Creativity in science education 9

Science education, as shown earlier in the paper in the image usually offered of
'traditional teaching', has had a practice of treating students as 'passive
learners'. This stark contrast may be the main reason why science educators
turn to art when seeking to re-vitalise their subject. Science teaching, we think,
would benefit from adapting the artistic process of self-expression, including
'risking failure, taking leaps of faith and trusting in a more creative approach
when the outcome is not at all certain' (Mesure, 2005: 13). This might be a
way of making teaching meet children's needs, while truly emphasising
creativity. The challenge, of course, is to ensure that the teaching still has
science as a main focus rather than artistic expression. To achieve this,
awareness of the characteristics of scientific creativity and clear goals for the
learning outcomes are needed.

Inquiry science

In investigative, or inquiry science students work on open-ended, investigative

tasks, the underlying idea being that by so doing school science mimics real
scientists' creativity. This idea occurs frequently in science education literature
(for example, Gangoli, 1995; Washton, 1966). The words 'discovery',
'inquiry' and 'creativity' have been used as synonyms to describe this practice
(Lucas, 1977). Our task here is to explore the extent and ways in which
investigations in science really offer an arena for developing students' scientific
creativity.

A contrast exists between the ideals on which inquiry based science is founded
and the reality of its practice. Inquiry science is attractive to science educators
for idealistic and realistic reasons. The approach dominated 1960s and '70s
science curricula, about which DeBoer (1991: 206) writes:

If a single word had to be chosen to describe the goals of science

educators during the 30-year period that began in the late 1950s, it
would have to be inquiry.

Inquiry projects run by the UK's Nuffield Foundation (for example, Nuffield
Foundation, 1971) and the American Association for the Advancement of
Science in the US (American Association for the Advancement of Science,
1967) established strong, influential trends and ideas, leading many educators
to become passionately convinced about the correctness and benefits of
inquiry-based science teaching. Although the dominance has faded in more