Creativity in science education and research on scientific creativity are becoming increasingly significant. Several domain-specific assessment tools focusing on different aspects of scientific creativity have been developed. Some of these tools consider a wide range of aspects, while others focus on very specific science-related aspects, thereby lacking an explicit focus on problem solving. Therefore, the authors developed the novel divergent problem solving ability in science test (DPAS) to assess students’ potential to design different possible solutions for a particular scientific problem. The test was created as an outcome measure in intervention studies. It consists of two subtests and 13 subject-specific items. This study aims to broadly assess the construct validity and reliability of the DPAS and investigate the factorial longitudinal invariance and group invariance (group receiving interventions aimed at fostering divergent problem solving vs. control group) of the DPAS. Using data from 1,106 secondary school students from Austria, we found support for the construct validity and reliability of the DPAS scores. Moreover, we established robust longitudinal and group invariance of the DPAS, demonstrating its suitability for intervention studies.

This study is based on the urgent need to adapt education systems to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It examines the implementation of the “Innovative FOCUS” program at the secondary school level to promote creative problem-solving skills in the sustainability context. The Innovative FOCUS program employs a two-stage approach, integrating flexibility, originality, creative personality development, and strategic planning. It includes in-service teacher training and a challenge-based learning framework in which students engage in real-world sustainability projects. The program’s effectiveness was evaluated through teacher and student feedback focusing on the development of prototypes addressing sustainability challenges. The implementation of the InFOCUS program in 19 secondary schools demonstrated significant effectiveness. Teachers indicated that the program’s tools were effective in promoting students’ creativity and problem-solving skills. Of the 64 student teams, 62 successfully developed innovative prototypes, reflecting an improved capacity for innovative thinking and underlining the practical impact of the program. The Innovative FOCUS program effectively integrates sustainability education with creative and critical thinking skills. It demonstrates the potential of challenge-based learning in transforming students’ approaches to real-world problems, aligning education with 21st-century sustainability goals. The program’s success highlights the importance of such innovative approaches in contemporary education systems.

Automated scoring is a current hot topic in creativity research. However, most research has focused on the English language and popular verbal creative thinking tasks, such as the alternate uses task. Therefore, in this study, we present a large language model approach for automated scoring of a scientific creative thinking task that assesses divergent ideation in experimental tasks in the German language. Participants are required to generate alternative explanations for an empirical observation. This work analyzed a total of 13,423 unique responses. To predict human ratings of originality, we used XLM‐RoBERTa (Cross‐lingual Language Model‐RoBERTa), a large, multilingual model. The prediction model was trained on 9,400 responses. Results showed a strong correlation between model predictions and human ratings in a held‐out test set (n = 2,682; r = 0.80; CI‐95% [0.79, 0.81]). These promising findings underscore the potential of large language models for automated scoring of scientific creative thinking in the German language. We encourage researchers to further investigate automated scoring of other domain‐specific creative thinking tasks.

To sustainably shape tomorrow’s world, young people must be prepared to develop successful solution strategies for problems that are as yet unknown. Therefore, it must be a core task of schools to train students in their problem-solving skills. The natural science subjects could become established to address this challenge if scientific creativity is explicitly promoted in the classroom. Therefore, the goal of a team of researchers and teachers was to develop a support program for scientific creativity. The developed program is summarized under the term Flex-Based Learning and includes a wide range of interventions linked to the most significant aspects of scientific creativity. The interventions have been developed and investigated since 2010 within a long-term design-based research project. The empirical inquiry, both in laboratory and real classroom settings, in which a total of 104 teachers and 3,516 Austrian secondary school students (aged 10–18 years) participated, indicates that Flex-Based Learning is efficient at the student level and is considered by teachers to be practical. In addition, the research also provided deeper insights into the conditions for fostering scientific creativity and the relationship between theory and practice.

This study examines the impact of the Scientific Creativity in Practice program on students’ scientific creativity. This comprehensive teaching program aims to foster general creative skills, domain-specific competencies, and certain personality traits in science education. The program includes a variety of interventions and reflection tools that focus on divergent thinking, problem-solving, bisociation, imagination, and metacognition, which promotes strategies for developing, selecting, and evaluating creative solutions to scientific problems. The study used a two-group, repeated-measures design in Austrian secondary schools, with 26 classes taught using teaching techniques from the program and 12 control classes using traditional teaching methods. The effectiveness of the teaching program was assessed using the Divergent Problem-Solving Ability test, which was administered at the beginning and end of the school year. The results showed that the intervention classes achieved significantly higher scores, indicating improved divergent problem-solving ability.The study also emphasized the importance of intervention fidelity, with the quality of implementation (adherence) having a significantly higher impact on outcomes than the quantity (number of interventions). The results confirm the effectiveness of the Scientific Creativity in Practice program in fostering academic creativity and emphasize the importance of a well-structured teaching program. Future research will focus on measuring the impact of individual techniques of the program on different aspects of scientific creativity.