Performative Authoring: Nurturing Children’s Creativity and Creative Self-Efficacy through Digitally-Augmented Enactment-Based Storytelling

Psychological research, especially by Paul Torrance, has shown that the child’s engagement in creative activities tends to drop precipitously at around the 3rd- to 4th-grade period (8 to 11 years old). This phenomenon, called the ‘Fourth-Grade Slump’, occurs possibly because of an increase in social awareness and critical self-evaluation of competence in the child during this period. Increasing awareness of the complexity of the world’s problems, new paradigms of design focusing on the user, and advances in technology has led to rapid developments in the design and development of tools to support children’s creativity. Research in creativity support tools has generally focused on augmenting creative performance within specific tasks, using strategies such as facilitating access to information, or exposing the user to a space of possible combinations. Much less studied however, is how tools may help to develop positive attitudes towards creativity in individuals. This is important, especially in systems designed for children where the focus on the development of the person, during critical periods of growth such as the period of the Fourth-Grade Slump, may be said to be of equivalent or greater importance than the support of process or the generation of product. In the domain of storytelling or narrative construction, work in child development, educational pedagogy, social psychology, and performance studies have looked at how to tap into the power of children’s imagination during pretend play to nurture their storytelling abilities and their sense of self-efficacy or confidence. These interventions typically take the form of drama workshops or classroom roleplaying exercises. While results appear to provide good evidence that drama interventions and theater-based methods have some positive effects on children’s development of narratives, studies have shown mixed results in terms of the effects on children’s self-efficacy. I refer here to self-efficacy in the sense of a child’s perception of her creative abilities, in other words, her belief that she can produce creative outcomes. This creativity-oriented sense of self-efficacy has been called ‘creative self-efficacy’. This dissertation investigates how pretend play can be harnessed into the design of an interface to support children’s creativity in storytelling and their sense of creative self-efficacy. This overarching question was explored through four phases of research: Exploration, Design, Evaluation, and Integration. The Exploration phase consisted of two studies: a) a set of interviews with elementary school teachers, and b) an experimental study of how the interface or medium may affect children’s creative storytelling process; The Design phase consisted of two experimental studies, and design and development: a) the first study investigated how the physicality of props may support children’s enactment-based storytelling, and b) the second study explored the influence of the presentation of digital contextual/environmental cues on children’s enactment-based storytelling, c) design and development consisted of an exercise using the NEVO methodology to embody design knowledge gained from the Design phase into a concrete usable system, called DiME; The Evaluation phase consisted of two studies: a) the first was a pilot study that tested the usability of DiME and protocol of use with children, and b) the second was an experimental study across two school districts with different profiles investigating the effects of digitally-augmented enactment-based storytelling using DiME, on children’s creativity, story writing and creative self-efficacy; The Integration phase of the research consisted of a workshop with elementary school teachers, which initiated an exploration into how such a story authoring approach may be used in an elementary school curriculum and setting. The body of work that this dissertation presents elucidates (i) a physical enactment-based method for the authoring of stories by children, and (ii) how a digitally-augmented space may move beyond simple drama methods to positively influence the child’s creativity and imagination during storytelling, as well as her self-belief and motivation to engage in creation. The digitally-augmented enactment-based storytelling environment, that I term performative authoring, allows the child to collaboratively create a story through pretend play with a partner, while her enactments are reflected in real-time in the form of animated cartoon characters and objects on a large screen display through the use of motion tracking technologies. I have found that performative authoring has positive effects not only on the child’s creative self-efficacy, especially for the less extraverted children, but also on the richness of the child’s retelling or written narrative of her story. The significance of the results of the studies is with respect to the various domains and subareas represented (child-computer interaction, interactive storytelling, education and educational psychology, creativity and cognition). There is great potential to extend the concept of exploiting digitally-augmented enactment to support and scaffold higher-level cognition, beyond physical enactment. Extensions of this work include making use of more epistemic forms of enactment, instead of full-blown enactment, to support children’s creative story brainstorming, or to make use of digitally-augmented enactment to support other forms of higher thought apart from creativity and imagination. In the domain of storytelling or narrative construction, work in child development, educational pedagogy, social psychology, and performance studies have looked at how to tap into the power of children’s imagination during pretend play to nurture their storytelling abilities and their sense of self-efficacy or confidence. These interventions typically take the form of drama workshops or classroom roleplaying exercises. While results appear to provide good evidence that drama interventions and theater-based methods have some positive effects on children’s development of narratives, studies have shown mixed results in terms of the effects on children’s self-efficacy. I refer here to self-efficacy in the sense of a child’s perception of her creative abilities, in other words, her belief that she can produce creative outcomes. This creativity-oriented sense of self-efficacy has been called ‘creative self-efficacy’ (Beghetto, 2006, 2007). This dissertation investigates how pretend play can be harnessed into the design of an interface to support children’s creativity in storytelling and their sense of creative self-efficacy. This overarching question was explored through four phases of research: I. Exploration, II. Design, III. Evaluation, and IV. Integration. Phase 1 Exploration consisted of two studies: 1A) a set of interviews with elementary school teachers, and 1B) an experimental study of how the interface or medium may affect children’s creative storytelling process; Phase 2 Design consisted of two experimental studies, and design and development: 2A) the first study investigates how the physicality of props may support children’s enactment-based storytelling, and 2B) the second study explores the influence of the presentation of digital contextual/environmental cues on children’s enactment-based storytelling, 2C) design and development consisted of an exercise using the NEVO methodology to embody design knowledge gained from Phase 2 into a concrete usable system, called DiME; Phase 3 Evaluation consisted of two studies: 3A) the first was a pilot study that tested the usability of DiME and protocol of use with children, and 3B) the second was an experimental study across two school districts with different profiles investigating the effects of digitally-augmented enactment-based storytelling using DiME, on children’s creativity, story writing and creative self-efficacy; and Phase 4 Integration consisted of a workshop with elementary school teachers, which initiated an exploration into how such a story authoring approach may be used in an elementary school curriculum and setting. The body of work that this dissertation presents elucidates (i) a physical enactment-based method for the authoring of stories by children, and (ii) how a digitally-augmented space may move beyond simple drama methods to positively influence the child’s creativity and imagination during storytelling, as well as her self-belief and motivation to engage in creation. The digitally-augmented enactment-based storytelling environment, termed performative authoring in this document, allows the child to collaboratively create a story through pretend play with a partner, while her enactments are reflected in real-time in the form of animated cartoon characters and objects on a large screen display through the use of motion tracking technologies. I have found that performative authoring has positive effects not only on the child’s creative self- efficacy, especially for the less extraverted children, but also on the richness of the child’s retelling or written narrative of her story. This dissertation concludes by discussing the significance of the results of our studies with respect to the various domains and subareas represented (child-computer interaction, interactive storytelling, education and educational psychology, creativity and cognition) and extends the concept of exploiting digitally-augmented enactment to support and scaffold higher-level cognition, beyond physical enactment. Extensions of this work include making use of more epistemic forms of enactment, instead of full-blown enactment, to support children’s creative story brainstorming, or to make use of digitally-augmented enactment to support other forms of higher thought apart from creativity and imagination

