Dr. Hab., Professor V.D. Povzun¹
PhD, Associate Professor V.V. Apokin^1
1Surgut State University, Surgut

Keywords: progress management, creative resource, educational environment, monitoring, normal distribution asymmetries.

Background. The new social development model in progress implies new goals being set for the academic educational system with the reform process driven by the idea of the new creative didactics system with its philosophy of cooperative creativity focused on the fundamental socially sensitive education missions to secure a transition from ‘education for life’ to ‘education through life’ model [3]. Knowing well how diverse the interpretations of the modern creative activity and the notions of creativity and creative resource are [1, 2], we proceeded from the assumption that it is the self-assertion agenda that basically spearheads the individual creativity building process [7]. This agenda, however, may be realized in a variety of ways depending on the internal and external conditions

Objective of the study was to analyze benefits of the creative resource self-rating system applied in the academic sport disciplines.

Methods and structure of the study. The study was performed in the academic sport divisions of Surgut State University, with the 18-23 year-old students (n=257 of the both sexes) of the Physical Education and Sport department sampled for the study. We applied the Sharov’s Personality Creative Resource Rating Test to help every student rate his/her own creative resource [8].

When considering the opportunities offered for the individual creative resource building by the academic environments, we have mentioned [5, 6] that special priority shall be given to the initial creativity rating tests that are rather specific in a few aspects. Actual creativity self-rates in the student sample were found very high, and no significant changes in the creativity profiles could be found for the five academic years, with the profile structure being fairly smooth. This finding gave us the reasons to assume that the students tend of overstate their creativity i.e. their ambitions are too high in this age and reflect imaginary creativity rather than real one.

In this situation, the academic system has to take purposeful efforts to revise rather than straightly advance the students creativity so as to help them effectively adapt to the modern social challenges and missions and, hence, remove the potential contradiction between the individual excessive ambitions and social goals. The excessive ambitions related to the imaginary wishful creativity cannot be always tolerated by the academic education environment that generally requires real actions and real accomplishments than wishful thinking, and it means that every student has sooner or later to tailor his/her own aspirations and self-esteem to reality.

The academic policies and practices to address the above issue may not be always straightforward. It should be mentioned that the number of overconfident students tends to fall with time, with the process being indicative of the positive changes in the individual creativity self-ratings; albeit the virtually unchanged structure of the creativity profiles gives reasons to conclude that these changes are not deep enough due to the attempts to protect the status quo in the self-conceptions on the one hand; and on the other hand, it should be confessed that the personality formation policies and practices of the modern academic environment if any appear to be poorly designed, non-systemic and mismanaged.

We believe that the relevant academic policies and practices may be put in place if due consideration is given not only to the qualitative but also to the quantitative parameters of the self-ratings i.e. distributions of the elementary scores making up the creative resource self-rates.

Study findings and discussion. Given in Table 1 hereunder are the sample self-rates.

Table 1. Age-specific dominating creativity self-rates of the sample on a 10-point scale

The distribution of the age-specific dominating creativity self-rates is even more vivid on the bar charts given hereunder that clearly demonstrate both the variation range of the individual values and the certain logics in the distribution of the qualitative deviations and parameters: see Figure 1. These data give us the reasons to state with reasonable confidence that none of the academic-year-specific data arrays fits neither in the standard normal distribution nor symmetrical distribution curve as it shows an expressed right-side positive asymmetry: see Figure 2.

Figure 1. Bar charts of the age-specific dominating creativity self-rates on a 10-point scale:

points (on the horizontal axis) versus shares of the sample in %

It is common knowledge that a Gauss bell curve for mental qualities probing data depends on the contents of the questionnaire form and the sample. The right-side asymmetry of the bell curve may mean that the questions in the survey form are too difficult for the sample or most of the sample is rated high for the reason that the test is not accurate enough to detect the most gifted respondents. When the test is designed to rate the current rather than overall condition, the asymmetric distribution curve reflects the processes/ phenomena dominated by some systemic reason, with the curve showing eccentricities for the positive values only. In the case under study, as we mentioned before, the reason for the asymmetry is the overstated self-rates i.e. the student’s ambitions rather than reality [4, 5]. It may be stated, therefore, that the key problem of the universities in this field is that they still fail to objectively detect really creative and gifted students in the groups wishfully overestimating their own resources. Partially this problem may be due to the drawbacks of the testing procedure as it gives a priority to the self-rating procedures whilst the test population is not mature enough to fairly rate its own creativity and tends to wishfully overestimate own resource.

