Choice and Perception of Control: the Effect of a Thinking Skills Program on the Locus of Control, Self-Concept and Creativity of Gifted Students

Abstract

Thinking skills programs incorporate a range of objectives, including self-management of learning; independent thinking; effective problem-solving; increased creativity; increased accuracy; decreased rashness of judgement (de Bono, 1976). Implicit within many of these objectives is motivation to learn, both in terms of choice to participate and the way in which learning is structured within the program itself. This study aimed to investigate two levels of choice and control of learning: choice to participate (nominated and self-directed) and level of structure within the program (prestructured and flexibly structured)—serving as independent variables. A Block Design was used with the pre and post testing with random sampling and random allocation to two comparison treatments. Treatments included 10 hours exposure to CORT 1 Thinking skills (prestructured) and the Integrated Education Model (IEM) approach to thinking skills (flexibly structured). T-tests were computed on pre and post tests on dependent variables for both treatments. In the Cort 1 treatment, significant differences were found for locus of control, fluency, flexibility and originality. In the IEM treatment, significant differences were found for locus of control, fluency and fleXibility. Analysis of covariance showed no significant differences between the Cort 1 treatment and the IEM treatment of posttest scores across all dependent variables after adjusting for differences on pretest scores. A two-way analysis of variance for the block design between tructure of treatment and choice of participation showed a significant interaction on locus of control. Results showed that thinking skills programs can have a significant effect on locus of control but have no significant effect on self-cocept.