Creative thinking abilities: Measures for various domains

Abstract

Although creativity and creative thinking have been mentioned in schools as part of an identification process of gifted and talented students, they have been largely neglected in the mainstream education scene. The measurement issue is one of the reasons for neglect in the development of creative talent, along with the high-stakes testing environment of recent years which has narrowed the curriculum to exclude the teaching and assessment of creativity. In this chapter, the need for measures of creative potential will be discussed by describing macro components that are foundations for realizing creative potential along with the need for developing quality measures of creative potential. Clarifying definitions of creativity and creative thinking are offered, as an informative definition for any psychological construct is a condition for developing quality measures. The chapter, then, focuses on the measures of creative-thinking ability, distinguishing domain generality and domain specificity of creative-thinking ability. As most of the creative-thinking measures have been domain-general, the chapter briefly describes the domain-general measures, followed by an in-depth description of domain-specific measures, especially Creative Real Life Problem Solving measures (e.g., Creative Real Life Problem Solving: Thinking and Imagination, Las Vegas, NV), with a hope that the measures of creative potential discussed will enable researchers and practitioners helping individuals learn to be more creative.