Creative Thinking as a Predictor of Teacher ...

Creativity Research Journal 2006, Vol. 18, No. 3, 385–390

Copyright © 2006 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Creative Thinking as a Predictor of Teacher Effectiveness in Higher Education Nitza Davidovitch College of Judea and Samaria

Roberta M. Milgram College of Judea and Samaria and Tel Aviv University

ABSTRACT: Creative thinking, defined as the quantity and quality of ideational fluency, was investigated as a predictor of teacher effectiveness in 58 college-level instructors. The correlation between creative thinking and teacher effectiveness defined as real-life problem solving was r = .64, p < .0001. The absence of a relation between creative thinking and student evaluations was attributed to the fact that student evaluations did not include their opinion of their teachers’ creativity. The findings suggest the potential benefits in sponsoring pre-service and in-service workshops to enhance teachers’ creative thinking ability and including creativity in the evaluations of faculty. The goal of this study was to examine creative thinking as a predictor of teacher effectiveness in higher education. Creative thinking has been defined as a cognitive process of original problem solving by means of which original products are generated (Milgram, 1989). A product may be a response of any kind; an idea; a solution to a problem; an actual product in art, music, science, or mathematics; or a solution to a problem that arises in child rearing, business, or teaching. Original is defined as unusual (i.e., statistically infrequent and of high quality—productive, valuable, or worthwhile). Creative thinking has been operationally defined in terms of a single index of ideational fluency. A test of ideational fluency was developed that was based on the work of Guilford (1950, 1956), Mednick (1962), Torrance (1962), and Wallach and Kogan (1965). This test, the Tel Aviv Creativity Test (TACT; Milgram & Milgram, 1976), has been translated into six languages, used over the years in Israel and other parts of

Creativity Research Journal

the world (Milgram, Dunn, & Price, 1993), and used with participants that ranged in age from 3 (Moran, Milgram, Sawyers, & Fu, 1987) to young adult (Milgram & Hong, 1994; Milgram & Livne, in press). Taken together, the findings provided empirical support for the reliability and construct validity of creative thinking as defined earlier. The TACT yielded scores that were empirically distinct from intelligence test scores in children, adolescents, and adults at the normal range of IQ and above. This was found even when the TACT was group administered (Milgram & Milgram, 1976). There was, morever, a strong relation between quantity and quality of ideational output, supporting the conclusion that high ideational output is a precondition for quality responses (Milgram, Milgram, Rosenbloom, & Rabkin, 1978). An order effect was also noted with popular responses appearing earlier than creative ones in the response sequence (Milgram & Rabkin, 1980). Kaufman and Baer (2005) recently presented a systematic and integrative summary of the knowledge that has accumulated on the issue of whether creativity is a general or a domain-specific process. With reference to this issue, Milgram (1990) long took the position that general creative thinking is a critical component of creative performance in every domain. She presented a 4 × 4 Structure of Giftedness–Creativity Model (Milgram, We thank Galit Madar for her helpful suggestions and comments on this article. We especially appreciate her wise counsel on the research design and the analysis of the data. Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Roberta M. Milgram, College of Judea and Samaria, Ariel 44837 Israel. E-mail: [email protected]

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1989, 1991) that, to the best of our knowledge, was the first to specifically postulate a relation between general and domain-specific creative abilities. The ability to generate many ideas on the TACT was found to predict the ability to generate many original solutions to laboratory problems in children at all age levels and in young adults (Milgram, 1983; Milgram & Arad, 1981; Moran et al., 1987). The same ideational fluency–creative performance relation was demonstrated in the specific domain of problem solving in mathematics (Livne, 2002; Livne & Milgram, in press). The relation between general and domain-specific creative abilities was investigated in a series of recent studies (Milgram & Livne, in press). In these studies, the TACT (Milgram & Milgram, 1976) served as an excellent predictor of real-life, creative problem solving in a wide variety of domains such as social leadership, salesmanship, and family interactions. Milgram and Feldman (1979) found a strong relation (r = .62. p < .001) between general creative thinking and real-life, creative problem solving in the classroom by elementary school teachers. In this study, we extended the Milgram and Feldman study in several ways. First, we investigated the relation of general creative thinking to real-life, creative problem solving in teaching at the level of higher education. Second, we investigated the relation between the number of discrete solutions generated in the process of creative problem solving and the quality of these solutions. We examined this quantity–quality relation both in the processes of general creative thinking and of solving real-world problems of teaching at the higher education level. This quantity–quality relation was found in creative thinking in generating solutions to laboratory-type problems (Milgram, 1983; Milgram & Arad, 1983; Milgram et al., 1978; Moran, Milgram, Sawyers, & Fu, 1983). However, it has never been demonstrated in the process of generating solutions to real-life problems, in general, or in problem solving by teachers in higher education, in particular. One reason for the paucity of empirical research on the question of creativity and teacher effectiveness in higher education is probably related to the difficulty in defining and measuring teacher effectiveness (Biddle, 1964; Flanders & Simon, 1968; Gage, 1972; Hativa, 2001; Hativa & Goodyear, 2002; McNeil & Popham, 1973; Rosenshine & Furst, 1971; Ryans, 1960). A second reason is the heavy emphasis placed on student evaluations as a measure of teaching effectiveness in

