Truran, P. (2016). The development of creative thinking in graduate students doing scientific research. Educational Technology, 41-46.
The teaching of research methodology to graduate science students places an emphasis on scientific reasoning and on the generation and evaluation of evidence in support of research conclusions. Very little attention is paid to the teaching of scientific creativity, the processes for generation of new ideas, hypotheses, and theories. By contrast, the teaching of design aims explicitly to develop the creative skills of students. The creative thinking strategies taught to design students may be used to enhance the research skills of science graduate students in ways that complement the evaluative tools that are used by scientific researchers. The introduction of practical tools to develop the use of creative thinking strategies in scientific problem solving would be expected to improve the productiveness of researchers, and the reproducibility of research output.
