The use of Harvey Cards from creative thinking techniques in basic art education course

Creativity is one of the basic mental skills that has maintained its importance throughout human history and is increasingly valued today. Creativity plays an active role in problem solving, developing different perspectives on events and generating original ideas by blending existing knowledge with emotions, thoughts and experiences. In the face of today's rapidly changing conditions, the ability of individuals to approach events and phenomena from different perspectives is important. In this respect, creative thinking is not only limited to scientific and technological fields but is also considered as one of the basic components of artistic production processes. Gaining creative thinking skills is one of the main objectives of art education. In addition to technical competencies, the Basic Art Education course focuses on developing students' imagination, originality and multidimensional thinking capacities. In this context, how creative thinking can be supported in educational processes stands out as an important research topic. This research deals with the use of Harvey Cards in the teaching process in order to improve the creative thinking skills of first-year students of Kütahya Dumlupınar University Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Painting. After the application process within the scope of the research, the changes in the creative thinking levels of the students were analyzed in line with the basic design principles and elements. The findings revealed that Harvey Cards can be an effective method in supporting creative thinking and increasing students' ability to develop original ideas.