Leadership beliefs and the creativity gap : interpreting Malta’s PISA 2022 results

Abstract

In 2022, the OECD introduced a creative thinking battery within PISA, repositioning creative thinking as a measurable and comparable outcome of schooling.[1] Malta's results offer a compelling case for critical analysis: while Maltese 15-year-olds performed moderately relative to their core-domain achievement, school leaders reported markedly lower beliefs in the value of creativity than their OECD counterparts (latent mean: −0.351 vs OECD: 0.255).[2] Drawing on critical interpretive analysis of PISA 2022 national data, integrated with transformational leadership theory. This paper argues that the primary constraint on creative thinking development in Malta is not student capability but leadership belief. The paper makes two original contributions. First, it reconceptualises Malta's PISA profile as a belief-constraint formation a condition in which creative activities exist structurally but are epistemically underauthorised by school leaders — rather than as a curricular or student-level deficit. Second, it proposes the Integrated Creative Agency Developmental Structure, a recursive framework in which epistemic belief authorisation, creative climate formation, ecological mediation, and pedagogies of the possible mutually reinforce one another. This model positions creative leadership as a systemic lever and provides a theoretically grounded pathway for policy and leadership development in Malta and comparable small-state educational systems navigating VUCA and Anthropocene conditions.