Making Numbers Come to Life: Two Scoring Methods for Creativity in Aurora's Cartoon Numbers

Abstract

Although creativity has long been recognized as an important aspect of mathematical thinking, both for the advancement of the field and in students' developing expertise in mathematics, assessments of student creativity in that domain have been limited in number and focus. This article presents an assessment developed for creativity that provides a score for mathematical creativity (MaC) in addition to a score for general creativity in the numeric domain, or what we might call numerical creativity (NuC). We developed different rating scales for each and then explored how each scoring method accounts for the students' mathematical/numerical and creative skills. The psychometric properties for both scoring approaches were examined. Each method was shown to reflect different relationships with other performance tests. In addition, it is proposed that MaC may provide useful insight into students' levels of adaptive expertise in mathematics, as reflected by their ability to apply mathematical knowledge (i.e., language, operations, concepts) to novel situations, representing an informative supplement to performance indicators of math achievement.

Validity and Utility of the Test of Creative Thinking Drawing Production for Dutch Adolescents

“…Based on our results, we concluded that the TCT-DP measures a different construct than intelligence, school motivation, and inquisitiveness, and therefore provides useful additional information on the students’ creativity that can help teachers understand their students better and intervene more appropriately. This conclusion coincides with previous studies that found small correlations among the concepts measured (Amabile, 1985; Gajda, 2016; Gralewski and Karwowski, 2012; Tan et al, 2013). Interestingly, we did not find a linear correlation between creativity and intelligence.…”

“…However, the relationship between these two constructs is complex. Empirical ambiguities regarding the association of creativity and academic achievement vary from r = –.07 (Vijetha & Jangaiah, 2010) to r = .66 (Yeh, 2004; Tan et al, 2013). A meta-analysis of 120 studies conducted by Gajda et al (2017b) reported that there is significant evidence that creativity and academic achievement show a moderate correlation ( r = .22).…”

“…Cultural differences may also play a role when investigating the relationship between creativity and academic achievement. For example, correlations between creativity and academic achievement tests range from r = .07 in Poland (Gralewski & Karwowski, 2012) to r = .66 in England (Tan et al, 2013). Freund and Holling (2008) executed a multilevel analysis of predictors of academic achievement in Germany.…”

Differences in Judgments of Creativity: How Do Academic Domain, Personality, and Self-Reported Creativity Influence Novice Judges’ Evaluations of Creative Productions?

“…In our work developing an assessment battery based upon Sternberg's theory of successful intelligence [12][13][14], an observation schedule was proposed in addition to several group-administered paper and pencil activities. Both formats include subtests for creativity, yet the observation schedule offers the child an opportunity to produce an original object in an activity that is distinct from any academic task, such as writing.…”

Creativity Outside School: The Influence of Family Background, Perceived Parenting, and After‐school Activity on Creativity

“…Raters only rated the originality dimension for each solution and selected the most original solution to represent the originality of each task. This is because Diedrich, Benedek, Jauk, and Neubauer (2015) suggested that novelty is more important than appropriateness in CAT type measurements (Tan, Mourgues, Bolden, & Grigorenko, 2014). The Aurora has been validated across different cultures and demonstrates good reliability and validity (Aghababaei, Malekpour, Kajbaf, & Abedi, 2016; Prieto, Ferrándiz, Ferrando, & Bermejo, 2015).…”