An Investigation into the Effects of Curriculum Enrichment on Creativity and Achievement Motivation of Gifted students in Public Schools

Abstract

One of the main tasks of any educational system is to provide a proper field and opportunity for learning in order to flourish the various talents of students. In addition to such various needs of students, the needs arising from cultural and social requirements at national and regional levels and international requirements faced the educational systems with serious challenges. One way to solve such challenges is to design appropriate extracurricular activities to meet the educational needs of students in order to enhance their achievement motivation and creativity. This study was conducted in other to investigate the effect of curriculum enrichment on creativity and achievement motivation of gifted students in public schools of Farrashband, Fars, Iran. The present study is a descriptive study. The samples consists of all second and third grade students of public secondary schools in Farrashband, Fars, Iran .the samples include 40 gifted students and 139 ordinary students they were selected as the study samples, using simple random sampling method. In this study, Torrance's Creativity Questionnaire (1965), Herman's Achievement Motivation Questionnaire (1970) as well as one researcher-made questionnaire was applied to assess curriculum enrichment. The data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient, Independent t-test, and Manova. The obtained results revealed that there was a significant relationship between achievement motivation and educational attainment, and between creativity and educational attainment in students. Also, there was a significant relationship between curriculum enrichment and educational attainment of gifted students; however, there is no significant relationship was observed between curriculum enrichment and creativity which can be explained in this way that other factors such as personality and or familial traits may modify this relationship. In addition, there was no significant difference between talented and ordinary male and female students in terms of their achievement motivation and creativity. With regard to the findings of the current study, in order to improve the educational programs for students, it is suggested that special attention be given to the enrichment of educational facilities and also no difference be assigned to males and females in terms of creativity and achievement motivation in educational planning in the Ministry of Education.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s6p297