The divergent thinking of basic skills of sciences process skills of life aspects on natural sciences subject in Indonesian elementary school students

It is evident that learning natural sciences serves an important role in establishing scientific attitude, processes, and products on the part of students of any levels. This is in line with the statement proposed by Carin and Sund (1989) who strongly urge that the essence of learning Natural Sciences is aimed to train students to investigate natural phenomena in order to find scientific products through a scientific process based on scientific attitude on the grounds that a considerable body of evidence highlights how inquiry-based science can enhance students’epistemic and conceptual understanding of scientific concepts, principles, and theories (Zhai, Jocz, & Tan, 2014).

Scientific processes involve aspects of SPS. If the scientific processes are arranged in a particular order, it is called the scientific method (Towle, 1989). The learning that can enhance learners' mastery inevery aspect of the science process skills is badly needed in order that they can master the scientific process. SPS consists of basic skills, process skills, and investigative skills. SPS should be taught to students especially for basic skills in earlier grades of elementary schools. After mastering basic skills, the students may step by step learn the process skills and are taught SPS as a unified of scientific method in the form of investigative skills.With regard to this, it is important to investigate the mastery of basic skills of students in elementary schools starting from grade 4.

Science Process Skills (SPS)

With regard to basic processes, Rezba et al. (2007) state that SPS can be divided into basic process skills and integrative process skills. Basic process skills include observing, communicating, classifying, measuring metrically, inferring, and predicting. Meanwhile, integrative process skillls consist of identifying variables, constructing a table of data, constructing a graph, describing relationships between variables, acquiring and processing your own data, analyzing investigations, constructing hypotheses, defining variables operationally, designing an experiment, and experimenting. This classification is similar to that of Chiappetta (1997) who divides SPS into two aspects, namely basic skills and integrated skills. Basic skills refer to skills of observing, communicating, classifying, measuring metrically, inferring, and predicting. On the other hand, integrated skills include defining, formulating models, controlling variables, interpreting data, hypothesizing, and experimenting.

Different from the above classification, Bryce et al. (1990) classify SPS into three types which include basic skills, process skills, and investigative skills. Basic skills comprise of observational skills, recording skills, measurement skills, manipulative skills, procedural skills, and following instructions. Process skills deal with inferencing and selecting procedures. Investigative skills include skills of making a plan and carrying out a practical investigation.

In more details, Wenning (2005) classifies SPS into five types, namely rudimentary skills, basic skills, intermediate skills, integrated skills, and advanced skills. Then, Wenning (2010) adds new skills, namely culminating skills and elaborates each of the existing skills.

Creativity and Divergent Thinking

Solving problems to find new products through the scientific method is a process of inquiry. Mayer (1980) states that all science are inquiry in nature. Biology is one kind of science. In this case, biologists attempt to answer questions about living things. Finding new products is a creative work. Creative thinking belongs to the high cognitive domain/level in Bloom's taxonomy in reference to Anderson & Krathwohl (2001) and Dettmer (2006). However, it does not mean that creativity cannot be taught to elementary school students. This is supported by Miller (2005) who defines creativity as something which is not duplicated/imitated. He states that something which is not duplicated/imitated is categorized as creative.

Creative ideas are generated through the use of various thought processes such as divergent thinking, insightful thinking, associative thinking, homospatial thinking, blind-variation and selective retention, and janusian thinking (Sak & Oz, 2010). Derived from the psychometric tradition of creativity research, divergent thinking tests are the major instrument for measuring people’s creative potential (Zeng, Proctor, & Salvendy, 2011). However, divergent thinking does not guarantee actual creative achievement, but tests of divergent thinking are reliably and reasonably valid predictors of certain performance criteria (Runco & Acar, 2012).

Rule et al. (2012) quote several sources suggesting that elementary and middle school students who are high-achieving in science and who exhibit creativity are often not challenged or given the opportunity to fully utilize their abilities in the regular classroom. Many gifted students drop out because they think that school is boring, repetitious, and lacks relevance to real life. Students think that dropping out offers more excitement, challenging tasks, and coursework. Unfortunately, many classroom teachers lack sufficient background knowledge to design stimulating advanced science projects for their students. Added to this, some teachers avoid science altogether.

With reference to Csikszentmihalyi’s model of creativity, individuals build on culturally valued practices and design to produce new variations of the domain, which, if deemed valuable by the community (i.e. the field), becomes part of what constitutes the evolving domain. Each component of the system continues to influence one another over time (Peppler & Solomou, 2011).

The rethinking of design for knowledge sharing is an important part of creating new work processes and has to evolve hand in hand with space planning (Mitchell, et al., 2003). Barrow (Hadzigeorgiou et al., 2012) states that the inquiry in science will be able to develop learners creativity if there is an imaginative and divergent thinking process.

The Measurement of Divergent Thinking

The measurement of divergent thinking skills of SPS of life aspects using instruments in the form of tests with polytomous scales (a scale for more than two categories).In this case, the polytomous scale should be between three and nine categories in order that the items can be analyzed empirically using modern approach in the form of Item response Theory (IRT).

According to Thissen et al. (2001), all the discussions about items parameter estimation for polytomous models are deeply elaborated by Baker, van der Linden, and Hambleton. In this case, Maximum Marginal Likelihood (MML) is used to estimate items paremeter by Samejima for Graded Model (GM) and Generalization of Graded Model (GGM); Bock for Nominal Model (NM); and Muraki for Generalize Partial Credit Model (GPCM). Meanwhile, Masters & Wright as well as Andersen proposes a Partial Credit Model (PCM) and Rash Model (RSM) using MML and Conditional Maximum Likelihood (CML) to estimate item parameters. According to Wright & Masters (1980), an item is declared to be “valid” if the item fits with the model using an IRT approach. One of the ways to know the fitted items using polytomous scale on PCM model is by using Quest program (Adam & Kho, 1996).

Purposes of the Research

The divergent thinking ability is an early idea when the students perform SPS for example before observing, the students must have ideas about what they will observe. This research aims to investigate the divergent thinking in mastering each aspect of basic skills of SPS including its indicators met by the students of grade 4, 5, and 6.