34 strategies at the elementary and secondary school levels (Jo & Maker, 2011, this issue; Kwon, Park & Park, 2006). Kwon and colleagues concluded that traditional math education was intended to focus mostly on convergent thinking in which a student memorized existing mathematical rules and theorems and then applied them to problems to find one exclusive solution rather than to apply these rules and theorems in new and different ways. Jo and Maker found that when observers recorded the use of teaching strategies to encourage problem solving using the DISCOVER curriculum model, the teaching of mathematics was seldom described. They concluded that this observation could have been due to the fact that teachers spent little time on mathematics instruction in the schools in the study or because teachers did not see the usefulness of the model in mathematics. Because of educators’ apparent lack of interest, researchers have not emphasized creativity in mathematics, so the relationship between mathematical creativity and mathematical achievement at the elementary and secondary level has remained unclear.

The relationship between general academic achievement and domain-general creativity has been investigated by numerous studies after Getzels and Jackson’s (1962) classic study of the role of creativity in school achievement. While some researchers have found high correlations between academic achievement and creativity (Torrance 1962; Yamamoto, 1964; Asha, 1980; Cicirelli, 1965; Counts, 1971; Murphy, 1973), some have not verified the correlation or have found low correlations between these two variables (Baird, 1985; Edwards & Tyler, 1965; Hoyt, 1966; Krause, 1977; Mayhon, 1966; Marjoribanks, 1976; Nelson, 1975; O’Leary, 1980; Reilly & Chao, 1982; Sierwald, 1989;