Perceived creativity in insight problems by secondary school students: Effects of problem and solver's variables

An exploratory empirical study was conducted to collect and analyse the perception of secondary education students regarding the creativity involved in insight problems. A total of 127 Spanish students from 8th grade (2nd ESO) and 11th grade (1st Bachillerato) participated in the study and assessed the creativity involved in the problems before and after attempting to solve them. These evaluations were related to the course, gender, surface, and structural aspects of the problems. Everyday life and science contexts were considered as problem surfaces or contexts. The structural aspects of the problems were associated with the specific strategy required to solve them, such as ‘chunk decomposition’ and ‘constrain relaxation,’ the assistance provided by the problem statement to initiate the resolution process, and the possibility of metacognitive control over the quality of the solution developed. Individual booklets were prepared with counterbalanced statements to assess perceived creativity and to solve the problems. The results show that, contrary to expectations, students are capable of mentally representing the structural aspects of the problems during reading and before solving them. The problem surface did not significantly affect the initial perception of creativity. After solving the problems, the average changes in perceived creativity were of small magnitude. The results encourage teachers to use insight problems as promoters of creativity in secondary school classrooms.