CREATIVITY AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN RELATION TO THEIR CRITICAL THINKING AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

The global scenario of the 21st century is enlightened with the democratic principles of liberal economy with private enterprises and it needs a constant flow of skilled personnel for organizational success. The civilized world of today has an urgent requirement for creative people so that they serve the industry as well as participate in research and development in their respective fields of work. Open choice of profession, liberal works and appraisal of individual skills have become modern trends of dynamism in life. The aims of education are always dynamic. It consistently adheres to the utilitarian principles, the needs of society and the needs of the stakeholders of education. This research focuses on the level of creativity of the senior-secondary students. The teachers are entrusted with the responsibility of developing the creativity and critical thinking ability of the learners. This research is intended to find out how much this valuable objective has met the goal. This research is also intended to find an interaction effect of critical thinking, emotional intelligence on the creativity of senior secondary students and to show the difference in creativity, critical thinking ability and emotional intelligence with respect to gender and mediums of senior secondary schools affiliated to West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education (WBCHSE). Several researches have been done on finding the difference in emotional intelligence between genders but an interactional study of creativity, critical thinking and emotional intelligence with respect to genders and mediums of schools in Indian regional contexts is rare. A research gap is also found regarding comparative gender studies on the development of critical thinking ability of the students of English and Bengali medium schools affiliated with the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education (WBCHSE). This research on creativity seeks to fill the gap in between. A total of 600 male and female students were selected on a random basis by following stratified random sampling technique from Bengali and English Medium schools affiliated to WBCHSE to form the representative sample of 300 male and 300 female students from 8 different schools (5 Bengali Medium schools and 3 English Medium schools affiliated to WBCHSE to conduct the research. B.K. Passi’s Test of Creativity, Critical Thinking Scale by Hemant Lata Sharma and Priyamvada and Sevenfold Emotional Intelligence Scale (SEIS-KS) developed by Dr. Sarabjit Kaur were used to collect data.