Electronic brainstorming in Saudi primary education

Abstract

This study explores the use of electronic brainstorming in classrooms in primary schools in Saudi Arabia. It involves teachers and students in primary school who used computers in their Islamic Education lessons. The main aim of my study is to explore the students’ interest in Islamic Education in primary schools in Saudi Arabia, to improve their creativity skills through electronic brainstorming and to investigate the influence of the pedagogical affordances of the electronic brainstorming method on classroom activity. To this end, I compared three groups, electronic brainstorming (EBS), verbal brainstorming (VBS) and the traditional method (T), in different classrooms and with different teachers. Mixed qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis were employed. The data collection methods used in this study were classroom and online forum observations, teacher and the student interviews, and pre- and post-tests (using the Torrance test, TTCT, to measure students’ creativity skills). The sample consisted of 61 primary school students aged between 11 and 12 years old and three Islamic Education teachers. The study took place in a classroom within the students' primary school in Saudi Arabia, and lasted around three months. The interview and observation findings indicated the greater student participation, motivation and creativity in the EBS method. The observation and interview findings revealed positive differences between electronic brainstorming (EBS) on side and verbal brainstorming (VBS) and traditional methods (T) on the other side in Islamic Education lessons in primary schools in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, the analysis of the research findings demonstrated how pedagogical affordance of EBS lead to a significant improvement of creativity skills, dialogue and engagement in learning environment where EBS had been employed. Finally, this study concluded that EBS method has considerable potential to improve the Islamic Education curricula in primary schools in Saudi Arabia.