Improving the Large-Scale Creative Thinking Assessments: A Sociocultural View

The purpose of this paper is to use the Six A's model of creativity (namely actor, aim, action, artifact, audience, and affordance) to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the PISA 2022 creative thinking (CT) assessment and offer suggestions for improving the testing program. The authors point out that student CT in the PISA context is conceptualized as a specific type of creativity. It is PISA's aim that determines who the creative actors are, how the students engage in CT processes, and how the creative outcomes are presented. Based on the analysis of PISA 2022 methodology and results, we propose a series of suggestions for enhancing the PISA CT competencies and revising the relational test items, as well as how to use the PISA data to conduct secondary analysis. The issue of the gender gap in CT performance is also discussed from the perspective of environmental affordances.