PISA 2022 Results (Volume III)

7. From data to insights

Abstract

Results from the PISA Creative Thinking assessment offer a wealth of data points that can highlight aspects of education policy and pedagogy that merit further investigation and reflection. This chapter provides a summary and interpretation of the key messages highlighted throughout this volume to suggest how policies and practices might be improved to support the needs of students in creative thinking.

For Australia*, Canada*, Denmark*, Hong Kong (China)*, Ireland*, Jamaica*, Latvia*, the Netherlands*, New Zealand*, Panama*, and the United Kingdom* caution is advised when interpreting estimates because one or more PISA sampling standards were not met (see Reader’s Guide, Annexes A2 and A4).

For Albania** and the Dominican Republic**, caution is required when comparing estimates with other countries/economies as a strong linkage to the international PISA creative thinking scale could not be established (see Reader's Guide and Annex A4).

For the first time, it its 2022 cycle, PISA measured creative thinking with the aim of providing internationally comparable data on students’ competencies that have clear implications for education policies and pedagogies. Today’s students need to be able to think creatively and adapt to new ways of thinking and doing, as our societies increasingly depend on innovation and knowledge creation to address emerging challenges.

The PISA 2022 results showed that students in Singapore scored significantly higher than all other participating countries/economies in creative thinking (with a mean score of 41 points out of a total 60 points). Students in 11 other countries – in descending order, Korea, Canada*, Australia*, New Zealand*, Estonia, Finland, Denmark*, Latvia*, Belgium, Poland and Portugal – also performed above the OECD average in creative thinking (33 points).

In general, high-performing systems in creative thinking were amongst those that also performed above the OECD average in the PISA core domain assessments of mathematics, reading and science (with the exception of Portugal, which performed around the OECD average in all three core domains, and Belgium and Estonia which performed around the OECD average in reading). However, not all high-performing systems in the PISA core domains were amongst those high-performing systems in creative thinking: students in Czechia, Hong Kong (China)*, Macao (China) and Chinese Taipei performed well above the OECD average in mathematics, reading and science, but performed around or below the OECD average in creative thinking.

Beyond mean scores and rankings, results from PISA 2022 offer policymakers a wealth of data points that can highlight aspects of education that merit further investigation – and that might point to productive changes in policies and practices, or the design and implementation of new ones, for improving student outcomes in creative thinking.

Strong performance in creative thinking and academic subjects is both possible and complementary

Academic excellence is not a pre-requisite for excellence in creative thinking…

PISA results show that it is possible to be proficient in both creative thinking and in the core subject areas of mathematics, reading and science. Student performance in creative thinking correlates positively to performance in the PISA core domain assessments (correlation of between 0.66 and 0.67). However, only a relatively small proportion of the total variation in student performance in creative thinking can be associated uniquely with performance in mathematics (28% on average across the OECD).

PISA data also show that, amongst students who performed at the upper and lower ends of the mathematics scale, there was less variability in their creative thinking performance: around half of all students in the top quintile of performance in mathematics (and over half of all students in the bottom quintile) were also in the top quintile of performance in creative thinking (or bottom quintile, respectively). In other words, students who performed at the highest and lowest levels in creative thinking tended to also perform at the highest and lowest levels in mathematics. However, only around 28% students within the middle (i.e. third) quintile of creative thinking performed within the same quintile in mathematics, with similar proportions of students also performing within the second (23%) or fourth quintiles (24%), respectively. Moreover, around 14% of students within the middle quintile of mathematics performed within the upper quintile of creative thinking.

These data imply that performance in creative thinking and academic performance are complementary to some extent – particularly at the upper and lower ends of the proficiency scales – but that academic excellence is not a pre-requisite for excellence in creative thinking. Indeed, PISA data show that it is possible for many students to be strong creative thinkers, not just those who perform at the highest levels in mathematics, reading and science.

…but students need a baseline level of skills in core subject areas to excel in creative thinking

While students of all levels of proficiency in the PISA core domains have the potential to excel in creative thinking, PISA data showed that this was especially so for students who reached at least a baseline level of proficiency in mathematics, reading and science. This makes sense: without a minimum level of knowledge and experience in a given context, it would be very hard to generate appropriate, different or original ideas. Amongst the 14 lowest-performing countries and economies in creative thinking, 12 had over 50% of students who performed below a baseline level of proficiency in mathematics, reading and science.1

Some countries and economies performed better in creative thinking than expected

After accounting for students’ mathematics and reading performance, some education systems showed an overall relative strength in creative thinking

As summarised in Chapter 2 of this report, performance in creative thinking was positively correlated with performance in the PISA core domains. Yet some countries and economies performed relatively better than expected in creative thinking, given their students’ mathematics and reading performance. These included both high-performing and lower-performing countries, but students in Australia*, Canada*, Finland, and New Zealand* demonstrated a large overall relative strength in creative thinking together with high mean performance. On average, students in these countries scored around 3 or more points higher in creative thinking (a large performance difference) after accounting for both their mathematics performance and reading performance, respectively.

