Fostering Scientific Creativity in the Classroom: The Concept of Flex-Based Learning

Abstract

To sustainably shape tomorrow’s world, young people must be prepared to develop successful solution strategies for problems that are as yet unknown. Therefore, it must be a core task of schools to train students in their problem-solving skills. The natural science subjects could become established to address this challenge if scientific creativity is explicitly promoted in the classroom. Therefore, the goal of a team of researchers and teachers was to develop a support program for scientific creativity. The developed program is summarized under the term Flex-Based Learning and includes a wide range of interventions linked to the most significant aspects of scientific creativity. The interventions have been developed and investigated since 2010 within a long-term design-based research project. The empirical inquiry, both in laboratory and real classroom settings, in which a total of 104 teachers and 3,516 Austrian secondary school students (aged 10–18 years) participated, indicates that Flex-Based Learning is efficient at the student level and is considered by teachers to be practical. In addition, the research also provided deeper insights into the conditions for fostering scientific creativity and the relationship between theory and practice.