ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cognition
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1686498
This article is part of the Research TopicPersonality Traits and the Dual Nature of Creativity: Bright and Dark Sides ExploredView all 5 articles
Investigating Middle School Students' Creative Problem Solving in Numerical and Spatial Domains
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Coaching Education, Faculty of Sport Sciences, Sinop University, Sinop, Türkiye
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This study aimed to clarify the relationship between creativity components defined in numerical and spatial tasks. It also examined the characteristics of the products produced in these domains by students with different levels of creativity. The participants in the study consisted of a total of 167 sixth-grade students aged 12–13 from eight public schools in Turkey. Data were collected using an instrument to measure divergent production ability in mathematical problem solving. The valid and appropriate solutions obtained were scored based on fluency, flexibility, and originality, indicators of mathematical creativity. The findings show no statistically significant difference between spatial and numerical creativity in the problem-solving skills of middle school students in mathematics. The results further show that, irrespective of their creativity level, students tend to generate prototypical products such as right triangles in spatial tasks or parity and divisibility in numerical tasks. However, it was observed that students with high creativity skills produced more solutions in all categories of numerical and spatial contexts compared to students with low creativity levels.
Keywords: Students' creative products, Creative Problem Solving, numeracy skills, Spatial skills, Mathematical creativity
Received: 15 Aug 2025; Accepted: 29 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 İncikabı. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Semahat İncikabı, sincikabi@gmail.com
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