Fostering Children's Creativity Through Preschool Stem Creativity Module

Abstract

Creativity is a very important skill in 21st century education and need to be nurtured since early age. Previous researchers had claimed that creativity skills could be improved by learning Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). However, less attention is given towards fostering creativity through STEM in preschool. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the potential contributions of Preschool STEM Creativity Module on creativity development among preschool children. In this quasi-experimental study, 30 children (aged 6 years old) were divided into experimental and control groups. In the experimental group, the researchers fostered children's creativity through Preschool STEM Creativity Module. Creativity Test was used as an instrument to assess creativity development and the level of creativity through four dimensions of creativity namely fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. Scores for pre and post-tests were analyzed using descriptive, independent ttest, paired sample t-test, and Wilcoxon test. The results were indicated that the Preschool STEM Creativity Module intervention have led to a positive impact on the development of children's creativity. Furthermore, this study had also found that the intervention of this module could help to improve the level of creativity among children in terms of flexibility, fluency, originality and elaboration. Nevertheless, the improvement in fluency for the experimental group was seen to be lower when compared to the control group. Even so, in overall, STEM learning has been found to contribute to preschool children's creativity. And due to that reason, STEM learning should be implemented into the preschool curriculum in responds to the national education initiatives by strengthening STEM and achieving the 21st century skills.