Creative Thinking in Nature of Science PART A (iv)

Part A (iv) Creative Thinking in the Nature of Science – How might you design an investigation?

Creative thinking is required to imagine multiple ways to investigate an hypothesis.

How might you explore? Scientists have to come up with many ideas on how to investigate their questions using different research techniques and knowledge/ technology available.

Scientists use creative thinking to imagine multiple ways to design an investigation and reflect on whether their design will measure what they intended to find.

In the best science investigations, its not the questions that are most creative, but rather how the experiment is measured and how the data is interpreted.

How might you design an investigation?
It is important in science education for students to learn the science inquiry skills and processes to develop a deeper conceptual science understanding. However, if students only have the opportunity to perform guided / recipe experiments then they are limited to explore and construct their own explanations for their investigable questions. A worthwhile objective for teaching science is to allow students to think and act like scientists, by designing their own investigations, using open ended inquiry, rather than to solely learn or replicate what other scientists have already done.

Seeing there is more than one scientific method provides meaning for how students see the investigation as a component in understanding a scientific problem.

Dudley Herschbach said, “People thought it would not be feasible. It was called the lunatic fringe of chemistry, which I just loved.” He ignored his critics, and set out to see what would happen if he crossed a beam of molecules such as chlorine with a beam of hydrogen atoms. He spent several years collecting his data, which in the end uncovered new insights into the ways colliding molecules behave. In 1986 Dudley Herschbach and Yuan Lee were awarded the Nobel Prize "for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes."

Disney's Dumbo the flying elephant is magical to watch. Last night I took my son to see the 2019 movie.

Imagination - What if an elephant could fly? How could you design a model to show your scientific thinking?

Imagine you designed a model of Dumbo. In order to achieve take off what might the wing span of Dumbo’s ear have to be if a baby elephant weighs about 90 to 100 kilograms. What other questions would you need to consider?
For example: Which type of elephant would you base your model on because it would be the most aerodynamic? Which elephant shape is more streamlined? How might you explore this idea? What investigation could you try? Which is your best idea?
Which things (variables) will you keep constant? What factor (variable) will you measure?

I was wondering how they made the elephant bubbles when I was watching the movie. (Was it special effects?)
Is it possible to make animal shape bubbles? How might you explore this phenomena? How many different ideas have you come up with?

The official trailer for Dumbo https://youtu.be/7NiYVoqBt-8

Creative Thinking in the Nature of Science PART A (iii)

Part A (iii) Creative Nature of Science – What do you think if…?

Continuing on from part (i) creative thinking is required to make observations, to notice (what do you notice?) and part (ii) creative thinking is required to interpret and make inferences from your observations (what do you wonder?)

Part (iii) creative thinking is required to make predictions and hypothesise. What do you think if?

Creative people in any field come up with new ways of looking at the world – they are constantly asking, "What if...?" 

"What if...?" is an important question in science. Hypothesising is an intrinsic and creative mental process where information, perceptions, and different ideas are being combined and recombined until a particular combination seems to make sense.

McComas (1998) stated “close inspection will reveal that scientists approach and solve problems with imagination and creativity, prior knowledge and perseverance.” (p. 58).

In order to stay open to possibilities, imagination is critical. The idea of using one’s imagination to approach a problem is important to teach in science. Eisner states, “ . . . this is what scientists and artists do; they perceive what is, but imagine what might be, and then use their knowledge, their technical skills, and their sensibilities to pursue what they have imagined” (Eisner, 2002, p. 199).

Students can find hypothesising difficult as there is not 'one' answer, and it is possible to come up with lots of suggestions that are not 'meaningful or useful'. Therefore we need to help students by enabling intuitive thinking that emerges from prior knowledge or experience, and not following a script.

Executive functions, such as, self-regulation of your emotions is needed in order to allow creative thinking to emerge. It is important to support students to learn how to cope with risk, confusion, disorder and delayed gratification when they are not progressing quickly.

But it doesn't stop there.

Cognitive flexibility and using creative convergence is required to consider a variety of different possibilities and then decide on the most plausible, useful or appropriate idea.

