Predicting Creative Behavior: A Reexamination of the Divergence Between Traditional and Teacher-Defined Concepts of Creativity

Previous research has shown that teachers' identifications of traits associated with the creative personality differ substantially from those typically identified as characteristic of creative individuals. This result has helped resolve the paradox between teachers' self-reports that they enjoy having creative children in their classrooms and the findings that they dislike characteristics such as nonconformity that traditionally are associated with creativity. Nevertheless, it is essential that the predictive utility of teacher-defined concepts of creativity be compared with that of the traditional view to further our understanding of this apparent contradiction. Verbal and figural creativity were measured in 3rd- and 4th-grade children using a story-writing task and a collage task, respectively. Results indicate that children who most closely matched teacher-defined concepts of creativity were most creative in the verbal task but not in the figural task. Conversely, children who most closely mulched the traditional concepts of creativity were highest in figural creativity but not in verbal creativity. These results are discussed in terms of problems of classroom management and the increasing focus on creativity as a domain specific rather than global trait.