Comparison of the Tendencies of Students to Critical Thinking, Creativity and Innovation Based on the Social Climate

Tendencies to critical thinking, creativity and innovation are among significant challenges of third millennium schools which pave the way for development and promotion of students in their educational and vocational successes. The present research studies the effect of school social climate on critical thinking, creativity and innovation among third-grade female students of high school through describing the schools in two states of open and closed social status. The method of this research is of causal-comparative type. Statistical population of the research consist of all third-grade female students of second period of Tabriz high schools in the school of 2013-2014, of whom 365 students were selected using multistage cluster random sampling method. Social climate questionnaires of Halpin and Kraft, critical thinking of Ricketts, creativity of Abedi, and innovation of Koolze and Vanden Brooke were used for collecting data. Questionnaires validity has been reported using Cronbach’s alpha. Multivariate variance analysis test (MANOVA) was used for analyzing data. Results showed that there was a significant difference between open and closed social climates based on components of tendency to critical thinking, creativity and innovation, of which schools open social climate had the most effect on the tendency to creativity of female students.