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Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 11, Issue 1, Article 17
(Jun., 2010) |
Potentials
The above case studies illustrated some initial attempts to infuse creative elements into science teaching by three secondary teachers, who were novices at creativity teaching. They varied in their creative science teaching approach. Teacher A aimed at nurturing student creativity through science process. He expected that engaging students in making multiple new hypotheses could enhance their divergent thinking abilities in scientific inquiry. Teacher B aimed at nurturing creativity through applying science content. He expected that creative writing activities could train students’ imagination and flexibility in presenting science knowledge. Teacher C aimed at nurturing creativity through exploration started from a science-related scenario. She expected CPS activities could help students to develop divergent thinking and problem solving skills.
In results of this study, all three teachings were successful to some extent. Teacher A found that his students became capable of generating new hypothesis, and the quality and quantity of them increased in his second teaching. He considered this an improvement of creative thinking in science process. Teacher B found some students produced high-quality creative writings with both good application of scientific concepts and innovative metaphors, whereas, average students also managed to produce acceptable writings with some simple science concepts and personal analogy. In both level of performance, some degree of imagination and understanding of science concepts were demonstrated. For Teacher C, her interesting open-ended PS task readily stimulated students’ divergent thinking, and her improved CPS teachings further strengthened students’ problem solving skills. In sum, positive learning outcomes of students were obviously found in all three cases. In fact, student gains went beyond their creative thinking. In all three cases, some students reported that their interests in the science topic (i.e. light ray, tooth decay or plant) were much increased after the creative thinking activity. Especially in the case of Teacher B, both the teacher and the students believed that the creative writing activity strengthened student conceptions of light ray and consolidated what had been learnt in lesson.
On the other hand, the interviews with the three teachers revealed that, despite the difficulties in the teaching process, all of them believed that the activities were worth trying. Why so? They used to say “the activities are good for students”. From the activity design and pedagogical practices they developed, the three teachers had learnt how to make use of open-ended tasks (in science content, process or scenario) to stimulate divergent thinking, imagination and other creative attributes. Furthermore, all the three teachers demonstrated deeper level of professional reflection, in face of the tensions and dilemmas in their new teaching approach.
In short, in all the three cases, the creative teaching and learning exerted some positive impacts on both teachers and students. This study revealed that even teachers novice at creativity education, with minimal training, were capable of designing activities of these three approaches and implementing them in regular science classroom, with certain degree of success. Though with obstacles, it was worthwhile to explore these three kinds of creative science teaching approach in Hong Kong context.
Obstacles
The three teachers experienced a number of tensions and dilemmas in the try-out process. It was found that there were similarities and differences in their problems and their coping strategies. Let’s elaborate them in details here.
Content-domination
In education system of Hong Kong, secondary school science curriculum and examinations were still dominated by content knowledge. For Teacher A, though he aimed at creativity in science process, he could not always “put down” his concern about science content. He was dissatisfied with students’ inaccurate science concepts and science irrelevance. Comparatively, Teacher B showed less dilemma of this kind, as he aimed at fostering creative thinking through applying science content. In assessment, he allocated equal marks to both correct use of science content and imaginative thinking. However, his dual requirements made the task difficult, especially to some low-ability students. For Teacher C, she started with a science-related scenario in her CPS activity. She allowed her students to make free choice in the problem-solving process. Ultimately, her class discussion deviated from subject content and even science domain. Though Teacher C was rather open-minded in accepting non-science-related discussion in her science lessons, however, her students felt confused and not satisfied. Her students were under the tensions of the examinations and their established learning habit.
These three case studies showed that teachers were in the dilemma of content and creativity teaching, though this dilemma was demonstrated in different ways in different cases. Teaching creative thinking through science scenario (but not directly related to the subject content) may be complained by students that it is not useful, teaching creative thinking through science process may fail to cope with science content learning in parallel, whereas, teaching creativity in applying science content may be too difficult to students, who had limited science concepts and creative thinking abilities. Creative thinking is divergent and open-ended in nature. Therefore, in the development of creative thinking, it is very difficult to restrain student thoughts to some fixed-ended science contents, and, on the other hand, the exploration around a convergent content provides limited room for creative thinking. The dilemma between content teaching and creative thinking is basically a struggle between divergent and convergent style of teaching. And, the root of this dilemma is the heavy knowledge-content of science curriculum in Hong Kong.
