Development of critical and creative thinking skills for prospective physics teachers through mini-project-based learning during the COVID-19 pandemic

Critical and creative thinking skills are crucial for prospective physics teachers in dealing with learning in various situations. Unexpected conditions such as this pandemic period are a serious challenge to prepare prospective teachers to become adaptive teachers. Mini-project-based learning has been carried out and is able to trigger them to think critically to solve learning problems and creatively design mini-projects to explain physics concepts. Through observe-imitate-and modify (OIM) strategies, prospective physics teacher students can demonstrate critical thinking indicators through writing research results and displaying creativity indicators from the resulting project designs. Mini-project-based learning not only trains critical and creative thinking skills but also provides experience to be able to solve teaching problems in difficult situations.