Innovation of science and technology is the impetus for the promotion of human civilization, and the fostering of innovators of science and technology has become an important educational goal in the era of knowledge economy. The purpose of the present study is to mobile the teachers, who have long supervised students in science exhibition competition, to develop innovative science teaching material, and to conduct an instruction experiment to examine the effect of such a material on elementary pupils¡¦ creativity, problem solving, and science subject performance. The instruments of the present study include 1) Creativity Test (Verbal-bamboo chopsticks, figure-¤H) developed by Wu, et al. (1998), 2 )Creative Problem Solving Test, and Subject Knowledge and Concept Test developed by researchers (2002). The study consists of three stages. Firstly, a team of ¡§Innovative Science Teaching Material¡¨ is organized by 7 elementary school science teachers with average 20 years of working experience, five of which have been awarded as the first rank more than five times in science exhibition competitions held for elementary schools in Kaohsiung. An appropriate Creative Thinking Instruction Model (CTIM) is constructed through panel discussion and shared teaching expertise on weekly basis in a 17-week period, and teaching material is developed on the basis of the constructed CTIM. Secondly, an experiment is conducted to test the effect of the developed teaching material. The three teachers in the treatment group will receive a 3-day instruction demonstration and reflection from the workshop by the team of ¡§Innovative Science Teaching Material,¡¨ while the three teachers in the contrasted group do not. Then, a total of 206 fifth grade pupils in three Kaoshiung elementary schools are selected, on a quasi-experiment design, with pre-, and post tests on unequal number subjects, for the treatment group in a 10-week-session innovative instruction . Third, a follow up test is done 6 months after the experiment. The data are analyzed through One-Way MANCOVA to test the effect of the innovative science teaching material on pupils¡¦ learning. The results indicate that¡G1) a general consensus is reached by the team of ¡§Innovative Science Teaching Material,¡¨ through 17 panel discussions, and the essentials of Inquiry approach and STS(Science/Technology/Society) approach are combined on the basis of CTIM, which then be classified into ¡§Creativity of teachers,¡¨ and ¡§Creativity of the pupils, ¡¨ which were further differentiated into six steps: setting design, problem finding, hypothesis formation, testing design, results interpretation, and application promotion, which form an instruction loop; 2) On instruction effect, students in the experimental group perform better on verbal creativity, figure creativity, problem solving competence, and global science subject knowledge than those in the contrasted group; 3) On the follow up test (6 months after the experiment), students in the experimental group perform better on verbal fluency and verbal originality creativity than those in the contrasted group, which indicates a lasting effect of the instruction, but there is no significant difference between subjects.

Detta examensarbete handlar om att få ökad förståelse om hur pedagoger ser på skapande material i verksamheten och närmare bestämt om pedagogerna har något didaktisk tanke när de låter barnen arbeta med play doh deg.Genom kvalitativa intervjuer med pedagoger på olika förskolor har jag undersökt hur de arbetar med skapande material på förskolan och hur de tänker kring barnens lärande i skapande. För att få bredare förståelse valde jag pedagoger som arbetar både med de minsta barnen och de något äldre barnen.Resultatet visar att pedagogerna är mycket positiva till skapande material och ser det som brett område som kan vara användbart till mycket. De upplever play doh som ett billigt och bra material som man lätt kan fixa själv på förskolan. De upplever att barnen tycker att det är roligt att dega, det infinner sig ett lugn hos dem och de ser även att kräver koncentration och sätter igång fantasin hos barnen. Alla barn kan vara med och utforska degen på sitt sätt oavsett ålder, vilket bidrar till att det är ett demokratiskt material. Det bidrar till ett stort lärande hos barnen både genom språket, matematiken och tekniken, samt utvecklar samarbetsförmågan. / This study examines how working educators understand and use creative material and if they have any didactic thoughts when they let children use a material such as Play Doh.By using qualitative interviews with teachers from different pre-schools I have examined how they use creative material in pre-school and their conceptions of children´s learning during creative activities. In order to get a wider perspective and understanding I have chosen to conduct interviews with pre-school teachers working with both toddlers and older children.The result shows that the working educators have a very positive experience of creative material and see creative work as a useful tool for learning in many ways. They also view the material as a cheap and easy way to get children to express themselves. From the working educators' point of view, the children find it very amusing and become calm, concentrated and use their imagination to the edge. Despite age, every child is able to explore and use the material, which makes it a democratic material. This contributes to a large amount of learning both regarding language, math and technique and also develops an ability to work together with other children.