Kylie Murphy

Creative thinking in students

Fourth in the world in creative thinking: how good!?!?

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For the first time, global PISA data includes an assessment of fifteen-year-old students’ ‘creative thinking’. The 2022 results for this new measure are now out – and the implications challenge some beliefs about teaching creative thinking. 

Australia ranks fourth among the eighty-one participating countries. Australia’s ranking on creative thinking positions us just behind Singapore, South Korea, and Canada. Australia’s other PISA results also climbed: We now rank 10th for mathematics and 9th for both reading and science. Australian teachers are clearly doing great work and deserve recognition and praise for it.

It’s a good thing

While critics have argued that attempts to teach students to think creatively are misguided, suggesting that creative thinking cannot be taught, the PISA results indicate that thinking by learners can be cultivated and Australian teachers are doing that better than most others. This is a good thing! We want our students to both acquire knowledge AND think constructively with that knowledge.

The global data collected by PISA shows that teaching students to think creatively does not compromise their learning in more traditional domains, such as mathematics, science, and reading. There is no evidence of a problematic ‘opportunity cost’. Students who performed more strongly in creative thinking also tended to perform better in mathematics, science, and reading. 

However, the PISA data also confirm that creative thinking is not just a natural consequence of acquiring domain-specific knowledge. The correlation between more traditional measures of academic achievement and creative thinking is not perfect. In the PISA data, the intercorrelations between performance in mathematics, science, and reading (irrespective of creative thinking) were stronger than the respective correlations between each of these domains and creative thinking. One country (Portugal) performed higher than average in creative thinking but only average in the other three domains. Other countries (China and Czechia) performed above average in mathematics, science, and reading but at or below average in creative thinking. 

It isn’t surprising

Plainly, creative thinking is not innate and immutable; it is learnable and the experiences that teachers facilitate matter. So, it is not surprising that Australia has ranked highly. My colleagues and I surveyed hundreds of primary and secondary teachers across Australia. We found Australian teachers appreciate the importance of teaching students to think. They routinely and skilfully invite and facilitate creative thinking as they teach the broader curriculum. 

Our research focused on both critical and creative thinking, but given that PISA defines creative thinking as “the competence to engage productively in the generation, evaluation and improvement of original and diverse ideas”, it is fair to say that PISA’s test focuses on critical (evaluative) thinking as well as creative (generative) thinking. 

Like Australia, other high-ranking nations – Singapore, South Korea, and Canada – all include creative thinking as part of their official curricula. It is reasonable to assume that Australia’s inclusion of Critical and Creative Thinking in our national curriculum – as a ‘general capability’ – has something to do with Australia’s high ranking in the PISA Creative Thinking test, particularly given the other high performing nations also have a specific creative thinking curriculum. However, it is not because Australian teachers formally teach this aspect of the curriculum. 

All available evidence (including our own research and others’) suggests that Australian teachers do not feel confident in their knowledge of the ‘general capabilities’ in the Australian curriculum, including Critical and Creative Thinking, and do not teach the associated progression descriptors. That said, the mere existence of a component of our national curriculum called Critical and Creative Thinking arguably reflects and reinforces a widespread cultural belief in Australia (including among teachers) that critical and creative thinking skills are desirable and important for teachers to teach. 

The test

PISA’s creative thinking test covered four areas: written expression, visual expression, social problem solving, and scientific problem solving. Students were set tasks with no single correct response; for example, coming up with a story idea or multiple different approaches to address a challenge, or evaluating and improving an idea. Nearly 70% of Australian students achieved Level 4 or better, meaning that they could think of original and diverse ideas for different types of tasks, including simple imagination tasks and everyday problem-solving situations. 

While the results are informative and affirming of Australian teacher practice, the abilities PISA measured, in themselves, are of course limited. One obvious point, often (tediously) raised by those opposed to the notion of teaching critical and creative thinking, is that thinking in the absence of content knowledge is inherently constrained. Aiming to teach students to think critically and creatively in a knowledge vacuum or only in artificial contexts (like the tasks in the PISA test) would indeed be misguided. Practising the kinds of tasks in the PISA creative thinking test is not the reason why Australian students performed well on the test, and it should never be. Yes, of course, thinking is best taught by teaching and facilitating the use (and consolidation and extension) of knowledge. 

But there’s more

Additionally, there are discrete concepts and skills that students can be taught which meaningfully augment and add value to the individual mental abilities tested in PISA’s creative thinking test. These skills are applicable in different ways, depending on the subject area and grade level, and are not necessarily amenable to being measured on a standardised numeric ‘creative thinking’ scale. For example, teachers of different subjects and grade levels can teach different ways of creating ideas, including by combining ideas that have just been taught or by building on, modifying, or adapting ideas.

