PISA 2022 Creative Thinking Assessment: A Landmark Opportunity for School and System Leaders to Put Creativity at the Heart of Students' Learning
Open accessAbstract
The PISA 2022 Creative Thinking (CT) assessment is a watershed moment for the status of CT in schools, providing leadership opportunities for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. This extensive new data set reminds educators of the challenges faced by anyone trying to change a system predicated on individual subject disciplines and their largely content‐based assessments. It also helpfully further debunks some surprisingly long‐held myths about creativity—that it is vague, undermines scholarship, cannot be taught, and cannot be assessed in schools. This paper moves beyond the important ‘event’ of the PISA test to the important ongoing processes of formative assessments in classrooms which could be taking place today. Examples are offered from the author's own research with schools which expand on the PISA data and possible next steps are identified for school and system leaders who wish to seize the opportunities presented by the PISA CT Test.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
A policy-oriented synthesis treats creativity as measurable through fluency, originality, and adaptability, but domain fit for illustration products is indirect.
“A policy oriented synthesis using Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 Creative Thinking treats creativity as measurable through fluency, originality, and adaptability, but domain fit for illustration products is indirect (Lucas 2025).”
From A Study on the Role of Midjourney, A Generative Artificial Intelligence Tool, in Enhancing Student Creativity in Illustration Design Classes (2026) · cites this paper as Lucas 2025
Cites
Boden, M. A. (2004) · doi:10.4324/9780203508527 · Cited by 2,775 · see citing works
Toward a broader conception of creativity: A case for "mini-c" creativity.
Beghetto, R. A., & Kaufman, J. C. (2007) · Psychology of Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts · doi:10.1037/1931-3896.1.2.73 · Cited by 904 · see citing works
Creative Self-Efficacy: Correlates in Middle and Secondary Students
Beghetto, R. A. (2006) · Creativity Research Journal · doi:10.1207/s15326934crj1804_4 · Cited by 687 · see citing works
(2008) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 545 · see citing works
Research in action: using positive deviance to improve quality of health care
Bradley, E. H., Curry, L. A., Ramanadhan, S., Rowe, L. A., Nembhard, I. M., & Krumholz, H. M. (2009) · Implementation Science · doi:10.1186/1748-5908-4-25 · Cited by 524 · see citing works
Creativity and academic achievement: A meta-analysis
Gajda, A., Karwowski, M., & Beghetto, R. A. (2017) · Journal of Educational Psychology · doi:10.1037/edu0000133 · Cited by 515 · see citing works
Counting the muses: Development of the Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scale (K-DOCS).
Kaufman, J. C. (2012) · Psychology of Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts · doi:10.1037/a0029751 · Cited by 496 · see citing works
Fostering Students' Creativity and Critical Thinking
Vincent‐Lancrin, S., González-Sancho, C., Bouckaert, M., de Luca, F., Fernández-Barrera, M., Jacotin, G., Urgel, J., & Vidal, Q. (2019) · Educational research and innovation · doi:10.1787/62212c37-en · Cited by 402 · see citing works
Kaufman, J. C., & Beghetto, R. A. (2013) · Roeper Review · doi:10.1080/02783193.2013.799413 · Cited by 320 · see citing works
Bereczki, E. O., & Kárpáti, A. (2017) · Educational Research Review · doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2017.10.003 · Cited by 300 · see citing works
A Five-Dimensional Model of Creativity and its Assessment in Schools
Lucas, B. (2016) · Applied Measurement in Education · doi:10.1080/08957347.2016.1209206 · Cited by 194 · see citing works
Self-citationCreative pedagogies: a systematic review
Cremin, T., & Chappell, K. A. (2019) · Research Papers in Education · doi:10.1080/02671522.2019.1677757 · Cited by 187 · see citing works
The Palgrave Handbook of Positive Education
Jarden, A., Jarden, R., Chin, T.-C., & Kern, M. (2021) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-64537-3 · Cited by 168 · see citing works
Assessing Creativity in the Classroom
Barbot, B. (2011) · The Open Education Journal · doi:10.2174/1874920801104010058 · Cited by 167 · see citing works
The creative self: Effect of beliefs, self-efficacy, mindset, and identity.
