Relationships between Creativity and Teacher Variability

Abstract

Of current interest to psychologists is the concept of creativity ns a component of personality that needs explanation. Several attempts have been made to identify it and to actually test its complex nature. One such instrument (Torrance, et al., 1960; Yamamoto, 1962) was used in this study to find a relation between creativiry and teaching competency as well as to find other common characteristics of ceachers in comparison to levels of creativity. A total of 209 teachers were secured for creativity testing from the summer school population at Eastern Washington State College in 1962. Personal data were gathered concerning sex, age, number of years of teaching experience, number of years of college education, and reaching level. Letters were sent to the ceachers' principals asking them to race on a 5-point scale the over-all effectiveness of the teacher in the classroom. There was over a 90% return of these ratings. Six hypotheses were tested. The major hypothesis of the relationship between creativity test scores and principals' ratings was supported with a Pearson product-moment correlation of -.22 (p < .01). A product-moment correlation of -.I4 between creativity and age of the teachers was significant (p = .05). No significant differences were found between creativity test scores and sex, number of years of teaching experience, number of years of college education, or reaching level. The point-biserial correlation of .02 suggesred there were no significant sex differences on creativiry scores. The product-moment correlation of -.I2 ind~cated there was no significant difference between creativity scores and number of years of teaching experience. The non-significant X' of 4.39 indicated there was no significant relationship between creativity scores and number of years of college education and the biserial correlation of .05 indicated there was no significant difference beruleen creativiry scores and reaching level. (All rs were considered for significance from a .OO point.) Results suggest that, for the selected adult population, creativity may be a fairly stable trait since all variables but age were non-significant and correlated so close to zero. The evidence reported here that school administrators tend to give lower ratings to the highly creative ceachers gives direction to other topics for research. There may be inherent within creativity, as it is measured, personality characceristics that are not valued in ceachers.