Copyright 2020 The Author(s). Published by vgtu press

1.4. Research objectives and research questions
This paper presents the result of a study which investigate the effect of teaching CPS in math-
ematics to Malaysian or Form 1 children. The main effect that was examined is the change 
in students’ creativity, which were measured quantitatively and qualitatively. Consequently, 
the effect on students’ ability to solve problems and the relationship between them are also 
examined. Any changes in students who participated in this study were documented, par-
ticularly those changes during and after going through the intervention. This study is guided 
by the following research questions:
1. Are there differences in children’s creativity after intervention, as measured through 
the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) and observation checklist?
2. What are the changes in children’s mathematical problem solving ability after inter-
vention?
3. Is there any relationship between creativity and problem solving ability after learning 
through CPS?
1.5. Theoretical and conceptual framework
Among the attitudes toward life that may generate a person’s creativity is the willingness to 
(a) redefine problems in novel ways, (b) take sensible risks, (c) “sell” ideas that others might 
not initially accept, (d) persevere in the face of obstacles, and (e) examine whether their own 
preconceptions are interfering with their creative process (Sternberg, 2012, p. 5). Such at-
titudes are teachable and can be ingrained in students through instructions that encourages 
them to think for themselves. Sternberg stated that
“Creativity comprises several different aspects: (a) abilities, (b) knowledge, (c) styles 
of thinking, (d) personality attributes, (e) motivation, especially intrinsic motivation, 
and (f) environment” (2006, p. 88),
and can be suppressed if a person is unwilling to take sensible risks or if he/she is not in 
the environment that provides at least minimal support for creativity. It is thus crucially 
important, especially in schools, to provide an environment that allows creativity to flourish.
One of the most common frameworks for creative thinking was developed by Torrance 
(1971, p. 76) with four aspects of creativity namely – fluency, flexibility, originality and elabo-
ration. He later dropped flexibility in 1984 and added two other aspects – resistance to pre-

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M. Khalid et al. Enhancing creativity and problem solving skills through creative problem...
mature closure and abstractness of titles in his figural test. Torrance saw creativity broadly 
as the process of sensing a problem, searching for possible solutions, drawing hypotheses, 
testing and evaluating, and communicating the results to others. He added that the process 
includes original ideas, a different point of view, breaking out of the mould, as well as recom-
bining ideas or seeing new relationships among ideas. However, this research chooses the 
four components of creativity that Torrance (1971, p. 76) identified in his original creativ-
ity framework for mathematics problem solving in order to characterize the development 
of students’ creative thinking. Creativity is believed to be an integral part of mathematics 
(Brunkalla, 2009) and has been proposed as one of the major components to be included 
in mathematics education, since “the essence of mathematics is thinking creatively” (Mann, 
2006, p. 239).
This study proposed creativity to be fostered through CPS. Whether problem solving is 
creative or not depends on how it is taught and how it is learnt. Teachers’ pedagogical content 
knowledge influences how mathematics will be taught. The problem context (environment – 
whether it will be personal or social learning, teacher-centred or student-centred, interactive 
etc.
) or the nature of tasks (problem type – whether open ended, static, dynamic, ill-defined) 
determine the success of CPS. On the other hand, the process of learning (in this case prob-
lem solving), is made up of the following sequence: exploring and understanding, represent-
ing and formulating, planning and executing, and finally monitoring and reflecting (OECD, 
2014c) which is comparable to Polya (2004), a classic which was used in the framework of 
this study (refer to Figure 1).
The middle part of the framework shows mutual relationship between CPS and creativ-
ity. The components of creativity that were examined in this study are the combination of 
Torrance (1971) and Guilford (1967, pp. 10–11) model – fluency, flexibility, originality and 
elaboration. Fluency is the ability to generate quantities of ideas, flexibility is the ability to 
create different categories of ideas from different points, originality is the ability to create 
new and unique ideas and finally, elaboration is the ability to expand on an idea. Meanwhile, 
three problem solving criteria were emphasized so that CPS could be generated. The first 
criterion is the process of problem solving, where a 4-step process by Polya (2004, p. 41) 
in guiding students to solve problems was adopted. The second and third criteria of CPS 
are the learning context and nature of problem. The learning context here means students 
setting which are characterized by student-centred and collaborative group-work learning, 
where social interaction and negotiation of understanding with others can help students to 
construct knowledge.
Additionally, the nature of problems describes the kind of problems that were posed dur-
ing CPS which are open-ended, authentic and dynamic. Authentic problems provide realistic 
contexts that provide for construction of knowledge. In order to generate creativity in prob-
lem solving, the problems created should be open-ended where multiple solutions (answers 
and/or methods) is possible. Dynamic here means the problems created and posed should 
create a lively environment where students would be discussing or debating their solutions. 
Finally, lesson study will help the teachers to come up with criteria 2 and 3. However, this 
paper will only report the middle part, which is on creativity and problem solving and the 
relationship between them, and not the lesson study part.

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Creativity Studies, 2020, 13(2): 270–291
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