Creativity assessment in school: Reflection from a middle school italian study on giftedness

Abstract

The attention to Gifted students is a growing educational topic in Italy. This work is part of a broader doctoral study on giftedness assessment and education. In particular the contribute explores the usefulness of a teacher’s instrument to test creativity in Italian lower secondary schools. For this purpose it was tested the concurrent validity of the Renzulli Subscale of Creativity [1] used by mainstream teachers and special educational needs teachers and the William Test of Divergent thinking [2] used by the Educational researcher and completed by the students. A total of 106 students and 9 teachers participated in the study. The quantitative analysis shows a positive correlation between the evaluations through the Williams test and the Renzulli Subscale of Creativity used by the whole group of teachers. Therefore, the study checked if there was a difference between teachers’ characteristics in the evaluation of creativity, in particular between mainstream and special educational needs teachers. The results show that there is no statistical difference between the evaluations of the group of teachersA reflection of the importance of a multidimensional approach on the study of creativity, and in general of giftedness, that considers multiple source of information in the identification and Education of Gifted students is carried out in the study.