Other regional clusters of countries also demonstrated a moderate overall strength in creative thinking after accounting for student performance in mathematics and reading (e.g. Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico and Uruguay in Latin America; Belgium, Denmark*, Estonia, Germany, Latvia*, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Spain in Europe; Israel, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East; and Singapore and Korea in East Asia).

Within countries/economies, students demonstrated different strengths and weaknesses in creative thinking

The PISA 2022 Creative Thinking test assessed students' capacity to generate, evaluate and improve original and diverse ideas in four distinct domains contexts: written expression, visual expression, scientific problem solving and social problem solving. While students in high-performing systems tended to excel in all types of tasks, several countries tended to perform better in some domains than others. For example, students in Czechia, Italy, Lithuania and Iceland demonstrated the greatest relative performance in written expression items, achieving full credit in around 10 percentage point more items than they did across other task contexts. The country with the weakest relative performance in the written domain was Malaysia (with a negative difference of over 8 percentage points).

Creating original or diverse ideas in scientific problem-solving contexts was relatively hard in most countries and economies. However, after accounting for the relative difficulty of the tasks, students in Korea, Albania**, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands* demonstrated a moderate relative strength in this domain context, scoring full credit in over 5 percentage point more items in scientific problem solving than other domains. Conversely, students in Latvia* and Slovenia showed the weakest relative performance in scientific problem-solving tasks across countries and economies, achieving full credit in around 8 percentage point fewer items in this domain compared to their performance on all other items, after accounting for the difficulty of items.

Some high-performing systems adopt whole-system approaches to embedding, supporting and measuring creative thinking

In several high-performing systems in creative thinking, or those with a notable relative strength overall in creative thinking, system-level reforms of curricula and assessment practices over the past decades have focused on furthering the importance of creative thinking in education. Promoting the development of creative thinking consistently and effectively in education requires educators, curriculum developers and assessment designers to have a shared understanding of what creative thinking is, how students can develop creative thinking skills, and how their progress can be measured. Redefining curricula and learning progressions explicitly with these goals in mind can facilitate the development of creativity-supportive teaching and learning.

More concretely, high-performing systems in creative thinking have often implemented at least two of the following four approaches to supporting the development of creativity and creative thinking in education:

1. Embedding creativity and/or creative thinking throughout the curriculum. While creative thinking is increasingly included in global curricula, as either a transversal competency or within specific subject areas (OECD, 2023[1]), few jurisdictions provide strategic leadership and clear guidance in practice to accompany curriculum reforms. Indeed, in many cases, references to creative thinking are superficial at best with little guidance provided as to how or why these skills should be taught. Countries like Denmark, Korea, Singapore, Canada and Australia have all integrated creative thinking as cornerstones of their educational reforms in recent years, articulating its importance in education and accompanied by high-level strategic documents and practical resources for educators (see below).

2. Supporting educators to recognise, develop and evaluate creative thinking by defining learning progressions or rubrics. Some jurisdictions have developed detailed guidance and learning progressions to help educators understand the types of outcomes that ought to be expected of students and the learning trajectories they typically follow to reach them. Providing clarity to educators on expected learning outcomes and progressions is especially important in the context of complex competencies, like creative thinking, that can manifest in different ways across contexts and that include both thought processes and behaviours. In Australia, for example, the Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) have developed a “critical and creative thinking learning continuum” to map progression in creative thinking according to different levels of proficiency; the continuum supports the 2010 curriculum reform which included “critical and creative thinking” as one of seven general capabilities that intersect with the eight subjects or learning areas. Similarly in some provinces in Canada, creative thinking performance standards have been mapped across the content of subject areas in the curriculum, across grades and age groups (see Box III.2.2 for more information and examples of resources).

3. Creating opportunities in the curriculum for students to engage in creative and/or interdisciplinary work. Another challenge identified by policymakers is how to balance integrating creative thinking into education given already overcrowded curricula (OECD, 2023[1]). Some countries have attempted to reduce the number of compulsory subjects within the curriculum areas (e.g. Korea), and/or offer more practical or experiential courses encouraging creative work in primary or secondary education as elective subjects or as part of the core curriculum (e.g. Korea, Denmark). Another strategy to optimise instruction time and content coverage is to introduce dedicated interdisciplinary modules. When implemented successfully, interdisciplinary learning allows pedagogies to be articulated around more contextualised and authentic problems and enables students to engage in more active and meaningful learning experiences. Examples of this approach include in Finland, where the national curriculum requires schools to teach at least one inter-disciplinary module a year that makes connections across disciplines, and in Singapore, where students in secondary education can choose to undertake interdisciplinary modules that allow students to develop projects in authentic settings across society and industry. In New Zealand, the “Creatives in Schools” initiative provided funding to schools to partner with creative practitioners and to engage students in an extended project aiming to develop their creative thinking and collaboration skills. Other strategies adopted by some countries include carving out dedicated “exam-free” periods within the curriculum to allow more flexible moments in which students and teachers can engage in creative and interdisciplinary projects without the pressure of meeting standardised assessment targets.

