Differences in the development of creative competencies in children schooled in diverse learning environments

by Maud Besançon & Todd Lubart

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1041608007001355?via%3Dihub

Abstract

Studies on the development of creativity have highlighted the impact of learning environments. In particular, pedagogical approaches are hypothesized to differ concerning their emphasis on individual initiative, and action-based learning. A semi-longitudinal study was conducted during two consecutive years with 210 children in elementary schools with traditional and alternative pedagogical approaches. Our results highlight (1) an influence of pedagogy on children's creative performance; (2) a positive influence of alternative pedagogy on creative development from year 1 to year 2 mainly for Montessori school. Children's creative performance was influenced not only by the type of task but also by the type of school.

Introduction

Pedagogical practices evolve continually in order to take into account societal needs. Since the 1950s, creativity, defined here as the ability to produce novel, original work that meets contextual constraints, has been viewed as an increasingly important characteristic for professional success and personal development (Amabile, 1996, Gardner, 1996, Lubart et al., 2003, Ochse, 1990, Sternberg and Lubart, 1995).). In this paper, the impact of different learning environments on children's creative development is examined. Various pedagogies, which contrast on their potential support for creativity, have been implemented since the beginning of the 20th century. We examine the prototypical characteristics of traditional and alternative pedagogies. Then, task-centered factors concerning different components of creativity are described. Finally, the results of an empirical study are presented in which traditional and alternative learning environments are compared in terms of their effects on creative development.

The main goals of most educational systems are to transmit knowledge, rigorous working habits and societal values. According to Danvers (2003), traditional pedagogy is characterized by (1) a central role assigned to the teacher: teaching is frontal, i.e. the teacher is in front of the class; (2) an impersonal relation with pupils because there are usually many pupils in a class; and (3) the importance of abstract knowledge which is not always linked with the everyday life. Generally, teaching is dispensed in a collective way and the teacher's authority is based on the fact that the teacher masters the subject matter (Morandi, 1997).

Traditional pedagogy is supposed to offer a structure in which children can evolve. At the beginning, children acquire knowledge but they do not critique it. Then, pupils develop the capacity to criticize and propose new ideas, which occurs because they have initial cultural knowledge. Class time is devoted to learning and critical thinking and there is little attention to creativity.

During the 20th century, some educators and psychologists developed alternatives to the traditional approach. According to Piaget (1969/2004), it would be stimulating for children to make discoveries by themselves and thereby construct their knowledge through actions. The teachers' role is, in this view, to provide the pupil with a rich environment including situations favoring the emergence of cognitive and socio-cognitive conflicts, viewed as the engines of development. Vygotsky (1934/1997) introduced the concept of “Zone of Proximal Development” (ZPD): a child could then be defined with respect to a current level of development and a second, potential level of development that could be attained with assistance from an adult (Schneuwly & Bronckart, 1985). Between the two levels there is the ZPD. Thus, this concept indicates the importance of mediation in teaching methods: the teacher must engage the pupil in the ZPD and allow him or her to progress, after which, the pupil will be able to succeed alone.

Montessori (1958/2004) considered that imaginative thought must be based on contact with reality and sensory impressions. Based on these principles, she proposed targeted activities (such as learning how to see, feel, hear, and graduate colors or thermal stimuli…), beginning in preschool. For example, some pupils begin to learn the letters of the alphabet with the sense of touch: children had to follow the outline of letters drawn in various textures and their teachers provide directions on how to conduct the movements. For Montessori (1958/2004), to foster imagination, teachers should let it evolve freely (freedom to choose an activity, to handle objects placed at their disposal) but within a well established framework.

In a similar vein, Freinet, a French pedagogue, proposed a “psychological” theory of the child as primarily founded on two postulates (Freinet, 1994): (1) “Vital boost”: a child is animated by a natural dynamism, which should not be opposed; (2) “Experimental fluctuation”: error is a means to access knowledge. Moreover, creativity is allowed and fostered in various activities in which children themselves create their own productions from their knowledge or personal experience. Activities such as the “free-text”, the “free drawing” or the school newspaper allow creativity. For example, in the “free-text” activity, children write a text on a subject that is important to them. This text is then corrected and can be sent thereafter to another school or discussed in the class council (with other children and the teacher).

