TEACHING BIOLOGY FOR CREATIVE THINKING TO INSPIRE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIGENOUS TECHNOLOGY AMONG HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN PLATEAU STATE, NIGERIA

This study was a survey of the awareness of Biology teachers on teaching for creative thinking with emphasis on inspiring students to think creatively to develop indigenous technology using resources around them. Survey design was used for the study and the population comprised Biology teachers in Plateau State. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 60 Biology teachers from the population. A questionnaire titled “Teaching Biology for Creative Thinking to Develop Indigenous Technology” was used to collect data. Cronbach Alpha was used to determine the reliability of the instrument which was 0.93. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and the results obtained revealed that a large percentage of Biology teachers are of the view that teaching strategies should be emphatic on creative thinking to enhance students’ intellectual capacity to bring up new ideas and initiatives to develop indigenous technology to find solutions to the peculiar problems of society. Therefore, it is recommended that teachers should be encouraged to devise appropriate teaching strategies that can enhance creative thinking in students to inspire the development of indigenous technology during pedagogy so that the students can also contribute to national development with the novel ideas from creative thinking. The project based teaching strategy is discussed in this paper.