Students’ collaborative creative process and its phases in mathematics: an explorative study using dual eye tracking and stimulated recall interviews

In the age of artificial intelligence where standard problems are increasingly processed by computers, creative problem solving, the ability to think outside the box is in high demand. Collaboration is also increasingly significant, which makes creative collaboration an important twenty-first-century skill. In the research described in this paper, we investigated students’ collaborative creative process in mathematics and explored the collaborative creative process in its phases. Since little is known about the collaborative creative process, we conducted an explorative case study, where two students jointly worked on a multiple solution task. For in-depth insight into the dyad’s collaborative creative process, we used a novel research design in mathematics education, DUET SRI: both students wore eye-tracking glasses during their collaborative work for dual eye-tracking (DUET) and they each participated in a subsequent stimulated recall interview (SRI) where eye-tracking videos from their joint work served as stimulus. Using an inductive data analysis method, we then identified the phases of the students’ collaborative creative process. We found that the collaborative creative process and its phases had similarities to those previously found for solo creative work, yet the process was more complex and volatile and involved different branches. Based on our findings, we present a tentative model of the dyad’s collaborative process in its phases, which can help researchers and educators trace and foster the collaborative creative process more effectively.