Given the fundamental differences between traditional and alternative pedagogical methods, the question of effects on children's creative development can be raised.

During the second half of the 20th century, several studies tried to examine children's performances in traditional compared to alternative pedagogies. In particular, Horwitz (1979) conducted a review of the literature from the 1930s to the late 1970s. In the 1930–1940s, studies compared performances obtained by children either attending alternative or traditional pedagogy schools; children who were exposed to alternative pedagogy showed more initiative, better capacity to face problems, knowledge acquisition and social participation. In the 1950–1960s, the studies focused on performance differences between children exposed to traditional pedagogy and alternative pedagogy. First, the results showed that there was no significant difference either on school performance, problem solving tasks or creative thinking tasks. Second, children exposed to alternative pedagogies described themselves as less rigid, more subtle and imaginative; they were more open, less conventional and had fewer stereotypes concerning social roles. The results indicate also that children attending alternative schools were more cooperative, less competitive and more accessible than children exposed to traditional pedagogies. Based on research carried out in the 1970s, Horwitz (1979) found, regarding creative thinking, that children exposed to open classes outperformed those in traditional classes. However, the results did not show a complete consensus: whereas the majority of studies found better results for children in alternative pedagogy, some highlighted benefits for children in traditional pedagogy. These divergent results could be due to the fact that creativity is a concept that encompasses many definitions and, in addition, no indication is provided concerning the family and cultural environment, which may vary across schools and studies.

Two studies focused particularly on the effects of Freinet's pedagogy. First, Avanzini and Ferrero (1976–1977) found that, in general, the Freinet pedagogy was as effective as traditional pedagogy. However, with regard to creativity, children in Freinet schools (in France) showed better performances than children in traditional schools. One explanation is that teachers practicing the Freinet techniques grant greater freedom to pupils and allow them to express themselves with no threat of giving a grade or judgment; thus, these pupils take more initiatives, are more open to the world, qualities that are necessary for the development of creativity.1 In another study, Frankiewicz (1984) examined in a Polish school the effect of the free-text exercise: in a first group, teachers used the free-text task whereas in the second group, teachers used traditional lessons of Polish language. Results indicated in a post-test that pupils who had the free-text task showed better performances on different indices of creative thinking (fluency, flexibility and originality). Moreover, these same children proposed more original, richer and more coherent stories than children who did not receive the free-text method. These results suggest that practicing free-text composition supports the development of creative performance. However, it is difficult to draw any strong conclusions about the superiority of this method because there is no information on pupils' initial level of performance: indeed, it is possible that pupils of the free-text group already had higher performances than other children in the pretest.

Thomas and Berk (1981) conducted a literature review concerning the effects of different school environments on children's creativity, which revealed non-conclusive results as well. They emphasized that these divergent results can be due to the various definitions allowed for the school environment. In order to clarify the findings, Thomas and Berk undertook a study analyzing the creative performance of 225 children in first or second grade, in six different schools. Their hypothesis was that the environment that best supports the development of creative performance is an intermediate one, neither too structured, nor too open or flexible. Their results highlighted a complex relation for the development of creativity, which is influenced by the type of school, the pupil's gender and the type of creativity (verbal or figural). Notably, they found that (1) an intermediate environment promoted best creative development; (2) in general, boys were more creative than girls.

In conclusion, the results on pedagogical effects on creativity are preliminary. It is difficult to conclude on the influence of learning environments because the few studies that have been conducted focus only on creative performance at one moment in time and do not take into account certain variables such as the nature of the creativity tasks.

