Abstract Creativity can and should play a role in students’ science experiences. Beghetto
(Roeper Review 29(4):265–270, 2007) suggested a framework for teachers to assist students in
transforming their creative ideas into creative products. This framework involves taking time
to listen to students’ ideas, helping them recognize the constraints of a task, and giving them
multiple opportunities to think through and try their ideas. Ill-structured problems, such as
those found in inquiry and engineering design activities, provide excellent opportunities for
students to experience creative processing and express their creativity through product creation.
These types of problems are typically challenging, but the use of appropriate questioning
has been shown to assist students in solving problems. This multiple case study investigated
the use of inquiry-based questioning as a means of supporting creativity within a design-based
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) activity. Findings suggest that
groups facilitated by inquiry-based questioning strategies were better able to solve an illstructured
problem and achieved a more linear progression toward creative products than
groups who were not facilitated by inquiry-based questions.