Enhancing Creative Minds Development in Basic Science Students with Different Intellectual Abilities through Creative Exploration in Gboko

Enhancing Creative Minds Development in Basic Science Students with Different Intellectual Abilities through Creative Exploration in Gboko was studied using pre-test, post-test control group quasi experimental design. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to draw a sample of 70 (39 males and 31 females) students from a population of 1,823 (995 males and 828 female) upper-basic III Science students in 24 government grant-aided schools and was used for the study. Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT Figural-B) was adapted and used to collect data. The instrument was validated by five experts (including one Physics educationist, one Electrical/Electronic technologist, one education mathematician, one in test measurement from faculty of education, Benue State University Makurdi and a 10-year experienced Basic Science teacher from Benue State Technical College, Makurdi), it was trial-tested by a test retest and yielded a reliability coefficients of 0.992 as was computed using Pearson product moment correlation statistic. Data were analysed using mean and standard deviation to answer research questions and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 α-level. Findings revealed that a significant difference existed in the development of creative-minds of students taught Basic Science using creative exploration and those taught using expository teaching (F (1,67) = 147.909; ρ = 0.001 < 0.05). The study also revealed that there is no significant difference in the development of creative-minds mean scores among students with different intellectual abilities taught Basic Science using CE, F (1, 32) = 0.218; ρ = 0.644 > 0.05. The study recommended among others that creative exploration be used for teaching Basic Science at basic education level.