CREATIVITY AND CONSERVATION: A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN TWO FIELDS OF INQUIRY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR SCIENCE EDUCATIO

The proposed study was undertaken to contribute to the effort to identify and confirm existing relationships between cognitive development (as described by Piaget) and creative thinking (as defined by Torrance). Pioneering efforts by Reisman and Torrance have already yielded important results, although not conclusive. The purpose of this study was to increase knowledge with regard to the relationship between creativity and intellectual development by extending the concept of conservation and reativity. The tasks of conservation used were: continuous quantity, area, distance, length and discontinuous quantity. Results of performance of eight to eleven year old students on these tasks were compared with performance on Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking.;The following problems have been the focus of the present research: (1)What is the relationship between the ability to conserve (as measure by each of the five Piagetian tasks) and creativity (as measured by TTCT). (2)What is the best linear combination of conservation tasks for predicting certain creativity scores, and how much of the variance in creativity is "explained" by the combination of conservation tasks. (3)What is the maximum relationship between the set of creativity variables and that of conservation? (4)How many sources of variance exist between the domain of conservation and that of creativity?;In order to solve these problems, descriptive correlational research was undertaken. The following methods of analysis were used: factor analysis multiple regression, and canonical correlation. These analysis have revealed that most of the conservation variables (individually or combined) had a high predictability value on children's performance on the creativity tasks. One dimension was found to explain the canonical correlation between the two constructs.;This investigation as well as the ongoing theoretical and empirical efforts have demonstrated the need for the development of curricula in knowledge with regard to both cognitive development and creativity. Emphasis should be given to the development of original and divergent responses and an environment that allows creativity and intellectual development to flourish.