The way we traditionally teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) — which centers around lectures and exams contingent on memorization — isn’t adequate. STEM teaching that encourages critical thinking and creativity will be vital in helping us thrive in a society where science and technology are increasingly important.

Creativity and STEM are friends, not enemies

The OECD has just published a report assessing creativity in students for the very first time. Creativity in STEM is very much present and manifests as the ability to come up with solutions and insights that are both different and useful. This means that creativity and critical thinking are linked as well, because critical thinking, including questioning one’s assumptions, biases, and accuracy of information, is not just beneficial but required to evaluate and improve the usefulness of novel solutions. In the typical STEM classroom, students sit and listen passively as they are told facts, terminology, and procedures that they are expected to memorize without questioning and rapidly reproduce on exams. Such teaching actively discourages creative and critical thinking skills.

What would creative STEM education look like?

So how can teaching evolve so that students learn these vital skills? The most important principle is that the brain learns what it practices with helpful feedback. So, good teaching would provide opportunities for the learners to practice critical thinking and creativity in the context of STEM.

Critical thinking in science and engineering means making good decisions in finding the solutions to STEM problems. ‘Good’ decisions are ones made using the reasoning, skills, and knowledge of skilled engineers and scientists. This involves recognizing and applying relevant information, evaluating the validity of the information one has, and avoiding the many common biases that lead people to make poor choices. But critical thinking applies more broadly than just to STEM. In STEM, it is needed to make the full set of decisions that my research group has identified as making up the problem-solving process. Solving novel and authentic problems is the defining feature of STEM expertise, and hence critical thinking and creativity are crucial. And many decisions we make in the workplace and our personal lives require a similar approach.

Learners need to be practicing these thinking skills. To be successful, teachers must give students ‘agency’ — the opportunity to make decisions, struggle with answers, and learn from their mistakes. Instead of spending class time listening, students need to spend it actively making and justifying relevant decisions while solving problems. Teachers need to monitor their work and provide timely and specific feedback to help them recognize weaknesses and improve their thinking. This also provides students with new knowledge, as they realize it is needed for making decisions. It is beneficial for students work together in small groups on these tasks to facilitate the learning process.

Project-based instruction: a path forward for STEM teaching

Teaching that challenges students to improve their critical thinking is uncommon but is increasingly being used in higher education. However, teaching creativity remains a greater challenge. In any form of science and engineering instruction, the practice problems given to students almost always have a single correct answer: the way a skilled scientist or engineer would solve them. It is very hard to find other ways to teach the material. To develop creativity, however, students need practice in solving problems where there is no single correct answer, so they have opportunities to come up with their own unique solutions. Typically, the educational setting where this happens is in project courses, where students select their own problem and then spend an extended period of time coming up with their own solution. These project courses also give the students the opportunity to make a broader set of STEM problem-solving decisions.

We are still a long way from making such creativity-focused and project-based instruction the norm. To achieve this will require education institutions to substantially revise their instructional priorities and curriculum. Rather than trying to expose the students to the maximum amount of material, most of which they will never use or recall later in life, institutions need to focus on developing what is really important — creative and critical thinking skills. We need to empower a mindset that challenges pre-conceived notions and generates fresh, new ideas that bring about novel solutions. 

This won’t be easy. These changes will require a change in how education institutions measure academic success, encouraging teachers to be trained in alternative teaching methods, and empowering students with more agency. If we’re able to accomplish it, they would produce better-educated STEM students who are much better prepared to solve the problems they will confront in the workplace and the global challenges the world is facing.