Within Hong Kong educational reforms, creativity is defined as the ability to generate original ideas and solve problems, with schools implementing creativity development in accordance with their own needs. This study tested the hypothesis that Hong Kong Chinese students’ adherence to Confucian cultural beliefs and their functions of personal cognitive resource affect their creativity. Based on the Creative Inventions Test, an instrument with demonstrated construct validity in the Hong Kong Chinese context, students (N=324) from one secondary school in Hong Kong created four inventions with each evaluated by non-expert judges for originality and practicality , and extent of knowledge fixation . To estimate their adherence to Confucian cultural beliefs, students also completed a simplified version of the Eastern-Western Perspective Scale and, finally, a subset from the Thinking Styles Inventory. Path models showed that knowledge fixation and social conformity are significant negative predictors of originality and practicality. Furthermore, adherence to Confucian beliefs and executive thinking styles contribute indirectly and negatively to originality and practicality. We conclude that the development of creativity in Hong Kong is influenced by the tensions that exist between students’ Confucian cultural beliefs and social conformity and executive thinking, hence demanding a reimagining of the education reform in Hong Kong. © 2022 Taylor & Francis.

This study aimed to develop and validate an instrument, the Early Childhood Creative Pedagogy Questionnaire (ECCPQ), which can be used to understand preschool teachers' beliefs about creative pedagogy as a means of fostering creativity. Items were initially constructed from a review of the literature and interviews with 27 preschool teachers in Hong Kong regarding their beliefs about creative pedagogy. A sample of 564 Hong Kong preschool teachers completed the initial survey. Exploratory, followed by confirmatory, factor analysis resulted in a 22-item, 4-factor scale reflecting self-initiated pursuits, interpersonal exchanges, possibility thinking, and teacher-oriented pursuits. Although the first 3 domains align relatively well with the Western literature, the teacher-oriented pursuit factor seemed to be related to the Hong Kong educational context. These preliminary results suggest that the ECCPQ can be used for revealing Hong Kong preschool teachers' beliefs about creative pedagogy, and they provide a general framework for further research on the important aspects of fostering creativity in preschool classrooms. The findings also have implications for early childhood teacher education programs and professional development in Hong Kong.
[Copyright of Creativity Research Journal is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2013.843334]

This study examined possible bicultural effects on creative potential of children in four groups of Chinese and French children in Hong Kong and Paris. An international battery of widely used divergent measures (Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests; WKCT) and newly constructed divergent-plus-integrative measures (Evaluation of Potential Creativity; EPoC) was established for assessment. Study 1 showed that most measures of WKCT and EPoC were reasonably high in reliability and they had expected correlations with the fluency scores of some subtests of Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Study 2 found some interestingly mixed bicultural effects favoring verbal divergent responses for French children and graphic integrative responses for Chinese children. Compared with Paris-French children, the bicultural Hong Kong-French children had significantly higher scores in figural fluency, figural flexibility, and figural uniqueness of WKCT (requiring only verbal divergent responses) but significantly lower scores in the graphic divergent-exploratory measure of EPoC. Compared with Hong Kong-Chinese children, the bicultural Paris-Chinese children had significantly higher scores in the graphic convergent-integrative measure of EPoC, but significantly lower scores in verbal fluency, verbal flexibility, figural fluency, figural flexibility, figural uniqueness, and figural unusualness of WKCT. Implications of the mixed bicultural effects in relation to the diverse creativity measures and children groups are discussed.
[Copyright of Creativity Research Journal is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2013.752281]

The Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests were translated into Chinese and later fully computerized for research in Hong Kong. The normative data of two cohorts (1994 and 2002) of school children were employed to test the hypothesis that growth in creative thinking occurs in a society or culture during a period of education and curriculum reforms that emphasize creative thinking. Results of multivariate analysis of variance and subsequent univariate analysis of variance supported the hypothesis. Moreover, some interesting gender differences in creativity growth were observed, underlining the fact that boys and girls should be treated differentially to obtain a desirable creativity growth for them.
[Copyright of Creativity Research Journal is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Medical Teacher. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2013.843916]

