What comes first - Openness or creativity? On creativity development of fifth-graders

Author(s):

Caroline Theurer(presenting / submitting)Wida Rogh Nicole Berner Frank Lipowsky

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

09. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement

Format:

Paper

Session Information

09 SES 07 B, Creativity Development, Cognitive Styles and Financial Literacy

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

17:15-18:45

Room:

W5.18

Chair:

Marjeta Doupona

Contribution

Creativity is acknowledged as an essential facet of human personality. It refers to the capacity to produce novel ideas and to translate them purposively into an original product (Drevdahl, 1956). As the capacity has a social and a personal significance for learning (Hattie, 2009; Runco, 2004), it is stressed as an important educational goal in German-speaking literature (Bielenberg, 2006; Serve, 2000). Defined on the one hand as a procedural interaction of cognitive and personal components of individuals, and affected on the other hand by traits, motivation, environmental conditions as well as domain-specific skills, it can be considered as a multi-faceted concept (e. g. Cropley, 1991; Urban, 1993). Its complexity brings challenges concerning not only its definition, but consequently also in operationalization and assessment of creativity. Subsequently, there is still a research gap on the development of creativity and its conditional factors.

Theory and research that links creativity with personal determinants focuses on characteristics like unconventionality, perseverance, curiosity or personality traits. Research shows openness to experiences – one of the Big Five personality traits (Costa & McCrae, 1992) – to be one predictor for creativity: Several studies show a significant positive correlation between individual's openness and creative achievements (McCrae, 1987; Batey Furnham Safiullina, 2010; Furnham, Zhang & Chamorro-Premuzik, 2005, Furnham & Bachtiar, 2008).

These studies assess creativity in various ways. Both, studies using self-assessment tools and studies administering psychometric testing inventories are represented. The assessments in these studies differ additionally regarding the focus of creativity. Some studies estimate creativity as a general capacity; others focus on divergent thinking as one cognitive component of creativity. Regardless of the differences in assessment approaches, the studies report rather low, but constant positive correlations mainly for adults. They are furthermore commonly based on the assumption that a high degree in openness comes along with a high level of creativity. Thus, the studies rely empirically mainly on directional hypotheses. Reciprocal effects are rarely investigated. Furthermore, there is a lack of studies investigating whether the reported correlations manifest themselves also amongst adolescents or children. The presented study tackles these two aspects and analyzes the interdependencies of openness and creativity of fifth-graders in a longitudinal approach. Following Batey and colleagues (2010) the analyses are distinguished for two concepts of creativity: the generic creativity and divergent thinking as a cognitive sub-component of creativity.

Thus, in order to gain differential findings on the relationship of openness and creativity respectively divergent thinking in childhood, the following question will be answered:

Research question

How do openness for experiences and creativity influence each other when studied in children?

How do openness for experiences and divergent thinking influence each other when studied in children?

Method

Data The sample for the present study stems from the research project KuBiK5 (Cultural-aesthetic education and creativity in fifth grade), which relates creativity development of fifth-graders to their cultural activities whilst taking diverse mediating and other influences into account. The study is financed by the Mercator foundation and is part of a German research alliance for studies investigating impacts of cultural-aesthetic education. The project KuBiK5 collected data from more than 1000 students in 54 classes at the beginning of fifth (autumn 2015) and sixth grade in three German regions (North-Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Saxony). Besides creativity, divergent thinking, and openness other constructs like self-efficacy, self-concept, interests or cognitive abilities were measured two times. Additionally, the students were asked in detail about their activities in various domains of cultural-aesthetic education in and out of school. Data on indicators for socio-economic-background and the family’s proximity to arts and aesthetics is generated by a parents’ questionnaire. Instruments To assess creativity, the standardized “Test for Creative Thinking – Drawing Production” (TCT-DP; Urban & Jellen, 1996) was used. Operationalized by a drawing, which is rated by specially trained raters with a set of well-defined categories, it delivers an estimator for the creative potential of a person. Raters’ agreement is checked on carefully and shows good concordance between the raters. Ratings for the second measurement are currently being carried out. With a potential range from 0 to 72 points the descriptive statistics for the first measurement are as follows: M = 18.94, SD = 9.75 Divergent thinking was assessed as fluency and flexibility of students’ ideas in figural and verbal domain (Berner, Theurer & Lipowsky, 2012). Eight tasks (e.g. “Note everything that is round.”, “What if there was no more electricity?”) were administered, each with a time limit. Trained raters scored all students’ ideas. Concordance was constantly checked on and reveals very high agreement. Ratings for the second measurement are still ongoing. Data scaling will provide scores for fluency, flexibility and divergent thinking (MFlu = 8.56, SDFlu = 2.69; MFle = 5.02, SDFle = 1.23; MDT = 13.58, SDDT = 3.78). The students’ openness for experiences was measured with six items (e.g. “I am curious.”, “I like to experience new things.”; α = .71) on a four-point-Likert scale (M = 3.48, SD = .50).

