Problem solving e creatività: How to Get There

This article shares the need to decrease the content of teaching of chemistry, as suggested by many both far and wide and also to make its learning enjoyable and meaningful for students. If we hope to activate creative processes, it is necessary that our students are motivated and actively involved in what happens in the classroom and in their training. Training and learning are processes that should continue even outside the school. For this, more and more extensive knowledge, also in terms of teaching skills, is required in the teaching profession. An in-depth knowledge of teaching skills is the only necessary condition. However, in order to have an impact on today’s students, we need to be able to motivate and engage them. The solution of problems motivates students if the task is significant compared to the knowledge of the subject and if the difficulties are within the reach of the acquired skills. If we consider for instance solutions to crosswords, we will realize that when a solution is found, it gives them pleasure because the challenge is sufficiently easy to be taken up and, at the same time, sufficiently difficult which requires commitment and mental effort. In order to make it appealing to students and to get them used to a different approach to problem resolution, some logic problems are brought into play. But in order to get different results, we must change the way of teaching: teaching methods such as cooperative learning and the use of conceptual maps and summaries are useful tools to make learning more profound. Students should be encouraged and rewarded for their achievements. The teacher and the methods used make the difference; it is not easy to have students that go beyond what they have been taught, and it is rare to have solutions that experts are unable to conceive. Twenty years of positive results demonstrate that it is possible. Try to believe.