The first section of the master’s thesis uses an analysis of literature in the field of pedagogic psychology and literature didactics to present the concept of creativity and related divergent thinking. Among the factors that determine the development of creativity, I highlight the significant of the role of the family, children’s games, and the effect of the school environment. I believe that despite the awareness of the importance of children’s exploration and creation, the predominant impression is that creativity in school is somewhat pushed out of the syllabus and included primarily in aesthetic and technical subjects. In other subjects, daring ideas of pupils, alternative thinking, and questions are in most cases not given sufficient time or are even unwanted. The subject highlighted in the theoretical section so the thesis is literature in basic school. In this subject, elements of creativity are intentionally implemented and manifest themselves in the phase of so-called new tasks, specifically as deepening the experience of literature through creative and reproductive writing.
Based on the presented theoretical findings, the first thing I wanted to answer in the empirical section of the master’s thesis was in what scope do the textbook of selected subjects in the 2nd grade of basic school allow pupils creativity. In accordance with a predetermined category (i.e. does a task contain elements of creativity and how many such creative questions or activities are within a task), I analysed the textbooks for Slovenian language, mathematics, environmental education, and music art, and determined that most planned activities that promote creativity and therefore creative thinking are included in the subject of literature.
The second part of the study referred to the subject of literature. I prepared creative and reproductive tasks for various thematic groups. Here, my sample included pupils from the 2nd grade of basic school. When preparing tasks, I considered the characteristics of the developmental phase for literary creativity of pupils at this age. With the planned activities, I wished to encourage the pupils to overcome fear over wrong responses and to let them think outside existing patterns. I discovered that withdrawing from the real world and travelling into the world of imagination represents a problem for many pupils, evoking fear of the unknown, wrong. At the end of the study, continued creative activities and creative writing had shown progress in their relaxation, confidence and originality in writing, and related creativity.
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