Thinking Skills and Creativity最新文献

{"title":"How teachers’ creative pedagogies shape students’ creative thinking skills: a multilevel moderated mediation analysis from East Asia","authors":"Chunjin Chen ,&nbsp;Hongbiao Yin","doi":"10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102112","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102112","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>East Asian teachers’ pedagogical practices, rooted in Confucian heritage cultures, have sparked enduring debates about whether these pedagogies foster or impede creative thinking skills. This study addresses the debate by employing a multilevel moderated mediation model to examine how teachers’ creative pedagogies shape students’ creative thinking skills, with creative self-efficacy serving as the mediator and school openness to creativity as the moderator. Data were collected from 20,824 15-year-old students, who participated in PISA 2022, across 501 secondary schools in Hong Kong (China), Macao (China), Singapore, and South Korea. The results revealed some striking regional disparities. In Hong Kong (China) and Macao (China), creative pedagogies exhibited a significant positive direct effect on creative thinking skills, while negative effects were observed in Singapore and South Korea. Notably, creative self-efficacy consistently exerted a partial mediating role across all regions, with this mediating effect amplified in schools with higher openness to creativity in Hong Kong (China) and Singapore, but attenuated in Macao (China) and South Korea. The findings have implications for tailoring policies to reconcile creative pedagogies with regional norms and inspire future research on Confucian cultural variations in these mechanisms within East Asian educational contexts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47729,"journal":{"name":"Thinking Skills and Creativity","volume":"60 ","pages":"Article 102112"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145797149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Body maps for feeling of creativity in musical chord progression","authors":"Tatsuya Daikoku ,&nbsp;Masaki Tanaka","doi":"10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102103","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102103","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Creativity is a fundamental aspect of the human experience, enabling individuals to generate innovative ideas and artistic expressions including music. Although creativity is frequently framed as the ability to produce novel information, the mechanisms by which perceptions of creativity arise from this information—and their subsequent effects on our minds and bodies—remain inadequately understood.</div><div>This study investigates how musical stimuli evoke feelings of creativity through predictive mechanisms, while also examining the role of interoceptive bodily sensations, particularly those linked to the heart and stomach regions. Furthermore, we investigate the relationship between interoceptive sensibility and the intensity of the feeling of creativity.</div><div>By employing body-mapping assessments and emotional evaluations on 353 participants exposed to various chord progressions, we revealed the critical role of heart sensations in eliciting feelings of creativity. Our findings indicate that musical chord progressions characterized by high uncertainty and surprise generated heightened feelings of creativity alongside increased arousal. Notably, heart sensations correlated positively with the feeling of creativity, suggesting the crucial role of interoceptive bodily sensations in the experience of creativity. In contrast, the feelings of beauty and valence were more strongly influenced by predictable, low-uncertainty progressions, suggesting that the feelings of creativity may operate through a somewhat different cognitive mechanism than that of beauty and valence.</div><div>This study highlights the complex interplay between bodily sensations and feelings of creativity based on predictive processing. By framing creativity within the framework of interoception, our research contributes to a deeper understanding of the emotional and embodied processes that shape the experience of creativity. Future research should explore these relationships to enrich our comprehension of creativity in both artistic endeavors and everyday life.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47729,"journal":{"name":"Thinking Skills and Creativity","volume":"60 ","pages":"Article 102103"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145797150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impact of programming experience and gender on coding behavior","authors":"Yung-Ting Chuang,&nbsp;Kuan-Chin Su","doi":"10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102126","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102126","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Programming is a core skill in computer science education, crucial for developing problem-solving abilities and enhancing learning outcomes. Prior research, often limited by small samples or self-reported data, lacks further behavioral insights, especially in Asian contexts. This study investigates the impact of programming experience and gender on coding behavior to improve curriculum design and teaching strategies. To address this, we analyzed 180 participants’ coding behavior across three programming challenges, measuring time spent in the development environment, copy-and-paste frequency, submissions, and correctness rate.