Time constraints
Time constraints were found to be common to all the three teachers. The activities of the first two cases were deliberately designed to be simple and short, and teachers gave the students less time than needed. And, all the three teachers reported that their creative teaching used more time than expected. It is a great challenge for teachers to cope with the constraints of the curriculum and fulfill the requirements of creative teaching at the same time. The three teachers taking different teaching approaches were found to adopt different methods to cope with this time constraint. In interview, Teacher A reported that he asked his students to do self-learning in the school web for some less core knowledge contents, in order to spare time for the creative activities. Teacher B gave less than enough time for students to complete the creative writing, and asked his students to complete them at home. Teacher C reported that she arranged extra after-school lessons to complete the syllabus after doing this project. In terms of time management, Teacher C was in the worst situation. She needed to teach back all the science content in a separate period of time, whereas, Teacher A covered, at least, some ideas in the content (i.e. tooth decay) together with the creative activities. Of course, the time pressure to Teacher B was the least, because the creative activity was simply an extension of his normal content teaching, which could be easily accepted by his students as a take-home exercise.
Discrepancy in expectations
The discrepancy of expectations between teachers and students is also a problem in all the three cases. Teacher A, as an experienced science teacher, always insisted that imaginative and creative elements should not override science knowledge, accuracy or relevancy. He were expecting some scientifically correct and yet creative or novel ideas from his students. However, his students were more inclined to the playful and humorous aspects of creative thinking. Teacher A puzzled on how to respond to joking answers in the hypothesis-generating exercises, and struggled whether he should keep an open mind. In fact, Teacher B’s view on creative science teaching was very similar to that of Teacher A. The major difference is that Teacher B explicitly instructed students to produce writings with both creative thinking ideas and correct science concepts. Teacher B and his students could very quickly compromise in the assessment criteria which emphasized both aspects. It seemed that both Teacher B and his students did not have too much puzzle on why doing this creative writing exercise, as it could consolidate both the content knowledge and elicited imaginative thinking. In contrast, some students of Teacher C were very serious with their learning and did not accept this kind of playfulness in science class. These students’ conceptions of science learning were obviously restricted to learning of science content which would be tested in examinations. In fact, all the three teachers found unexpected discrepancies between teacher and students, and their student performances were below their expectations at the beginning of their try-outs. As being inexperienced in creativity teaching, the three teachers tended to oversimplify the integration of creative thinking training into a knowledge-dominated science curriculum.
Student abilities and interest
As classrooms of Hong Kong have a Confucius-heritage Culture, and most students have so limited experience in creative thinking learning. Their difficulties in completing teachers’ creative tasks could be easily understood. Even if students could come up with some ideas, they hesitate to respond and they worry whether their answers are appropriate. At the beginning, both Teacher A and C did not explain the learning objectives and the rationales of the creative activities. As a result, students did not understand the teachers’ expectations or the purposes of the activities. This increased their puzzles and confusion. Teacher B directly informed the assessment criteria to his students, who therefore became aware of the requirements and purposes of the creative writing exercises. However, his students still felt the exercise demanding. The creative writing exercise required students to grasp hold of a number of related science concepts accurately, some basic personal-analogy writing skills and also the ability to integrate the two. With the limited science knowledge, writing skills and imagination, students found it difficult to create good writings on that specific topic. Moreover, the subject content in science syllabus of Hong Kong usually belongs to “hard science” and not so daily-life. Students may find the creative tasks built around these topics remote and uninteresting. Like in the case of Teacher B, students might have low interest in writing a passage on “If I am a light beam….”. Comparatively, taking the other two approaches, teachers might be less restricted by the subject content at hand and found themselves more room to develop interesting creative tasks to suit their students (like the case of Teacher A and C).
Furthermore, obvious student differences in motivation and ability were found in all the three cases. Although some students enjoyed the activities and performed well, there were also other students who disliked them and performed poorly. This is a big challenge to teachers’ professional competence in taking care of these individual differences in a classroom of more than forty students in Hong Kong. The causes of these individual differences and their coping methods are worthy of further investigation.
In sum, this study found that all the three approaches had their strengths and limitations. Students had different gains in the three activities, including both creative thinking and content learning. In the creative science teaching, all the three teachers were experiencing tensions from content-teaching, time constraints, student abilities and interests, and discrepancies between teacher and student expectations. Adopting science content approach, students found it difficult to integrate the content and the creative thinking, whereas, teacher might find it hard to design easy and interesting creative activity around the content at hand. Adopting the science process approach, teacher worried that the discussion was irrelevant to the subject content in the syllabus. Adopting the science-related scenario approach, teacher lacked of time to cover the original science syllabus and students complained the learning was not useful to their examinations. All these teaching dilemmas in fact were rooted in the content-dominated curriculum in Hong Kong.
Copyright (C) 2010 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 11, Issue 1, Article 17 (Jun., 2010). All Rights Reserved.
