Creativity Assessment in School: Reflection from a Middle School Italian Study on Giftedness

Clarissa Sorrentino

doi:10.13189/ujer.2019.070228

Abstract

The attention to Gifted students is a growing educational topic in Italy. This work is part of a broader doctoral study on giftedness assessment and education. In particular the contribute explores the usefulness of a teacher's instrument to test creativity in Italian lower secondary schools. For this purpose it was tested the concurrent validity of the Renzulli Subscale of Creativity [1] used by mainstream teachers and special educational needs teachers and the William Test of Divergent thinking [2] used by the Educational researcher and completed by the students. A total of 106 students and 9 teachers participated in the study. The quantitative analysis shows a positive correlation between the evaluations through the Williams test and the Renzulli Subscale of Creativity used by the whole group of teachers. Therefore, the study checked if there was a difference between teachers' characteristics in the evaluation of creativity, in particular between mainstream and special educational needs teachers. The results show that there is no statistical difference between the evaluations of the group of teachers. A reflection of the importance of a multidimensional approach on the study of creativity, and in general of giftedness, that considers multiple source of information in the identification and Education of Gifted students is carried out in the study.

Highlights

Alongside the new conceptualization of the construct of giftedness, there is an emerging demand for a new paradigm for its identification [3] that “would recognize the different ways in which students display giftedness and would call for more varied and authentic assessment” [4;p.3].In the “Three Rings model” of Renzulli [5], creativity represents one of the main components of Giftedness
The sample was composed by 106 students (55 Males and 51 Females), of five different classrooms (4 classroom of first year of middle school and one of the second year), which were evaluated from the Educational researcher through the Williams Test of Creativity [2]. 111 assessments were made by 6 mainstream teachers and 56 assessments were made by 3 SEN teachers through the Renzulli Subscale of Creativity [1] for a total of 167 assessments. 7 teachers were females and two were males
When we look at the Williams TWG, the Shapiro Wilk test is .01 which is less than

Summary

Introduction

In the “Three Rings model” of Renzulli [5], creativity represents one of the main components of Giftedness. According to Renzulli, highly creative productive as opposed to lesson learning giftedness is really a combination of an inner action between and among commitments, high ability and creativity. Creative productive people have above average but not necessary superior level of ability as measured by tests of intelligence and aptitude [6]. Well-above-average ability can be considered as either a general ability that interferes in all domains and/or specific ability related to high level performances within specific domains. Renzulli defines well-above-average ability as that possessed by those individuals performing in the top 15–20% of any domain

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Conclusion