4. Encouraging accountability through monitoring and evaluation. Very few systems assess creative thinking in a standardised way as part of efforts to monitor and evaluate student learning outcomes in this area. Indeed, one of the main challenges of developing creative thinking in education identified by PISA participating countries was the lack of assessment focus on creativity (OECD, 2023[1]). One exception is in the state of Victoria in Australia: since 2016, the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority has administered Critical and Creative Thinking (CCT) assessments annually to a sample of schools. The CCT assessments support its commitment to measure its Education State Targets, one of which aims for 25% or more Year-10 students to have developed excellent critical and creative thinking skills. Increased evaluation and assessment efforts that explicitly focus on creative thinking reinforce to educators and students that these are important skills to develop and that creative ideas in education are valued.

Significant gender gaps in creative thinking exist in most countries and economies

Girls outperform boys in creative thinking in all tasks…

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 (see Figure III.3.4 in Chapter 3). On average across OECD countries, girls scored nearly 3 points higher than boys – a large performance difference – and in Jordan, Finland, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Jamaica*, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar (in descending order), girls scored 5 or more points higher than boys. The data also show that boys were less likely to be high achieves in creative thinking (i.e. score within the 75^th percentile within their country/economy) than girls.

These performance differences cannot be explained solely by girls’ performance in the PISA core domains. After accounting for mathematics and reading performance, girls still largely outperformed boys in creative thinking: in all countries and economies, girls performed relatively better than boys with similar mathematics performance, and their performance advantage remained significant in around half of all countries and economies after accounting for reading performance (Table III.B1.3.6).2 Despite similar gender differences observed overall in creative thinking and reading performance across countries and economies, girls scored 1 point higher in creative thinking than boys with similar reading scores on average across the OECD (a small but significant difference in performance); and in Macao (China), Saudi Arabia, Finland, Jamaica*, Hong Kong (China)* and Jordan (in descending order), girls scored over 2 points higher than boys in creative thinking after accounting for reading performance (a moderate performance difference).

…especially creative expression tasks and tasks building on others’ ideas.

Performance differences between boys and girls also persisted across all types of tasks, including by different domain contexts and ideation processes (see Chapter 4). In nearly all countries and economies, girls performed equally to or outperformed boys in all task groupings. The only exception was observed in Mexico, where boys were more successful in scientific problem-solving tasks than girls. In contrast, in Finland – the country with the largest observed gender gap in performance overall – girls achieved full credit in at least 10 percentage point more items than boys in nearly every subset of items.

Girls demonstrated the biggest advantage in success in written expression tasks, particularly in Finland, Iceland, Korea and Qatar (over 10 percentage points, rising to 17 percentage points in Finland) (Figure III.4.12). Even when comparing students with similar mathematics and reading scores, gender differences remained the largest in written expression tasks on average across OECD countries (over 5 percentage points) (Table III.B1.4.8). Girls also outperformed boys in most countries and economies in visual expression tasks, with the largest gender gap observed in Israel (14 percentage points), Latvia*, Estonia, Hong Kong (China)*, Iceland and Romania (over 10 percentage points). In terms of ideation processes, girls had the greatest overall success compared to boys across countries and economies in tasks requiring them to build on others’ ideas, and differences generally remained significant for performance in these tasks after accounting for the performance of boys and girls in mathematics and reading. In Finland, girls achieved full credit in over 10 percentage point more items corresponding to this ideation process after accounting for their performance in mathematics and reading, and in Jamaica*, Latvia* and Estonia, performance differences were around 9 percentage points after accounting.

These results on gender differences in performance show that boys need support to fully demonstrate their creative potential. While research on gender differences in creative thinking have tended to show that girls perform better than boys on certain types of creative thinking tasks (see Box III.4.5), the consistency with which gender differences are observed across countries and economies in PISA 2022, and across different types of tasks, points towards a need to address boys’ disadvantage in this area – perhaps, in part, by supporting their attitudes and beliefs towards creativity and their engagement with more open-ended learning and problem-solving tasks.

Girls also have more positive beliefs about creativity, in general…

As well as outperforming boys on the PISA creative thinking test, PISA data show that girls often reported more positive beliefs about the nature of creativity or higher levels of attitudes and socio-emotional skills associated with creative thinking. On average across the OECD, more girls than boys reported believing that creativity extends beyond the arts and that it is possible to be creative in nearly any subject. Students who reported having such beliefs scored higher on the PISA creative thinking test than their peers by over 3 points on average across the OECD (a large difference in performance), even after accounting for gender and students’ and schools’ socio-economic profiles (Figure III.5.3).

