Cross-cultural comparison of creative thinking in mathematics textbooks: A case study of high school mathematics textbooks in China, Japan, and South Korea

Abstract

Creative thinking is the core of students' creativity in the digital intelligence era and is crucial for developing students' mathematics literacy. In the mathematics curriculum, tasks in textbooks serve as a vital vehicle for cultivating students' creative thinking and have become a consensus in education reform across many countries. Analyzing the differences in how students' creative thinking develops in mathematics textbooks from different nations has gained increasing attention from the academic community. Students in China, Japan, and South Korea consistently outperform their Western counterparts in mathematics, and each country's educational development path is distinct. Accordingly, this study employed a continuous comparison method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to modify Hadar and Tirosh's (2019) creative thinking framework, creating an analysis model suited for examining creative thinking tasks in high school mathematics textbooks. This model includes fourteen sub-categories across three broad themes: divergent thinking, convergent thinking, and horizontal thinking. The comparative analysis reveals that the mathematics tasks in textbooks from these three countries emphasize different aspects of developing students' creative thinking. Additionally, this research offers valuable insights for educators seeking to understand the variations in creative thinking within high school mathematics textbooks across nations. It also provides guidance for future textbook development—such as increasing both the number and proportion of creative thinking tasks, including more interdisciplinary creative thinking exercises—to further foster students' creative thinking abilities.