1 2*Dr. Susan George | Dr. S. Rajaguru 1 Ph.D. Scholar, Sri Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya College of Education, Coimbatore, India-641020. (*Corresponding Author)2 Associate Professor in Education, Sri Ramakrishna Mission Vidyalaya College of Education, Coimbatore, India -641020

58International Educational Scientific Research Journal [IESRJ]

IntroductionThe tribal groups constitute 1% of the total population in the state of Tamil Nadu, in India. 36 out of the 461 tribal groups in the country are in Tamil Nadu. Every year, under tribal development plans, special provisions are being made for the educational development of scheduled tribes (Parthasarathy, 2007).

“Formal education is being imparted to tribal children in tribal areas of Tamil Nadu, through the special department of Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare. They have been making efforts to build self-confidence among the tribal and to bring out their innate creative talents with the help of education. To achieve that, educa-tion and culture must go hand in hand. In the Nilgiris district, this department is responsible for 25 Government Tribal Residential Schools, under the supervi-sion of the District Collector” (Parthasarathy, 2007).

To enhance the development of education among the tribal children, the investi-gator has attempted a study entitled “Creativity and Academic Achievement of Underachievers among Tribal and Non-tribal Students in the Nilgiris District of Tamilnadu, India”

Definitions of the Terms Used :Creativity:Musick (2001) opines that “creativity is the use of mind or body to perform tasks in a way that is not common. It is a function of human intelligence and becomes evident only in the active process of doing something. It relates to the capacity of all people to combine skills, knowledge and resources to solve problems in new ways in any context and within any group”. “Creativity is a concept of individual differences which is intended to explain why some people have higher potential to provide new solutions to old problems than others. It leads us to change the way we think about things and is conceived as the driving force that moves civili-zation forward” (Hennessey & Amabile, 2010, pp.569-598).

Achievement:Travers (1970, p.447) states that “achievement is the result of what an individual has learned from some educational experience”. According to De Cecco, Crawford and William (1977, p.301), “achievement is the expectancy of finding satisfaction in mastering challenging and difficult performances”. Furthermore, Tinambunan (1988, p.149) defines achievement as “the student's grasp of some body of knowledge or proficiency in certain skills”.

Underachievement:Underachievement lacks clear cut definition. Dowdall and Colangelo (1982, pp.179-184) describe three underlying themes in a definition of psychological underachievement: “one, discrepancy between potential achievement and actual achievement; two, a discrepancy between predicted achievement and actual achievement; three a failure to develop or use potential”.

Tribes of the Nilgiris District:The six primitive tribal groups of Nilgiris are the Todas, Kotas, Kurumbas, Irulas, Paniyans and Kattunaickens. The Todas and Kotas live on the high alti-tude of the hills, Kurumbas and Irulas are found in the middle range of the hills and Paniyans and Kattunaickens inhabit the foot hills of the Nilgiris District”.

Unique Cultural Background:The tribal people belonging to the Nilgiris District are considered to be friends of wild life or guardians of nature. They perform unique cultural practices during death rituals which are different from the non-tribal people. Child marriages are common among them. They earn their living by being labourers on tea estates. Most of them are poor in comparison with the non-tribal. Most of the girl students drop out from schools at an early age to look after their siblings while their par-ents go for work. All these practices make them different from the non-tribal peo-ple (Parthasarathy, 2007,p.91)

Objectives of the Study:1. To identify the underachievers among the tribal and non-tribal students at

the high school level

2. To study the significant difference, if any, in creativity and its dimensions – fluency, flexibility and originality among the underachieving students belongs to tribal and non-tribal groups.

3. To study the significant relationship, if any, between academic achievement and creativity of the students ( tribal and non-tribal ).

Hypotheses of the Study:H There is a significant difference in creativity and its dimensions (fluency, a1

flexibility and originality) among the underachieving students belongs to tribal and non- tribal groups.

H There is a significant relationship between academic achievement and cre-A2

ativity of the students. (tribal and non-tribal)

Population and Sample:The population for the present study consists of the students in the 25 Govern-ment Tribal Residential (GTR) Schools in the Nilgiris district which includes 12 primary schools, 10 middle schools, 2 high schools and 1 higher secondary school.

Sampling Technique:The Simple Random Sampling method was applied to select the 6 Government Tribal Schools from the Nilgiris district. All the tribal students from Stds.VI to IX studying in these schools were selected purposively as sample for the research investigation. Similarly, four Aided Schools were randomly selected from the Nilgiris district for selecting the non-tribal students. Therefore, 587 tribal and 479 non-tribal students were selected as sample for this study.

MethodologyAcademic achievement test scores of 479 non tribal students (279 Boys and 200 Girls) from Std VI to Std IX were collected from four different aided schools in Coonoor, Nilgiris district. Similarly, the achievement scores of 587 tribal stu-dents (322 boys and 265 girls) from Std VI to Std IX, belonging to Irula, Kurumba and Paniyan tribes, were selected from six different government tribal residential schools in the Nilgiris district. The Raven's Progressive Matrices test of intelligence was administered to the students and the scores were compared

ABSTRACT

Creativity is an essential psychological trait exists in varying degrees among different individuals. It is considered as base for higher order psychological entity need for succeeding in the all types of tasks in the learning environment. Further, it is closely related with academic achievement of the children. But in the case of under achievers, the creativity makes a less difference in the learning outcomes of the children. As such the present study is on the creativity and academic achievement of the tribal and non-tribal children of Nilgiri district, Tamilnadu. The study was conducted with the objectives like to compare the creativity and academic achievement of tribal and non-tribal underachievers. It was conducted on a sample of 587 tribal (Boys=322 & Girls=265) and 479 non tribal (Boys=279 & Girls=200) secondary school students of Nilgiri district, Tamilnadu. The findings of the study are significant difference exist in the creativity of tribal and non-tribal underachievers, no sig-nificant difference exist in the academic achievement of tribal and non-tribal underachiever. The non-tribal underachievers are more creative than the tribal students in terms of the creativity dimensions of fluency, flexibility and originality.

