Students' Achievements in the Field of Chemistry According to the Indicators of Creativity from the Trefoil Education Paradigm

Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore the possible use of the indicators of creative thinking, taken from the Trefoil concept, in the field of chemistry when assessing students' performance, determining the potential for creative development and providing directions for further work. In this way, chemistry instruction might contribute to encouraging the creative abilities of students necessary in the modern, fast-paced world. There is the question of whether the indicators of creative thinking can be useful in evaluating students' achievements in the situation of solving open-ended tasks in the field of chemistry and the kinds of results achieved by students. The research sample included 97 eight-grade students from two primary schools in Belgrade. The research was conducted at the end of the eighth grade in the school year 2016/17, after the entire chemistry curriculum for primary school had been covered. An appropriate achievement test was constructed and then implemented. The obtained results indicate that a large number (30%) of students are capable of formulating several acceptable answers to the given open-ended task, which is a characteristic of divergent thinking in sciences. This finding is even more relevant if we bear in mind that the students from this sample did not have any similar type of demands or experiences in previous classes. This points to the fact that there is a significant potential for developing creative thinking, which might be realised if students solved open-ended tasks more frequently.