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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Literature Review
Basic concept of creativity
After reviewing a number of important literature on creativity, Mayer (1999) recently concluded that there was a consensus on the how to define creativity in terms of its products. Creative products have two criteria, i.e., novelty and appropriateness. For instant, Sternberg and Lubart (1999) stated, "creativity is the ability to produce work that is both novel (i.e., original, unexpected) and appropriate (i.e., useful, adaptive concerning task constraints)" (p.3).
Amabile (1996) had proposed a theory for the development of creativity. In her framework, creativity is hypothesized as a confluence of three kinds of resources: (i) creativity-relevant skills (across domains), (ii) domain-relevant knowledge and skills (domain-specific), and (iii) task motivation. Domain-relevant resources include factual knowledge, technical skills and special talents in the domain. Creativity-relevant resources include appropriate cognitive style, personality trait, conducive work style and knowledge of strategies for generating novel ideas. In specific, the major features of the appropriate cognitive style are the preference of breaking perceptual set and cognitive sets, keeping response options open, suspending judgment, etc. Furthermore, Amabile (1996) had proposed that "intrinsic motivation was conducive to creativity; whereas extrinsic motivation was detrimental" (p.107). Concerning the nurturing of intrinsic motivation, Hennessey (1995) highlighted the importance of promoting a "playful attitude" in the environment. Persons who are able to maintain playfulness, may continue to focus on the interest and enjoyment they derived from the task. They are more likely to keep their intrinsic motivation, even under external constraints. Humor, fun, and play take the brain from a cognitive, rule-bound state to a more fluid state where the whole body can work on a problem while the "thinking mind" is relaxed (Prouty, 2000).
In line with Amabile's social psychology approach, Nickerson (1999), in his review, suggested that numerous characteristics, competencies, traits, attitudes and other factors were associated with creativity, but most basic determinants to realize one's creative potential were affective (attitudinal, motivational) and not cognitive ones. Desire, internal motivation, and commitment are more important, than either domain-specific knowledge, or knowledge of specific creativity-enhancing techniques (Nickerson, 1999).
In support to their affective approach, Feldman (1988,1999) suggested that creativity was rooted in the desire for creative change, i.e., "the conscious desire to make a positive change in something real" (Feldman, 1988, p.288). People's new creative efforts are inspired by the results of previous creative efforts. He emphasized that seeing the results of other people's creativity illustrated that it was possible to make a difference. He believed that the interaction with the creative efforts and products of others would have significant stimulation on ones' creativity. Other scholars (Sternberg & William, 1997) also emphasized that role model was one of the most important factors for the development of creativity.
In contrast to the affective approach, some profound scholars in creativity research, Guilford (1950), Torrance (1974), Wallach & Kogan (1965) and others, considered divergent thinking process as central to ones' creative process, and thus divergent thinking skills were crucial to ones' creative ability. Most of these scholars focused on three of the divergent thinking skills --- "fluency", "flexibility", and "novelty" . With regards to fluency, Guilford (1950) stated that those people who produced large numbers of ideas were more likely to have significant ideas. For flexibility, he stated that creative people should be able to change set easily, generate ideas from different perspectives. For novelty, he stated that creative people would have unusual but appropriate ideas. In recent literature, divergent thinking abilities were still widely accepted as a significant measure of ones' creative potential (Lubart, 1999; Runco & Nemiro, 1994). Influenced by these theories, many creativity enhancement packages in the past were designed for training mainly the diverging thinking abilities of participants (Ripple, 1999). However, this approach was challenged by some scholars Crophley, 1999), who suggested that creativity development should be multi-faceted, taken into account the cognitive, affective, motivational, personal, and social factors, and should permeate the whole curriculum.
Creativity in teaching
In-depth studies on creativity of teachers are rare, though its importance is widely accepted in educators nowadays (Randi & Corno,1997). Classroom is a dynamic, interactive, complex and ever-changing environment. Every moment in teaching, teachers are facing new challenges. They have to solve a lot of problems, which they have not been taught directly in training courses or experienced before. In an old book "Creativity in Teaching", Miel (1961) suggested that teachers might express their creativity in three areas of tasks: integrity in classroom relationships, development of teaching content, inventiveness in the use of time, space and materials. Rubin (1985) described two types of inventiveness in teaching----- in its simple form, invention involves adapting lessons to particular classrooms and students; and, in its complex form, invention involves devising ways to solve instructional problems. Halliwell (1993) suggested "inventive flexibility" as a common type of creativity in teaching. Teachers need to make creative mediation between the given materials (e.g. that in the textbooks) and a particular group of learners on a particular occasion. It is this mediation for which some degrees of inventiveness or flexibility become essential. In all their descriptions (Halliwell,1993, Miel,1961, Randi & Corno, 1997, and Rubin,1985), teaching was considered as a creative process, demanding the flexibility and adaptability of teachers.
With regards to science teaching, few studies have been documented on the creativity of science teachers. Sussman (2000) suggested, "improvisation is a skill that most science teachers quickly master, whether it's searching for inexpensive or free materials for the classroom, substituting everyday materials for expensive lab equipment, or incorporating activities into the curriculum that don't require a lot of materials"(p.20). She encouraged teachers to "remember to be creative, use your imagination, and improvise"(p.20). Melear (1993) had developed a course titled "Creativity and inventiveness in science", and "creative science teaching" is one of its learning areas. In the final chapter of the book "Creativity in Primary Science" (Frost, 1997), its author concluded that "science teaching provides both the opportunity and the necessity to be creative" (p.182).