The Torrance Test Of Creative Thinking

Creativity drives today’s world, with new technology arriving daily and science conducting itself further. We need creative and imaginative people in today’s atmosphere to bring the world to the next step forward. “Standardized college admissions tests assess only analytical skills, as well as the knowledge base on which they act, and completely ignore creative and practical skills (Sternberg 7)”. Without creative people in this world, where do you think we would be? Not very far. We need practical skills to go throughout everyday life. The standardized tests don’t test for that knowledge base, they test how much short term memory a

Children are no longer encouraged to be creative in the test prep environment. Instead, they are being taught to perform well on standardized tests and are labeled as unintelligent if they don’t. Young children are born with creativity and we see that when they are playing and pretending. According to Sir Ken Robinson, in Slon’s (2013) article, “by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity” to be creative. The fundamentals of creation and experimentation are not part of the standardized testing mechanism.

Kaufman and Beghetto (2014) further suggest that creativity can be fostered in children to a certain extent by providing them with opportunities to express their own unique ideas.

The Williams CAP Assessment was chosen to evaluate the student’s creative thinking first, because it was the test available through the course and the assessment tool my school district uses. Second, it was chosen because through research directly related to this class, I have learned the Williams CAP Assessment has been well developed and evaluated as one of the approved assessment tools due to it’s inclusion of multiple creative factors. Third, since this was the test that I had some experience with,

The American youth are becoming smarter, but are creative minds are shrinking. American children’s scoring on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking has been falling since the 90s. Having

Shepard, L. A. (2006, Creating coherent formative and summative assessment practices. Orbit, 36, 41-44. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/213738810?accountid=8194

In the context of creativity’s stated definition, we will proceed to group our arguments into three themes of factors: cognitive ability, expertise training, and environmental conditions. The human brain is highly adaptable and can continue to develop new cognitive abilities, even past adulthood (Norman, 2015). Proper cognitive expertise and training can help workers produce and operate in ingenious ways (Ginamarie, Lertiz & Mumford, 2004). Finally, the working environment can both motivate or stifle creative output. Managers can influence all three components: expertise, thinking skills, and motivation (Amabile, 1998).

S. I. Hayakawa wrote and published an article named "What lt Means to Be Creative". This article challenged how a creative person could be defined and identified. In Hayakawa’s essay he presents several points of view an individual could be characterized as being creative. His writing forces you to contemplate on how a person’s aptitudes are categorized. Hayakawa tests your ability to be opened minded and makes you visualize how a person could be described as a creative individual but may discredited themselves due to society’s standard of this word. After reading his writing, I believe I can summarize his analogy.

This approach focuses on creativity as a process and how new ideas emerge.  Theorist Graham Wallas proposed a five stage model and focused on the unconscious mind:

In addition, Figure 1 shows the number of publications on psychological safety and creativity from 1970-2015. The study of those topics increases year by year. However, it shows only limited studies are addressed in the reputable journals. An opportunity for future study is widely open.

IQ is defined as a measure of intelligence that shows the ratio of an individual’s mental age to their chronological age, this is then multiplied by 100 (Cattel 1972). Creativity cannot be measured by undertaking an IQ test, creativity is subjective and the simplest way of defining it is the ability to create original, useful and surprising new things. However, over the years pioneering research has inspired psychologists to devise tests to measure creativity. The most famous Divergent Thinking test is Guildfords Alternative Uses Task established in 1967. This test proposes that the individual involved should think of alternative uses for a common item such as a brick. This way of measuring Divergent Thinking is universally used in contemporary testing of creativity.

According to Baird and colleagues, mind wandering can enhance creativity goals and problems that were encountered. Creativity finds solutions that are novel, and high quality (Matlin, 2009). J.P. Guilford researched how we measure creativity. Creativity should be measured by divergent production. This research demonstrates the number of different responses that are made for each test item (Matlin, 2009).

A smart man said “Creativity is as important as literacy and we should treat it with the same standing.” (Ken Robinson-“Do schools kill creativity?”). There are multiple studies on how creativity helps improve a student’s mind. Project based learning is a huge creative booster for students. A math teacher from California uses projects to do math instead of using the text book. From doing this, she’s had more students pass her class then from when she was teaching straight from the text books. Instead of having standardized tests, using more creative techniques for students to enjoy the learning they’ve done and for them to show the higher officials what the students are learning. Creativity is the process of turning real world problems into an understanding by extending the minds cognitive processes. In Alabama, kindergartners are studying different ways to be creative.

The capacity to be creative, to produce new concepts, ideas, inventions, objects or art, is perhaps the most important attribute of the human brain. We know very little, however, about the nature of creativity or its neural basis. Some important questions include: how should we define creativity? How is it related (or unrelated) to high intelligence? What psychological processes or environmental circumstance cause creative insights to occur? How is it related to conscious and unconscious processes? What is happening at the neural level during moments of creativity? How is it related to health or illness, and especially mental illness?

Creativity is the ability to produce work that is original yet appropriate-something that others have not thought of but that is useful in some way (Kaufman & Sternberg, 2007; Sternberg, 2003b). The significance of creativity for children’s development is very high. Creativity helps children develop the overall areas of development; physical, social, emotional, language and cognitive. A child learns to innovate as well as invent while doing creative activities. Through creative practices child finds multiple methods of looking at various situations, assessing these situations and finding new solutions. Children often desire to be able to express themselves without any