Exploring Students' Creative Thinking Processes in Solving Open-Ended Problems

Abstract

Creative thinking is a key competence in mathematics learning, particularly when students engage with open-ended problems that enable multiple strategies and solutions. This study aims to explore students’ creative thinking processes in solving open-ended problems through a synthesis of recent empirical findings. A Systematic Literature Review was conducted following the stages of identification, screening, eligibility, and synthesis based on Snyder’s guidelines. Twenty selected articles were analyzed using content analysis to identify cognitive patterns, strategy variations, and factors influencing students’ creativity. The results reveal that students’ creative thinking develops through several stages, including understanding the problem, generating ideas, selecting strategies, revising solutions, and providing mathematical justification. Creativity is reflected in students’ ability to produce diverse ideas, shift strategies flexibly, generate original solutions, and elaborate their reasoning. Internal factors such as cognitive style and conceptual understanding, along with external factors such as task quality, instructional approaches, collaboration, and technology, significantly shape the creative thinking process. The review concludes that open-ended problems hold strong potential for fostering mathematical creativity and should be systematically incorporated into mathematics instruction. Structural implications include enhancing problem design, adopting creativity-oriented pedagogies, and developing process-based assessments to strengthen students’ creative mathematical development