After a creative person asks "What if...?" they then go on to logically think through the consequences and narrowing down those new ideas to focus on one that can be elaborated.
Experts who study creativity have found that logical thinking is always a part of the creative process in any field, from art to science to business (Tardif & Sternberg, 1988)

Looking at the image:
“What if..?” question comes to your mind?
What if a black hole came close to the Solar System? What do you think would happen next?
Or
What might happen if the Earth fell into a black hole? What do you think would happen next?
What is your hypothesis?
What science ideas could help you explain this?
What do you already know or what have you observed that led to your prediction?
What reasons do you have for making that prediction?
What other predictions might be plausible?
What changes can we predict with accuracy?

One scientist currently thinks that if the black hole is massive enough, the Earth could glide right through it and we could live out a normal life? How does this relate to your idea?

What would happen if you put up a firewall to protect the Earth from a black hole?

Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

McComas, W. (1998). The principal elements of the nature of science: Dispelling the myths. In W. McComas (Ed.), The nature of science in science education: Rationales and strategies (pp. 53-72). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Creative Thinking in the Nature of Science PART A (ii)

Part A (ii) Creative Thinking in the Nature of Science
In (i) creative thinking is required to make observations, to notice.
In part (ii) Creative thinking is required to interpret and make inferences from your observations. What do you think?

Beveridge “argues that the art of observation depends on developing the capacity for pattern-recognition, which in turn relies on a broad pool of networked knowledge that allows you to spot the piece that doesn’t fit”
(Beveridge, 1950. The art of scientific investigation.)

In carrying out effective scientific observation you deliberately notice for
each characteristic you know may be there, 
for any unusual feature or unexplained , 
and especially for any suggestive associations or relationships among the things you see, or between them and what you know.

In this image

What do you think? What do you wonder?
What do you know? What don’t you know?
What is the same? What is different?
What patterns / relationships can you recognise? Is there a hidden pattern?
Is there an outlier (s)? Was there something that you did not expect to see happening?
Did you need to see the bigger picture or wait for a prolonged period of time to see the pattern or connections?
What inferences are you making when you see this image?
What questions do you have? What burning question has it inspired in you to want to know?
Do we all make the same inferences? Ask some other people, what inferences did they make? Were their observations the same? If so, how did they make a different inference to you? If their observations were different, what did they notice differently to you? Why do you think they saw a different pattern? Can you justify why your inference is better? How do your observations support your justification? Do you need to change your thinking?
What new connections have you made?

Pattern recognition can lead to new discoveries, and innovative ideas and connections.

‘Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something.’ (Steve Jobs 1996)

Creative Thinking in the Nature of Science PART A (i)

Part A i Creative Thinking Nature of Science

Stein, Smith, Henningsen, and Silver (2000) define Cognitive Demand as, “The kind and level of thinking required of students in order to successfully engage with and solve the task.

A problem that requires only memorisation is at the low end of cognitive demand. 
A problem that requires students to make connections between ideas in new ways requires a high level of cognitive engagement and therefore is at the high end of cognitive demand.
Research has shown that using high cognitive demand tasks in ways that support rigorous thinking will lead to increases in student learning. (Stein et al. 2009).

Creative Thinking is required to make Observations: What do you notice?

Observation is much more than merely using our senses;
it also involves a mental process which, may be partly conscious and partly unconscious.

Observation is one of the hardest skills to master mainly because we are so easily distracted and we look for the obvious.

Observation requires
• patience
• time
• creative space
• imagination
• making connections to prior knowledge or experience
• curiosity

You need to allow your mind to meander with no specific destination, imagine, look for patterns and relationships – those which are known and those which are unexpected or seem to be unusual and create uncertainty.
(2017 article in “Current Biology” UC Santa Barbara Study Shows Our Brains Wired To See The Big Picture, But We May Miss The Obvious)

Image from : 
https://www.theatlantic.com/…/this-article-wont-cha…/519093/

In this image – what do you notice?
What patterns can you see? What relationships can you see? What have you seen before?
What are the unusual things you notice?
Are you in a quiet place? Have a deeper look, focus – now what else do you see that you didn’t see before?
Is this unexpected?
Are you certain or uncertain?
What do imagine?