Teaching with surprise to enhance children’s inclination for creative thinking and creative tendencies

The present study is a short-term intervention program aimed at cultivating children's creativity based on the 'butterfly model' of nurturing creativity, adopting a 2 x 3 mixed experimental design with placebo and no-treatment groups. They also received the equal intervention after the experimental group finished for the sake of fairness to all the participating children. A total of 74 Chinese children aged 5-9 participated in the study. The experimental and control groups were assessed using the following scales: Creativity Assessment Packet, and Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire. After two weeks of intervention, children showed improvement in state-like variables, such as divergent thinking and creative tendencies, while their trait-like variables, such as intelligence, and the parental rearing patterns of their family members, did not show any improvement. The study provided a prudent paradigm for evaluating educational courses and established a foundation for future long-term research on cultivating children's creativity.