| As the United States education system moves towards a more rigorous instructional framework, the Common Core State Standards provide educators with an opportunity to reflect upon current best practices, curriculum guides, and course sequences. While school leaders focus on implementing the Common Core, all stakeholders must think differently about the methods, content design, and theories of instruction when transitioning to a dynamic integrated curriculum model. This holistic approach to the Common Core provides teachers with more time and opportunities to explore concepts and provide all students with the chance to master material. Creativity development in elementary school students has many positive benefits on overall academic, social, and societal perspectives. While the shift in content is occurring, administrators must consider various ways not only to preserve, but to increase the implementation of creativity into the school schedule and classroom environment. The purpose of this quasi-experimental research study examined the impact of weekly scheduled creative opportunities in a primary school's Maker Space as it relates to student creativity scores on the Assessing Creative Thinking and Processes rubric design by Drapeau (2014). Quantitative data were collected over an eight week period in which kindergarten students had the freedom to create open-ended projects in the Maker Space. The results of this study indicated creativity scores increased overall for both the control and experimental group, though the frequency of exposure to the Maker Space differed for each group.;Keywords: kindergarten, elementary education, creativity, maker movement, maker space, innovative thinking, problem solving, school scheduling. |
