Teaching science creatively, 2nd edition

Abstract

At first glance, science teaching and creativity might seem to be strange bedfellows. For many of us, our experiences of being taught science at school were anything but creative. We think back on experiments to ‘prove’ scientific truths; of information to be memorised; of mathematical algorithms to be replicated. Even in the upper years of primary education in England, the pressures of national testing in science up to 2009 tended to squeeze creativity out of teachers’ practice and children’s learning, in favour of revision. Yet we also know that science education need not be like this. The growth and relative success of primary- led approaches to science teaching and learning over the past 25 years – with their emphasis upon curiosity, observation, exploration and enquiry – have inspired many children and have even begun to influence the secondary curriculum. It is our argument in this book that we can no longer leave children’s creative development to the arts; science needs to have just as strong an emphasis in the creative curricula being adopted by so many primary schools