Abstract

This quantitative research examined factors that affect elementary students’ creativity and how those factors correlate. Aiming to identify significant factors that affect creativity and to clarify the relationship between these factors by path analysis, this research was designed to be a stepping stone for creativity enhancement studies. Data were gathered from 208 students in 3 fifth-grade classes and 3 sixth-grade classes in 5 different schools located in Seoul, Korea. Survey questions, asked through five-score Likert-scale items, focused on attentiveness in science class, creativity and scientific attitude, which has been shown by the literature to have positive influences on one another. The findings include that their scientific attitude, attentiveness, and creativity correlated with significance, where gender did not have an effect on the relationship. Gender and age of the students have shown no significant effect on their scientific attitude, attentiveness or creativity. Scientific attitude, attentiveness and creativity have demonstrated positive effects to each other, the effect being stronger from scientific attitude to creativity (0.659) than the other two, attentiveness & scientific attitude (0.32) and attentiveness & creativity (0.368). Scientific attitude affects creativity most directly (0.659), and attentiveness would affect creativity more as a cofactor next to the scientific attitude (0.213) rather than when it’s by itself (0.154). That is, if a teacher devises a certain way to enhance attentiveness of students during their science class, their scientific attitude and attentiveness would increase, giving them a solid chance to enhance their creativity consequently.

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