Session Information
99 ERC SES 05 G, Research on Arts Education
Paper Session
Contribution
In our interconnect world, characterized by widespread access to technology and information, it is increasingly important to understand teachers´ role in human and social development (Rodrigues & Martins, 2018). Educating people for present and future times, requires mastery of the learning competences for the 21st century (P21, 2015) and their relationship with the structured of school curricula.
One of the roles of science education is to educate citizens to be prepared to critically analyze scientific information, make informed decisions, and actively participate in civic issues related to science (Justi et al., 2022). It is essential that, since the beginning of teacher training, Science Education is presented through the cross-related perspective between Science, Technology and Society (STS) orientation (Vieira et al., 2011), specifically combining theoretical and practical teaching strategies (Rodrigues, 2011).
STEAM is an educational approach based on a student-centered methodology, with an interdisciplinary perspective between Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math areas, and focused on solving real or realistic problems (Shernoff et al., 2017). STEAM Education fosters key competencies, namely creativity, problem-solving, collaborative work, communication and others (Perignat & Katz-Buonincontro, 2019).
The development of Creativity during the learning process stands out as it is a key point in fostering existing and future problem-solving, several cognitive skills, and also revealing potential for innovation in educational, economic and social spheres (Plucker et al., 2004). Creativity can be understood as a cross-disciplinary ability to produce individual or collective ideas and strategies that are original, critical, plausible and feasible (Beghetto, 2007). Craft (2010) defends that creativity is human potential manifested in different cognitive domains, so everybody is potentially creative by nature.
In order to educate future citizens with these competencies, it is necessary to cultivate them the early years and throughout a life learning context. Clearly, it is urgent to encourage a teacher training approach that presents innovative teaching and learning methodologies (Ompok et al., 2020).
In this project, we chose to approach STEAM education through a Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) methodology. CBL aims, in a collaborative, multidisciplinary and experiential way, to identify, investigate and propose solutions to real CTS problems along the learning process (Rådberg et al., 2020).
This study has in view answering the question "What are the perceptions of pre-service teachers about creativity education?", identifying possible changes in the perception of creativity in the educational process. It was utilized scales of perception about creativity, already validated in literature, before and after the implementation of a formative proposal based on STEAM education and creativity promotion, through CBL methodology.
This communication is part of a doctoral project whose main research question is How creative thinking and teaching skills can be promoted for science primary school teaching through a STEAM approach? With specific questions to answer: i)How to develop a proposal for pre-service primary teachers initial training through a STEAM approach promoting creative thinking? ii) What are the effects of the STEAM formative proposal on developing creative thinking in pre-service primary school teachers? iii) What is the relation between the creative thinking level and developing primary school science teaching competencies?
The PhD project has the following research goals: i)To develop (design, plan, validate, implement and evaluate) a STEAM & Creativity formative proposal that promotes the creative thinking of pre-service teachers; ii) To evaluate the effects of the STEAM & Creativity formative proposal on the level of creative thinking and it´s relation to developing teaching skills; iii) To develop a set of recommendations from the research results for primary school science teacher training.
Method
The results were obtained by answering two different perceptions about creativity scales: i)Teaching for Creativity Scale (Rubenstein et al., 2013) and ii) Beliefs about Teaching for Creativity Scale (Katz-Buonincontro et al, 2021). Both scales were translated from English to Portuguese with translator validation and adapted for initial teacher training context, more specifically adjusting verbs to represent realistic scenarios of what the participants will face in the field, as they still have little or no teaching experience. All two instruments have items that require participants to take a position on a statement according to a 7-point likert scale, relating to the four parameters: i) Teacher Self-efficacy; ii) Environmental Desirability; iii) Social Value; iv) Creative mindset. The target audience for this study was bachelor's and master's degree students in education courses during one academic year. It should be emphasized that interpreting these results in isolation does not allow making assumptions about improvement in participants' creative or teaching potential. The results will still have to be triangulated with more diversified data collected to make global assertions of this nature. The data collection was set into three cycles of implementation and two cycles of redesign & analysis, with interleaved stages. It was worth carrying out these interval analyses in order to identify some constraints in the first scale in relation to the participants, so in the last round of implementation we were able to change the scale used. The initial scale application took place before the formative proposal implementation, that lasted two academic semesters with didactic-nature and creative fostering regular activities. Another one was carried out in the end of this term. In first and second cycle it was adopted the Teaching for Creativity Scale (Rubenstein et al., 2013) and in the last one, the Beliefs about Teaching for Creativity Scale was applied (Katz-Buonincontro et al, 2021). Over the three cycles of implementation of the formative proposal, around 80 responses were collected in the initial stage and 70 in the final stage. The data collected was analyzed using interpretative quantitative methodology with Microsoft Excel support. These results will contribute to an overall analysis of the development of creative and teaching skills, along with other instruments such as creativity tests, students´ portfolio, focus group sessions and observation.