symmetric distribution curve

asymmetric distribution curve

Figure 2. Asymmetric and symmetric distribution curves for empirical data

Conclusion. The self-rating data array was found expressly bimodal, with the sample generally grouped into those who said ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to most of the test questions. It was found that the responses were generally determined by whether or not the necessary quality was found in the respondent, with those who have this quality responding most of the questions, and the others failing to respond. We believe that the university policies shall be geared to empower the first ones and change the self-esteem of the second ones. The only problem in implementing this obvious grouping policy is how to avoid the discriminatory/ isolative attitudes in the academic and social environments.

References

1. Ananiev B.G. Chelovek kak predmet poznaniya [Man as an object of knowledge]. St. Petersburg: Piter publ., 2001, 288 p.
2. Druzhinin V.N. Psikhologiya obshchikh sposobnostey [Psychology of general abilities]. St. Petersburg: Piter publ., 2002, P. 166.
3. Povzun V. D. Tsennostnoe samoopredelenie lichnosti v universitetskom obrazovanii. Dis. dokt. ped. nauk [Individual value self-determination in university education. Doct. Diss. (Hab)]. Surgut, 2005.
4. Povzun V.D., Povzun A.A., Apokin V.V. Vozmozhnosti obrazovatelnoy sredy universiteta v razvitii tvorcheskogo potentsiala studentov sportivnogo fakulteta [Features of university educational environment for development of creative potential of sport faculty]. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury, 2013, no. 1, pp. 94-95.
5. Povzun V.D., Povzun A.A., Apokin V.V. Sravnitelnyanaliz i puti razvitiya tvorcheskogo potentsiala studentov v usloviyakh obrazovatelnoy sredy universiteta [Comparative analysis and ways of development of creative potential of students in conditions of university educational environment]. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury, 2013, no. 7, pp. 85-88.
6. Povzun V.D., Povzun A.A., Apokin V.V. et al Psikhologicheskie kharakteristiki tvorcheskogo potentsiala studenta i ikh izmeneniya v obrazovatel'nom prostranstve universiteta [Psychological characteristics of students' creative potential and their changes in university educational environment]. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury, 2013, no. 9, pp. 83-86.
7. Salnikov V. A. Talant, odarennost i sposobnosti v strukture sportivnoy deyatelnosti [Talant, endowements and abilities in structure of sports activities]. Teoriya i praktika fiz. kultury, 2002, no. 4, pp. 16-20.
8. Sharov A.S. Sistema tsennostnykh orientatsii kak psikhologicheskiy mekhanizm regulyatsii zhiznedeyatelnosti cheloveka. Dis. dokt. psh nauk [System of value orientations as psychological mechanism of human life control. Doct. Diss. (Psych.)]. Novosibirsk, 2000.

Corresponding author: apokin_vv@mail.ru

Abstract

The study was designed to analyze benefits of a creativity self-rating system applied in the academic sport disciplines. The study was performed in the academic sport divisions of Surgut State University, with the 18-23 year-old students (n=257 of the both sexes) of the Physical Education and Sport department sampled for the study. We applied the Sharov’s Personality Creative Resource Rating Test to help every student rate his/her own creative resource. The self-rating data array was found expressly bimodal, with the sample generally grouped into those who said ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to most of the test questions. It was found that the responses were generally determined by whether or not the necessary quality was found in the respondent, with those who have this quality responding most of the questions, and the others failing to respond. We believe that the university policies shall be geared to empower the first ones and change the self-esteem of the second ones. The only problem in implementing this obvious grouping policy is how to avoid the discriminatory/ isolative attitudes in the academic and social environments.