…and in their own capacity to engage in creative work…

When it comes to gender differences in students’ beliefs about their own capacity to engage in creative work, PISA results are more nuanced. Boys and girls equally reported believing that their creativity is something about themselves that they cannot change much, but when it comes to engaging in specific creative tasks, girls reported slightly higher levels of creative self-efficacy than boys. This finding is more notable given that, across OECD countries and economies, boys reported higher levels of general self-efficacy than girls and much lower levels of fear of failure (OECD, 2023[2]). However, in several Asian countries, including Korea, Hong Kong (China)*, Macao (China), Chinese Taipei and Indonesia (in descending order), as well as in Brazil, boys reported higher levels of creative self-efficacy (Table III.B1.5.8). Overall, after accounting for gender and student and school socio-economic profiles, students who reported higher levels of creative self-efficacy performed better in creative thinking on average than those who did not.

…as well as some other attitudes and socio-emotional skills associated with creative thinking.

Girls also reported significantly higher levels of some attitudes that support creative thinking, including openness to art and experience (+0.46 index-unit higher than boys, on average across the OECD – a large difference) and imagination and adventurousness (+0.29 index-unit higher than boys, on average across the OECD). After accounting for student and school characteristics, a one-unit increase in the indices of imagination and adventurousness and openness to art and experience were associated with higher scores in creative thinking (between 1.5 and 1 point, on average).

In nearly all participating countries and economies, girls also reported a higher propensity for perspective-taking than boys, with several items strongly associated with creative thinking performance (Figure III.5.11, Tables III.B1.5.37 and III.B1.5.39). However, gender differences across other indices with similarly strong associations with creative thinking performance were either mixed (openness to intellect, curiosity) or in favour of boys (persistence), suggesting that gender differences in attitudes and beliefs associated with creative thinking may only explain a small proportion of the observed differences in performance between boys and girls.

Socio-economic divides in performance persist in creative thinking

All students should be provided with opportunities to fulfil their potential, express their ideas, and think outside of the box. Yet PISA 2022 results show that socio-economically advantaged students outperformed their disadvantaged peers in creative thinking, as they did in the core PISA assessment domains. Across OECD countries, the difference in creative thinking performance between students in the top quarter of the PISA index of socio-economic and cultural status (ESCS) – or advantaged students – and students in the bottom quarter of the index – disadvantaged students – is very large at 9.5 score points, which represents a difference of over one proficiency level in creative thinking. In Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Hungary, Israel, Romania, the Slovak Republic and Peru, the difference in performance between advantaged and disadvantaged students is well over 12 score points.

The strength of the association between socio-economic status and performance, however, is weaker in creative thinking than it is in the PISA assessments of mathematics, reading and science, respectively, on average across the OECD (Figure III.3.10 and Table III.B1.3.8).3

In some countries, disadvantaged students perform well in creative thinking…

PISA 2022 results show that low socio-economic status need not be a determinant of poor academic outcomes, including students’ capacity to think creatively. Several countries and economies combined high-performance in creative thinking with relatively small differences in performance between advantaged and disadvantaged students (with respect to the OECD average): for example, the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students in Latvia* was around 6 points, and around 7 points in Australia*, Canada*, Denmark*, Estonia and Korea.

PISA data also show that in some countries and economies, students from disadvantaged backgrounds even excelled in creative thinking. Indeed, in some high-performing countries like Australia*, Estonia and Latvia*, the mean performance of disadvantaged students is around the OECD average (33 points), and well exceeds that in Singapore (36 points), Korea (35 points) and Canada* (34 points).

Another way to examine the success of disadvantaged students in creative thinking across countries and economies is to consider academic resilience. Academically resilient students are defined in PISA as students who are in the bottom quarter of the PISA index of economic, social and cultural status (ESCS) in their own country/economy (i.e. disadvantaged students) and who scored in the top quarter in that country/economy (i.e. high achievers), thus attaining educational excellence in comparison with students in their own country. The share of academically resilient students in creative thinking varies across countries and economies, from as much as 20% of disadvantaged students in Uzbekistan to below 8% of disadvantaged students in Romania, Bulgaria and Peru (Figure III.3.11). In these latter countries, few disadvantaged students are high achievers in creative thinking. Amongst the highest-performing systems overall, Korea (16.7%), Canada* (16.1%), Estonia (15.0%) and Latvia* (14.6%) have the largest share of resilient students in creative thinking, and Singapore (9.9%) and New Zealand* (9.0%) have the smallest shares. In New Zealand*, this low share of resilient students is combined with a relatively large gap in the performance of advantaged and disadvantaged students (11.7 score points compared to 9.5 score points in Singapore, for example, or 6 points in Latvia*).

…but poor literacy skills may largely prevent disadvantaged students from being able to fully reach their potential in creative thinking.

In general, the association between socio-economic status and performance in creative thinking likely reflects the range of economic and cultural factors, experiences and mechanisms known to affect student achievement overall. After accounting for students’ mathematics and reading performance, differences in the performance of advantaged and disadvantaged students are much smaller across all countries/economies – and they even become statistically non-significant in 14 countries/economies (Table III.B1.3.7).

