statistics, t-test, and Pearson’s coefficient of correlation.

2.7. Analysis and Interpretation

To find out the variation in scores, if any, between different dimensions of creativity namely verbal and non-verbal, originality and elaboration, the investigator has employed the test of significance of mean differences and calculated the‘t’ ratio as per the formula meant for correlated means for large samples, the result is presented in Table 1.

The analysis of data as presented in Table 1 reveals that the students’ sample do not show any significant difference with regard to the verbal vs non-verbal as well as originality vs elaboration aspect of creativity. In this context, the hypothesis pertaining to these aspects like there does not exist any significant difference between student’s performance in verbal vs non-verbal and originality vs elaboration is rejected.

The data pertaining to the creative thinking ability of the children with gender and locale wise variation have been presented in the Table 2.

Note: P<0.05.

As can be seen from Table 2 that the sub sample girls and boys do not differ significantly with regard to the creative thinking ability whereas the creative thinking ability of the rural and urban students differ significantly from each other. As such the hypothesis that there does not exist any significant difference between girls and boys on creative ability is accepted and the hypothesis indicating no difference between rural and urban students on creative ability is rejected.

Further, the investigator has also studied whether there is any discrepancy in parent-child interaction with regard to gender and the locale wise variation. The data pertaining to this aspect have been presented in Table 3.

Note: P<0.05.

The data as shown in Table 3 indicates that there is variation in parent-child interaction so far as gender and locale is concerned. Therefore, the hypothesis relating to these aspects that there does not exist any significant difference in parent-child interaction with regard to gender and locale is rejected.

The relationship between parent-child interaction and creative thinking ability of the students was also studied and such relationship was found to be positive and significant. In this context, the coefficient of correlation between the two variables was 0.41 and was found to be significant at 0.01 level. Hence the hypothesis indicating no significant relationship between parent-child interaction and creative thinking ability was rejected.
The relationship between parent-child interaction and creative thinking ability of the students was also studied and such relationship was found to be positive and significant. In this context, the coefficient of correlation between the two variables was 0.41 and was found to be significant at 0.01 level. Hence, the hypothesis indicating no significant relationship between parent-child interaction and creative thinking ability was rejected.

3. FINDINGS

The analysis of the data reveals that:

• The students were found to be equally efficient in verbal, non-verbal, originality and elaboration features of creativity.
• The sub-sample of girls and boys do not differ significantly on creative thinking ability.
• The rural and urban students show differential levels of creative thinking ability.
• The mode of parent-child interaction differs in case of girls and boys.
• The mode of parent-child interaction is not same in case of rural and urban students.
• Both parent-child interaction and creative thinking skills were significantly interconnected with each other.

4. RECOMMENDATIONS

Depending upon the data analysis and discussion of the findings, it was concluded from this study that creativity is an important factor that is required to be explored and trained continuously.

• Parents should provide an open, free and democratic environment that will enhance the creative talent of their children.
• Optimize child’s creativity on an ongoing basis, parents need to take time to engage directly with the child in creative activities.
• Parents must encourage their children for free and self-expression and to take risk in some activities.
• Parents need to provide simple facilities so that children can make effort to satisfy their curiosity.
• Parents should give their children opportunity to think and act independently with exposure to new, problems, encouraging divergent thinking.
• Parents need to obtain facts outside the school so that child can convey their thoughts and feelings in a wider area.
• Since the research population of the present study is limited to students, it is probable that factors such as education, culture, age, social situation, workplace etc. affect academic achievement, therefore it is recommended to consider carefully about these factors in the same future studies.

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