Enhancing Creativity of Elementary Science Teachers

Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 2, Issue 2, Article 4 (Dec., 2001)
Vivian Mo Yin CHENG
Enhancing Creativity of Elementary Science Teachers - a preliminary study

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Discussion
On the whole, this program is successful in arousing the interest of teachers in teaching science and doing science practical work in classrooms. It enables teachers to become aware that science is around us, nearly everything in our daily-life is related with science and can be used to do science experiments. Through the activities, most teachers have changed their image in science, from something very difficult and remote, to something interesting, simple and daily-life. They seem to have higher motivations, confidence, interests and value in self-developing experiments with daily materials than before. The affective objectives of the program are, to certain extent, achieved. However, there is no obvious evidence that the creative abilities of the teachers are really enhanced, though teachers have developed some innovative ideas during lessons.
In evaluation, the effect of the present program is found to be hindered by two factors. First, the science background of most teachers is very weak. The majority of them have only secondary three level of science education, and many recieved this education more than ten years ago. As suggested by many scholars (Amabile,1996; Sternberg & Lubart, 1996), domain-specific knowledge is a very significant factor in creativity development. Therefore, the lack of science knowledge hinders the creativity development of these science teachers. The second limitation is the lack of time. The contact time of this program is only five hours and is not enough for achieving such a challenging goal. The program has been conducted for four cohorts of teachers. However, on the average, only around 6 to 8 activities could be finished in each cohort (though all of the activities were tried-out).
This study is only a preliminary attempt in exploring ways to enhance the creativity of science teachers. The program presented is still in a developing stage, and its evaluation is incomplete. In future, more rigorous attempts should be conducted on evaluating the effects of the program. Pre-test and pro-test can be done to examine more accurately the changes in the attitudes and beliefs of the teachers. Follow-up study is necessary to understand teachers' classroom practice, i.e., whether the teachers have really self-developed science practical activities in their school context, and what real-life problems they have encountered in doing so. Based on these evaluations, the program can be revised and improved.
As suggested by recent creativity studies (Amabile, 1996; Nickerson, 1999), affective factors are crucial to creativity development. Therefore, this kind of creativity program should go beyond skill-based training. Its ultimate goal is to nourish an affect --- designing experiments with simple tools (like all other creative act) is not a skill nor a job, but it itself is an interesting game, which can bring the participants challenges and the joy of self-actualization (Maslow, 1968). This kind of program should aim at cultivating several beliefs --- teaching has infinite possibilities; science is around us; not only experts or textbooks can have good ideas; teacher themselves can also create new and useful experiments if they try to do so. In conclusion, we should encourage an appreciation of science, a more flexible attitude, a higher self-confidence, a love in teaching and a stronger aspiration in improving our science education. In order to let our children to have more meaningful science education in future, it is highly necessary for us to continue our effort in developing programs for enhancing science teachers' creativity.