The Test of Creative Imagination: making the test suitable to the age group of 5–6 years

ABSTRACT

Imagination is the ability of envisaging something that does not exist at the time being. Since 5–6-year-old children get through the pre-operational stage of Piaget’s [2004. Çocukta Zihinsel Gelişim [Intellectual Development of Child] (2nd ed., H. Portakal, Trans.). İstanbul: Cem], they believe in empirical facts. Hence, Kujawski’s Test of Creative Imagination (TCI) is not suitable to the children aged 6 years and younger. In this study, Kujawski’s TCI was tried to be made suitable for the age group of 5–6 years. For this purpose, 204 children aged between 5 and 6 years attending the kindergartens, selected by using simple random sampling method in the city centre of Denizli Province, Turkey, were included in the study. At the end of the study, TCI was found to be a reliable and valid assessment instrument for children in the age group of 5–6 years. The 6-year-old children made more ideas and more detailed constructions than the 5-year-old children.

KEYWORDS:

• Imagination
• creativity
• preschool stage
• Test of Creative Imagination
• development of imagination

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the First Eurasian Educational Research Congress, Istanbul, Turkey, April 2014.

I would like to express my gratitude to Assoc. Prof. Özcan Doğan for supporting the idea in this study and for the overall contribution he has made to my thesis. Thanks Assoc. Prof. Necla Acun Kapıkıran, who assisted me to reach the articles, and Maciej Karwowski who gave permission for the scale.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Aysun Gündoğan is at Child Care and Youth Services Department, Tavas Vocational School of Higher Education, Pamukkale University.