Characteristics of students on related science courses in further education colleges: Part III—Achievement and divergent thinking ability

Abstract

Summary Tests of attainment in Chemistry and Physics, together with tests of divergent and convergent thinking were administered to a sample of 633 students on GCE Advanced level, OND and ONC courses in a total of 39 colleges of further education. Factor analyses of all the data showed that the divergent thinking tests were measuring something different from the tests of convergent thinking and also that divergent thinking, as measured by these tests, had only limited association with attainment in Chemistry and Physics. At the lower levels of convergent verbal ability, the divergent thinking score correlates well with the convergent thinking score, but once a certain minimum convergent verbal ability is reached, convergent and divergent thinking become independent of one another until a high level of convergent verbal ability is reached when there is once again good correlation between convergent and divergent thinking scores. Part-time students were significantly inferior to their full-time counterparts on the divergent thinking test scores and were still inferior after allowance was made for their poorer convergent verbal ability.