Creativity and achievement of second graders in open and traditional classrooms

The Wallach-Kogan Tests of Creativity and 3 subtests of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills were administered to 129 2nd graders who had continuous experience in either open or traditional classrooms as defined by the Walberg-Thomas Open Education Scale. Five classes of each type were studied in 3 different school systems. Although students in traditional classes in one school system had higher fluency scores than those in open classes, consistent differences in fluency were not found; no significant group effects were found for uniqueness scores. However, Ss in traditional classrooms scored consistently higher than those in open classrooms on measures of vocabulary, reading, and mathematics achievement. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).