CREATIVE THINKING MANIFESTATIONS IN THE SOLVING PROCESS OF EXPERIMENTAL SITUATIONS WITH A HIGH DEGREE OF UNCERTAINTY BY STUDENTS

Abstract

The article is devoted to revealing manifestations of the use of perceptive-mental strategies of analogizing, combining, reconstructing, and universal strategy when solving experimental situations with a high degree of uncertainty by students. For this purpose, an experimental study was conducted among students of the I-VI courses of the specialty «Psychology» and students of the III course of the specialty «Social Work» of the V.I. Vernadsky Taurida National University during the 2022/2023 academic year (n=106). A content analysis of the students experimental task solving was carried out, the formulation of its condition is characterized by the paradoxical actions of the main participant, the reasons for which must be explained. The content analysis of the students’ answers made it possible to reveal the manifestations of the main perceptive-mental strategies, used by students. It was established that: 1) the analogization perceptive-mental strategy is used by the majority of the researched – 67%; 2) the combining perceptive-mental strategy – 25% of students; 3) the reconstruction perceptivemental strategy – 39% of students; 4) the manifestations of students’ use of a universal perceptive-mental strategy were found in 13% of the subjects. The content of the answers was divided according to the degree of originality. According to the form of answers, the following were found: 1) simple statements without explanation – 61%; 2) contain a description of the situation – 12%; 3) have an explanation of the motives of the act of theft – 18%; 4) contain both a description of the situation and an explanation – 17%; the conclusion is formulated – 1%. Summarizing the results of the research, it can be stated that the majority of students in our sample demonstrate an initial, elementary level of creative thinking, applying the perceptive-mental strategy of analogizing, giving answers in the form of simple statements, without description and explanation, which indicates the need to develop and implement psychological-pedagogical tools for the development of students creative thinking.