Abstract
This chapter focuses on the notion of creativity in the contexts of science and science education. It discusses the meaning and the various conceptions of creativity and their relationship to school science, as well as the problems inherent in the development and evaluation of students’ creativity. In examining, as it does, some taken-for-granted ideas and science activities regarding inquiry science and the integration of art and science, this chapter attempts to formulate a conception of creativity for school science that is both compatible with the idea of scientific creativity and realistic with regard to what students can actually do. A number of activities/strategies that encourage creativity, and more specifically imaginative/creative thinking, are also included at the end of the chapter.
It is the tension between creativity and scepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.
Carl Sagan, in Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science, p. 73
The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.
Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, in The Evolution of Physics: The Growth of Ideas from Early Concept to Relativity and Quanta, p. 92
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination.
John Dewey, in The Quest for Certainty, p. 294
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Notes
- 1.
An ERIC search revealed that well over 1 million articles have been written about creativity in the contexts of education and learning and a little over 150,000 about creativity in the context of, or relating to, science education. Yet the above question is quite timely, now that creativity is increasingly considered a crucial ability for the future. As we enter a new era, creativity is not just becoming increasingly important (Pink, 2005), but it seems that ‘our future is now closely tied to human creativity’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 6). Gardner (2010), in his Five Minds for the Future, has argued for the crucial role of creativity, as a one of the five cognitive abilities that leaders of the future should seek to cultivate.
- 2.
See about the project at www.creative-little-scientists.eu
- 3.
In regard to the scientists’ age, some examples can be illustrative. Marie Curie was about 30 when she began working on radioactivity, and by the time she was 45, she had won two Nobel Prizes. William Lawrence Bragg, the youngest-ever Nobel Laureate, received, at the age of 25, the Nobel Prize for his work on X-rays and crystal structure. Werner Heisenberg also did his pioneering work on quantum mechanics in his mid-20s, as did Albert Einstein, who published, some of his most important papers at that age. As for the secret of life, this was unravelled by James Watson, who codiscovered the structure of DNA when he was only 25 (Simonton, 2004). It is quite evident that these scientists transformed both their disciplines and the way people see the world. And this transformation of outlook may be more important than the improvements, marginal or not, in people’s daily life, due to the application of the novel scientific ideas themselves (Peters, 1988). But what is important and may very well have implications for science education is that of all sciences only physics is the field with the youngest pioneers, preceded only by poetry (Simonton, 2004).
As for the scientists being deliberately creative, again two examples, from two different eras, can help illustrate the point. Nikola Tesla was looking for new ways to harness the energy of the ionosphere. Tesla was deliberately trying to harness the naturally occurring electricity in the ionosphere and then broadcast it back to relay stations that could then transmit free energy all over the planet. The fact that his creative vision was not realized is another story. However, out of that work emerged ideas in regard to the wireless transmission of electrical power. More recently, physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, in visualizing graphite as billions of layers of carbon atoms laid on top of each other, and in being interested in isolating a few of those layers, or maybe just one layer, took a block of graphite (i.e. the same material used for the centre part of a pencil), stuck tape to it, and then pulled the tape off. Not only did the tape method work, but in October of 2004, the two scientists announced that they had managed to create single sheets of carbon just one atom thick and in 2010 received the Nobel Prize!
- 4.
Current research on analogies in scientific understanding focuses on near analogies, that is, analogies in which the source and the target concept or domain are close.
- 5.
The CASE programme was designed to increase students’ scientific reasoning, especially analytical skills rather than creative thinking.
- 6.
Hu and Adey’s (2002), based on Guilford’s theory of creativity, developed a model for testing scientific creativity in the context of secondary school science. Their assessment focused on three factors, namely, process (referring to imagination and thinking), trait (referring to fluency, flexibility, and originality), and product (referring to technical product, scientific knowledge, science phenomena, and science problem). Even though their model offers the possibility for assessing 24 ‘factors’, Hu and Adey focused on seven items, namely, unusual use, problem finding, product improvement, creative imagination, problem-solving, science experiment, and product design. Administered to 160 UK students, they found both a high internal consistency and inter-scorer reliability.
Weiping, Adey, Jiliang, and Chondge (2004), who applied Hu and Adey’s model to compare Chinese and British adolescents’ creativity, found that creativity develops in stages, with a levelling off occurring at age of 14, something that agrees with the results of the Guilford-Torrance test.
- 7.
An argument about whether individual creativity is superior or inferior to social creativity is hard to defend or maybe meaningless in the sense that there is an interplay between the two.
- 8.
In this case the script is based on actual life events, but students can enrich it with imaginary situations, events, and dialogues that do not alter the historical reality.
- 9.
Such a challenge can take place at the beginning of the lesson, in order to motivate students to think creatively and at the same time become aware of the various interconnections of phenomena and ideas.
- 10.
The issues that can be raised about science fiction have already been discussed at the end of Chap. 1.
- 11.
The findings of a study, whose sample consisted of 300,000 students from kindergarten through grade 12, are overwhelmingly disappointing with regard to creative thinking. By and large, children’s thinking beyond fifth grade, that is, in middle and high school, was found to be conformist (Kim, 2011).
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Hadzigeorgiou, Y. (2016). Creative Science Education. In: Imaginative Science Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29526-8_5
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