Expected Outcomes

Analyses To check for bivariate correlations, Pearson correlations are calculated. To analyze the relationship between the constructs in depth, cross-lagged-panel-analyses shall reveal potential reciprocal effects. These analyses will be run in Mplus 7.2 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2014) whilst taking the nested data structure into account. All data from the second measurement will be available within time to present results on developmental courses and dependencies. First results First correlational analyses show low, but significant relationship between openness and creativity (r = .09, p < .05) as well as openness and divergent thinking (r = .13, p < .001). Unlike in the literature, the relationship seems to be closer between openness and divergent thinking. Data from the second measurement will be at hand in time. Reciprocal effects over the course of one year can be calculated whilst controlling for sequential correlations between openness and creativity resp. divergent thinking. Data on cognitive abilities will be added to the analytical models as controlling variable.

References

Barron, F. & Harrington, D. M. (1981). Creativity, Intelligence, and Personality. Annual Review of Psychology, 32, 1–704. Batey, M., Furnham, A. & Safiullina, X. (2010). Intelligence, general knowledge and personality as predictors of creativity, Learning and individual differences, 20(5), 532–535. Berner, N., Theurer, C. & Lipowsky, F. (2012). Ist Kreativität messbar? Zur Erfassung kreativer Fähigkeiten im Forschungsprojekt PERLE [Can creativity be measured? On assessing creativity in the research project PERLE]. Erziehung & Unterricht, 162(5-6), 442–453. Bielenberg, I. (Ed.). (2006). Bildungsziel Kreativität: Kulturelles Lernen zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft [Educational goal creativity: Cultural learning between the Arts and Science]. München: Kopaed. Costa, P. & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO personality inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO five factor inventory (NEO-FFI): Professional manual. Odessa, Florida: Psychological Assessment Ressources. Cropley, A. J. (1991). Unterricht ohne Schablone: Wege zur Kreativität [Teaching without former plate: Ways towards creativity]. München: Ehrenwirth. Drevdahl, J. E. (1956). Factors of importance for creativity. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 12, 21–26. Furnham, A., Zhang, J. & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2005). The relationship between psychometric and self-estimated intelligence, creativity, personality and academic achievement. Imagination, Cognition and Personality (25)2, 119–145. Furnham, A. & Bachtiar, V. (2008). Personality and intelligence as predictors of creativity. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 613–617. Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge. McCrae, R. R. (1987). Creativity, divergent thinking, and openness to experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(6), 1258–1265. Muthén, L. K. & Muthén, B. O. (1998-2014). Mplus User ́s Guide. 7th Edition. [Computer software.]. Los Angeles, California: Muthén & Muthén. Runco, M. A. (2004). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 657–687. Serve, H. J. (2000). Fundamente (grund)schulpädagogischer Kreativitätsförderung [Foundations of fostering creativity in (elementary) school]. In H. J. Serve (Hrsg.), Kreativitätsförderung [Fostering creativity] (pp. 10–26). Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren. Urban, K. K. (1993). Neuere Aspekte in der Kreativitätsforschung [Recent aspects in creativity research]. Psychologie in Erziehung und Unterricht, 40, 161–181.

Author Information

Caroline Theurer (presenting / submitting)

University of Kassel, Germany

Wida Rogh

University of Applied Sciences North-Western Switzerland, Institute for Secondary Education

Nicole Berner

University of Applied Sciences North-Western Switzerland, Institute for Secondary Education

Frank Lipowsky