Abstract

Creative thinking is considered to be a significant contributing factor in scientific discoveries. What we wanted to investigate in this study is whether creativity is also a significant contributing factor in science learning. We hypothesized that learning science can be seen as a mild form of exploratory process through which students understand nature by applying rules that often require students to view things from a new angle. In more demanding learning situations, students may need to compare and evaluate multiple explanations of a phenomenon, and then come up with their own point of view. The study involved 311 secondary school students who took part in a two-year science enrichment programme at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. These students’ scores in the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) were recorded during the early stage of the programme. Following the progress of the students in the programme after one year, we examined students’ TTCT scores and their overall performance scores in the science enrichment programme. There was a positive but mild correlation between creativity and science learning achievement.