1. The Influence of Social Issue- based Science Teaching Materials on Students’ Creativity Jack Holbrook Anne Laius Miia Rannikmäe Tartu, 02.10.2003

2. Introduction  Attitudes of students towards science, scientific subjects and career of scientists are low;  Relevance of science teaching is low;  Students’ higher order thinking skills are quite poor, especially with problem solving skills;  The creative abilities of Estonian students are not investigated in the field of science studies.

3. Research Goal  To investigate the influence of social issue- based science teaching materials through several science subjects on students’ creativity;  To investigate the difference in male and female students’ creativity.

4. Sample Experimental group:  18 science teachers  9 schools  236 students of 9 th grade Control group:  13 science teachers  8 schools  211 students of 9 th grade

5. Social Issue-based ScienceTeaching Material  teaching material is societally related, i.e. students are familiar with the situation and can thus appreciate its relevance;  education goals are stipulated and form the major focus of the material, i.e. students are participating in the process of educational learning appropriate for the goals of the country and their intellectual development;  following the material is a learning exercise, i.e. it provides an intellectual challenge and utilizes constructivist principles — moving from the information and understanding already in the possession of students to the new;  the activity is student participatory, i.e. the student is involved either individually or groups for a considerable amount (>60 %) of the teaching time;  consideration is given to enhancing a wide range of communication skills.

6. Teachers’ In-service Courses  8 months;  Introduction of STL philosophy (STL= scientific and technological literacy);  Criteria for creating social issue-based science teaching materials;  Teachers’ team-work in creating their collaborative teaching materials;  Ownerhip of STL philosophy and creating teaching materials;  The 8-week teaching module for students.

7. Module of Social Issue-based Science Teaching  8 weeks;  Within 2-3 subjects: Chemistry, Physics, Biology,  1-3 teachers;  Teachers’ team created social issue-based teaching materials.

8. Method An instrument of discrepant situations for students to assess their creativity (adapted by Iowa University), was based on three activities: the questions ask about the discrepant situation; the causes should be suggested; the consequences should be predicted about the discrepant situations. Scoring in this section refers to creative strength of students. The total number of questions, causes and consequences was counted and the average was calculated. The following discrepant situation was created to be universal for different science subjects: “Imagine the situation on the Earth if Mankind had not invented paper”.

9. Results: Creativity of 9th Grade Students

10. Results:Change of Students’ Creativity

11. Results:Change of Male and Female Students’ Creativity

12. Conclusions  The creativity of students increased significantly during the eight- week teaching module. The most significant increase appeared on the scale of asking questions.  A societal teaching approach was most effective in encouraging the students to ask different questions about the discrepant situations and also increased the number of predicted consequences.  The least increase was with the ability to suggest causes, this being quite similar to the process of problem solving, in which the hardest situation is for the students to recognise a problem.  Remarkable differences occurred in the creativity of male and female students: the average creativity of female students was significantly higher on every scale of creativity.  The experimental teaching module seemed to affect the male students more positively than the female students as significant differences between the results of their post-test had disappeared.