Creativity in science and technology
A survey of 12 upper primary and secondary school science teachers, focused on teachers’ view about the role of creativity in science found that teachers identified science more with the context of justification which is about proving and validating existing knowledge, rather than the context of discovery; which is about inventing new knowledge and artefacts.
Publication
Datt, S., Shah, M., & Chunawala, S. (2017). Upper primary and secondary school science teacher’s perception of creativity in science education. In A. Sharma and J. Rajeswaran (Eds.), Creativity and cognition in art and design: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Creativity and Cognition in Art and Design (ICCCAD 2017) (pp. 278-286). New Delhi: Bloomsbury.
Paradox of novelty and usefulness
While literature on creativity defines it as any activity that leads to creation of novel and useful artefacts or ideas, a paper on the paradox of novelty and usefulness presented diverse and alternative perspectives of viewing creativity using various examples from history of technology.
Publication
Datt, S. (2017). Paradox of novelty and usefulness. In A. Sharma and J. Rajeswaran (Eds.), Creativity and cognition in art and design: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Creativity and Cognition in Art and Design (ICCCAD 2017) (pp. 188-198). New Delhi: Bloomsbury.
Differences in problem identification and problem solving between adults and children
Differences in problem identification and problem solving between adults and children was studied by analysing a range of innovations registered on the website of the National Innovation Foundation, India (http://nif.org.in/). Students and adults who submitted these innovative ideas had not received any design brief by an external agency and the range of problems they tackled were from diverse areas. Specific problems that were addressed by these 2 groups (students and adults) were categorised. We expected greater diversity in the kinds of problems identified by students as compared to adults. This was because literature suggests that young children are very creative and this creativity is limited by external factors as children grow. Instead, we found a greater diversity in the problems tackled by adults. Besides, there were other qualitative differences in the kinds of problems identified by adults and children. Through this study we explored the possibility of judging creativity by identifying diversity in large number of created artefacts.