Abstract:

Education today is going through a difficult time in which evaluation processes have become standardized and students and educators are under great pressure (Robinson & Aronica, 2016). As a solution to this situation, several authors emphasize the importance of betting on teaching-learning environments centered on students and whose bases are based on theories of creativity and multiple intelligences (Mora, 2013, Pérez & Sánchez, 2014). In addition, there are several unknowns that have left open previous studies regarding sociodemographic variables, as is the case of gender and the course. The aim of the present study was to analyze these differences in Spanish students of Primary Education and Secondary Education. The Creative Intelligence Test (CREA; Corbalán et al., 2003) and the Multiple Intelligence Detection Questionnaire for primary (Prieto & Ballester, 2003) and secondary (McKenzie, 1999) were administered to a sample of 222 students (48 % boys) from 6 to 17 years. The results showed differences according to the course variable, showing primary students in higher creativity and high school in multiple intelligences. Specifically, creativity presented high values in the first years of elementary school (being 2º of primary the course with higher levels of creativity), suffering a sharp decrease in 4º of primary and remaining later in lower levels in secondary. As for the multiple intelligences, when they reached secondary school all of them experienced a remarkable growth in general, although the social and the corporal were the best considered by the students, against linguistics, viso-spatial and logical-mathematical that decreased in comparison to primary. The variable gender seemed not to be a priori, as a conditioning factor in the study of both creativity and multiple intelligences, since there was no evidence of significant differences in any case. That is, girls and boys presented similar scores on the two variables and, therefore, were in contrast with previous research. The present study provides insightful data on the controversy over gender differences in creativity and multiple intelligences, as well as the ages at which both variables predominate. This information is of great importance when developing effective teaching-learning programs that are not only focused on academic areas and that allow an integral development in young people. And as Bona (2015) points out, all children are extraordinary and each of them is a different world. Therefore, it is not enough to focus their education on the mere transmission of data, but it is necessary to provide academic, personal and social knowledge tools so that they can face the situations that present their life.