Differences in Creativity Performance and Environment Support between Education and Art students

This study examines the differences among students in the education and art fields, regarding their creativity performance and environment support for creativity. One hundred and twenty-eight college students were recruited for the study. The TTCT (Test of Torrance Creative Thinking) was adopted for the assessment of creativity performance. The KEYS Scales developed by Teresa Amabile were used to assess the stimulants to creativity in the work environment. The results show that on average the art students obtained a higher score for creativity performance than the education students. A significant difference in originality (p=0.003) was found between the two fields. As for the environment support, education students feel more supported by peers (p=0.04), while art students feel having more freedom (p=0.003) and more sufficient resources (p=0.00) in the context. More efforts on fostering creativity in education field are suggested at the end.