Development of school laboratory participation over a period of six months: A case study of aspects of divergent thinking and problem discovery

Abstract

Creativity, especially problem discovery and divergent thinking are skills that will be demanded for more and more jobs in the future. STEM subjects are leading the way. Schools are an important learning place to train the future generation of workers. However, promotion of creativity in STEM subjects is not sufficiently implemented. Chemistry teachers prefer frontal teaching instead of free, pupil-centred methods that encourage creative work. Extracurricular learning activities offer potential due to the free work atmosphere of a self-discovered problem. Pupils then have to solve it. In the context of this study, the development of problem discovery and divergent thinking of gender, parental academic background and gender differences based on parental academic background will be presented in this study. It is based on two school laboratories: Agnes-Pockels-Lab (without accompanying and professional support) and the DroPS project (with accompanying and professional support).