KEYWORDS: Underachievers, Tribal children, Non-Tribal children, Creativity, Academic achievement.

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Research Paper E-ISSN No : 2455-295X | Volume : 2 | Issue : 5 | May 2016

Research Paper E-ISSN No : 2455-295X | Volume : 2 | Issue : 5 | May 2016with their academic achievement scores. The students who scored a higher RPM percentile when compared to their academic achievement scores were identified as underachievers. The Passi test of creativity (1972) was then administered to the underachievers belong to tribal and non-tribal students and they were classi-fied into different creativity levels.

Statistical Technique AppliedIn this study the investigator applied descriptive, and inferential analysis. As Descriptive Analysis, the mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis were calculated for academic achievement and creativity scores. Whereas the t-test was used to find the significant difference if any in the creativity between tribal and non-tribal students. Correlation co-efficient was also used to find out the rela-tionship between academic achievement and creativity.

Result and DiscussionThe following tables are the self –explanatory of the result obtained in this study.

Table-1: Creativity difference between underachievers among tribal and non -tribal students.

Creativity differences between underachievers among the tribal and non tribal students are presented in table-1. The mean, standard deviation, standard error and t-value have been calculated for the creativity test scores conducted by the investigator. It is found that the t-value is significant at 0.01 levels. Therefore, the research hypothesis “There is a significant difference in creativity between underachievers among tribal and non tribal students”, is accepted. It is evident from the mean creativity scores that the underachievers among non tribal stu-dents have performed better than the tribal students, in the creativity test con-ducted by the investigator.

Tables-2, 3 and 4 reveal the mean, standard deviation and t-value calculated for the creativity test scores (fluency , flexibility and originality dimensions) of both tribal and non tribal students. The t-values for all cases are significant at 0.01 lev-els. Therefore, the research hypothesis “There is a significant difference in cre-ativity dimension (Fluency) between underachievers among tribal and non tribal students”, is accepted. From the mean values tabulated, it is understood that the underachievers among non tribal students have performed much better in ‘Flu-ency,

Table-2: Creativity difference in dimension (Fluency) between under-achievers among tribal and non tribal students.

Table-3: Creativity difference in dimension (Flexibility) between under-achievers among tribal and non tribal students.

Table-4: Creativity difference in dimension (Originality) between under-achievers among tribal and non tribal students.

flexibility and originality' dimensions than their tribal counterparts. This indi-cates that the creativity dimensions are higher in non-tribal.

Figure -1: Difference in Creativity and Academic Achievement between Tribal and Non-tribal Students.

Further it is observed that the there is a negative correlation between academic achievement and creativity. The correlation co-efficient, r is -0.63 which is found to be significant at 0.05 levels. It can be concluded that creative students are not necessarily high achievers. Findings of the StudyŸ The non-tribal underachievers are found to be more creative than the tribal

students in terms of the creativity dimensions of fluency, flexibility and orig-inality.

Ÿ Highly creative underachiever does not show a high academic achievement when compared to low creative underachiever.

Ÿ There is negative relationship between creativity and academic achievement of the children with underachievement belongs to tribal and non-tribal groups.

Implications of the StudyThe investigator opines that tribal children possess the basic cognitive abilities for successful participation in schools, and their low achievement levels are attributed to school and home related factors as would apply to non-tribal stu-dents also. The identification of underachievers among tribal and non-tribal stu-dents reveals that there is a lack of awareness about the value of education among these students. Poor school environment, parents' illiteracy, lack of interest in subjects, responsibilities at home, teachers' lethargy etc. account for the causes of underachievement. The underachievers tend to become dropouts in spite of the wide measures taken by the government to educate them and mould them according to the changing patterns of the modern world. A study of creativity and achievement of underachievers is inevitable to identify the real potential in the students. Academic achievement is expected to be high in creative students who show a high level of intelligence. The underachievers are a contradiction to this statement. The present study will help the school authorities to single out such stu-dents and motivate them to succeed academically

REFERENCES1. Acharyulu, S.T.V.G. (1997). A Study of Relationship among creative thinking, intelli-

gence and school achievement, Ph.D. thesis, Utkal University, Orissa.

2. Asha,C.B.(1980).Creativity and Academic Achievement among secondary school chil-dren, Asian Journal of Psychology and Education, Vol. 6,No. 1.

3. Khandwalla, P.N. (1988). Fourth Eye – Excellence through creativity, New Delhi: Wheeler Publishing.

4. Mishra, B.B. (2007). Impact of Culture and Academic Achievement on Creativity of Tribal Students. Meri Journal of Education, Vol.II. No.II, PP-72-76.

5. Parthasarathy, J. (2007). Education and Development among the tribes. Tribal Educa-tion Status Documentation. Hill Area Development Programme. Udhagamandalam. Tamil Nadu.pp.4,11,12,33,53,89.

59 International Educational Scientific Research Journal [IESRJ]

groups N Mean SD t– value

Tribe 65 69.51 66.40 7.55(Sig. at 0.01 level)Non-tribe 133 158.78 83.23

groups N M SD t– value

Tribe 65 36.20 31.53 7.83(Significant at 0.01 level)Non-tribe 133 84.52 44.55

groups N Mean SD t– value

Tribe 65 20.69 18.50 7.01(Sig. at 0.01 level)Non-tribe 133 43.96 23.41

groups N M SD t– value

Tribe 65 12.62 19.71 4.55

Non-tribe 133 30.30 28.15