Do Gifted Student Writers and Creative Writing Experts Rate Creativity the Same Way?

Abstract

Little research has been conducted on how gifted novices compare to experts in their judgments of creative writing. If novices and experts assign similar ratings, it could be argued that gifted novices are able to offer their peers feedback of a similar quality to that provided by experts. Such a finding would support the use of collaborative feedback in gifted classrooms. We asked gifted high school creative writers and three groups of experts (cognitive psychologists, creative writers, and teachers) to rate a set of 27 short stories and 28 poems for creativity using a scale of 1 to 6. The interrater agreement among the novices was within acceptable standards, and the agreement among the experts was very strong. When the ratings of novices were compared to the ratings of experts, a strong degree of correlation was found, supporting the use of peer feedback among gifted novice creative writers.

Assessing creativity with divergent thinking tasks: Exploring the reliability and validity of new subjective scoring methods.

“…The consensual assessment technique entails independent judges-ideally but not necessarily experts-rating products for creativity, based on the judges' tacit, personal meanings of creativity. Judges often show high consistency and agreement (Amabile, 1982;Baer, Kaufman, & Gentile, 2004;Kaufman, Gentile, & Baer, 2005;Kaufman, Lee, Baer, & Lee, in press). …”

The American Idol Effect: Are Students Good Judges of Their Creativity across Domains?

“…Five elementary classroom teachers were selected as being appropriate experts to rate the creative products, consistent with past findings that show classroom teachers as agreeing with content experts when rating children's creative work (Baer, Kaufman, & Gentile, 2004;Kaufman, Gentile, & Baer, 2005). No rater was a classroom teacher for any of the children in the study, and all products were presented with no identifying information.…”

Effect of Patternmaker’s Proficiency On the Creation of Clothing

“…Proficiency in creative activities was characterized by Johnson-Laird, who stated that such proficiency involves not only skills that can be obtained by training but also the discovery of new information and knowledge [7]. Kaufman et al [8] investigated writer's creativity by comparing student and expert writers' writings. Oura investigated the proficiency of pianists and practitioners in terms of the cognitive psychology of their creative skills and showed that proficient pianists and Kendo practitioners learn and play by understanding implicit and complicated information [9].…”