The ability to think differently, also called divergent thinking, is the foundation stone of today’s rapidly changing world. The present study was carried out to assess the divergent thinking ability of 1000 school children (6-9 years both boys and girls) representing academic grades I, II, III selected randomly from various schools from urban areas of Jammu Province (J&K), India. Standardized Divergent Production Ability Test devised by Sharma (2006) was administered to each child in order to assess his / her divergent thinking ability. The results of the study revealed that both boys and girls showed a declining trend in mean value scores of Associational Fluency, Expressional Fluency, Adaptive Flexibility, Originality and Elaboration component with an increase in academic grades. It was also found that girls scored higher on the components of Word Fluency, Ideational Fluency, Spontaneous Flexibility, Associational Fluency and Elaboration as compared to boys across academic grades. Statistically, no difference was found on creativity scores of all the three academic grades. The study has implications for children, parents, teachers and professionals in the field of child development and can be used to provide inputs for enhancement of divergent thinking skills among children.
