Primary School Teachers’ Use of Visual Learning to Enhance Pupils’ Creative Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills

The study explores how primary school teachers integrate visual information into the teaching and learning process to stimulate learners’ creative thinking and problem-solving abilities. Twenty-one teachers from seven public primary schools (primary one, three, and six teachers) were purposively selected to participate in the study. The case study design was followed, and data were collected using interviews. The Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning guided the study, and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Teachers facilitate learners’ observation, discussion, and analysis of visual information such as videos, pictures, images, charts, and drawings to generate ideas, ask and answer questions, describe details, compare information, and engage in presentations and hands-on activities. These approaches encourage learners to think beyond memorisation, generate original ideas, and explore different perspectives. The pupils also practice, demonstrate, act out, and role-play concepts they observe and watch from visual media. These interactions with visual information helped the pupils think creatively, creating relevant and useful items and solving problems. Videos, images, pictures, and charts are visual forms of information that help the teachers foster creative thinking and problem-solving skills among their pupils. These visuals encourage pupils to ask questions, think critically, draw their own conclusions, and identify relationships between concepts, fostering creativity and developing problem-solving skills. Lack of electricity, poor internet connectivity, large class sizes that hinder management, and limited access to appropriate visual information are among the challenges the teachers face in their efforts to use visuals to enhance pupils’ creative thinking and problem-solving skills. For teachers to continue developing pupils’ creative thinking and problem-solving skills using visual information, they must be provided with the needed resources.