Scientific and Linguistic Creative Domains in Secondary Education. A Case Study in Spain

Creativity has been included as one of the four C's of 21st-century skills essential for students to succeed both in school and in the workplace.Thus, many countries are including this topic in their educational policies.This is the case of Spain, where the last educational law (LOMLOE) states that creativity must be worked out in all subjects.In the process of assessing the real situation of the Spanish educational system in terms of creativity development and observing future changes regarding its implementation, this work presents a cross-sectional quantitative study.The performance of 223 students of the four grades of compulsory secondary education in both the scientific and the linguistic domains of creativity was evaluated.Two instruments were used to measure daily and specific microdomains of scientific creativity and verbal-metaphorical microdomain of linguistic creativity.Results show a moderate to low development of creativity in secondary students in all studied domains of creativity.There were statistically significant differences according to gender, with women being the ones with greater creative skills.A progressive increase in creativity was observed up to the third year of compulsory secondary education, with a decrease in the last year.Finally, a positive correlation between scientific and linguistic creativity was established, in addition to an even higher correlation between both microdomains of scientific creativity.This study shows that there is still work to be done to promote creativity in the Spanish educational system, attending to the different subjects and creative domains.Some proposals are discussed, which highlight the importance of teacher training to achieve this goal.