The Spectra+ program is a 4-year model arts initiative being conducted in four elementary schools in two southwestern Ohio cities. An empirical study compared students in a Spectra+ program with two groups of students in two alternate, non-Spectra+ programs in districts A and B to measure differences in creativity, academic achievement, self…

This paper suggests that there are ways to organize the literature, both within music and in related fields of study, so that the interested professional can engage in an active organized study of creative thinking in music. There are also ways of defining musical behaviors that are indicative of creative thinking in children as well as adults.…

An examination of the introspective evidence of artists and scientists on their creative processes suggests that determining the causes underlying the transformation of material in thought is the key for understanding creativity. A similar problem underlies the transformational process of understanding metaphor. T.S. Kuhn's view of scientific…

Studies of creativity have generally dealt with the creative act, typically defined as the statistically infrequent approach to problem solving. A study was conducted to determine whether a relationship exists between problem discovery and originality of the written product, and whether problem-finding behavior may be observed in student writers.…

Creativity of 72 third-graders from open and structured classes was measured in relation to anxiety level. Low anxiety children were found more creative in open as compared to structured classrooms. No significant differences were found between creativity levels of high anxiety students in the two types of classes. (Author)

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships of children's performance on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) and on selected Piagetian tasks of conservation. Study subjects, 133 kindergarten and first grade multi-racial boys and girls, were administered the TTCT-Figural Form A and selected Piagetian tasks of conservation…

The relationship between pre-cognition and creativity was investigated in an effort to reaffirm previous findings (Costello 1977) of a correlation between these variables. A sample of 100 engineering freshmen was tested for creativity using the Torrance Test for Creative Thinking and was tested for pre-cognitive ability using the Dean-Mihalasky…

This paper examines the concept of creativity through the identification of traits and characteristics found in the so-called creative personality. The works on creativity of several scholars and researchers are briefly reviewed, including those by Ellis Paul Torrance, Donald W. MacKinnon, Sarnoff A. Mednick, Paul Heist, Philip Wesley Jackson, and…

Creativity can be considered a function of knowledge, imagination, and evaluation and usually programed instruction is thought to be detrimental to creative behavior since the material is highly structured and the responses are usually restricted. However, this need not be so, for one seed of creativity, student control, is inherent in programed…

This study evaluates a creativity program for elementary school teachers and children. A total of 687 fourth and fifth grade students and 27 teachers from four public schools in New York City were participants in either the experimental or control groups. The experimental teachers attended a 27 week in-service training program designed to assist…

Describes some general methods of promoting creative thinking and learning that can be used to focus attention, increase depth of conceptualization, and make the curricular content relevant and enjoyable. (Author/RK)

Results of divergent thinking tests (administered to 228 intermediate school students, of whom about 43 percent were gifted) and calculated correlations between creativity and intelligence measures did not support the threshold theory which posits that creativity and intelligence are related only up to an intelligence quotient of about 120.…

This study tested 142 youth 12 through 16 years of age with a special percept-genetic creativity test, a creativity-fantasy scale, and a percept-genetic personality test. Creativity was defined as the inclination to transgress the confines of an established perceptual context. Results are discussed and the development of creativity from preschool…

Partial correlation procedures were used to compare the reliability of ideational creativity in 225 academically gifted and nongifted fifth to eighth grade children. The divergent thinking interitem and intertest correlations of the gifted children were significantly larger than the nongifted. Ideational originality was reliable only in the…