Exploring the Characteristics of Undergraduate Students’ Creative Thinking Skills

This study aims to develop a self-report inventory to measure University students’ perception of their creative thinking skills. Creative thinking is a critical learning outcome in higher education and one of the essential 21st Century Competency. The data were collected from 253 students of a university in Hong Kong. A structural equation model was applied to confirm the construct validity of the instrument. The result shows that the key characteristics of creative thinking skills are empirically constructed by creative character, originality, sensitivity, synthesizing and resistance to premature closure. The five characteristics of creative thinking can be considered as learning processes or outcomes to inform the design of instructional events and learning activities to nurture students’ creative thinking skills.

本研究旨在开发一种自我报告量表，以衡量大学生对其创造性思维技能的认知。创造性思维是高等教育中一项关键的学习成果，也是21世纪核心素养之一。数据来自香港一所大学的253名学生。应用结构方程模型来确认该工具的结构效度。结果表明，创造性思维技能的关键特征由创造性人格、独创性、敏感性、综合能力以及对过早下结论的抵制这几个方面实证构建而成。创造性思维的这五个特征可被视为学习过程或成果，为教学设计和学习活动的设计提供参考，以培养学生的创造性思维技能。