</div><div>Our findings reveal that participants with greater programming experience employed more sophisticated coding and debugging strategies, whereas those with less experience often neglected structured planning, making it more difficult for them to achieve higher accuracy. Additionally, notable gender differences were observed: males tended to debug iteratively with higher submissions, while females spent more time understanding problems before implementing solutions. Overall, both programming experience and gender influenced coding behavior, underscoring the need for tailored instructional support to enhance learning effectiveness and engagement. Unlike earlier studies dominated by Western samples and self-reported data, this study provides objective behavioral evidence from Asian learners, adding cross-cultural insight into how programming experience and gender shape coding behavior.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47729,"journal":{"name":"Thinking Skills and Creativity","volume":"60 ","pages":"Article 102126"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145976679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Becoming a designer-scientist: A designer’s journey into laboratory practice and material characterization as creative tools for biodesign with bacterial cellulose","authors":"Luis Quijano ,&nbsp;Ziyuan Jing ,&nbsp;Tiziana Ferrero-Regis ,&nbsp;Laura Navone ,&nbsp;Dmitri Golberg ,&nbsp;Wenqing Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102125","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102125","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>With the integration of biotechnology into design practices (biodesign), designers are learning to navigate between the interfaces of design and science. However, for designers, the laboratory often remains an unfamiliar environment: structured, procedural, and often perceived as incompatible with creative practice. This study attempts to demystify laboratory practice and explores how laboratory practice can function as a creative methodology for designers through the reflection of the primary author’s journey from designer to designer-scientist with an autoethnographic exploration of bacterial cellulose. Conducted within a chemistry laboratory, this study investigates how scientific protocols, tools, and material characterization techniques can inform design decisions and expand material design for designers. The findings show that engaging with laboratory methodologies allow designers to think through materials by observing transformation at both aesthetic and molecular levels, linking empirical data to creative decision-making. Reflecting on moments of uncertainty, adaption and learning, this study illustrates how laboratory practice reshapes the designer’s practice and identity, fostering confidence and fluency across disciplinary boundaries. Ultimately, this study argues that the act of “becoming a designer-scientist” reframes biodesign as both an empirical and reflective practice, while opening new pathways for sustainable and transdisciplinary futures.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47729,"journal":{"name":"Thinking Skills and Creativity","volume":"60 ","pages":"Article 102125"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145938627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A thematic analysis on the critical thinking performance of the first-year Chinese undergraduates","authors":"Yan Sun","doi":"10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102065","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102065","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper aims to distill the critical thinking (CT) frame internalized by Chinese college students based on a thematic analysis on their CT performance. Research data show a CT frame comprised of four key dimensions in content which include: 1) quality of argument, 2) textual organization, 3) emotional factors, and 4) dialectical thinking, and a thinking mechanism of association. What’s more, the underlying cultural factors are discussed further to account for the cognitive orientation, elucidating the intellectual coherence between the frame and traditional Chinese thought in <em>wenxue</em> and holistic thinking mode. The research adds up to the existing literature in highlighting the gap in Chinese college students between their questioning spirit and cognitive skills, confirming their lack of analytic thought and specifying their cognitive orientation with empirical evidence, which in turn calls for pedagogical considerations in mediating cognitive processes which may not be operative in their frame, and qualitative improvement on the critical knowledge of Chinese teachers as well.