Teachers’ views on creativity in mathematics education: an international survey

Convergent and divergent thinking in task modification: a case of Korean prospective mathematics teachers’ exploration

“…In addition to the examination-centric education issue, mathematics teachers' reluctance or superficial implementation of creative teaching has been identified as being related to a lack of profound understanding of mathematics (Leikin et al 2013;Lev-Zamir and Leikin 2011), teachers' insufficient knowledge and experience in task design or task modification for teaching creativity (Breen and O'Shea 2010;Perkins 1985;Leung and Silver 1997;Haylock 1997;Hershkowitz et al 2017), and a lack of awareness and negative disposition towards creativity (Beghetto and Sriraman 2017;Craft 2005). In addition, avoidance of teaching creativity has been shown to be related to conflict between teaching creativity and teaching skills (Torrance 1987;Coil 2014) Abstract This study investigated how 38 secondary mathematics prospective teachers modified textbook tasks for convergent and divergent thinking while learning to teach mathematics during university coursework.…”

Breaking the habit: engineering students’ understanding of mathematical creativity

“…Several papers (e.g. Torrance 1977;Sriraman 2004;Badran 2007;Zhou 2012;Leikin et al 2013) refer different definitions for creativity and also different points of view for it but, focusing on the final product of a creative activity, Amabile (2013) refers that '[t]he two main criteria for a creative product are originality (…) and usefulness'. In engineering, several authors (e.g.…”

“…Zhou 2012; Morin, Robert, and Gabora 2014) point to the importance of problem-solving for engineers. Finally, Leikin et al (2013) wrote that if you ask students' definitions of creativity, a lot of them would answer that creativity is 'thinking outside the box'.…”

“…A variety of aspects of mathematical creativity are mentioned in several studies, some authors use historical examples of mathematical creation (e.g. Torrance 1977;Leikin et al 2013), how to measure it using tests (e.g. Kaufman 2009), and others detail it in terms of stages needed for the mathematical creation (e.g.…”

“…Nevertheless, the same authors approached mathematical creativity and learning mathematics saying: 'Solving such challenging mathematics problems [ill posed or open ended] could lead students to experience creativity in doing mathematics and also try to think as a mathematician, which means that students are encouraged to reflect on their own ideas'. Leikin et al (2013;quoting Eysenck 1994) refer that 'mathematical creativity is observed when one generates a nonstandard solution for a problem which may not be solved by using a standard method'.…”