Investigating the predictive role of reflective thinking and decision making on creative thinking dispositions

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to investigate whether university students’ decision-making styles and reflective thinking skills are significant predictors of their creative thinking dispositions. The study was carried out with 245 university students and the data were collected with Marmara Creative Thinking Dispositions Scale, Reflective Thinking Scale, and Melbourne Decision-Making Questionnaire. This study revealed that university students presented high creative thinking dispositions and reflective thinking skills as well as high decisional self-esteem. Also, most of them use vigilance as a decision-making style. Besides, reflective thinking skills, decisional self-esteem, and vigilance decision-making style were positively correlated to creative thinking dispositions while buck-passing, procrastination, and hyper-vigilance decision-making styles were negatively correlated to creative thinking dispositions. This study also showed that university students’ reflective thinking skills, decisional self-esteem, and decision-making styles significantly predicted their creative thinking dispositions, and 18% of the total variance on their creative thinking dispositions was explained by reflective thinking skills and decision-making styles.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative thinking
• reflective thinking
• decision making styles
• decisional self-esteem
• university students

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ali Orhan

Ali Orhan holds a BA degree in English Language and Literature, and he has received his MA degree and PhD in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. He is working at Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University in Türkiye. His research interests focus on higher-order thinking skills, curriculum development and evaluation, meta-analysis, flipped learning, and digital literacy. He is the author of numerous articles published in international peer-reviewed journals like Journal of Educational Research, Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, Smart Learning Environments, and Learning Environments Research.

Orhan Ataman

Orhan Ataman is an assistant professor at Sakarya University of Applied Sciences in Türkiye. His research interests include quality in higher education, quality assurance in English language teaching, and students’ motivation in learning English as a foreign language.