Do School Activities Foster Creative Thinking? An Analysis of PISA Results

• Published in: Education Sciences
• Main Authors: José Hernández-Ramos, Roberto Araya
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2025-01-01
• Subjects: creative thinking; PISA; creative solving problem; scientific problem solving; teaching and learning
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/15/2/133

In 2022, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessed the creative thinking skills of 15-year-old students, measuring their ability to generate creative ideas and improve others’ ideas. The present study used a correlational design to explore the relationship between creative thinking test scores and the frequency of participation in school activities. Surprisingly, the results show that countries with higher participation in school activities obtained worse results in the global PISA test for creative thinking and scientific problem-solving. Even after adjusting for PISA performance in 2018 and 2022, the increase in school activities did not improve low creativity scores. PISA identified this result as counterintuitive but analyzed it at the student level. However, we examined the phenomenon at the country level, which allows us to suggest another explanation. These findings indicate that such activities may need to be more enriching, focusing more on developing divergent rather than convergent skills. The complexity and cognitive load teachers require to design and carry out highly creative activities may explain these results. This study proposes reconsidering the pedagogical implementation of these activities and incorporating generative artificial intelligence as a fundamental tool to enhance creative development in the educational environment.