Creativity Tests and Teacher and Self Judgments of Originality

Abstract

IN THE HISTORY of the development of tests of intellectual ability, teacher ratings have played a most important role. Indeed, in the development of intelligence tests, such ratings have probably been used as criteria more frequently than any other type of measure. This would certainly be true if grades are considered tobeaspecial case of teacher rating. Recently, however, teacher ratings have come under heavy criticism as a criterion measure for tests of certain types of intellectual ability. In par ticular, Getzels and Jackson (1, 2) make adistinc tionbetween and types of intellectual ability, and on the b a s i s of t h e ir studies of the two types conclude that teachers much prefer the type of pupil, rate them unduly high, and even reject the type pu pil in their ratings? Since high IQ and high creativ ity type pupils do equally well on objective achieve ment tests, this is interpreted as a major weakness in teacher ratings as a criterion. Torrance (6), on the basis on independent findings, essentially con firms these conclusions. Getzels and Jackson also present clinical data which suggests that highly creative pupils recognize their own capacities quite well, and that therefore self ratings may be more appropriate as criteria of creativity than are teach er ratings. The results and conclusions have been g r e eted with enthusiasm by various critics of education,and have been generalized to the point of concluding that teachers are unable to recognize creativity or orig inality. There are, however, difficulties for this interpretation. These difficulties arise because the qualities rated by teachers in the Getzels and Jack son study are qualities on which high IQ types would be expected to be higher than high creativity types, and therefore the results may in fact reflect ac curate perception on the part of the teachers. Spe cifically, the characteristics rated were 1) desira bility as a student, 2) leadership qualities, and 3) in volvement in learning. No direct teacher ratings of creativity or originality were included. It is obvi ously unfair to conclude that teachers cannot rate originality on the basis of a study in which they were not asked to make such ratings. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to ex plore the intellectual characteristics of pupils which are related to teacher ratings of originality, and to obtain data relevant to the question of teacher dis crimination against creative children in making such ratings. In order to obtain more generalizable re sults, a secondary purpose was to correlate teacher ratings with pupil characteristics over a wider range of ability than was used in the Getzels and Jackson study.