Students can be taught domain-specific ways to test ideas, to consider alternatives before making a decision, to effectively propose their ideas, or to write recommendations in a way that makes them more likely to be adopted. Students can also be taught to use learned information to think in questioning, accurate, and reasoned ways, to valuably complement creative idea generation. These are concepts and skills that some Australian teachers already teach – but they could be taught more explicitly and by more teachers. 

There are many valuable skills that teachers can teach – incidentally or formally – which are ‘observable’ (and thus assessable) but do not necessarily lend themselves to being ‘measured’. Learning self-regulation skills is no less potentially life-changing for a child because such skills are not typically scored by teachers. The same goes for the skills involved in productive thinking. Some things are worth teaching regardless of whether they are psychometrically scorable, and regardless of whether there is an international ranking to compete for.

How good?

Coming fourth among 81 countries for our students’ ability to think creatively is good – really good. The fact that Australian teachers value and are actively cultivating these abilities in their classrooms is not a coincidence. No doubt, Australian teachers’ efforts are having a positive impact on students’ propensity to think creatively – and this is reflected in Australia’s impressive ranking. 

But the test on which this ranking is based is very limited. It does not capture all the critical and creative thinking skills that Australian teachers should and do teach to help students (a) learn knowledge more deeply and (b) use their knowledge in careful and constructive ways. Australian teachers are very capable of teaching these skills, but we cannot take this for granted. Discrete, observable, and applied critical and creative thinking skills (flexibly applicable in all subjects and grade levels) should be focal in teacher education and professional development in this area. 

Nice if the home country scores well

Any singular, measurable construct of creative thinking risks becoming a distraction in the context of schools and what schools are for. Australian teachers want to teach critical and creative thinking skills – and they want to learn how to do this more effectively. Initial teacher education and in-service professional learning programs have an important role to play in ensuring that classroom teachers feel confident to teach and assess the broad range of critical and creative thinking skills that enhance academic learning and bring rich personal and societal benefits. Measuring creativity as a psychological construct is interesting – and nice if your home country scores well – but it should not be the focus of schooling.  

Kylie Murphy is the Academic Program Director (Postgraduate) and a senior lecturer in Educational Psychology and Pedagogy at La Trobe University’s School of Education. Kylie is passionate about ITE that develops critically informed, classroom-ready educators. She is currently researching the alignment between ITE coursework and professional experience, and ways to support more inclusive and effective teaching of critical and creative thinking in schools. Follow her on Twitter @KylieMurphyEd or on LinkedIn. 

We can teach it so much better once we know what it is

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‘Critical’ and ‘creative’ are commonly used terms, but shared understandings of these terms are less frequent. Critical and creative thinking (CCT) refers to two broad types of thinking that manifest in different ways and draw upon different combinations of knowledge and skills depending on the context and purpose. This explains the many slightly differing definitions you will find attached to the terms if you go looking.  Boiled down, critical thinking means evaluating ideas (especially claims and arguments), tools, methods, or products in reasoned ways, while creative thinking means making mental connections between and generating new ideas, tools, methods, or products for an intended effect. They’re different types of thinking but go well together. We believe developing young people’s CCT is a key purpose of education – and that teachers should be taught to teach CCT in a ‘deliberately incidental’ way.

CCT is not just important for Australia to stay internationally competitive or because there is increasing demand for employees with CCT skills. Thinking creatively and critically makes our world, and the lives we live, better. CCT gives meaning to much of what students learn at school. The OECD attributes such importance to CCT that it is introducing a standardised assessment of CCT this year. And of course, ACARA sees its importance, too; CCT is one of the seven General Capabilities in the Australian Curriculum.

So, it was with interest that we noted the findings of a recently published study by Carter and Buchanan. The 185 NSW primary teachers they surveyed agreed that the General Capabilities in the Australian Curriculum (Version 8.4) – which include CCT – were important, but the teachers were not confident in their knowledge of these capabilities. Almost half of the teachers reported that they did not understand the General Capabilities. Most reported teaching the General Capabilities only occasionally or not at all; and of the 37 teachers who were interviewed in the study, only 2 said they taught General Capabilities explicitly. 

Of all the reported excerpts about how Carter and Buchanan’s interviewees said they taught the General Capabilities, several of the General Capabilities were referenced but there was not a single mention of teaching CCT. The teachers cited – understandably – that a lack of professional development was the impediment to their understanding of the General Capabilities. It is not surprising that teachers would struggle with CCT particularly, given questions about the adequacy of teacher education in relation to teaching CCT.

