A Quantitative Examination of the Impacts of Modeling on Creativity

Abstract

Modeling has frequently been shown to be a very effective and valuable educational technique. However, it remains underutilized, largely as a result of the common belief among educators that it reduces student creativity. Prior observation has led experts to theorize that modeling has an impact on student creativity, yet there is no agreement on whether modeling helps or hinders creativity, and, so far, there have been no rigorous, quantitative studies done to examine the relationship between modeling and creativity. In an attempt to answer this question, I utilized a novel metric for scoring the creativity of balloon choices made by children ages 3-10 and compared the mean scores of groups with a model to the mean scores of groups without a model. By using a t-test, it was determined that there was no probabilistic basis to determine that modeling has an impact on creativity, thereby going against both sets of established hypotheses. These findings indicate that it is unlikely that creativity has a major impact on creativity if it has an impact at all, thus modeling should likely be more widely utilized in classrooms.