ABSTRACT
There is a general consensus among psychologists and educators that creative thinking improves students’ motivation, metacognitive capacities, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, and their abilities to solve problems, write creatively, and interpret scientific process (Beghetto, 2010; Plucker, Beghetto, & Dow, 2004; Smith & Smith, 2010; Torrance, 1959). Yet in recent years, with policymakers and stakeholders paying increased attention to students’ scores on standardized achievement tests, creative thinking seems to be “squeezed out of many educational arenas” and to “belong on the endangered species list” (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2010, p. 191). In this context, teachers spend less time on training students’ creative thinking. Even worse, they show unfavorable attitudes towards creativity; therefore, unintentionally discouraging it in the classroom (Cropley, 2006; Oral & Guncer, 1993; Russ, 1993; Scott, 1999). These concerns are not uniquely present in the United States, but rather are widely shared in other cultures, such as China (Niu & Sternberg, 2003), Korea (Kim, 2009), and the United Kingdom (Craft, 2005).