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47729,"journal":{"name":"Thinking Skills and Creativity","volume":"60 ","pages":"Article 102065"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145579744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fostering divergent thinking through a growth creative mindset: The mediating roles of multicultural attitudes and openness to experience","authors":"Liang-Chen Su ,&nbsp;Ju-Hui Wei ,&nbsp;Hsueh-Hua Chuang","doi":"10.1016/j.tsc.2026.102129","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tsc.2026.102129","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Divergent thinking, a core aspect of creativity, involves generating diverse and original ideas. Previous research suggests that a growth creative mindset, defined as the belief that creativity can develop through effort and persistence, is a potential influential factor in divergent thinking, as it encourages deep engagement in creative tasks while fostering resilience and adaptability. However, the mechanisms linking a growth creative mindset to divergent thinking remain underexplored. This study posited that multicultural attitudes and openness to experience could serve as mediators in the relationship between a growth creative mindset and divergent thinking. A survey was conducted with 343 university students in Taiwan, and their divergent thinking was assessed using a newly refined and expanded coding scheme for the Alternative Uses Task. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the relationships among the variables. The results indicate that a growth creative mindset significantly enhances divergent thinking, with both multicultural attitudes and openness to experience serving as mediators. Notably, the impact of these mediators does not differ significantly from each other. These findings provide empirical evidence of the mechanisms through which a growth creative mindset fosters divergent thinking, highlighting the importance of cultivating multicultural attitudes and openness to experience in promoting creativity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47729,"journal":{"name":"Thinking Skills and Creativity","volume":"60 ","pages":"Article 102129"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145938630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Design and verification of self-facilitation card-based toolset for complex problem-solving","authors":"Yingting Chen ,&nbsp;Taro Kanno","doi":"10.1016/j.tsc.2026.102130","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tsc.2026.102130","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although collaboration is essential for solving complex problems, many teams lack access to skilled facilitators who can structure effective discussions. In resource-constrained settings, such as collaborative business decision-making, external facilitation is often infeasible, placing the burden of coordination and reasoning on the participants themselves. While teams can often manage tasks and logistics, they frequently struggle with the deeper cognitive demands of collaboration including clarifying goals, articulating reasoning, and evaluating assumptions. Existing facilitation frameworks often overlook the real-time reasoning needed for high-quality problem solving. As a result, groups without trained facilitators are vulnerable to shallow framing, decision inertia, and missed opportunities for reflection. To address this gap, we propose a lightweight, portable solution comprising a set of theory-driven facilitation cards that guide users through key cognitive moves during discussion without requiring prior training. We developed a deck of 25 cognition-oriented prompts, grounded in cognitive psychology and triple-space interaction theory. In a study involving 30 self-facilitated dyads completing 12-session business simulations, the card format measurably enhanced participants’ ability to frame problems and sustain reflective reasoning. Utterance-level analysis of 6969 conversational turns revealed that specific cards triggered deeper reasoning in both immediate responses and delayed turns, suggesting lasting cognitive activation. Teams that engaged more with the cards showed greater task improvement over time. The findings of this study inform the design of cognitive prompts and suggest routes for future integration involving adaptive, real-time support for self-guided, cognitively demanding collaboration scenarios.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47729,"journal":{"name":"Thinking Skills and Creativity","volume":"60 ","pages":"Article 102130"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145938626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring critical and reflective thinking in mathematical literacy through variable- and person-centered approaches","authors":"Kai-Lin Yang ,&nbsp;Chien-Heng Chen ,&nbsp;Wan-Rou Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.tsc.2026.102127","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tsc.2026.102127","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Critical and reflective thinking are essential 21st-century skills and play a pivotal role in mathematical literacy (ML). Prior research has neither clearly distinguished these skills nor developed tools to assess them as specific sub-skills rather than broad dispositions. This study addressed this gap by examining the relationship between critical thinking in ML (CT-ML) and reflective thinking in ML (RT-ML), identifying students’ performance profiles, and exploring gender differences using a two-dimensional framework for assessing CT-ML and RT-ML. Results indicate that CT-ML and RT-ML are two distinct but interconnected constructs, each comprising three sub-skills. While the overall structure was consistent across genders, boys and girls differed in the patterns of strengths and weaknesses across CT-ML and RT-ML sub-skills, reflected in their performance profiles. Theoretically, the findings clarify the distinction between CT-ML and RT-ML and establish their complementary nature, offering an innovative perspective