The creative training in the visual arts education

•The openness to new experiences is one of the main gains of creative training.•Creative Strengths can be improved through practical inferences and applications in creative training.•Creative training may increase of participants’ open-ended thinking besides the creative thinking.

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effect of creative training on creative thinking and problem solving of students in visual arts higher education. The participants were Turkish university students. The findings indicated that the effect of creative training on students’ creative thinking was significant and effect size medium. However, creative training was not effective significantly on problem solving of students. The results indicate that the creative training as educational approach is effective on the creative thinking, but it is not effective on problem solving of students. Accordingly, it was concluded that open structures in the learning activities as component of creative training, can be cause of open-ended thinking in the thinking process. This result suggests that open structures as ‘open-ended thinking’ and open-minded in learning activities with the liberated-flexible learning environment and teacher’s encouragements plays important role in the development creative thinking and problem solving of students.