Assessment of Creative Thinking of Hong Kong Undergraduate Students Using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking

Abstract

[EN] Creativity has been a key graduate attribute and transferrable skill for the universities nowadays. A better understanding of freshmen students’ level of creativity thinking facilitates the cultivation of the ways for nurturing the development of creativity in students throughout their university education studies. The purpose of this study was to investigate creative thinking abilities of first-year undergraduates in Hong Kong using the Torrance Tests of Creativity Thinking (TTCT) – a commonly known assessment for creativity. A total of 492 first-year undergraduates at a university in Hong Kong were asked to complete TTCT Figural Form consisting of picture construction, picture completion and lines activities. Generally, the creative potential of Hong Kong undergraduates was well above the average. The students demonstrated their abilities in generation of a number of relevant ideas (fluency), producing novel responses (originality), abstract thinking (abstractness of titles), and open-minded thinking (premature closure). They exhibited creative strength of, for example, flexible imagination, thinking with senses, and thinking beyond boundaries. However, students’ elaborative thinking, metaphorical-thinking and sense of humor had a lot of room for improvement. Based on the assessment results, some implications on the possible institutional strategies for nurturing creativity among students during university education were discussed.