Exploring scientific creativity through concept mapping

The highly complex modern world needs a large number of creative persons to meet multidimensional challenges emerging in the society. This suggests the importance of fostering creative thinking in the field of science. Scientific creativity has emerged as an independent field of creativity research, rather being considered as a mere application of creativity in scientific endeavor, and is now getting increasing attention of science educators. To foster creative expressions among children, teachers must use various styles and strategies. This study focuses on finding out whether concept mapping can contribute to scientific creativity and was conducted on a sample of 87 secondary school students. Statistical techniques like test of significance of difference between two large independent groups and large dependent groups were used together with ANCOVA and Cohen's d. Findings of the study supported the theoretical assumption that Concept mapping stimulates the creative thinking among students.