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higher education. Creative thinking is, generally, not among the teacher behaviors that students are asked to evaluate (Hativa, 2001; Hativa & Goodyear, 2002). In this study of creative thinking as a predictor of teacher effectiveness, we used two criterion measures of teaching effectiveness that are described in detail later. One criterion measure was the quantity and quality of solutions reported by lecturers to problems that arise in day-to-day teaching at the level of higher education and the second was student evaluation of teacher effectiveness. Method Participants Research participants were 58 lecturers (43 men and 15 women) in a regional college in Israel who volunteered to participate in the study. They ranged in age from 29 to 68 (M = 49.34, SD = 9.92). Materials TACT. The predictor (i.e., general creative thinking ability) was measured by four items (2 verbal and 2 figural) selected from the TACT (Milgram & Milgram, 1976). Research participants were asked to generate as many possible responses to each stimulus presented as they could. Two scores (1 for quantity and 1 for quality of response) were computed for each research participant by means of a two-stage process. In the first stage, norms for scoring responses as popular or unusual–original–creative were determined in the following manner: Each test response was first scored as either popular or unusual (i.e., given by 5% and more or by less than 5%, respectively, of the participants in this research study). Based on these norms, in the second stage of the process, three scores were computed for each research participant: (a) quantity—number of popular responses, (b) quality—number of unusual–original–creative responses, and (c) total number of discrete responses—popular + original. Two criterion measures of teacher effectiveness administered to each research participant. 1. Student Evaluation of Teacher Performance in Higher Education (Davidovitch, 2003): This instru-


Creative Thinking and Teacher Effectiveness

ment is an evaluation form that consisted of six items scored from 0 (least positive evaluation) to 5 (most positive evaluation). The six items were as follows: organization and structure of course, clarity of lectures, effectiveness of use of audio–visual or technological teaching aids, stimulated curiosity and independent thinking, attitude toward students, and overall evaluation. The mean score of the six items was computed for each class that the research participant taught. A composite student evaluation score was computed for each research participant for all classes taught by the participant during the academic year 2004. 2. Real-Life Problem Solving: Teaching (Davidovtich & Milgram, 2004): This measure consisted of five items. Each item described a problem situation that frequently arises in teaching in higher education. Research participants were asked to generate as many possible solutions to each problem as they could. Three scores were computed for each research participant: quantity—number of popular responses; quality—number of original responses; and total number of discrete responses—popular + original. The procedure for determining popular or quantity scores and original or quality scores for the Real-Life Problem Solving: Teaching was the same as that described earlier for scoring quantity and quality of general creative thinking. Procedure A letter asking for volunteers was sent to the senior faculty of the college (N = 102). The number of affirmative responses was 58 (56.86%). A kit containing the two instruments (TACT, Milgram & Milgram, 1976; and Real-Life Problem Solving: Teaching, Davidovitch & Milgram, 2004) was sent to each volunteer. The kit also included a form asking the instructor’s permission to include students’ evaluation of their teaching in the database of the study.

Results and Discussion The reliabilities of the three measures used in this study were examined. Means, standard deviations, and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of the three instruments are presented in Table 1. The reliability coefficients of the popular, unusual, and popular + unusual scores on the predictor measure (i.e., TACT, Milgram & Milgram, 1976) were 0.84, 0.85, and 0.92, respectively. The reli-


Table 1. Means, Standard Deviations, and Reliability Coefficients: Tel Aviv Creativity Test, Real-Life Problem Solving: Teaching, and Student Evaluation of Teacher Performance in Higher Education Variable Tel Aviv Creativity Test: Popular Score Tel Aviv Creativity Test: Unusual Score Real-Life Problem Solving: Teaching — Popular Score Real-Life Problem Solving: Teaching — Unusual Score Student Evaluation of Teacher Performance in Higher Education

