Strategies for stimulating students' creativity in teaching and learning history

Abstract

The school system of the 21st century has a clearly defined structure of educational goals. Among these educational goals creative development has a very important place because the creative student is the one who is willing to discover, critically think and create. Each od aforementioned competences are necessary for life and work in the 21st century. The development and encouragement of creativity is related to cognition, so the teaching of creativity is closely connected with development of cognitive thinking. Teaching and learning history by its complexity requires the development of abstract thinking in students, which is necessary to understand the subject matter, but also abstract thinking presents the precondition for the development of creative thinking. In order to teach students a demanding abstract thinking and encourage the development of creative thinking, they need to be exposed, through the use of appropriate teaching strategies, to the various challenges that will trigger them. The aim of this paper is to present the theoretical background of what constitutes creativity in general and specific in history teaching, to present the features of creative thinking, to disclose the role of school environment and teachers, and to provide examples of assignments for students whose purpose is to encourage creative thinking by applying collaborative strategies.