Abstract
Creativity is an essential factor in ensuring the sustainable development of a society. Improving students’ creativity has gained much attention in education, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) education. In a quasi-experimental design, this study examines the effectiveness of a project-based STEAM program on the development of creativity in Chinese elementary school science education. We selected two fourth-graders classes. One received a project-based STEAM program (the experimental group, n = 33), and the other received a conventional science teaching (the control group, n = 33) over 6 weeks. Students’ creativity was assessed before and after the intervention using a multi-method approach, including a test of divergent thinking, a story completion through the Consensus Assessment Technique (CAT), a creative self-efficacy (CSE) measure, and a group-based creative project. Moreover, all students received a test of their science knowledge after the intervention. The results showed that compared with the control group, the creativity of the experimental group students improved significantly for 6 weeks at both individual and group level, even though their knowledge in science were comparable. This result confirmed the effectiveness of a project-based STEAM educational program improving elementary school students’ creativity. Implications are discussed.
Highlights
Creativity has become an increasingly important factor in ensuring the sustainable development of a society and is one of the essential skills in the 21st century
The results demonstrated compared to the control class, students from the STEAM class showed a significant improvement in their creative thinking, measured via both verbal and nonverbal forms of the Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT)
The results showed that all three individual creativity scores are moderately correlated
Summary
Creativity has become an increasingly important factor in ensuring the sustainable development of a society and is one of the essential skills in the 21st century. Using a single group pre-and post-test design, Lou et al (2017) examined how a STEM-PBL teaching program affects creativity among ninth graders Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics education at the elementary school level effectively promotes students’ learning outcomes, including creativity. This study adopted a Scratch-based STEAM education program for an experimental class of Korean students, whereas students from the control class adopted the traditional learning method. They found that Scratch-based STEAM education had a positive effect on the improvement of creativity. We hypothesize that students from the experimental group improve more than those from the control group on creativity after the intervention
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