Influence of prior knowledge on students' performance in idea generation: Reflection on university entry requirements

Creative performance of science and engineering professionals is supported by their ability to generate diverse solution ideas. The latter ability, in turn, can be influenced by numerous factors including prior knowledge and experience of the problem solver as well as by ideation heuristics she/he uses. This paper investigates the influence of prior science knowledge on the outcomes of an idea generation experiment that engaged engineering students from Australia, Czech Republic, Finland and Russian Federation in resolving the same open-ended technical problem. APPROACH In order to establish the potential reasons behind the unexpectedly poor performance of Australian students this study reflected on: (1) the results of OECD PISA 2012 assessment of student skills in mathematics, science and reading and the results of the 2012 OECD PISA assessment of creative problem solving skills; (2) performance of students from Australia, Czech Republic, Finland and Russian Federation in the abovementioned idea generation experiment; (3) reviews of educational systems of Australia, Czech Republic, Finland and Russian Federation as well as the admission requirements at universities that participated in the abovementioned idea generation experiment. RESULTS It was discovered that the minimum university admission requirements in science knowledge at participating universities from Czech Republic, Finland and Russian Federation were similar and substantially more demanding than that at the Australian university. All other identified factors that could have influenced the idea generation performance were evaluated and found to be insignificant. Therefore, it was concluded that the most likely reason for poor performance of Australian engineering students compared with their counterparts from Czech Republic, Finland and Russian Federation was related to significant differences in their prior science knowledge.