The Evaluation and Selection of Creative Ideas in Educational Settings: Current Knowledge and Future Directions

Abstract

Worldwide, student-centered pedagogies have emerged in education to develop creativity. However, these pedagogies do not automatically enhance students’ creativity, because students tend to underestimate and reject creative ideas – even when highly novel ideas are required to solve the problem at hand. Understanding how students evaluate and select ideas is crucial for enhancing creativity. Therefore, this paper reviews research on idea evaluation and idea selection among students. This paper suggests that the evaluation of ideas depends both on specific and general components, and a mild state of affect and openness to experience seems to play a significant role. To improve idea evaluation and idea selection, students should be exposed to a variety of ideas and effective instructional strategies benefit students as well. Teachers should explicitly instruct students to select creative ideas and encourage them to simultaneously generate and refine ideas. However, instructing students to transform their creative ideas into tangible products may unintentionally influence their choices for creative ideas. Balancing novelty and usefulness pose challenges for students during evaluation and selection, and teachers should attune to students’ reactions as much as possible (e.g. accommodating emotional outbursts). Finally, several future trends and important research questions are highlighted.