Creativity Assessment of Primary School Children by the Tests, Teachers’ Ratings, and Self-estimates

Abstract

Development of the child’s creativity is recognized as one of the main objectives in education. Our study aimed to investigate the relations of the objective and subjective indicators of creativity with intellectual and personal variables in 240 primary school children (aged 7-8 and 9-10). We used Teachers' Checklist of children’s abilities; The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking; Group Inventory for Finding Talent; Cognitive Abilities Tests; school achievement. The results show positive correlation between the teachers' ratings of intelligence and creativity in both ages, but not between the intelligence and creativity test-scores. The teachers' creativity ratings also did not correspond to the pupils’ creativity self-estimates because the teachers mostly orientated towards intellectual abilities and work organization skills of the children. The data demonstrate the need to integrate subjective and objective information to evaluate multifaceted children’s creativity.   

Keywords: creativity;  intelligence; school children; teachers;