Associations between Computational Thinking and Figural, Verbal Creativity

Creativity and Computational Thinking (CT) have been pointed out as two important skills that would promote students in the digital age as contributing members of society. Therefore, these two constructs have been extensively researched in recent years, but the associations between them are yet to be fully understood. This study takes another step towards bridging this gap by examining the association between CT and three types of creativity, i.e., Figural Creative Thinking, Verbal Creative Thinking, and Computational Creativity. Data was collected from 119 ninth-grade students (14-15 years old) from Israel. Students took two commonly used creativity tests (Torrance's Test of Creative Thinking, and the Alternative Uses Test). They also used Kodetu—an online learning environment for CT—and we used the system log files to measure their CT acquirement and their computational creativity. Findings suggest some nuanced associations between the four sets of variables. Specifically, we point out the limited associations between verbal and figural creativities, some of which are negative; also, we found that the associations between creative thinking and CT, as well as between creative thinking and computational creativity, differ by gender.