on CT and RT as dual constructs. Methodologically, the design of sub-skill assessment items and the application of BSEM provide a rigorous approach to modeling cognitive structures of micro-level thinking skills. Practically, the study highlights the need for learning tasks that foster both CT-ML and RT-ML, while tailoring instruction to students’ distinct profiles and addressing gender-based differences in sub-skill development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47729,"journal":{"name":"Thinking Skills and Creativity","volume":"60 ","pages":"Article 102127"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145938625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Children and adults differ in non-linear indicators of cognitive transitions solving of an insight problem","authors":"Sebastian Vásquez-Pinto ,&nbsp;Sofía Gálvez-Cienfuegos ,&nbsp;Diana Castillo ,&nbsp;Diego Morales-Bader ,&nbsp;Ralf F. A. Cox ,&nbsp;Ramón D. Castillo","doi":"10.1016/j.tsc.2026.102133","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tsc.2026.102133","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recent research reported that the entropy and determinism of pupillary diameter fluctuations differentiated children who solved an insight problem from those who did not, particularly during the final stages of problem solving. Although these findings are novel, children remain understudied in a field where most investigations have focused on adults. Given the scarcity of comparisons between these groups, the present study aimed to examine differences in performance and eye-tracking metrics in both children and adults who either solved or failed to solve an insight problem. The sample of children from the previous study was compared with a new sample of 80 adults who attempted to solve the 8-coin problem. The frequency of solutions, the proportion of fixations, and measures of pupillary fluctuations (entropy, determinism, and <em>β</em>-scaling exponent) were compared across groups. Results showed that adults solved the problem more frequently than children. In addition, adults and solvers exhibited more focused and centralized fixation patterns across the problem setup, whereas children and non-solvers displayed broader and more disorganized observation patterns. Moreover, solvers were characterized by higher entropy than non-solvers in both children and adults during the final stages of problem solving. Determinism differentiated solvers from non-solvers only among children over time, but not among adults. Although adults’ <em>β</em> values were higher than those of children at certain windows, the <em>β</em>-scaling exponent for both groups was described by brown noise. Previous findings suggest that the anticipatory dynamics of pupillary fluctuations during insight problem solving unfold similarly in both children and adults. Nevertheless, adults exhibit more predictable and structured variability in pupillary fluctuations, accompanied by constrained yet efficient observation patterns that result in higher performance. In contrast, children display more entropic and variable pupillary dynamics, accompanied by unconstrained yet less efficient observation patterns, leading to lower performance than that of adults.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47729,"journal":{"name":"Thinking Skills and Creativity","volume":"60 ","pages":"Article 102133"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145938624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fostering thinking skills: Transitioning from routine to creative design spaces","authors":"Yi-Teng Shih,&nbsp;Luqian Wang,&nbsp;Chun Wang To","doi":"10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102048","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.tsc.2025.102048","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Many empirical studies on creativity focus on designers’ cognitive design processes. However, the existing research on design creativity outcomes does not provide sufficient information. This study addresses this gap by investigating the characteristics of award-winning student designs, which represent a recognized standard of creative excellence. Employing an inductive methodology, this research analyzed expert evaluations of student design work. A rigorous inductive thematic analysis, using a dual-coder protocol, was performed on 353 creative characteristics identified by experts across 100 assessments. This analysis yielded three primary variables for defining creative design outcomes: Aesthetic, Usability, and Impact. These variables were integrated into a visual pedagogical model adapted from Gero’s creative design space model. In a practical application of this framework, student participants subsequently secured 23 international design awards (e.g., Red Dot Award, European Product Design Award) between 2021 and 2024. The results indicate that the proposed model is an effective tool for enhancing student design creativity, team communication, and confidence. This research contributes a validated, outcome-oriented framework for design education, offering a structured approach for cultivating and assessing high-level design innovation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47729,"journal":{"name":"Thinking Skills and Creativity","volume":"60 ","pages":"Article 102048"},"PeriodicalIF":4.5,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145442522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}