How do girls and boys feel when developing creativity and critical thinking?

Abstract

Do girls and boys report different feelings during teaching and learning for creativity and critical thinking? This document highlights differences between the emotions reported by male and female secondary students in a project about fostering creativity and critical thinking run by the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation at the OECD. We explore data from 10 271 secondary school students in 184 schools in 9 countries and draw implications for classroom and system level attempts to embed creativity and critical thinking in education.The emotions associated with learning can lead to different experiences and perceptions of creativity and critical thinking and affect students' skills development. The information provided here aims to help educators provide more customised support to boys and girls navigating different emotional experiences, and so support equitable outcomes when developing creativity and critical thinking.The importance of well-being in all aspects of children's lives is increasingly recognised internationally. Reflecting this, the OECD released a conceptual framework for measuring child well-being in 2021. The report points to a lack of cross-national data on adolescent conceptions of their own emotional well-being, despite a long-established connection between social and emotional well-being and the formation of educational attitudes, behaviours, aspirations, and attainment (OECD, 2021[1]).While there is a general need for more data on children's emotional well-being in school, data on the emotions they associate with the development of key 21st century skills such as creativity and critical thinking are particularly scarce. Given the connection between emotional well-being and attainment, teachers, institutions, and systems wanting to foster students' skills can benefit from better understanding the role of emotions in the development of skills, including differences in the emotions experienced and expressed across different groups of students.In this context, this document addresses a number of significant differences in data concerning the selfreported emotions of girls and boys involved in an international project on fostering and assessing creativity and critical thinking in education, run by the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI).