Creativity in science
Creativity in science teaching
Sarah Longshaw
ABSTRACT The article endeavours to define creativity and then expands on how creativity can be
applied in the classroom and more specifically to science teaching. The importance of creativity in
today’s curriculum is discussed, along with the factors that sometimes limit this process. The author
questions the difference in approach between primary and secondary students and gives examples
of the application of creativity from her own teaching.
I am not sure I am qualified to write this: I have
read a number of books, I always sign up for
sessions on creative teaching at the Association
for Science Education (ASE) conferences, but do I
really qualify to wear the T-shirt that labels me as
a creative teacher?
All teachers are creative: they have to be. How
many of us face the challenge of teaching students
to learn in a way we did not utilise ourselves?
Think of the new National Curriculum for key
stage 3 (age 11–14) in England, with its focus
on skills rather than just content. How many of
us have puzzled over how to get a topic across
to a less- or more-able or well-behaved group
and come up with a way that is different from
one we have tried before? Yet how many of us
would, hand on heart, say that we are creative
teachers? Yes, we might agree that we produce
(occasional) creative lessons, particularly with our
‘better’ classes or when we are being observed or
assessed. Maybe this is because we are not sure
what creativity is, maybe it is because we are not
convinced that we fit our own definitions of what
being a creative teacher means, or maybe it is
simply because we always feel under pressure to
achieve – to complete the scheme of work within
a set time or to help our students achieve their
targets. The enemy of creativity is lack of time
and how many of us feel we have adequate time
to reflect on our teaching, or to nurture our own
creativity? And perhaps most significantly, how
does creativity relate to science?
When I started to research this piece, I found a
similar situation to that described by Libby Riley
(2006): the majority of information is on creativity
in general, and even that is focused more on
primary than secondary teaching. With education
today, focusing more on the learning of skills
than of content, perhaps there is an even greater
demand for creativity in teaching.
What does creativity mean?
Let’s start by trying to understand what creativity
means. There are various different views of
creativity. Ofsted, by using the NACCCE report
(1999), provides the following definition:
Creative processes have four characteristics. First
they involve thinking or behaving imaginatively.
Second this imaginative activity is purposeful;
that is it is directed to achieve an objective. Third,
these processes must generate something original.
Fourth the outcome must be of value in relation to
the objective. (Ofsted, 2003).
Libby Riley (2006) states:
Other research suggests ... it is associated
with the need to make (create) something
tangible, whereas creativity is characterised by
being imaginative, showing inventiveness and
originality of thought.
I believe creativity is about the ability to think,
not just to recall, but to apply, suggest, extend and
model, to create analogy, and it is this definition
that I try to apply to my teaching.
How creativity is relevant in teaching is well
described in David Starbuck’s book Creative
teaching: getting it right (2006). Starbuck reports
that ‘one of the biggest changes that took place in
the 20th century was the nature of the workplace’.
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Creativity in science teaching
This has led Starbuck to argue that ‘the
outcomes of schooling are now more focused on
transferable skills than on academic knowledge,
reflecting the relentless march of the information
age’. And indeed, the new key stage 3 curriculum
also echoes the need to teach students skills rather
than just feeding them information.
But can creativity be taught? Is it a reflection
of the teacher, the student or a combination of the
two? Creative lessons should encourage students
to ‘think outside the box’ and come up with offthe-wall ideas, but students must be confident
in the reception these will get before they are
willing to voice such suggestions, and teachers
must be confident that they can ‘bring the class
back’ should the flight of fancy go too far. As
Starbuck explains:
Creative teaching done right, will move you
beyond such comfort zones into areas of teaching
that are far more rewarding for you and your
pupils alike. It requires a certain amount of trust
... and is not possible, without a clear and wellenforced discipline structure in place.
It would be easy to ‘blame’ the UK National
Curriculum for a lack of creativity in education,
but contrary to common belief the National
Curriculum is intended as a guideline to what
students should know, rather than being a
prescription for how they must be taught. Perhaps
we should view the National Curriculum as a play
script, allowing each teacher to apply his or her
creativity to the delivery of the content therein.
The constant changes in education mean that
we do not always have the time or the mind-share
to produce new and exciting lessons in every
area we cover. Furthermore, teachers are often
reluctant to step outside the boundaries of the
safe but uninspiring lesson for fear of possible
discipline problems.
However, teachers are some of the most
optimistic people around and so we continue to
try to meet all these demands and produce creative
lessons. And having made that commitment, we
often find that engaged and motivated students
are more likely to be on- than off-task, and our
optimism is rewarded. Moreover, the growth of
the Web means that we are able to share ideas and
resources with a far wider audience and often at a
time that is convenient to us.
‘The silly question is the first intimation of
some totally new development’ according to
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Alfred North Whitehead (quoted in Bowkett,
2006). It is perhaps the first step on the road to
creativity. But the environment must be such that
students are not afraid to take such steps; they
need to truly believe that there is ‘no such thing
as a silly question’. Indeed, how many teachers
actually believe this? Questioning needs to be
open and this in turn means that the teacher needs
to be prepared for the lesson to progress in a
number of possible ways. In his book, 100+ ideas
for teaching creativity, Steve Bowkett (2006)
advocates ‘keeping the stress low’. He continues:
‘A creative attitude says that exploring towards
the answer is more valuable than finding the
answer itself. The learning is in the journey.’
A learning journey or a point to prove?
Bowkett’s view must be at odds with the
experience of many students in science practical
work, where the objective of the practical seems
to be to prove a given point. Naturally, the
practice of the scientific technique is of value in
itself, but is this really the sole purpose of the
practical? Agreed, we have to be pretty confident
of the outcome ourselves in order to adequately
risk-assess the experiment – but surely we could
also introduce something to make the average
practical less prescriptive?
The ASE publication School chemistry
experiments (Farley, 2001) provides a range of
experiments that can add variety to teaching.
Because the students are less familiar with them,
they are less likely to be able to predict the
outcome; as a result they are more willing to think
about what they are doing.
I recently spent an afternoon with some year 5
(age 9–10) pupils. We were ‘playing’ with magic
sand (a hydrophobic solid that repels water and
appears silvery under water owing to a layer of
trapped air). They marvelled that, as they brought
the sand above the surface of the water, it remained
dry. Then they began to ask questions: ‘What
happens if we add oil to the water; oil doesn’t
mix with water either?’ ‘What happens if we add
washing-up liquid?’ Here were 9- and 10-yearolds thinking out loud, drawing on their prior
experience and being willing to suggest further
experimentation. They were not looking for answers
for answers’ sake, they were looking for questions
for the sake of extending their understanding. How
often in the secondary curriculum do we provide
such experience for our students?
Longshaw
So where in the progression through their
secondary education does it all ‘go wrong’? When
do students stop asking ‘What happens if?’ and
start asking ‘Is this right?’ And what role have
we, the teacher, played in this transition? Surely
we should be responding to the question ‘Is this
right?’ with the response ‘Is that not what you
expected?’ and then ‘Why do you think that might
happen?’ By providing the framework, we can
help them explore towards the answer in the way
advocated by Bowkett.
The ‘Coke and Mentos’ experiment (Making
Science Fun! website) provides a good basis
for creative thinking/teaching. Firstly, it is
impressively messy as the two-litre bottle of fizzy
drink emits a fountain of spray several hundred
centimetres (or more) into the air. Secondly,
it gets students talking: they often suggest it is
a chemical reaction (thinking of the reaction
between acid and carbonate – or bicarbonate of
soda and vinegar). But suggest the reaction may
not be a chemical one, challenge them to examine
the surface of the sweet (it is covered in tiny
dimples on which the gas bubbles collect) and
then ask them to suggest how they could test this
theory and you have the basis of a creative lesson.
Creativity has to be, if not taught, at least
modelled. At the start of the last academic year,
as part of the process of getting to know my
students, I set them the challenge of defining their
beliefs or understanding of science through the
homework ‘Science is ...’. They could complete
the statement in any way and I was hoping for
some insight into the youngsters, some poetry,
collage or other preferred imagery. However, the
disappointing response left me feeling that by year
10 (age 14–15) most students do not associate
science learning with creativity. They produced
the fairly predictable A4 poster with little insight
or inspiration. This was not solely their fault, but
possibly the result of a curriculum that has trained
them to believe that questions have either a right or
a wrong answer. On reflection, it was probably also
due to their not being given sufficient information
in the brief. In an attempt to give them freedom
of expression, I had left the task too open-ended. I
would like to think that a year on, that same class
would produce something more creative.
Where does creativity fit into science?
So what does creativity have to do with science?
Generally we associate creativity with making
Creativity in science teaching
things or expressing them in a way other than
that most commonly expected. And isn’t
science all about logic? Well yes and no. To
prove something does require logic, but first of
all someone has to have an idea. As Einstein
himself said ‘Imagination is more important than
knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination
encircles the world.’ The first step in explaining
something for the first time must be to observe
the phenomenon. Next we try to relate it to
our own experience and then test and refine
our explanation rigorously. Brin Best and Will
Thomas in The creative teaching and learning
toolkit (2007) define creativity as ‘The intentional
and purposeful search for innovation in problem
solving’. This book includes lots of ideas for how
to include creativity in teaching and, as suggested
earlier, because being creative is not limited to a
particular subject, nor are these ideas.
