A. Kadir Bahar

Wisdom has long occupied an important place in psychological and philosophical thought as a marker of mature human development. In contemporary empirical scholarship, it is generally understood as ...

This study extends prior research with younger children by examining the development of general creativity and creative problem solving in science among upper elementary students in Grades 3 through 6. Participants were 283 students in inclusive classrooms in a public elementary school in New South Wales, Australia, where teachers implemented the Real Engagement in Active Problem Solving approach, a talent development model that engages students in identifying and solving real-world problems through alternating divergent/productive and convergent/evaluative thinking. Using a pretest–posttest repeated-measures design, students completed the Test of Creative Thinking–Drawing Production and the Test of Creative Problem Solving in Science. Three-level linear mixed-effects models were used to examine changes over time across grades. Results showed significant growth in general creativity across grade levels. Creative problem solving in science also improved overall, with significant gains in Grades 3, 4, and 5, although Grade 6 showed a small non-significant decline. Growth was strongest for fluency and flexibility, whereas originality and elaboration showed more modest change. Among the component steps, identifying problems demonstrated the strongest growth. Findings suggest that creativity and creative problem solving can be cultivated in inclusive classrooms when talent development principles are embedded in the regular curriculum.

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which criterion-referenced originality scores are related to scores generated through alternative measures of originality (i.e., sample-based scoring and expert-referenced scoring) in mathematical problem-solving tasks. Drawing on data from 520 students enrolled in a public elementary school situated in a culturally diverse metropolitan area of New South Wales, Australia, the criterion-referenced approach was compared psychometrically with sample-based and expert-referenced scoring approaches. Another focus for analysis was on how each scoring system describes the relationship between originality and fluency. The results are important for ongoing debates about creativity and educational assessment, highlighting the implications of scoring methods for the interpretation of students’ original mathematical thinking. The study contributes important information for the design of fair and meaningful assessment and scoring practices.

Mathematical creativity (MC) plays an important role in mathematics and education; however, its conceptualization and assessment remain inconsistent across empirical studies. This systematic review examined how MC has been defined, conceptualized, and assessed across 80 empirical studies involving K-12 populations. Through thematic analysis, the study identified three definition types: divergent thinking, problem-solving, and problem-posing, as well as affective–motivational emphasis. We organized theoretical frameworks into three categories: domain-general, domain-specific, and multidimensional frameworks. Results showed that the most common definitions emphasized divergent thinking components while fewer studies highlighted affective and dispositional factors. Domain-specific frameworks were the most frequently used, followed by multidimensional frameworks. Regarding assessment, studies predominantly relied on divergent-thinking scoring. Most assessments used criterion-referenced rubrics with norm-based comparisons. They were delivered mainly in paper-pencil format. Tasks were typically open-ended multiple-solution problems with fewer studies using self-reports or observational methods. Overall, the field prioritizes product-based scoring (e.g., fluency, flexibility, originality) over evidence about students’ solution processes (e.g., reasoning, metacognitive monitoring). To improve cross-context comparability, future work should standardize and transparently report age, grade, and country coding and scoring practices.

In this paper, we proposed and discussed the use of a standards-based criterion-referenced assessment (CRA) approach in scoring originality with a specific focus on teaching for creativity. Throughout the paper, we supported our perspective with examples, particularly addressing evidence-based educational models that were designed to develop students’ ability to solve real problems in creative and effective ways in different domains. Given the importance of using proper assessment methods in fostering and monitoring learning, we believe such an approach might have significant implications for teaching practices and future research.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the influence of social context and morality on malevolent creativity. The sample consisted of 217 (176 female, 41 male) undergraduate and graduate students in a Southeastern public research university in the U.S. Six different open-ended socially oriented problems (three Divergent Thinking (DT) Social Games and three DT Realistic Presented Problems tasks) were used to explore the way malevolent creativity differs in two sets of problem tasks. Realistic Presented Problems are constructed differently from Social Games tasks in such a way that they include unfair, disturbing, and threatening contextual factors, while Social Games problems have more neutral and everyday problem scenarios. Participants also completed the Self-Report of Creative Traits and morality measures. The findings of the study indicated that fluency and originality were related significantly to malevolent creativity. Further, social contexts in DT tasks led to a significant difference in malevolent creativity. Participants generated significantly more malevolent creative responses in Realistic Presented Problems than in Social Games tasks. The results also revealed that morality was significantly correlated with creative personality, but the results provided no evidence that morality moderates the relation between creativity indices and malevolent creativity.

There is a well-established historical background of research on mathematical giftedness that can be traced back to the early 1900s. An overarching purpose of this research was to review and explore the existing research and its evolution since its emergence in educational and psychological studies. Thus, we examined the past, present, and future of research on mathematical giftedness using a bibliometric analysis. Our findings provided extensive insights into the intellectual structure of the extant literature on mathematical giftedness, including the leading journals, articles, countries, authors, institutions, and networks among researchers as well as key research topics that were investigated in the literature. Perhaps one of the most striking findings of this study was about the productivity in the field over the years as the bibliometric analysis indicated a decline in the number of publications that were published in the last several years. We discussed possible factors behind the recession in research investigations on mathematical giftedness and provided significant implications of the findings to inform future research.