Expected Outcomes
The present study revealed that, based on the perceptions presented by the participating future teachers, before and after the proposal´s implementation, creativity-related topics had been discussed and some concepts are more developed. In four dimensions set, i) Teacher Self-efficacy; ii) Environmental Desirability; iii) Social Value; iv) Creative mindset. it was possible to note and justify the patterns of responses shown. Overall, the results show that these pre-service primary school teachers feel prepared to act in their teaching practice by stimulating their students' creative thinking. They recognize the importance and impact of creativity as an essential skill for citizenship and as an instrument of social transformation. They also indicate an acknowledgement that all people are potentially creative, and that creativity is a skill that can and should be developed throughout life. It should be pointed that in the environmental dimension, which deals with the relationship between the development of creativity through external educational agents (management, training bodies, curriculum management bodies, etc.), there were some disparate patterns of responses with a wide range of occurrences among the response, which could be explained by the short or none teaching experience of the participants involved in the study. As a constraint to using the Teaching for Creativity Scale, it is possible to highlight the length and items to be answered by the students. That could explain the difference in the number of responses in the stages after implementations, which was carried out asynchronously. Subsequently, in the last cycle of analysis we chose to use the Beliefs about Teaching for Creativity Scale (Katz-Buonincontro et al., 2021) to collect the perceptions of pre-service teachers, as it is a more concise instrument and is also targeted at the context in question.
References
Justi,R., Maia, P., Monique Santos. (2022). Science education for citizenship. In Dillon, J., & Watts, M. (Eds.). Debates in Science Education. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003137894 Katz‐Buonincontro, J., Hass, R., Kettler, T., Tang, L. M., & Hu, W. (2020). Partial measurement invariance of beliefs about teaching for creativity across U.S. and Chinese educators. British Journal of Educational Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12379 Ompok, C. S., Ling, M. T., Abdullah, S. N. M., Tambagas, M., Tony, E. E., & Said, N. (2020). Mentor-mentee programme for STEM education at preschool level. Southeast Asia Early Childhood Journal, 9(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.37134/saecj.vol9.no1.1.2020 P21 (Partnership for 21st Century Learning). (2017). P21 Framework definitions. Washington, DC. Perignat, E., & Katz-Buonincontro, J. (2019). STEAM in practice and research: An integrative literature review. Thinking Skills and Creativity. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.TSC.2018.10.002. Plucker, J., Beghetto, R., & Dow, G. (2004). Why Isn't Creativity More Important to Educational Psychologists? Potentials, Pitfalls, and Future Directions in Creativity Research. Educational Psychologist, 39, 83 - 96. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep3902_1. Rådberg, K., Lundqvist, U., Malmqvist, J., & Hagvall Svensson, O. (2020).From CDIO to challenge-based learning experiences–expanding student learning as well as societal impact?. European Journal of Engineering Education, 45(1), 22–37. Rodrigues, A. V. (2011). A Educação em Ciências no Ensino Básico em Ambientes Integrados de Formação. Doctoral Thesis. Unviersity of Aveiro. Rodrigues, A. V., & Martins, I. P. (2018). Formação Inicial de Professores para o Ensino das Ciências nos primeiros anos em Portugal. In Formação inicial e continuada de professores de ciências: o que se pesquisa no Brasil, Portugal e Espanha. (pp. 179–198). Edições Hipótese. Rubenstein, L. D., McCoach, D. B., & Siegle, D. (2013). Teaching for Creativity Scales: An Instrument to Examine Teachers’ Perceptions of Factors That Allow for the Teaching of Creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 25(3), 324–334. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2013.813807 Vieira, R. M., Vieira-Tenreiro, C., & Martins, I. P. (2011). A Educação em Ciências com Orientação CTS -atividades para o ensino básico. Porto: Areal Editores
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