Understanding and assessing constructs of mathematical creativity in educational settings

Balanced research and practice

Creativity is a developmental attribute of human cognition and an important characteristic of gifted behaviour. Mathematics as a discipline of inquiry provides a suitable platform to develop creativity. The proposed workshop intends to help participants understand the constructs of mathematical creativity and how to assess creativity using two instruments: Mathematics Creativity Questionnaire (MCQ) (Delcourt & Sharma, 2021) and Mathematics Creativity Test (MCT) (Sharma, 2021). Participants will be given experience of using both the instruments. MCQ consists of questions based on nature of mathematics and creativity. MCT consists of test items using pictures, contexts and problem solving to assess the creativity on five parameters: novelty, fluency, flexibility, mathematical appropriateness and mathematical coherence. The responses are scored on a rating scale and descriptive analysis is done to locate creative potentials in different subdomains. Both instruments are field tested and results are analysed using appropriate statistics.