The Ministry of Education, Religious Affairs and Sports and Institute of Educational Policy (IEP)with a comprehensive set of measures, aim at the further development of students’ creative thinking, says a statement from the IEP.

The IEP announcement continues:

“Today’s announcement by the OECD of the results for the performance of students who took part in the PISA 2022 (Programme for International Student Assessment – PISA 2022) survey for the additional and innovative domain “Creative Thinking” (innovativedomain “CreativeThinking” ), shows the way for the changes that will be adopted from the next school year. The results are part of the PISA 2022 survey and come in continuation of the corresponding announcements that preceded it for Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Text Comprehension”.

It is recalled that the countries with the highest level of creative thinking are, in descending order (with an excellent 60), Singapore (41), Korea (38), Canada (38), Australia (37), New Zealand (36 ), Estonia (36), Finland (36), Denmark (35), Latvia (35), Belgium (35), Poland (34) and Portugal (34). These are the countries that also achieve high performance in the basic knowledge subjects examined by the PISA survey (Mathematics, Reading Comprehension, Natural Sciences).

Greece is ranked in the group of countries that perform lower than the average performance in OECD countries in terms of students’ creative thinking. Based on this performance, Greece ranks 38th among the 64 participating countries, with a performance of 27 points against the OECD average of 33 points.

Cross-Curriculum Actions Focusing on Critical Thinking – New Topic Bank in PISA Research Philosophy

Based on the above observations as well as the results for Greece, YPAITHA, in collaboration with the IEP, is launching a set of policies aimed at promoting the creative thinking of students, with the start of implementation in the 2024-2025 school year.

This set of policies includes:

• Establishing a horizontal nature of actions at the level of Study Programs that strengthen creative thinking. In this context, they are expected to make a significant contribution:
the Literacy Program, i.e. the reading and analysis that will accompany the literary books that will be distributed free of charge to every student in all grades of primary and secondary education and
the “Active Citizen Actions” Program which focuses on engaging students with contemporary social problems.

• Reinforcement of relevant actions within the framework of the Skills Workshops. Further promotion of the “Create and Innovate” thematic unit in all classes where the Skills Workshops are implemented. The subject in question is precisely aimed at cultivating creative thinking and initiative through STEM/Robotics, Entrepreneurship, etc. actions.

• Utilization of digital media in the planning and utilization of creative ideas and solutions especially in art courses.

• Development of a Topic Bank in the logic of the PISA research questions and philosophy.

• Integrating in the teacher’s guides of all subjects and especially in the core subjects examined by the PISA survey (text comprehension, mathematics, natural sciences), activities such as investigating open-ended problems, capturing alternative solutions and ideas, answering questions of the type “what would happen if…”, “how would you deal with…”, methods of evaluating creative activities, etc.

• In support of the above interventions, the following is planned:

a) an extensive training program for teachers in pedagogical and teaching practices that enhance students’ creative thinking,

b) a corresponding training program for education officials and especially for School Counselors and Principals of school units in order to encourage relevant practices in the schools under their responsibility and

c) repository of learning resources and indicative lesson scenarios from which teachers of all grades and all subjects can draw ideas for similar activities.

• Completion of the installation of 36,000 interactive whiteboards in every school room from the 5th grade to the 3rd high school within 2024. Education thus becomes more creative, as students, through the most modern technological tools, can have multiple sources of learning .

• Reduction of memorization but also development of critical thinking, through the multiple book. Teachers will be able to choose the textbook they want from among the approved books included in the Register of Teaching Books (MDB). At the same time, all approved books will be available in a digital library, so that students can combine sources.

• Emphasis on the procedures of individual evaluation of teachers and those of the self-evaluation of the school unit on criteria related to the application of pedagogical practices (investigative learning, solving open-ended problems, projects) and the implementation of activities (groups, a variety of intra-school activities in which students actively participate ) that enhance creative thinking.

• Incorporating in all exams (in-school, promotion, graduation) at least one topic that examines creative thinking (as the example of the OECD PISA program shows, this skill can be assessed with validity and reliability).