Abstract:

There is no doubt about advantages of students’ creativity as future professionals in a society. We are interested in finding more effective ways in order to invoke divergent thinking rather than convergent. However, we need to know more about cultural and academic obstacles to creativity of students in schools. We need to know more about psychological factors that affect students’ thinking system positively and negatively. We are responsible for enhancing school programs applying mechanisms and techniques for creative thinking. This study is designed to investigate and compare the relationship between creativity and perseverance with the relationship between creativity and professors teaching style in university students. Two hundred students were selected through a Stratified Random Sampling from among all who were studying in different fields at a certain university in a certain period. It was a descriptive analytical study. Torrance Test of Creative Thinking was administered. A questionnaire was designed by researchers to collect data about the level of perseverance and teaching styles. Inferential statistics including Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Pearson's Chi-Squared Test are used to analyze data. Findings indicate that there is a weak correlation between Creativity and Perseverance (Pearson Correlation Coefficient=0/221 (p<0.003)). There is no correlation between creativity and professor’s teaching style. Although the relationship between creativity and perseverance is weak but it deserves further researches. Existence of this correlation may mean that the more we use our thinking systems, the more flexible it is towards divergent thinking. On the other hand, it may mean that people with higher level of creativity have better potential of sustained effort. We can hypothesize that in order to encourage students to gain more creative cognition we may need to work on their motivation for more function. On the other hand, we can investigate if working on children’s thinking systems towards more divergent ways can help them to increase their perseverance. Furthermore, if there is a correlation between creativity and perseverance, we can hypothesize that it is possible rigid academic systems that sometimes result in lack of motivation for sustained effort prevent students from developing creativity in this way. As a proof, we can point to lack of creative events inside the country but considerable examples of creative process and products by professionals abroad who studied until high school diploma or bachelor’s degree inside the country. We hypothesized that there is a correlation between creativity and professors teaching style, but it was rejected during this research. We hypothesize that if there is nothing wrong by our research method and administration, it is possible that thinking system of university students is shaped enough until this time so that the assumed duration of research was not enough for an interaction between these factors. Therefore, we advise the same research on students of primary, middle and high schools.

Keywords:

Creativity, Perseverance, Professor, Teaching Style.