As reported by The University of Winchester, new Pisa results highlight the importance of creative thinking in education, challenging policymakers to integrate creativity alongside academic success
The results of the first-ever Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) test of creative thinking were launched at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris today (18 June).
It’s a powerful signal to the world that creativity matters, that there is a global understanding of what it is and, most importantly, that it can be taught and assessed.
According to Pisa, creative thinking is “the competence to engage productively in the generation, evaluation and improvement of ideas that can result in original and effective solutions, advances in knowledge and impactful expressions of imagination”.
As such, for the purposes of the Pisa test, both written and visual expression were encouraged with some scenarios broadly located in science, and some essentially just requiring common sense.
Pisa measured the creative thinking skills of 15-year-olds in 64 countries but sadly none of the four home nations chose to participate.
The affirmation of the importance of creative thinking comes at a time when the main political parties in England are at least paying lip service to the importance of creativity in schools.
From the results, though, some five clear findings reveal themselves:
1. Strong performance in creative thinking and academic subjects is possible
Students in Singapore came top of the creative thinking ranking order, followed, in descending order, by Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Estonia and Finland.
It is, Pisa shows, a false binary position to suggest that doing well in creative thinking somehow distracts learners from success in core subjects.
Students can flourish academically and in creative thinking.
2. Whole-system approaches work
The results show that high-performing systems in creative thinking adopt whole-system approaches to embedding, supporting and measuring creative thinking and make it a cornerstone of educational reforms, for example, in Denmark, Korea, Singapore, Canada and Australia.
Supporting educators to recognise, develop and evaluate creative thinking by defining learning progressions or rubrics, as Australia has done with its ‘critical and creative thinking learning continuum’ which spells out what progress looks like, shows how this can be done.
Furthermore, creating specific opportunities in the curriculum for students to engage in interdisciplinary work is important and different examples demonstrate there are numerous approaches to do this.
This can be done by perhaps reducing the number of compulsory subjects (Korea), offering more experiential courses as elective subjects (Korea, Denmark), introducing dedicated interdisciplinary modules (Finland), giving secondary students opportunities to choose interdisciplinary projects in authentic settings (Singapore), or providing funding to encourage partnership (the Creatives in Schools scheme in New Zealand).
It is possible to put accountability through creative assessments, too. For example in the state of Victoria in Australia where, since 2016, the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority has administered Critical and Creative Thinking tests annually to a sample of schools.
3. Girls outperformed boys
Pisa 2022 results show that in no participating country/economy did boys outperform girls in creative thinking, and in all but three countries and economies – Chile, Mexico and Peru – the difference in average performance between boys and girls was statistically significant.
This was especially the case for creative expression tasks and tasks building on others’ ideas.
4. Creative thinking requires engaged students
The results show what students believe about their creative potential matters; those who believe they can develop their creative skills performed better in creative thinking.
Sadly, students in many countries report they do not find learning or engaging in creative work at school particularly enjoyable.
5. Schools and teachers can make a real difference
The pedagogies educators choose encourage students to come up with original answers, and express their ideas, are challenging, encourage multiple perspectives, leave space for the unexpected and leave time for reflection.
Interestingly, this latest Pisa test does not seek just to provide a global ranking of schools based on a single event. Rather it sees the development of better understanding by teachers and better policies by governments as equally important.
Two recent publications, Thinking outside the Box and Supporting students to think creatively, are good examples of practical resources produced last year to support school leaders and teachers.
Outcomes pose policy questions
Despite not taking part in the Pisa tests, these are exciting times in England on the ground when it comes to creativity in schools.
More than a hundred schools are taking part in the Creativity Collaboratives, a new online community Leadership for Creative Thinking is providing support for schools, and recent research undertaken by Rethinking Assessment has shown that it is possible to embed and assess creative thinking in schools even within the current system.
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