Abstract
Enhancing creativity and critical thinking have garnered the attention of educators and researchers for decades. They have been highlighted as essential skills for the 21st century. A total of 103 United States students (53 female, 24 male, two non-binary, and 24 non-reporting) and 166 Chinese students (128 female, 30 male, one non-binary, and seven non-reporting) completed an online survey. The survey includes the STEAM-related creative problem solving, Sternberg scientific reasoning tasks, psychological critical thinking (PCT) exam, California critical thinking (CCT) skills test, and college experience survey, as well as a demographic questionnaire. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) yields a two-factor model for all creativity and critical thinking measurements. Yet, the two latent factors are strongly associated with each other (r=0.84). Moreover, Chinese students outperform American students in measures of critical thinking, whereas Americans outperform Chinese students in measures of creativity. Lastly, the results also demonstrate that having some college research experience (such as taking research method courses) could positively influence both United States and Chinese students’ creativity and critical thinking skills. Implications are discussed.
Highlights
Creativity and critical thinking have been recognized as essential skills in the 21st century (National Education Association, 2012)
We performed a Pearson correlation to examine the relationship between creativity and critical thinking, which include performances on three measures on creativity and three measures on critical thinking
The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between creativity and critical thinking, how culture influences creativity and critical thinking, and how college research experience affects creativity and critical thinking
Summary
Creativity and critical thinking have been recognized as essential skills in the 21st century (National Education Association, 2012). Many researchers and educators have focused on these two skills, including acquisition, enhancement, and performance. Numerous studies have been devoted to understanding the conceptual complexities involved in creativity and critical thinking. The concept of creativity has evolved over the years. It was almost exclusively conceptualized as divergent thinking when Guilford (1956, 1986) proposed divergent thinking as a part of intelligence. In 1990s, many creativity scholars challenged the validity of tests of divergent thinking, and suggested that divergent thinking only captures the trivial sense of creativity, and proposed to use the product-oriented method to measure creativity
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