The Effectiveness of the Productive Thinking Program

The Productive Thinking Program (PTP), consisting of 16 programmed lessons designed to develop productive thinking skills, was used as the basis of a program conducted with 546 fifth graders in 21 classes in four upstate New York school districts. One hundred and twenty students from one of these districts were involved in a modified Solomon Four Groups Design. A number of PTP stories were presented to both control and experimental groups, but the experimental group alone was invited to participate with the story characters in their adventures. The Minnesota Tests of Creative Thinking were used to assess productive thinking, with the construct validity being of major concern. Problem solving was defined in the categories of fluency, flexibility, and appropriateness of response. In this study, three experimental groups and three control groups were set up to study the effectiveness of the PTP. There were two teacher involvement and two pre-test conditions for the experimental and control groups. Generally, the findings mildly support that the PTP was effective in bringing about differences in posttest scores on the variables studied. One explanation of these findings could be that this application of the PTP differed from that recommended by its authors. (Author/BJG)