The effect of the Waldorf based education program on the creativity and cognitive skills of preschool children

Purpose of the research is to investigate the effects of Waldorf-based education program on creativity and cognitive skills of preschool children. A quasi-experimental design was used as the experimental research model for the research. 32 children from a Waldorf-based education program school constituted the experiment group, 45 children from a state kindergarten constituted the control1, and 48 children from a private kindergarten constituted the control2 group where for both schools the Ministry of National Education Preschool Education Program was applied. The dependent variables of the research are creativity skills and cognitive skills; The independent variable is the education program applied in the Waldorf approach. Hybrid Creativity Test was used to measure creativity skills, and Colored Progressive Matrices Test was used to measure cognitive skills. SPSS program was used in the analysis of the data. One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was applied for the pre-tests in order to compare the children's creativity and cognitive skill levels before the experimental process, and no significant differences were found for the pre-tests. The post-tests applied after the eight months of experimental process were compared with One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). As a result, a significant result was found in the sub-dimensions of creativity, flexibility, fluency, originality and total creativity, in favor of the group in which the Waldorf approach-based education program was applied. In the post-test comparison of cognitive skills, no significant difference was observed between the groups.