Examining performance differences across types of tasks provides further insights into potential sources of difficulty for disadvantaged students and the relationship between basic literacies and creative thinking performance. In general, large performance differences are observed between advantaged and disadvantaged students across all task groupings (Table III.B1.4.9 and Table III.B1.4.10). On average across the OECD, advantaged students have the largest advantage in “generate diverse ideas” tasks (a difference of around 18 percentage points) and the smallest in “evaluate and improve ideas” tasks (13.5 percentage points) (Figure III.4.14). Disadvantaged students thus appeared less successful in more open tasks, compared to those where an idea is already provided; it may be that such constraints weaken some of the performance differences otherwise observed between advantaged and disadvantaged students in tasks that are more open and, perhaps, influenced by advantaged students’ relatively larger resources of prior knowledge and experience (see Box III.4.6).

Across domain contexts, the association between socio-economic advantage and creative thinking performance is strongest in written expression tasks and weakest in visual expression tasks (where writing and comprehension skills were less likely to influence task performance) (Table III.B1.4.10). In around one-third of all countries/economies, advantaged students were successful in over 20 percentage point more items in the written expression domain than disadvantaged students. This significant advantage may be influenced by the likely greater cultural wealth of advantaged students (e.g. more books at home) as well as their overall stronger proficiency in basic literacies. After accounting for mathematics and reading performance, differences in success between advantaged and disadvantaged students remained significant but much smaller (around 3 percentage points), and largely of a similar magnitude across the different domain contexts (Table III.B1.4.12).

Indeed, item-level analyses of performance on specific tasks showed that disadvantaged students performed notably worse than their advantaged peers in tasks requiring extended written responses, even on items within the same unit (and therefore domain context) (see Box III.4.6 in Chapter 4). In contrast, performance gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students in the visual expression domain were relatively small and akin to those observed in items requiring short, written responses in other domains. In fact, in six countries and economies (Croatia, Jordan, Macao (China), Malta, the Palestinian Authority and Uzbekistan), there were no significant differences observed in the performance of advantaged and disadvantaged students in visual expression tasks, on average. These domain- and item-level patterns in success suggest that disadvantaged students may struggle to fully express their creative potential when tasks demand more than simple written responses (e.g. a few words). Addressing students’ basic writing skills could therefore help close some of the observed gap in creative thinking performance across countries and economies between advantaged and disadvantaged students.

However, socio-economic differences in performance persist across many countries and economies even after accounting for mathematics and reading performance

It should be noted that differences in mathematics and reading performance do not account for all of the observed differences in performance by socio-economic profile – even after accounting for these variables, disadvantaged students still scored lower in creative thinking than advantaged students on average. Moreover, in some countries and economies, the performance gap between disadvantaged students and advantaged students remains large even after accounting for academic performance: for example, in Bulgaria, disadvantaged students’ scored nearly 4 points lower than advantaged students with similar mathematics and reading performance (i.e. after accounting), and in New Zealand* and Peru, this performance gap is over 4.5 score points.

Creative thinking requires engaged students

Students around the world are curious and motivated learners…

In general, creative work requires a set of internal resources including domain readiness, cognitive skills and some level of task engagement and goal orientation (OECD, 2022[3]). In other words, individuals are unlikely to engage in creative work unless motivated to invest some effort towards achieving their creative goals. Creative self-efficacy, openness to intellect and curiosity are thus important for supporting students to engage in creative work and are all associated with small but positive changes in creative thinking performance (a difference of around 1 point).

PISA data show that students across countries and economies reported largely positive attitudes towards learning and engaging in creative work in general. For example, across OECD countries, nearly 83% of students reported that they enjoy learning new things; in Brunei Darussalam, Costa Rica, Colombia, France, Mexico, Italy, Peru, Panama* and Portugal, over 90% of students agreed or strongly agreed with this statement (Table III.B1.5.11). Only in Slovenia did considerably fewer students report that they enjoyed learning new things (61%). Students’ reported enjoyment of learning new things was strongly associated with creative thinking performance on average across the OECD – after accounting for students’ and schools’ characteristics, these students scored nearly 4 points higher in creative thinking than those who did not.

Similarly, many students reported high levels of curiosity across OECD countries: around 77% of students on average reported that they are curious about many things and that they like to know how things work, while only 11% of students reported that they find learning new things to be boring. However, over 1 in 4 students in Morocco, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia said they found learning new things to be boring. General attitudes of curiosity were also strongly associated with better creative thinking performance, with students who reported being curious about many things and liking to know how things work scoring about 3 points higher in creative thinking than those who did not, on average across OECD countries.

…who are confident about being creative, in general,…

Most students also reported high levels of confidence in their ability to be creative in general (72.5% of students on average across the OECD), as well as to demonstrate creative thinking in everyday social problem-solving situations, such as coming up with many good ideas for helping people in need (71%, OECD average) or ideas for solving disagreements with people (70%, OECD average) (Figure III.5.6 and Table III.B1.5.7).

