Creative-digital diagnostics and reflexive development of school students in the course of studying Natural Sciences

Abstract

The authors of the article raises an issue that is relevant from the perspective of modern education connected with difficulties of using the results of psychological diagnostics of students’ creative thinking carried out with the help of traditional testing techniques within the framework of the actual learning process. To address this issue, it is recommended to use the solutions suggested by the “forming” and “reflexive” approaches to this problem and conduct a synthesis of these two approaches using modern digital technologies. This way, it will provide us with an opportunity to turn developing (forming) procedures into diagnostic and turn diagnostic means into developing. Such a conceptual and technological symbiosis allowed us to create a computer networking system “CREO DATUM” enabling its users to carry out creative-digital diagnostics and psycho-pedagogical support of reflexive development of students’ creative potential at the same time based on the material of one of the natural sciences taught within the school curriculum, namely chemistry. This system includes a database of domain-specific creative tasks by solving which students demonstrate their thinking abilities; digitalization of this process in the online mode allows teachers to monitor and assess the dynamics of such parameters of their creative potential as divergence and criticality. This tool enables the teacher and student to predict the area of future development promptly and select further creative tasks on the subject via “CREO DATUM” taking into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of previous creative efforts. Experimental testing of the “CREO DATUM” system allowed us to categorize the students who took part in the research. Four groups have been identified: children with high creative potential, ones with low creative potential, divergents, and analysts. Methodological recommendations have been developed for each category of students based on the material of a natural science subject aimed at psychological and pedagogical support of their development.