Enhancing creativity of elementary science teachers: A preliminary study

This study presents a program for developing the creativity of teachers in designing hands-on science activities with the use of everyday resources. The design of this program is based on creativity theories in mainstream psychology. It aims at fostering the creative attitudes (i.e. confidence, interests and values) and the divergent thinking abilities (i.e. fluency, flexibility, unusualness and elaboration) of teachers in self-developing science experiments with simple everyday items. Strategies adopted in the program include --- hands-on inquiry, breaking of perceptual and cognitive sets, generation of multiple answers, suspension of judgment in brainstorming, attribute listing, usage of checklist, morphological synthesis, modeling and providing creative examples, thought-provoking questioning, cultivation of playful environment and self-reflection for meta-cognitive awareness. This program has been conducted to about 80 in-service teachers. The evaluation results are positive, indicating that part of the objectives of the program is achieved. Suggestions are made for improvement and future studies. Copyright © 2001 HKIEd APFSLT.