…but students in many countries/economies report that they do not find learning or engaging in creative work at school particularly enjoyable.

Despite high levels of curiosity and openness to intellect, in general, far fewer students reported such positive attitudes towards learning in the context of school. For example, while over 8 in 10 students across the OECD reported enjoying learning new things, only 1 in 2 students reported that they love learning new things in school. Students in some European countries in particular reported a lack of enjoyment of learning new things in school: in decreasing share of students, less than 40% of students in Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands* and Czechia agreed with this statement, with as few as 26% of students in Poland reporting agreement.

Similarly, students were less confident in their abilities to demonstrate creative thinking in specific school contexts compared to more general situations: on average across the OECD, 62% of students reported that they were confident that they could come up with creative ideas for school projects. In some countries and economies, including Brunei Darussalam, Czechia, Estonia, Hong Kong (China)*, Latvia*, Macao (China), Malaysia, Morocco, Poland, Chinese Taipei and Thailand, around 50% or fewer students reported that they could come up with creative ideas for school projects – perhaps reflecting limited opportunities and experience in engaging in creative work at school. Countries in which students reported the largest discrepancies between their confidence in being creative, in general, and in coming up with creative ideas for school projects, are Latvia* (around 25 percentage points), Thailand (23 percentage points), Czechia and Chinese Taipei (21 percentage points), and Poland (20 percentage points).

Boys and disadvantaged students, in particular, demonstrated higher levels of disengagement with the PISA 2022 creative thinking tasks

Part of the difference in creative thinking performance between girls and boys might be explained by different levels of engagement with the PISA test. In general, boys showed higher levels of task disengagement than girls, and this pattern was consistent across all three engagement indicators examined in Annex A8 (Tables III.A8.8 to III.A8.13). Significant gender gaps across engagement indicators were observed in many of the countries and economies that recorded large differences in the performance of girls and boys in creative thinking. For example, girls left significantly fewer items without a response than boys in the Palestinian Authority and Albania** (over 8 percentage points difference). Gender differences in engagement across different types of tasks also mirrored gender differences in engagement with the test overall, with boys showing the greatest disengagement with tasks in the written domain compared to girls.

Similarly, disadvantaged students exhibited more disengaged behaviours across all task groupings and across all three engagement indicators (Annex A8, Tables III.A8.14 to III.A8.19). While disengaged behaviours were generally similar across the task groupings for each measure, disadvantaged students showed slightly more disengaged behaviours in scientific problem-solving tasks – especially relative rapid responding behaviours and non-response behaviours. In some countries and economies, disadvantaged students recorded particularly high levels of disengaged behaviours with respect to their advantaged peers and compared to other countries. For example, large differences in non-response behaviours between disadvantaged and advantaged students were observed in North Macedonia (difference of 17 percentage points), Romania (15 percentage points), Bulgaria (14 percentage points), and the Slovak Republic and Israel (around 13 percentage points).

What students believe about their creative potential matters

Students who believe they can develop their creative skills performed better in creative thinking…

PISA data show that on average across OECD countries, around 1 in 2 students believe that their creativity is something about themselves that they cannot change much. Put differently, only 46% students on average hold a growth mindset on creativity– far fewer than those who hold a growth mindset on their own intelligence (57%, OECD average) (Table III.B1.5.4). These results imply that many students consider creativity to be akin to an innate talent that no education, training or experience can improve (i.e. fixed mindset). In Chinese Taipei, only 36% of all students hold a growth mindset on creativity, and in Kazakhstan, Georgia and Ireland*, less than 40% of all students.

This is a worrying finding in the context of developing creative thinking through education and practice. If creative thinking and creative work requires engaged learners, then students need to believe that they can develop these skills through practice – in the same way that they can improve their mathematics, reading or science literacy. PISA 2022 data show that holding a growth mindset on creativity has a positive association with creative thinking performance on average across the OECD, after accounting for student and school characteristics. In some countries this association is particularly strong, for example in Brazil (4 points), Peru and Saudi Arabia (3 points).

…but socio-economic divides also persist in student beliefs about creativity.

PISA data also show that socio-economically disadvantaged students were less likely to hold a growth mindset on creativity, on average across countries and economies. Differences in the proportion of advantaged and disadvantaged students who reported a growth mindset on creativity were particularly large in Brazil and Panama* (14 percentage points) and Peru (16 percentage points). In only two countries (Korea and Italy) were disadvantaged students more likely to report holding a growth mindset on creativity than their peers. Even larger differences between advantaged and disadvantaged students were observed when asked about their creative self-efficacy (i.e. their confidence in carrying out creative tasks) (Table III.B1.5.8 and III.B1.5.9). At the index level, advantaged students reported considerably higher levels of creative self-efficacy than disadvantaged students (+0.36 index-unit, on average across the OECD).

