CREATIVITY IN ENGLISH TEXTBOOKS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MATRICULATION AND O LEVEL

Abstract

 English textbooks in Pakistan play an important role in shaping students’ learning experiences. However, concerns have been raised that these textbooks often emphasize memorization rather than creative thinking. Although earlier studies have explored communication skills in textbook analysis, limited research has compared creativity in Matriculation and O Level English textbooks. This study aims to compare how creativity is addressed in Matriculation and O Level English textbooks used in Pakistan. The study follows a quantitative research approach and applies Ellis Paul Torrance’s Model of Creativity from 1966 as the theoretical framework for textbook analysis. Eighteen exercises from each textbook are selected to represent key content types. Six experienced teachers from the education department scored these exercises. Each exercise was assessed using four dimensions of creativity including fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration through a three point ordinal scale.The Mann Whitney U test was used to compare overall creativity scores between the two textbook systems. The results show that the O Level textbook has higher levels of fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. In contrast, the Matriculation textbook mainly focuses on guided and structured  tasks and provides fewer opportunities for creative expression. These findings demonstrates clear differences in how creativity is addressed in English textbooks across the two educational systems and offer guidance for curriculum developers to support creative learning.