Scientific Creativity- A New Emerging Field of Research: Some Considerations

Authors: Dr. Rajib Mukhopadhyay, Dr. Malay Kumar Sen

Pages: 1-9

Abstract:

Knowledge of science and creative vision of an individual have become two important quality parameters of him/her in the contemporary society- which is highly technical, as well as complex. In this context, fostering creativity in science education is also becoming more and more important. As a consequence, investigation of creativity in science education, to be called precisely as „scientific creativity‟ is also receiving increasing attention of science educators. This area has been selected as the focal theme of the present study. The study was designed to identify whether science learning has scope to nurture creative vision, to examine the construct of scientific creativity, to review different considerations of science educators regarding various dimensions of the construct. Science learning has some of its intrinsic features. It enables an individual to acquire various information in science and also to apply different steps of scientific method in each step of daily life leading to improvement of the standard of living, at the same time. Present study has explained this feature of science learning with reference to the philosophical perspective of science and also shows its similarity with the construct of creativity. Emergence of scientific creativity as a new area of research has also been discussed with adequate no of references. The discussion reveals that scientific creativity needs to be considered as an independent field of study. Operational construct of scientific creativity has also been explained. Different operational dimensions considered by different researchers have been reviewed in details. Though divergent thinking is considered as the essential element to explain the construct of creativity (general), discussion reveals that convergent thinking also is considered by some of the researchers to explain the construct of scientific creativity. Discussion also indicates that available studies are inadequate, and scope is there to investigate creativity in physics which is a potential area of scientific creativity, though remains mostly unexplored. The study has its psychometric importance, and is relevant in the contemporary context of revolution of science and technology in the modern society. Keywords : Science Education, Creativity, Scientific Creativity, Operational Dimensions, Creativity in Physics.