Schools and teachers can make a difference

Pedagogies encouraging creative thinking are associated with better student performance…

On average across OECD countries, between 60 and 70% of students reported that their teachers value their creativity, that they encourage them to come up with original answers, and that they are given a chance to express their ideas in school – with relatively higher proportions of students reporting such pedagogies in Latin American countries and lower proportions of students in European countries (Table III.B1.6.1). For example, in Austria, Czechia, Greece and Poland, less than half of all students reported that their teachers encourage them to come up with original and/or creative solutions on assignments.

Students who reported experiencing more pedagogies that encourage creative thinking demonstrated slightly stronger creative thinking proficiency than their peers, after accounting for students’ school and socio-economic profiles and students’ performance in mathematics and reading. This positive association was the strongest for students who believed that their teachers value students’ creativity more broadly and who reported that the activities they do in their classes help them think about new ways to solve problems (Table III.B1.6.4).

…especially in certain types of tasks…

Interesting patterns emerged when examining the relationship between the use of pedagogies encouraging creative thinking and students’ performance across different types of tasks. Students who reported that their teachers value their creativity were more likely to achieve full credit on items asking them to evaluate and improve others’ ideas (average odds ratio = 1.27) than to generate diverse ideas (1.21) or creative ideas (1.17) (Figure III.6.5). In other words, students whose teachers’ value their creativity were 27% more likely to suggest original ways to improve others’ ideas than students who felt their teachers did not value their creativity. This aligns with research suggesting that evaluating the appropriateness of ideas is a skill that is more easily amenable in an educational context than, for example, generating original ideas (Howard-Jones, 2002). Students who reported that their teachers valued their creativity were also more likely to perform relatively better on items in scientific problem-solving contexts (1.27) than on those in the visual expression domain (1.11), and they were more likely to achieve full credit than other students as the difficulty of items in the test increased.

Similar odds ratios were observed for students who reported that their teachers give them enough time to come up with creative solutions on assignments. In contrast, students who reported that they are given a chance to express their ideas at school did relatively better than others on items in the social problem-solving domain and in tasks that required generating diverse ideas.

…but more needs to be done to support teachers to develop students’ creative thinking in schools.

Across many PISA participating jurisdictions, policymakers reported that “developing students’ creativity” was formally integrated into initial teacher training in their country/economy (OECD, 2023[1]). However, findings from the OECD’s Teacher and Learning International Survey (TALIS) in 2018 showed significant variation between countries and economies on the extent to which teaching “cross-curricular skills” – of which creative thinking is just one of many – were included in initial teacher training, ranging from over 90% of teachers surveyed in Chile and the United Arab Emirates to less than 50% of teachers in Austria, Czechia, France and Slovenia (OECD, 2023[1]).

Even if included in initial teacher training, the extent to which developing students’ creativity is given importance likely varies substantially. More could be done across countries and economies to support teachers to implement practices encouraging students to engage in creative thinking, both as part of their professional training and education and as part of their everyday classroom tools and practices. For example, teachers might benefit from pedagogical resources that exemplify what it means to teach, learn and make progress in creativity in primary and secondary education, and how to connect pedagogies encouraging creative thinking to different elements of the curriculum (see Boxes III.2.4, III.6.2 and III.6.5 for examples).

Many schools offer students opportunities to engage in creative work…

Schools often provide opportunities for students to engage in activities or classes that aim to broaden their educational experiences beyond developing core literacies and/or further their holistic development. Such activities might focus on artistic or expressive endeavours (such as art and design, creative writing, music or theatre activities) that are typically associated with “creative” practices, or they might focus on games and competitions, physical education, community engagement or developing other specialised skills or interests. PISA data show that, on average across OECD countries, 65% of students reported having access to art classes/activities once a week or more, 59% to music classes/activities, 42% to computer programming classes, 35% to dramatics and theatre classes/activities, 31% to a science club, and 30% to creative writing classes (Figure III.6.6). Students in Jamaica*, the United Kingdom*, Australia*, the United Arab Emirates and Macao (China) have the greatest access to a range of different school activities, according to school principals, with school principals in Greece, Norway, Belgium, Poland and Czechia having reported that their schools offer relatively less activities to students compared to other countries (Table III.B1.6.65).

Taking part in school-based activities might be mandated by teachers, schools or the curriculum in some countries and economies, while in other education systems and schools, student participation in such activities might be elective or even restricted to just a small number. On average across OECD countries, students reported participating at least once a week in art classes/activities (27% of students), music classes/activities (22%), computer programming classes/activities (17%), creative writing classes/activities (16%) and drama and theatre classes/activities (11%) (Table III.6.1). In Albania**, Uzbekistan, Baku (Azerbaijan), the Dominican Republic** and the Palestinian Authority, students reported the highest frequency of participation in various activities at school, compared to students in Czechia, France, Lithuania, Poland and Portugal who reported taking part in these activities in school the least often. In the United Kingdom*, the availability of school activities according to school principals was much higher than the reported participation of students in such activities. Nonetheless, it follows that the more that such activities are made available to students in school, especially when integrated into the curriculum, the more likely students are to participate in them.

