Measuring Creative Capacity in Gifted Students: Comparing Teacher Ratings and Student Products

Creativity and giftedness are frequently associated, and schools may use measures of creativity for identifying gifted and talented students. The researchers examined three aspects of elementary student creativity: (a) the relationship between a teacher's rating of student creativity and rubric-scored student writing samples, (b) group differences regarding creativity between identified gifted and general education students, and (c) potential gender differences evident in teacher ratings of creativity as well as creative products. Participants in the study were 155 Grade 4 students in an urban district in a southwestern state. Teacher ratings on three different scales were related to student creative products, yielding Pearson correlations ranging from r = 0.20 to r = 0.27. Identified gifted students scored higher than general education students in both teacher ratings of creativity (d = 0.83) and written products (d = 0.53). Female students scored higher than male students in both teacher ratings of creativity (d = 0.22) and written products (d = 0.57). These findings suggest that teacher ratings moderately predict creative student products. Identified gifted students scored consistently higher than general education students in creativity, and females scored slightly higher than males on creativity measures.