According to Sternberg and Lubart (1995), creativity is a cognitive ability which requires a confluence of six distinct and interrelated resources: intelligence, knowledge, intellectual style, personality, motivation and environmental context. Individual differences in abilities reflect different patterns of prior learning (Anastasi, 1970, Snow, 1978, Snow, 1980). According to Snow (1994), different levels of ability development and different patterns of ability differentiation result from different types of educational programs. In addition, each individual's learning history is also unique and personal because individuals perceive situations differently according to their own history or their interests. Thus, children's creative performance could be influenced by their initial creative aptitude, by their learning environment, and by the interaction between these two variables. In this vein, it is possible that the effects of pedagogy will be greater for pupils with certain levels of initial creative ability compared to others. The effect of the pedagogy is hypothesized to be greatest when children have relatively low creative potential.

Creativity is partly domain general (Plucker, 1998) but largely domain specific and even task specific (Baer, 1999, Lubart and Guignard, 2004). Models of the creative process have distinguished various phases of processing and kinds of thinking that may come into play. One broad distinction opposes divergent thinking, in which the goal is to explore multiple cognitive paths, and convergent thinking which seeks to focus on a single, perhaps optimal path (Simon, 1960). Complex creative performance tasks involve certainly both kinds of processes, in various degrees and in specific sequences that favor the generation of new ideas in a task. In this vein, Lubart and Guignard, (2004) proposed that the moderate correlations observed between different creative performance tasks stem from the fact that there is a different mix of cognitive operations, and knowledge, involved in each creative domain and task.

In related work, Maker (1996) distinguished several types of problem solving tasks in the school setting. A continuum is proposed from closed problems (Type I and Type II) to intermediate problems (Type III and Type IV) to open problems (Type V and Type VI). According to Maker and Nielson (1995), only the first four types of problems, characterized mainly by known standardized methods and solution paths, are employed in the school system (Types I, II, III,IV). However, only the last three (Types IV, V and VI) of problem solving activities engage creativity. Problem types I to III emphasize convergent thinking, problem type IV focuses on divergent thinking, and problem type V and VI combine both kinds of thinking. These different considerations argue in favor of using a range of creative performance tasks in order to measure the effects of pedagogy on creative development. Both divergent thinking measures and integrative creative thinking tasks are necessary. Divergent thinking tasks require children to generate many ideas from a given starting point and have been the basis of creativity testing in schools during the past fifty years. These measures, in both verbal and figural domains, must be used together with tasks that involve integrating numerous generated ideas into a cohesive production. In this way, integrative tasks in the verbal (story-telling) and artistic (drawing composition) domains complete classic divergent thinking measures.

In the current study, we examined the influence of learning environment on the development of children's creative performance. We hypothesized that children schooled in alternative pedagogies (Montessori and Freinet) will have greater creative performance than children schooled in traditional pedagogy. This study is the first, to our knowledge to compare these three types of pedagogies (Montessori, Freinet and traditional) in terms of multiple measures of creative performance. Creativity was measured with two types of tasks (divergent and integrative ones) across two content domains (verbal and graphic expressive domains), in order to examine the consistency of pedagogical effects on creative performance. In addition, we examined the extent to which the school pedagogy effect may be greater over time (a one year span) for some children than for others, as a function of children's initial scores on a creativity task, children's grade level, and gender. To address these issues, we conducted a longitudinal study with approximately one year between test and retest for children from traditional and alternative pedagogies.

Population

After obtaining school and parental consent, 211 children (96 boys and 115 girls) participated. Children were enrolled in 1st grade to the 4th grade, the first year of the study and from 2nd grade to the 5th grade, in the second year (from 7 to 12 years old). Children came from four primary schools in Paris or its suburbs.2

Five judges (Mage = 27; SD = 1.73) evaluated story creativity and five other judges

Discussion and conclusion

Concerning the first hypothesis of an influence of pedagogy on children's creative performance, our results indicated that, in general, children schooled in alternative pedagogies (Montessori and Freinet) obtained higher performances than children schooled in traditional pedagogy. These findings replicate results obtained by Avanzini and Ferrero (1976–1977) and Frankiewicz (1984). However, our results are not completely congruent with those of Thomas and Berk (1981), which revealed, like