Creative metacognition and self-ratings of creative performance: A 4-C perspective

a r t i c l e i n f o Creative metacognition (CMC) refers to a combination of self-and contextual-knowledge used to make decisions about one's own creative efforts and accomplishments. Competent creators use CMC to judge whether their contributions might be considered creative. Do novice creators have the ability estimate their own level of creativity? The purpose of this study was to examine this question. Specifically, this article reports on an exploratory study that examined whether elementary students' domain specific mini-c and little-c self-ratings aligned with external ratings of creativity. Students (N = 242) completed three performance tasks (i.e., a visual, verbal, and scientific task). Immediately following each task, students were asked to judge whether their resulting product was creative at the mini-c level (i.e., creative to the self, but not others) and little-c level (i.e., recognized as creative by others). External raters also scored the creativity of each completed task. Results indicate that students were able to differentiate their performance on different creative domains (i.e., visual, verbal, scientific) and across levels of quality (i.e., mini-c and little-c). In addition, their self-ratings were also predictive of creativity scores as assigned by expert raters. The specific patterns of the relationships between students' self-ratings and creativity are discussed and implications for subsequent research are provided. " I had a pleasant talent but not an incredible talent. I was not my father or my son. And you have to abandon all kinds of things. " – Mary Rodgers (daughter of composer Richard Rodgers, mother of composer Adam Guettal), quoted in Green (2003) Mary Rodgers, who passed away this year, was a remarkable creator. She wrote the hit Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress and the popular kids' book Freaky Friday, which spawned two film adaptations. She contributed songs to many well-known revues (such as Free to Be You and Me and The Mad Show) and was the chair of the board at Juilliard for years. Yet Rodgers recognized that her talent, while prodigious, had a limit. In contrast, her father was Richard Rodgers, the composer of Oklahoma, South Pacific, and other classic shows. Her son, Adam Guettal, is a groundbreaking, Tony Award-winning composer of Floyd Collins and Light in the Piazza. Her father was clearly Big-C (demonstrating genius-level creativity), and her son is a strong contender to join these ranks someday. Rodgers herself will be remembered, but is probably a better …