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The article analyzes articles on the development of creative thinking of preschool children. Conducted categorization allowed to formulate five modern approaches, which are the most common among researchers and teachers: work through art, educational environment, creativity training, problem solving, children’s narratives.

The author emphasizes that: a) when working with objects of the aesthetic cycle for the development of creative thinking, it is important to pay attention not so much to the beauty of the product, but to the quality of interaction with the teacher, the ability to act on children’s own ideas and the availability of materials, providing children with independence in making decisions about how and what to do most of the day; b) when organizing the educational environment, it is necessary to focus on dialogue and discussion practices, open tasks, the personal significance of the proposed activity for the child, a soft schedule with long periods when the child can be immersed in one lesson, professional freedom of the teacher; c) integration of problem situations that require experimental activities and the development of “science-based” ways to answer controversial questions is an effective way to stimulate curiosity in preschool age.

The article is devoted to the practice of using problem situations for educational purposes when working with preschoolers. Currently, problem situations are more often used in the education of schoolchildren or adults, although studies demonstrate that preschoolers have the necessary prerequisites for the perception of ambiguous problems that do not have a direct answer, and their subsequent solution. The article analyzes studies that demonstrates the ability of preschool children to understand scientific problems, formulate hypotheses, and operate with the opposites. The ability of preschool children to solve problems without a direct answer and with ambiguous conditions in other ways than an adult solves them is considered not as a lower level of thinking than an adult, but as a specific form of thinking that works according to its own laws, but allows you to effectively achieve a new, creative result. Research shows that problem situations is an effective tool for the development of children’s thinking, in particular, studies of the Russian scientific school of dialectical psychology (structural-dialectical approach) present an idea about the value of judgments and reflections of a preschool child for his/her development, as well as for an adult who is in interaction with him.

The article is devoted to the results of a pilot study of the relationship between the quality of the educational environment in preschool groups and the level of development of creative thinking of preschool children and the study of the development of creative thinking of teachers in solving pedagogical problems.

The study is based on the idea of the quality of education inherent in the Federal State Educational Standard of Preschool Education, the cultural and historical concept of L.S. Vygotsky’s and structural-dialectical approach, describing dialectical thinking as the ability to creatively transform objects and situations. The study was aimed at studying the possible relationships between the quality of the educational environment in preschool groups and the level of development of the dialectical thinking of children, as well as the ability of adults (teachers) to use creative thinking tools to solve professional problems: designing an educational action and developing dialogue with a child.

The study was conducted on a random sample of preschool departments of educational complexes in Moscow (a total of 103 children from 5 to 6.5 years old and 35 teachers). To assess the quality of the educational environment, we used the ECERS scale and the pilot version of the scale “Stimulating dialectical thinking”. To assess the creative thinking of preschoolers, a block of techniques was used to measure the level of dialectical thinking, and for adults, a methodology was developed and tested for studying mental strategies in solving professional pedagogical problems.

The article presents the results of an empirical study about the correlation between such problem solving components as dialectic thinking, problematization, and (adaptive situational problem solving in) meta-situation-transformative solutions of preschool children. The methodological basis for the study is the structural-dialectic approach (N. E.Veraksa) as well as work on dialectic and post-formal thinking (P. Arlin, M. Basseches). The paper describes for the first time the author’s technique for the diagnosis of dialectic thinking “What could the other way around be?” and the results of testing the method “Questions about picture with objects” (Bernice Lai-Ting Yan; P. Arlin) with preschoolers. We also used V. T. Kudryavtsev’s method “Bunny”, which is aimed at measuring the ability of a preschooler to turn a selection task into a transformation task. The study involved 83 children of preschool age (4-6 years) from the following kindergartens in Moscow: «Lesovichok» (34 respondents; program “From Birth to School”); “Fox” (33 respondents; the experimental program “Transformation”); kindergarten №1511 (16 respondents; the program “Development”). The key results were that we found significant positive correlation between such parameters as the dialectical thinking actions “Transformation” and “Shift Alternatives”, questioning, and (adaptive solutions to problematic) meta-situation-transformative solutions of situations. The article also describes in detail the results of diagnosis by each of the methods, which indicate children’s significant difficulties when making oppositions between objects and events, and asking questions that allow them to make a conclusion about the necessity of paying attention to the aforementioned components of the mechanism of creative thinking within the educational process.

Search for compact and at the same time effective means of pedagogical diagnostics, which could easily fit into the educational activities of preschool educational institution leads to a discussion of the possibility of using pedagogical problem situations as such means. These situations contain certain social problems that a child solves together with an adult. Problem situations create conditions of children’s activities and communication, where it is necessary to analyze and / or evaluate the behavior of other people and choose a strategy own behavior in view of its possible consequences. Problem situations are used in psycho-diagnostics, and are similar to the method of the natural experiment. By their target orientation, substantial and structural organization (themes and questions), species (illustrative simulation and real situations), requirements to their design and stages, educational and diagnostic problem situations are quite similar. The process of transformation of pedagogical problem situations into the diagnostical suggests following the logic of the diagnostic process, compliance with its stages - design, content organization, analysis and prognosis.