This analysis tool has the potential to increase teacher awareness of the complex
cognitive activities associated with creative student thinking and inform their pedagogical
decisions about task selection and implementation. The sufficiency of this tool in
accounting for student response to this task was demonstrated. The tool’s usefulness in
identifying the mismatch between potential and actual student responses was confirmed
and has assisted in identifying factors that promoted and inhibited creative thinking. The
provision of a task with the potential for creative thinking was not sufficient to trigger such
thinking in the absence of student autonomy. The effect of the classroom culture on
promotion of creative thinking was clearly demonstrated through the change of classroom
culture during this lesson; the autonomy to explore aspects of this task after task closure
was a significant aspect of the changed classroom culture that supported creative thinking.
Areas for further study include testing the tool’s sufficiency with a diverse range of tasks
demonstrated to elicit creative thinking, and exploring triggers that may elicit increasingly
more complex thinking.