THE INFLUENCE OF STL TEACHING AND SCIENCE TEACHERS’ TEAMWORK ON CHANGE OF STUDENTS’ CREATIVITY

For any paradigm change, and certainly for reflecting on STL (scientific and technological literacy) ideas, it is essential for teachers to be involved in professional development. One form of professional development that was used to promote STL teaching was to guide teachers, through workshops, to create their own teaching materials, based on the STL philosophy. The current research was carried out during the 2002 school year with teachers of science subjects and their 9th grade students in different Estonian schools. The experimental schools were divided into three groups (3 schools per each): in Group 1, one teacher participated, in Group 2 two teachers participated and in Group 3 three teachers participated in the courses and taught the same students, at the same time, in different science classes. The experimental teachers enrolled in the 8-month STL teaching intervention study and in the course of that their students were exposed to an 8-week STL teaching module. The results of creativity tests, undertaken before and after the intervention study, showed, that the students' creativity mean changes during the 8-week STL teaching module, depended upon the number of teachers. Of importance is that the collaboration of two or three teachers can significantly more increase the creativity f students – a further aim of the STL teaching approach.