Educational achievement is an outcome of many factors, of which intelligence explains the largest proportion of variance. Intrinsic motivation and creativity have also been shown to play a role in individual differences in education. A study has shown that reading enjoyment has a reciprocal relationship with the educational achievement in late childhood and early adolescence. Also, creativity is shown to be associated with educational achievement (r = .17; a meta-analysis). Additionally, studies have established the relationship between intrinsic motivation and many creative behaviours.
The present study investigated the link between creativity, intrinsic motivation and educational achievement, beyond intelligence. The study is the first to explore creativity, intrinsic motivation and educational achievement in a longitudinal design. Educational achievements were measured as National Curriculum English grades at ages 9 and 16. Specifically, the present study investigated how grades may be influenced by enjoyment to write and creative expressiveness in writing. English grades at ages 9 and 16 are evaluating skills in the same domain, however, the criteria differs at these two ages. While at age 9 English is evaluated primarily on technical skill, at age 16 more emphasis is placed on creativity. Rewarding technical skills at age 9 may prevent formal recognition (i.e. higher grades) of creative expressions and therefore may reduce enjoyment in writing. A pilot study showed that creative expressiveness in writing explained an additional 7 % of variance in GCSE English grades, above and beyond intelligence and English grades at age 9.
The present study utilised a subsample (n=277) from a large, longitudinal twin study in the UK, the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS). Creativity was measured in children’s written stories at age 9 with the Consensual Assessment Technique. Each story was coded by 5 independent judges for 10 dimensions, including creativity. The inter-rater reliabilities between the judges for the 10 dimensions ranged from .76 to .95. The first factor with seven highest loading dimensions was named as Creative Expressiveness, which was used as a measure of creativity in the analyses. All the analyses were adjusted for intelligence at age 9.
The 3 research questions for the study were:
1. Is Creative Expressiveness in written stories at age 9 associated with English achievement at ages 9 and 16?
2. Does enjoyment of writing mediate the relationship between English achievement at ages 9 and 16?
3. Does Creative Expressiveness in writing moderate the relationship between English achievement at ages 9 and 16?