M

SD

Reliability Coefficients

19.12

9.62

0.84

11.00

10.34

0.85

12.81

6.14

0.85

4.41

4.42

0.71

23.17

2.70

0.95

ability coefficient of the two criterion measures (i.e., the Real-Life Problem Solving: Teaching, Davidovitch & Milgram, 2004; and the Student Evaluation of Teacher Performance in Higher Education, Davidovitch, 2003) were .91 and .96, respectively. On the basis of these findings, we concluded that the instruments used in this study were highly reliable. We found a strong quantity–quality relation within the measure of creative thinking, r = .71, p < .0001; and within the measure of real-life problem solving in teaching in higher education, r = .66, p < .0001. On the basis of this finding, we concluded that there is a strong relation between the ability to generate many solutions to stimuli in ideational fluency-based measures of creative thinking and the quality of these solutions. These data indicate that the quantity–quality relation previously demonstrated by Milgram and her associates (Milgram, 1983; Milgram & Arad, 1981; Milgram et al., 1978; Moran et al., 1987) in laboratory-type studies obtains in the process of real-life problem solving in teaching at the level of higher education as well. Further evidence of the important contribution of general creative thinking ability operationally defined as ideational fluency to creative, real-life problem solving in teaching is provided by examination of the correlation between the component scores of creative thinking and the criterion as presented in Table 2. As might be expected, the ability to produce unusual or creative responses to stimuli in the task designed to assess

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Table 2. Correlation Coefficients: Tel Aviv Creativity Test (TACT), Real-Life Problem Solving (RLPS): Teaching, and Student Evaluation of Teacher Performance

Variable 1. TACT: Popular Score 2. TACT: Unusual Score 3. RLPS: Teaching—Popular Score 4. RLPS: Teaching—Unusual Score 5. Student Evaluation of Teacher Performance in Higher Education

1 TACT Popular

2 TACT Unusual 0.65*

0.65* 0.68* 0.58* —

0.40** 0.56* —

3 RLPS Popular

4 RLPS Unusual

5 Student Evaluation

0.68* 0.40*

0.58* 0.56* 0.68*

— — — — —

0.68* —

—

*p < 0.01.

ideational fluency was related to creative problem solving in teaching, r = .54, p < .0001. However, perhaps unexpected was the finding that the ability to produce popular solutions was even more predictive of real-life, creative problem solving in teaching r = .71, p < .0001. The finding that the generation of popular responses is both related to their quality and constitutes a necessary precondition for their production has been previously demonstrated in studies of the cognitive process of creative thinking across a wide age range (Milgram et al., 1978; Milgram & Rabkin, 1980; Moran et al., 1983). The findings of this study are the first, however, to demonstrate that a similar quantity–quality relation obtains in real-life problem solving as well. The correlations between the predictor measure, creative thinking, and the two criterion measures (i.e., real-life problem solving in teaching in higher education and student evaluations) are presented in Table 2. The correlation between the predictor measure (i.e., creative thinking) and the criterion measure (i.e., teacher effectiveness as measured by real-life problem solving scores) was r = .64, p < .0001. This finding indicates a very strong relation between creative thinking outside and inside the classroom. In other words, the lecturer’s ability to produce many ideas to a stimulus that has no direct application to the classroom and the practical ability to generate solutions to problems that do arise in the classroom are strongly related. In addition, it is important to recall that, as reported earlier, the number of solutions generated to the problems presented was related to their quality. The findings indicate that it would be very worthwhile to (a) identify candidates for pre-service and in-service teacher education who possess a high level of creative ability and at the same time, and (b) en-

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hance creative thinking in teachers. The findings suggest that sponsoring pre-service and in-service workshops to enhance creative thinking ability of teachers is worthwhile. The departments that deal with improving instruction in higher education would do well to test this recommendation. By contrast, the relations of general creative thinking or creative thinking in solving real-life problems in teaching and student evaluations were not significant. In retrospect, a number of factors may have been working against the hypothesized relation. First, only one of the six items that the students were asked to evaluate in the teacher’s performance could be construed as relevant to creative thinking at all. Students were asked to rate their teachers on the extent to which they stimulated curiosity and independent thinking. Second, even this item misses the mark because it refers to the extent that the teacher stimulates creative thinking in the students and not whether the teacher demonstrates curiosity and independent thinking in the classroom. Third, whether the teacher demonstrates creativity in the classroom may not be as important to the students as other aspects of the teacher’s performance. In a study that supports this contention (Milgram, 1979), students (N = 500) ranging widely in age, intelligence, and creativity showed a marked preference for teachers who were intelligent and knew the subject matter, rather than for teachers who were creative or had warm personalities. These considerations suggest that creative behavior by teachers may indeed enhance their effectiveness in the classroom, but that the methodology employed in this study to test this relation was deficient. Given the strong relation of creative thinking to effective teaching reported earlier, we recommend that


Creative Thinking and Teacher Effectiveness

future student evaluations of teachers include items designed explicitly to tap the student’s evaluation of the creativity of his or her teacher. Such evaluations might provide evidence that creative thinking in teaching is associated with more effective teaching and provide the impetus for colleges and universities to devote time, effort, and funds to enhancing creative thinking in their teachers. The findings reported earlier may or may not apply to teachers at all levels of education. Although it is reasonable to assume that the quantity–quality relations found in this study will be found in creative problem solving in teaching at other levels as well, this possibility remains to be empirically investigated.

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