Students in the Philippines among lowest creative thinkers in PISA test
The Philippines ranked among the lowest in a test on creative thinking by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).
The 2022 PISA study assessed 15-year-old students in 64 countries on their capacity to think creatively and out of the box in different contexts.
In the ranking, the Philippines was among the lowest-performing countries in the 63rd spot with a mean score of 14. This is below the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 33.
Other countries at the bottom include Albania with a score of 13, Uzbekistan with 14, Morocco with 15, and Dominican Republic with 15.
Meanwhile, countries with students who earned above the OECD average mean score on the creative thinking test include Singapore, Korea, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
PISA 2022 also found that in all countries and economies, girls outperformed boys, scoring 3 points higher on average in creative thinking. Female students were better at written expression tasks and tests that required them to build on others' ideas.
In the Philippines, girls scored an average of 16 while boys scored 12. Meanwhile, high achievers in the country listed scores of 30.3 for girls and 19.6 for boys on creative thinking.
Aside from gender, socio-economic status also played a role as those with more advantaged students were better creative thinkers. The difference in their performance was notable in writing tasks.
Creative thinking is described by the OECD as the generation of valuable and original ideas for different contexts. This can be applied to contexts like the expression of imagination and investigation of issues, problems, and society-wide concerns.
The said assessment includes four domains: written expression, visual expression, social problem-solving, and scientific problem-solving.
One question in the creative thinking test asked students to write an original story for a book with the cover "2983" consisting of eight sentences.
Another had students think of titles for presented illustrations.
The recent test was PISA's first time to assess creative thinking.