Creative Thinking in Design Education

This cross-national study investigates how creative thinking is manifested through design-based learning (DBL) in Singapore, Finland, and Hungary. Moving beyond the standardized metrics of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 assessment, this research utilizes a practice-based lens to examine the specific pedagogical mechanisms—problem framing, materialization, iteration, and social context—that structure everyday classroom activity. The analysis reveals that creative thinking is not a static individual trait but a situated practice profoundly shaped by institutional conditions and the degree of curricular embedding. By analyzing diverse educational settings, the study identifies how different instructional architectures prioritize specific dimensions of the creative process, from initial brainstorming to technical realization. The findings show that creative thinking does not develop evenly across domains simply through exposure to open-ended tasks. Instead, creative engagement becomes patterned through repeated participation in particular forms of design practice. Where design processes are explicitly taught and systematically reinforced, students are better able to sustain evaluation and refinement; where design activity is exploratory but weakly scaffolded, creative thinking tends to remain concentrated in ideation and expressive exploration. By bridging large-scale assessment frameworks with local classroom realities, this article argues that creative profiles are pedagogical products rather than inherent student attributes. The study suggests that fostering advanced creative competencies requires moving beyond generic “openness” toward structured, domain-sensitive instruction that legitimizes and supports iterative improvement alongside initial idea generation.