Abstract:

Contemporary society is characterised by fast and complex change processes (Barnett, 2000) covering all spheres of life. According to the Report on the EUA Creativity Project (2007), creativity has been identified both as a key factor to adequately addressing the challenges caused by these changes as well as a major driving force towards knowledge creation.

According to Biggs and Tang (2007), creativity involves hypothesising, synthesising, reflecting, generating ideas, applying knowledge to “far domains” and working with problems that do not have unique solutions. Creativity also implies the skill to create and connect ideas and produce frameworks to judge the significance of facts and ideas and possible solutions. These can be seen as higher-order skills that students should develop along their Higher Education route.

Several teaching and learning strategies were implemented in a chemistry course, at the University of Aveiro, in Portugal, as a way of encouraging students’ creativity. In this paper we are concerned with the kind of approach to creativity (Almeida, Teixeira-Dias & Medina, in press) adopted by students when approaching one of these strategies: the mini research projects.
Data were collected through non participant observation of meetings with the tutor, through semi-structured interviews with students and through the oral presentations made by each group to the whole class.

Keywords:

Creativity, higher education, science education, chemistry, mini research project.