A Brain-Based Evolutionary Approach to Creative Problem Solving in School Science

Helping students improve their creative problem solving (CPS) skills is one of the primary objectives of science education. The essential components of CPS are the generation and test of various ideas that are both novel and useful. By reflecting the studies on the structural and functional characteristics of the human brain that are related to affection, behavior, and cognition, the evolutionary processes occurring between and within organisms, and the evolutionary attributes embedded in science itself and in individual scientists’ scientific activities consisting of generation-test-retention (g-t-r) processes, a brain-based evolutionary model of CPS was developed. The model consists of three components and three steps. The three components are the affective (A), behavioral (B), and cognitive (C) components. Each component is composed of three steps: Diversifying → Emulating (Executing, Estimating, Evaluating) → Furthering (ABC-DEF). The model is brain-based in that it incorporates the affective component, which is based on the limbic system of the human brain involved in emotional aspects, the behavioral component, which is associated with the sensorimotor areas involved in behavioral activities, and the cognitive component, which is based on the prefrontal lobes involved in the thinking parts of CPS. The model is evolutionary in that it proceeds from the diversifying step to generate variants at each component to the emulating step to test and select the useful or valuable items among the variants, and then to the furthering step to apply or extend the selected items. After applying the model to elementary students, the cases for each component and stage were analyzed. These cases generally supported the possibilities and values of the model. Further research is required to determine whether students’ learning will be enhanced by this approach.