Are Giftedness and Creativity Synonyms in Mathematics?

By Bharath Sriraman. 2005

326 citations recorded by the source corpus.

At the K-12 level one assumes that mathematically gifted students identified by out-of-level testing are also creative in their work. In professional mathematics, “creative” mathematicians constitute a very small subset within the field. At this level, mathematical giftedness does not necessarily imply mathematical creativity but the converse is certainly true. In the domain of mathematics, are the words creativity and giftedness synonyms? In this article, the constructs of mathematical creativity and mathematical giftedness are developed via a synthesis and analysis of the general literature on creativity and giftedness. The notions of creativity and giftedness at the K-12 and professional levels are compared and contrasted to develop principles and models that theoretically “maximize” the compatibility of these constructs. The relevance of these models is discussed with practical considerations for the classroom. The paper also significantly extends ideas presented by Usiskin (2000).

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e6bb1cec0662777ae4f4beed26e34a22cd87442c

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Creative mathematics teaching in the eye of the beholder: focusing on teachers' conceptions (2011, background): “Creativity in school mathematics obviously differs from the creativity of professional mathematicians (Sriraman 2005).”
Pre-service primary teachers’ conceptions of creativity in mathematics (2010, background): “While there are people described as mathematically gifted, this does not mean that others are not also creative in mathematical ways (Sriraman, 2005).”
Predicting Creative Problem-Solving in Math From a Dynamic System Model of Creative Problem Solving Ability (2011, background): “As a result, school communities deemphasize creative problem solving ability in math and do not consider it in their scope of academic improvement (Mann, 2009; Sriraman, 2005).”
Levels of mathematical creativity in model-eliciting activities (2014, background): “Various authors refer to the importance of creativity in mathematics (Chamberlin & Moon 2005; Ervynck 1991; Piirto 1998; Sternberg 1999; Sriraman 2005).”
Notions of Creativity in Mathematics Education Research: a Systematic Literature Review (2021, background): “The body of research on creativity in mathematics education research is rich and diverse (Leikin, 2009; Schindler & Lilienthal, 2020; Sriraman, 2005).”
Creativity and mathematical problem posing: an analysis of high school students' mathematical problem posing in China and the USA (2013, background): “The research literature on mathematical creativity has historically been sparse with an overreliance on the writings of eminent mathematicians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Brinkmann & Sriraman, 2009; Sriraman, 2005).”
Technology-based assessment of creativity in educational context: the case of divergent thinking and its relation to mathematical achievement (2015, background): “Another line associates creativity with giftedness, suggesting that only a smaller group, the most talented learners of mathematics, are creative (see Leikin, 2009; Mann, 2006; Sriraman, 2005; Sriraman & Lee, 2011).”
Teachers’ views on creativity in mathematics education: an international survey (2013, background): “For Sriraman (2005) and Ervynck (1991), mathematical creativity is a central quality held by research mathematicians (Sriraman 2005).”
The education of mathematically gifted students: Some complexities and questions (2011, background): “For example, examples of absolute creativity may be seen in discoveries of Fermat, Hilbert, Riemann and other prominent mathematicians (Sriraman, 2005).”
The relative influences of domain knowledge and domain-general divergent thinking on scientific creativity and mathematical creativity (2017, background): “Similar to the difficulty in defining creativity, scholars also rarely agree on a widely accepted definition for mathematical creativity (Haylock, 1987a; Liljedahl & Sriraman, 2006; Mann, 2006; Sriraman, 2005).”