Karwowski, M., & Kaufman, J. C. (2017) · Cited by 157 · see citing works
Education System Alignment for 21st Century Skills: Focus on Assessment.
Care, E., Kim, H., Vista, A., & Anderson, K. (2018) · Cited by 145 · see citing works
Structured Uncertainty: How Creativity Thrives Under Constraints and Uncertainty
Beghetto, R. A. (2018) · Creativity theory and action in education · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-90272-2_2 · Cited by 125 · see citing works
Creative primary schools: developing and maintaining pedagogy for creativity
Craft, A., Cremin, T., Hay, P., & Clack, J. (2013) · Ethnography & Education · doi:10.1080/17457823.2013.828474 · Cited by 106 · see citing works
Developing young children’s creativity: What can we learn from research?
Sharp, C. (2005) · set Research Information for Teachers · doi:10.18296/set.0633 · Cited by 94 · see citing works
Teaching Creative Thinking: Developing learners who generate ideas and can think critically
Lucas, B., & Spencer, E. (2017) · Cited by 85 · see citing works
Self-citationTeaching for Creativity in an Era of Content Standards and Accountability
Baer, J., & Garrett, T. (2010) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511781629.003 · Cited by 72 · see citing works
Progression in Student Creativity in School: First Steps Towards New Forms of Formative Assessments
Lucas, B., Claxton, G. L., & Spencer, E. (2013) · Winchester Research Repository · Cited by 71 · see citing works
Self-citationSchool Does Not Kill Creativity
Karwowski, M. (2021) · European Psychologist · doi:10.1027/1016-9040/a000449 · Cited by 51 · see citing works
PISA 2022 Creative Thinking Assessment: Opportunities, Challenges, and Cautions
Barbot, B., & Kaufman, J. C. (2025) · The Journal of Creative Behavior · doi:10.1002/jocb.70003 · Cited by 48 · see citing works
Durham commission on creativity and education.
Spohrer, J., Houston, A. M., Newton, L., Daniels, S., Morgan, N., Coho, W., Ruck, A., & Lucas, B. (2019) · Durham Research Online (Durham University) · Cited by 31 · see citing works
Self-citationCreative Thinking: Skill Development Framework
Ramalingam, D., Anderson, P., Duckworth, D., Scoular, C., & Heard, J. (2020) · Cited by 15 · see citing works
Beghetto, R. A. (2018) · Rowman & Littlefield Publishers eBooks · doi:10.5040/9798881821111 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
He, S. (2026) · Journal of Computer Assisted Learning · doi:10.1002/jcal.70305
Fostering Creativity Through Education: Lessons From the PISA 2022 Survey
Goulet‐Pelletier, J., Collet, O. A., Sowden, P. T., & Côté, S. M. (2025) · The Journal of Creative Behavior · doi:10.1002/jocb.70080
Putting Creativity at the Heart of Schools: The Medium Is Also the Message
Lucas, B., & Stoll, L. (2026) · Springer international handbooks of education · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-88898-4_47-1
Self-citationWang, W., Qin, Y., Chang, Y., & 李骐 (2026) · Global Education Bulletin · doi:10.71052/grb2025/kwhb7458
Improving cross-national comparability in PISA creativity using AI and Many-Facet Rasch modeling
Primi, R., Nakano, T. D. C., Wechsler, S. M., Cadime, I., & Almeida, L. D. S. (2026) · Thinking Skills and Creativity · doi:10.1016/j.tsc.2026.102373
- Authors
- Lucas, B.
- Affiliations
- University of Nottingham (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Lucas, Bill
- ORCID
- Lucas, Bill
- Venue
- The Journal of Creative Behavior
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2025-09-16
- Volume
- 59
- Issue
- 4
- ISSN
- 0022-0175 (ISSN-L)
- 2162-6057
- OpenAlex
- W4414243277
- Cited by
- 5
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 1
- FWCI
- 5.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- The Journal of Creative Behavior (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Creativity in Education and Neuroscience
- Social Sciences › Education › Educational Assessment and Pedagogy
- Social Sciences › Education › Education and Critical Thinking Development
- Keywords
- PISA 2022, creative thinking assessment, creativity in education, school leadership, educational reform, formative assessment, creativity myths, creativity assessment
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