A lack of clarity about CCT is pervasive. The more you read in this area, whether it is the scholarly literature or the grey literature, the more you can be forgiven for wondering if there is any kind of thinking that CCT does not include! We see the lack of definitional clarity around CCT as a significant barrier to confident and effective CCT teaching – but not an obstacle that quality teacher education and professional development cannot help teachers to overcome.

We argue that helping teachers to develop a deep understanding of CCT (much deeper than we can cover in this post) is important because of what well-established educational psychology principles – drawing on cognitive, social, and behavioural psychology – tell us. Only when teachers deeply understand the conceptual structures of CCT will they be able to teach CCT effectively.

Higher-order skills such as CCT are not the product of natural maturation and social interactions, and can therefore be thought of as biologically secondary skills. Cognitive psychology tells us that biologically secondary knowledge and skills should be taught explicitly, in order for the learning to be efficient and effective. This means that to most effectively develop students’ CCT, teachers need to teach CCT deliberately. This involves drawing attention to, explaining, and illustrating the concepts and skills involved (e.g., for critical thinking these might include evaluate, reason, argument, analyse, evidence, logic, conclusion, or the term critical itself; for creative thinking these might include imagination, brainstorm, open-minded, flexible, method, adapt, concept map, synthesise, or the term creative itself). The particular concepts, skills, explanations, and demonstrations will, of course, depend on the learners’ development, prior learning, and interests, and the learning area (or domain) knowledge being drawn on.

Cognitive psychology also tells us that CCT skills are not ‘generic strategies’, learnable in a content vacuum; they require content knowledge. To teach CCT in a knowledge-based way, teachers need to have a particularly deep understanding of CCT – so they can recognise and harness as many opportunities as possible to teach CCT skills utilising the domain knowledge they are teaching. Only by doing this as often as possible, in as many different learning areas as possible, can teachers encourage learners to engage in CCT habitually and ‘generally’. CCT skills taught in isolated CCT focused programs – if new skills are learned at all – do not generalise.

Social and behavioural psychology has much to contribute to teachers’ ability to establish CCT as socially normative thinking practices. To encourage children (and the adults they become) to engage in CCT in the various situations where it’s desirable to do so, teachers should frequently and explicitly model CCT skills, drawing attention to and labelling the specific skills they are using; provide plentiful and varied opportunities for learners to engage in the skills themselves, prompting and guiding where necessary; and try to ensure that the learners feel good (natural positive reinforcement) when they engage in those skills.

By taking a developmentally appropriate cognitive, social, and behavioural approach to teaching CCT – a ‘deliberately incidental’ approach – teachers can teach students not only what it means to think creatively and critically, but also that these are expected and valued ways of thinking. However, if teachers don’t have a deep understanding of what CCT is, they can’t fully harness the power of educational psychology principles to maximise the development of their students’ CCT. We believe that improved teacher education and professional development is needed to help many teachers feel confident enough to teach CCT in knowledge-based, explicit, and socially normalising ways.

We hope that any introduction of standardised testing of CCT skills encourages a more widespread focus on knowledge-based, explicit teaching of CCT. The OECD’s assertion that the “PISA assessment will examine students’ capacities to generate diverse and original ideas, and to evaluate and improve ideas, across a range of contexts” gives us some hope. Whether or not standardised testing of CCT is introduced in Australia, we hope all Australian teachers will get the support they need to develop a deep understanding of CCT and ‘deliberately incidental’ CCT pedagogies.

Overall, we hope that, in the future, all teachers will feel well prepared to teach CCT in a way that contributes to a society in which thinking creatively and critically in all domains of life is the wonderful norm.

From left to right: Kylie Murphy is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Psychology and Pedagogy at La Trobe University’s School of Education. Her background includes secondary teaching in science, psychology, and relationships education, and university teaching in research literacy, critical evidence-based practice, and pragmatic research methodology. Kylie is passionate about critically-informed teaching, including finding ways to support more inclusive and effective teaching of CCT. Follow her on Twitter @KylieMurphyEd or on LinkedIn. Steve Murphy is the Director of Professional Practice & School Partnerships at La Trobe University’s School of Education. He has extensive experience as a STEM educator and educational leader in schools. He researches rural education, with a particular focus on STEM education in rural schools and preparing teachers to work in rural communities. Follow Steve on LinkedIn or on Twitter @MurphyRuralEd. Nathaniel Swain is a teacher, instructional coach, and researcher with expertise in language, literacy, instructional practices, and cognitive science. He founded the national community of teachers and registered charity called Think Forward Educators, and produces a regular blog for teachers known as the Cognitorium. Nathaniel currently teaches Foundation at Brandon Park Primary, where he is also a Science of Learning Specialist. He is excited to be joining La Trobe University’s School of Education as a Senior Lecturer in January 2023. Follow him on LinkedIn or on Twitter@NathanielRSwain.