Students creativity in chemistry classes

Abstract

In this paper the effects of the elaboration of the Stoichiometry by different teaching/learning methods, according to aims to encourage divergent thinking and creativity of primary school students (aged 13), is presented. The pedagogic experiment with parallel groups was carried out within six sessions during the 2010/2011 academic year. Two seventh grade classes (50 students) from Mathematical Grammar School in Belgrade were chosen as a sample. One group (group A) was taught by a combination of the demonstration methods and the stoichiometry calculations. The other group (group B) were divided into several groups and each of them had a few tasks: (i) to conduct experiments and according to results to create stoichiometry problems, and (ii) to read the text and according to the information from text to develop stoichiometry problems. At the pre-test, the group A showed a slightly higher overall result than the group B. The results of posttest show that the great number of different types of responses was given in group B. The obtained results show that an opportunity to create stoichiometry tasks associated with the experimental work or with the texts can contribute to the development of students divergent thinking.