At the end of the summer term, I worked with
a group of students on a number of challenges
– one of which was to build the tallest structure
from spaghetti (dry) and marshmallows. One of
the notoriously difficult year 9 girls (14-year-old),
who had hitherto been rather uninterested, was
suddenly transformed and built a structure that
differed from all those around in that she made no
attempt to ‘stick’ the spaghetti together with the
marshmallows; she simply layered the spaghetti,
criss-crossing the strands to build a tower on which
she balanced the marshmallows. She had simply
interpreted the ‘problem’ differently and used her
creativity to solve it from a different perspective.
As teachers, it is important that we allow
students this freedom of expression. Earlier
in the year, my 12-year-old son, in year 7 at a
different secondary school, was set the challenge
of making a model cell. Excited by the prospect
of his homework, I asked him how he planned to
tackle his assignment. I found it very difficult not
to try to dissuade him from his preferred means of
making a xylem cell from a thick cardboard roll,
around which he wound hairy string, which he
then painted. His offering was far more original
than the wallpaper paste-filled plastic bag, stuck
inside a box, that I had envisaged making.
Encouraging students to think creatively can
begin with some very simple exercises – last year I
challenged year 9 with the question: ‘If you were a
metal, which one would you be and why?’ A lot of
the boys wanted to be iron (because of its strength).
Many of the girls chose the precious metals because
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Longshaw
of their association with jewellery and perceived
value. But the one that made the most impact on
me was the student who chose aluminium ‘because
it is the only time I will be light[weight]!’
Obviously, there are a lot more ideas (see the
references) and not all are appropriate to every
situation. However, ‘For teachers the time has
come from being the sage on the stage to the
guide on the side’ (Best and Thomas, 2007). We
need to involve our students in their learning.
We need to recognise that different students have
(combinations of) different learning styles, and
yet how many of us naturally teach in the style
in which we prefer to learn? We also need to
recognise that ‘variety is the spice of life’. Never
before have we had to compete with so much
change: for example, there are now so many more
ways of accessing information than there were
when I was a student. However, we need to help
our students to find solutions rather than simply
telling them the answers.
I am hopeful that the new key stage 3
curriculum with its ‘big questions’ will help
ensure that in the transition from primary to
secondary our students do not lose their ability to
watch and wonder, to suggest and synthesise, to
refine and review.
As with every journey, the foray into creative
teaching starts with a single step, and yes, it can
be scary. However, we should ‘Aim for success,
not perfection [and] never give up the right to be
wrong, because then you will lose the ability to
learn new things and move forward with your life’
(anonymous).
Paulo Coelho (2007) wrote ‘What is a
teacher? It isn’t someone who teaches something,
but someone who inspires the student to give of
her best in order to discover what she already
knows’. Perhaps we should bear this in mind as
we aim to inspire the next generation. In my mind,
I have an image: my lesson on atomic structure
begins with ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ as I aim
to describe my ‘journey to the centre of the atom’.
I make an analogy with the solar system – the
gravitational pull of the massive central nucleus is
holding the surrounding electrons as they spin in
their orbits. So far this is still a work in progress,
but to me it is an aspiration that one day I will be
a truly creative science teacher!
References
Best, B. and Thomas, W. (2007) Creative teaching and
learning toolkit. London: Continuum.
Bowkett, S. (2006) 100+ ideas for teaching creativity.
London: Continuum.
Coelho, P. (2007) The witch of Portobello. New York:
HarperCollins.
Farley, R. F. (2001) School chemistry experiments.
Hatfield: Association for Science Education.
NACCCE (National Advisory Committee on Creative and
Cultural Education) (1999) All our futures: creativity,
culture and education. London: DfEE.
Ofsted (2003) Expecting the unexpected: developing
creativity in primary and secondary schools. London:
Office For Standards in Education.
Riley, L. (2006) So it’s creativity – what the research says.
Education in Science, 216, 26–27.
Starbuck, D. (2006) Creative teaching: getting it right.
London: Continuum
Website
Making Science Fun! http://www.stevespanglerscience.
com/experiment/00000109 (accessed January 2009).
Sarah Longshaw teaches chemistry at Eaton Bank School in Congleton, Cheshire.
Email: [email protected]
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