Examining the Effects of STEM PBL on Students’ Divergent Thinking Attitudes Related to Creative Problem Solving

Abstract

The opportunities for fostering divergent thinking and creativity are limited in traditional lecture-focused classrooms, which could discourage students' from applying and developing their creativity and divergent thinking within an academic context. STEM project-based learning is an alternative to traditional instruction that can be used to challenge students to identify creative solutions to problems. This alternative involves an innovative instructional method that allows one to integrate engineering and technology into mathematics and science classrooms within a project that includes various teaching and learning practices grounded in constructivism. The purpose of this study was to understand the effect of STEM PBL on students' attitudes toward engaging in divergent thinking and students' perceptions of their creative problem-solving (CPS) skills. Therefore, we provided STEM PBL courses (e.g., coding, cryptography, microcontroller, bridge-building, 3D-printing) to secondary school students during the summer of 2018. Examining the differences between students' pre-and post-test in SPSS-25 revealed that students (n = 48) who received two-week long STEM PBL intervention held more positive attitudes toward engaging in divergent thinking and demonstrated improved self-perceptions of their CPS skills. The implication of this study is that integrating STEM PBL into mathematics and science classrooms can help students develop positive attitudes toward engaging in divergent thinking and positive perceptions of their CPS skills, thus increasing their persistence and perseverance in engaging with complex problems that require the generation of original ideas.