Ability of Spanish preservice teachers to differentiate between creative and reproductive activities in the classroom

Abstract

Creativity is a key competency for the 21st century society and the development of certain scientific aspects related to creativity should constitute a priority in education. But to do so, teachers need to have the skills, confidence and pedagogical knowledge necessary. This paper investigates the ability of 190 Spanish future teachers to differentiate between creative and reproductive activities in the science classroom. Using the instrument prepared by Newton and Newton (2010) they were asked to rate a set of activities according to their capacity to develop scientific creativity. The results show that both the field of knowledge and the scientific topic influenced their responses, although they were able to differentiate between creative and reproductive incidents, with statistically significant differences in both topics studied. Keywords: scientific creativity; classroom activities; preservice teachers.