Ayoub, A., Abdulla Alabbasi, A. M., Al-Subaie, A., Runco, M. A., & Acar, S. (in press). Enhanced open-mindedness and problem finding among gifted female students involved in future robotics design. Roeper Review.
Abstract
The article investigated the impact of a robotic-based enrichment program on problem finding (PF) and active-openminded thinking skills (AOT) in 60 gifted female students (8th and 9th graders) from the Eastern region of Saudi Arabia. The participants were randomly selected from several cohorts of gifted students who participated in an enrichment summer program. The enrichment program lasted for 4 weeks. The study instruments included the Problem Generation test and the Active-Openminded Thinking scale, which were administered to the participants at the beginning of the program and at the end of the program. The change in the measured program outcomes after attending the robotics intervention program was assessed by a regression model, where post-test scores were regressed on pre-test scores. The results revealed differences for the three subscales of AOT: Belief Identification (BI) Flexible Thinking (FT), and Dogmatic Thinking (DT) as well as the total score of the AOT in favour of post-test condition. Moreover, the results indicated that 9th graders benefited more from the enrichment program than 8th graders did. As for PF, fluency scores showed no significant differences between pre-test and post-test, while originality scores were significantly higher for the post-test scores when compared to the pre-test scores.