A sample of 2,476 Grade 4 to 9 Chinese school children was tested with the new electronic Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests. Among primary students, creativity scores rose from Grade 4 to 5 and then dropped from 5 to 6; and among secondary students, creativity scores rose from Grade 7 to 9. A drop from Grade 6 to 7 was also observed. Apart from these overall trends, different patterns of gender differences were found in primary and secondary grades. In Grade 4 to 6, boys scored higher than girls marginally on most creativity indexes. In Grade 7 and 8, girls excelled boys significantly on figural fluency, flexibility, uniqueness, and unusualness. In Grade 8, girls also scored higher on verbal flexibility. The gender differences were narrowed down again marginally in Grade 9.
[Copyright of Creativity Research Journal is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2010.503543]

This study investigated the connection between drawing skill and artistic creativity in relation to age groups and levels of artistic involvement among 223 Chinese primary, secondary, and university students in Hong Kong. Based on the fantasy drawing task, visual-artist judges made expert judgments on students' drawing skill and artistic creativity. There was substantial correlation between drawing skill and artistic creativity among children, adolescents, and young adults, even when artistic involvement was controlled in the partial correlation analyses. The results of correlational and regression analyses suggested that drawing skill contributed most significantly to the prediction of artistic creativity throughout the years at different stages of development, but artistic involvement became more important, especially in young adulthood. Implications of the findings on the skill-creativity relationship for arts education and the directions for future research are discussed.
[Copyright of Creativity Research Journal is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400410903579528]

Gender differences in creativity scores of the Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests were found for a sample of 2476 4th- to 9th-graders from 8 primary schools and 4 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Specifically, girls in the junior high grades excelled boys in verbal flexibility, figural fluency, figural flexibility, figural uniqueness, and figural unusualness. These findings contrasted with previous findings of no gender differences in a norming study of the same instrument carried out eight years before this study. The gender differences were explained in terms of environmental effect and cultural effect.
[Copyright of Creativity Research Journal is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2010.481522]

We tested 462 primary students (244 boys and 218 girls) in Grades 1, 2, and 3 from 20 primary schools in Hong Kong. Their ideational fluency was assessed by using 2 items each on 3 types of verbal tasks (instances, uses, and similarities) and 2 types of figural tasks (pattern meanings and line meanings) from the Wallach-Kogan tests. On the average, students generated about 20 instances, gave 9 alternative uses of a common object, listed 11 possible similarities between a pair of named objects, and gave 13 and 15 possible meanings for visual patterns and lines, respectively. Although boys scored consistently higher in ideational fluency than girls on verbal tasks, significant gender differences did not emerge for figural tasks. Significantly higher scores on ideational fluency were evident for students in higher grades especially for verbal tasks. The use of the Wallach-Kogan tests in the assessment of divergent thinking ability and creativity for Chinese children is discussed.
[Copyright of Creativity Research Journal is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15326934CRJ1334_13]

Teachers' implicit theories of creativity were elicited by requesting 204 Hong Kong primary and secondary school teachers to list the characteristics of either creative or uncreative students. Their responses, an average of about 4 to 5 creative or uncreative characteristics by each teacher, were categorized into 42 creative and 33 uncreative attributes, traits, or trait adjectives. The most frequently mentioned creative attributes were "imaginative," "always questioning," "quick in responding." "active," and "high intellectual ability," whereas the most frequently mentioned uncreative attributes were "conventional," "timid," "lack of confidence," and "conforming." Unlike results of U.S. studies, this study yielded findings that suggested that Chinese teachers regarded some characteristics of creative students as socially undesirable and other characteristics as associating highly with intellectual functioning. Cultural differences on the perception of creativity in students are discussed.
[Copyright of Creativity Research Journal is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15326934crj1203_3]