No creativity without knowledge, curiosity and critical thinking

With which tasks and how can creativity be measured?

- Creativity is a cognitive competence that is highly domain-dependent, which is why early measurements distinguished between textual and visual creativity. One can be good at one and not good at the other. So there is no such thing as being universally creative, it is domain specific. That's why the OECD also measured creativity in four areas: creative writing, visual creativity, social problem-solving creativity and scientific creativity.

The OECD has measured creativity in four areas.

The students were given tasks corresponding to the domain, for example, in the case of social problem solving, the task was to see how they could make the library more usable for disabled people.The main thing they look at is how well the person can give multiple answers and how original these answers are considered to be. Multiple answers really do need to be different, so if someone answers that they need to hire more people to help at the library, and then they answer that they need to ask someone to take the book there, those are not two different answers, because they both involve similar demands on human resources. Or if you have to give a title to a book that has a big tree at the beginning, then the person who answers that it's a giant tree, a giant pine, a giant nature, then these are similar answers and not original.

Originality was looked at by testing in mock trials what the population was most likely to answer, and separating original and non-original answers accordingly. For example, if most children suggest removing barriers, this is a relevant response, but not an original response. There was a question about how the existing ramp could be better used, and this had some original answers, such as a mat to help with braking or books could be placed next to the ramp.

So the OECD's PISA measure asked questions in three ways in these four areas, looking at how well they could give different answers, how relevant and original they were, how well they could develop an existing idea. The latter is important because it also requires them to be able to take an existing situation and move on from there. Complex coding allowed a total of 60 points to be scored in the four areas.

Hungary's performance in this area? What role does family background play in this?

Hungary's results are similar to the PISA results in other areas, we are slightly below average and one of the biggest influences is the socio-cultural background of the student. In other words, schools are not really able to mitigate the social differences, which is a problem because there is a serious loss of human resource potential. The countries that have done well on the creativity test - and not necessarily those that have done well in maths or reading comprehension, see China - are those that have been working for a decade to introduce creativity development into curricula and schools, like Australia or Singapore. Those countries where creativity is not the focus, only excellence in existing fields, have not done well.



How is creativity related to critical thinking?

Creativity is closely related to critical thinking, because a creative process can only start when someone becomes aware that something is not working or could be done better. Therefore, problem sensitivity is the basis for starting a creative process. This kind of creative dissatisfaction is one of its driving forces, and the other is the relentless curiosity and intrinsic motivation that helps to persevere. And what is also very important is the deep knowledge of the field, so creativity without knowledge does not exist, but it is also true that you have to be able to go beyond your traditional knowledge. Therefore, although we need knowledge, if we overload students with too much knowledge without allowing them to process it and perhaps actively participate in their own learning and even question things and move on, then we are working against creativity.



How does this result differ from the 2015 collaborative problem solving result, where girls also scored higher?



At the time, OECD PISA measured individual and collaborative problem solving, which was already a kind of interactive, but not yet so open-ended, problem solving in a digital environment. Boys did better in individual problem solving and girls in collaborative problem solving. So here we see the same thing as in creativity, that girls performed better in all participating countries, controlling for all other factors.



Teamwork is rated higher by boys, but what is the role of sensitivity to relationships?



What's interesting is that girls scored higher in collaborative problem solving in 2015, but not because they like working in teams better. Boys are more likely to like being in a team, but their motivation in this is mostly to increase efficiency, i.e. to achieve better results in a team, possibly to beat others. Girls, on the other hand, value relationships in teamwork, which can be seen as intrinsic motivation rather than efficiency gains, which is more of an extrinsic motivation. This kind of communal well-being seems to be good for freedom of thought, while competition encourages participants to stay in the familiar but to perform at their best.



Experts say creativity can be developed in education. What are some obvious ways to do this?



Basically, you have to move the mind of the teacher/student from fixed thinking to evolving thinking, which means believing that they can be creative, that they can evolve, not thinking that things are immutable. There is a need to move away from the traditional classroom culture towards a well-functioning classroom culture, where the learner is active, is the protagonist of their own learning, and therefore the teacher is a facilitator, not a dictator. Multiple solutions are acceptable and should be worked out by the learner, not memorised from one set of ready-made answers. Let's face it, the combination of a crowded curriculum and underpaid teachers reinforces the latter.

By the way, we've just launched a new website for our " the secret of good education" short films, which take a light-hearted look at the serious issues of good education.

Sipos Júlia