Teaching creative thinking in regular science lessons: Potentials and obstacles of three different approaches in an Asian context

A large-scale school-based creativity project was launched to introduce creativity elements into Physics, Chemistry, Biology and integrated science subjects of Form 1 to Form 6 in secondary schools of Hong Kong (corresponding to Years 7 – 13 in the UK). The project adopted an infusion approach, in which regular lessons were restructured for direct instruction in thinking skills and processes (Ong & Borich, 2006). The teachers of this project received about ten hours of creativity training and conducted some simple try-outs of creative teaching. Afterwards, the teachers were free to choose one of the three creative science teaching approaches, according to their own backgrounds and preferences. They then designed their own creative science activities based on their students’ needs and school syllabus.

Three teachers of similar backgrounds, each adopting a different approach, were chosen to the samples of case studies. Teacher A adopted science process approach, asking students to generate new hypotheses. Teacher B adopted science content approach, inducing creative writing tasks on the science concept taught. Whereas Teacher C adopted science scenario approach and conducted a creative problem solving (CPS) activity which started with a science-related problem situation. The three teachers came from different secondary schools, all of which are of average academic standard in Hong Kong, and use their mother-tongue, Cantonese, as the medium of instruction. The three teachers had 5 to 14 years of teaching experience, and all were novices at creativity teaching. One important point is that these teachers were free to choose the creativity approach which most suited their own teaching styles, student abilities and school curriculum. For this reason, this study assumed that each creativity approach under examination was implemented by a suitable teacher in a suitable classroom context, in the school-based creativity project described.

This study examined the process, outcomes, tensions and dilemmas in the teachers’ initial attempts of implementing the creative activities in their regular science lessons. Data were collected from teacher and student interviews, analyses of students’ work and in-depth lesson analyses of a few selected lessons. Each case study reported in the following session includes the background of the teaching, the teaching and learning process and their evaluations.