THE EFFECTS OF TEACHING STUDENTS HOW TO INVENT

Teachers encourage students to develop inventions, organizations spons or invention contests, and publishers sell guidebooks on inventing. On ly a few studies have examined the relationship between these material s or opportunities to invent and students' inventiveness. The purpose of this experimental study was to provide an instructional unit on the invention process and to investigate the degree to which training inf luenced students' inventiveness. Students in the experimental group re ceived eight lessons that were designed to provide training in the inv ention process and encourage the development of inventions, and studen ts in the control group received one introductory lesson and opportuni ty to develop inventions. Using the Invention Evaluation Scale, expert s assessed three aspects of students' inventions: originality, technic al goodness, and aesthetic appeal. Regression analyses indicated that group membership was a significant predictor of the quantity of invent ions, but not a significant predictor of the quality of students' inve ntions.