Creativity, gender and academic performance in students who enter the engineering degree

Abstract

This research is about the relationship between the skills and the creative actions that are put into prac- tice by students who enter the Engineering degree, gender and the academic performance they achieveduring the first year. The data were gathered by applying a test that measures the creative capacities and a questionnaire that assesses the creative actions in several areas. A total of 134 first year studentsof Engineering degree in an Argentinian public university answered both the survey and questionnaireand the results show differences by gender, with better performances of women, and better scores forthe high performance group by developing creative actions in the area of Science and Technology. The conclusions on one hand endorse the complexity of the connections between creativity, gender and per- formance and, on the other hand, point out how important it is to create educational contexts that favor from the admission the development of creative actions.