Imagination is the basis for cultivating creative thinking, and thus the driving force of innovation. Creativityrelated
research has progressed for many years, but the understandings of imagination and its indicators still
remain unclear. So far, few studies have clearly discussed how imagination manifests itself, let alone developed
an evaluation tool for assessing imagination. Because of the potential applicability to the profession of
educational technology and various fields, some general concepts of imagination must be explained before
referring to them specifically with the indicators which might be observed or assessed.
IMAGINATION
The term imagination has its root in the Latin verb imaginary, meaning “to picture oneself”. This root indicates
that imagination belongs to an individual scope, and has a denotation of self-reflection, an examination of one’s
own feelings and thoughts. Imagination is thus viewed as “a creative faculty of the mind” or “a power of the
mind” (Perdue, 2003).