A Survey of the Effects of Teaching Creative Methods in Painting Workshop (Case Study: B.A. Students of Painting, Alzahra University)

Scientific research has revealed that creativity is a skill that can be both acquired and taught. Moreover, most studies have indicated that organizing creative thinking training courses positively affect the students' creativity in different stages of their academic endeavors. In order to understand an artist's condition, we should take a look at the impact that social conditions leave both on him and his art. It is through examining such elements and their indisputable impact that we can discover the nature of art and the artist. Creativity is not to occur suddenly, but is a phenomenon encompassing many factors for its development and flourishing. It is a collection of talents, contemplations, acquisitions, functions and also the outcome of his works that make someone a creative artist. It might be stated that “education is indeed effective in the recognition, training and directing the emotional and mental powers. Thus, education will be inhibiting and directing; but it is not itself a producer of creative force, and consequently, it is impossible to eliminate the deficiency or lack of emotional force through education. The question of the relation of education to artistic creativity is a longstanding argument which questions the philosophy of the existence of art faculties. Although today we are witnessing lots of creative works by students, yet one of the disadvantages and traumas of modern painting is that the artist's creativity has decreased significantly and thus, the works of art are unable to communicate effectually with the human beings' creative spirit. The current paper aims to alter this schema and emphasize the educational aspect of creativity. Conducting this research deemed necessary since it attempts to clarify the appraisal and impact of training creativity. Moreover, this study should have been made to evaluate and finally identify more creative artists and reach out for them on one hand and provide proper opportunities for them on the other. The criteria for the assessment of creative art should be specified based on creativity components. Furthermore, the circumstances in which the creative researcher or creative student is working should be noted. Next, the extent of motivation of creative processes needs to be recognized: what motivates people to have creative artistic outputs and what obstructs creative thinking? To what extent the creativity-based art teaching methods affect the development of creativity in undergraduate students of painting discipline? What impact does creativity-based art education have on the accomplishment of practical projects of undergraduate painting students? Since there are limited theoretical, research material on the subject of the assessment of creativity and training, particularly in the field of painting, it is necessary to examine it among a group of students of the field to provide a foundation for the expansion of the concept of creativity to teaching art disciplines. Creativity is one of the main areas of research related to artistic phenomena. The studies conducted on creativity education suggest that creativity is not just an intrinsic trait; it can also emerge as a result of education. Many scholars of the field have mentioned creativity education, considered it possible and have provided respective evidence. Aiming to assess the impact of creativity education on improving the students' creativity in the painting workshops, the present study answers these questions: To what extent a curriculum integrated with creativity affect the development of such faculty in undergraduate students? How does education integrated with creativity affect the practical projects of students? The paper has surveyed the effect of creativity training on the undergraduate students of painting discipline taking painting workshop courses at the Faculty of Arts; Alzahra University during the academic year 2012-2013 was studied. For this purpose, a number of 18 students studying at semester 6 were selected. These students received 20 hours of training on components of creativity integrated with painting workshop curriculum. Using the skills acquired, the students created works of art during the workshop. Pre-exam was taken followed by post-exam. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to examine the normal distribution of the data and paired-samples T-Test was applied. The results indicated significant, meaningful increase in the students' creativity score (P<0.001). In other words, creativity training resulted in the improvement of the students' creative faculties. Also, according to art professors' evaluation, training creativity led to meaningful growth in the emergence of components of creativity in the practical works of students in the experimental group (p<0.05). The semi-experimental research method, Abedi's creativity test and the evaluation form of Visual Arts have been used.