…but the availability of and participation in such activities are strongly associated with socio-economic factors, leading to mixed associations with performance outcomes…

In general, advantaged schools provide students with greater access to different school activities, according to school principals – with the largest disparity in weekly offer between advantaged and disadvantaged schools, on average across OECD countries and economies, being drama and theatre classes/activities (20 percentage points difference), as well as debate club, science club, computer programming classes/activities and music classes/activities (all 15 percentage points difference) (Table III.B1.6.66). Yet it is students in socio-economically disadvantaged schools who participate in activities more often than their advantaged peers, on average across OECD countries (Table III.B1.6.16).4

One reason for this counter-intuitive association between participation in different school-based activities and student background may be that students from more advantaged backgrounds, or who attend more advantaged schools, are more likely to focus their time and orient their educational choices towards traditionally “academic” subjects that have a greater influence on their ability to transition into tertiary education – and eventually, access high-paying jobs. These students may thus be less likely to choose to participate in such classes or activities regularly, especially as part of their formal studies. Students from more advantaged backgrounds may also have greater access to extra-curricular activities not asked about in PISA, such as private tutors or language classes, or more “elite” sports and clubs that are not typically offered at school.

Students who report participating in many activities at school scored lower in creative thinking than those who did not, on average across OECD countries – although this negative association can largely be explained by the characteristics of students who frequently participate in school-based activities. After accounting for students’ and schools’ socio-economic profiles, as well as students’ mathematics and reading performance, there was no strong association between participation in activities and creative thinking performance. This weak relationship can also be explained by the fact that the PISA test does not reward students for the intrinsic quality of their work (i.e. whether a story is well written with an elaborate vocabulary, or whether a visual output is aesthetically appealing); instead, the test focuses on whether students can make original and diverse idea associations, and this capacity to think outside of the box can be developed through active learning experiences across all school subjects (not just through participation in activities associated with the arts, for example).

…although moderate and regular participation in certain activities in school is associated with more positive student outcomes

Despite mixed associations between participation in creative activities and creative thinking performance, in general, an interesting pattern emerges when examining the average creative thinking performance of students who reported participating in school-based activities at different levels of engagement. Students who take part in art, music, creative writing or computer programming activities/classes on a weekly basis at school scored modestly better in creative thinking than their peers who either participated in those activities either on an ad-hoc basis (i.e. once or twice a year, or about once a month) or very often (i.e. almost every day). It may be that activities that are embedded within the curriculum and that engage students in tasks that require creative thinking on a regular but considered basis (e.g. as part of lessons taken once or twice a week) may be best for developing students’ creative thinking skills. Beyond performance outcomes, students who participated in school activities about once or twice a week also reported higher levels of openness to intellect and creative-self efficacy – two attitudes supporting creative thinking – than their peers who participated more and less frequently.

References

[2] OECD (2023), PISA 2022 Results (Volume II): Learning During – and From – Disruption, PISA, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/a97db61c-en.

[1] OECD (2023), Supporting Students to Think Creatively: What Education Policy Can Do, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://issuu.com/oecd.publishing/docs/supporting_students_to_think_creatively_web_1_?fr=sMGE0ZjYxMjMxNTE.

[3] OECD (2022), Thinking Outside the Box: The PISA 2022 Creative Thinking Assessment, https://issuu.com/oecd.publishing/docs/thinking-outside-the-box (accessed on 4 March 2023).

Notes

← 1.  In decreasing share, the countries/economies with over 50% of students who performed below a baseline level (i.e. Level 2) in mathematics, reading and science and who also took the PISA 2022 Creative Thinking assessment are: Uzbekistan (71.4%), the Philippines (71.3%), Morocco (68.5%), the Dominican Republic (68.4%), the Palestinian Authority (63.5%), Jordan (62.9%), El Salvador (62.8%), Indonesia (59.0%), Albania** (56.2%), North Macedonia (55.8%), Baku (Azerbaijan) (50.9%) and Panama* (50.4%). These 12 countries and economies were amongst the 14 lowest performing countries in creative thinking.

← 2.  Relative performance refers to the residual performance attributable to creative thinking skill uniquely after accounting for performance in mathematics, reading or science, respectively, in cubic polynomial regressions performed across students at the national level.

← 3.  Students’ socio-economic status is measured by the PISA index of socio-economic and cultural status (ESCS). The strength of the association between performance and socio-economic status is measured by the percentage of variation explained by socio-economic disparities. The strength of this association among OECD countries participating in the creative thinking assessment is 11.6% for creative thinking, compared to 15.9% for mathematics, 12.9% for reading and 14.6% for science, respectively.

← 4.  The only exception to this trend across OECD countries is participation in music classes/activities, where advantaged students participate more often than disadvantaged students.