Assessing the creative abilities of primary school children

Abstract

The study set out to establish viable methods of assessing the creativity of primary school children. Teachers were asked to identify children whom they thought were creative. Two hundred and seventy nine children were assessed subsequently with the Test for Creative Thinking - Drawing Production - TCT-DP (Urban & Jellen 1993) and the results were compared with the teachers' assessments. Verbal protocols were taken with a subsample to establish children's strategies whilst working on the TCT-DP. The story-telling technique of creativity assessment was also explored with a further subsample. The results indicated that although teachers did better than chance in identifying creative children, the TCT-DP was much more accurately able to identify creative children. There was no significant correlation between iQ and TCT-DP scores. The verbal protocols suggested subtle differences of approach to the TCT-DP in highly creative children. The story-telling assessment proved labour intensive and, although no real conclusions could be drown, it showed interesting potential. General aspects of the assessment of creativity in primary school children are discussed.