Decoding learning: the proof, promise and potential of digital education

With hundreds of millions of pounds spent on digital technology for education every year – from interactive whiteboards to the rise of one–to–one tablet computers – every new technology seems to offer unlimited promise to learning. many sectors have benefitted immensely from harnessing innovative uses of technology. cloud computing, mobile communications and internet applications have changed the way manufacturing, finance, business services, the media and retailers operate. But key questions remain in education: has the range of technologies helped improve learners’ experiences and the standards they achieve? or is this investment just languishing as kit in the cupboard? and what more can decision makers, schools, teachers, parents and the technology industry do to ensure the full potential of innovative technology is exploited? There is no doubt that digital technologies have had a profound impact upon the management of learning. institutions can now recruit, register, monitor, and report on students with a new economy, efficiency, and (sometimes) creativity. yet, evidence of digital technologies producing real transformation in learning and teaching remains elusive. The education sector has invested heavily in digital technology; but this investment has not yet resulted in the radical improvements to learning experiences and educational attainment. in 2011, the Review of Education Capital found that maintained schools spent £487 million on icT equipment and services in 2009-2010. 1 since then, the education system has entered a state of flux with changes to the curriculum, shifts in funding, and increasing school autonomy. While ring-fenced funding for icT equipment and services has since ceased, a survey of 1,317 schools in July 2012 by the british educational suppliers association found they were assigning an increasing amount of their budget to technology. With greater freedom and enthusiasm towards technology in education, schools and teachers have become more discerning and are beginning to demand more evidence to justify their spending and strategies. This is both a challenge and an opportunity as it puts schools in greater charge of their spending and use of technolog

Tellers, Makers, and Holders of Stories: A Micro-Analytic Understanding of Students’ Identity Work in Drama-based Adult ESL Classrooms

Despite a wide-spread pedagogical interest and scholarly conviction in the possibilities of educational drama for creating more contextually-situated, engaging, and multi-modal L2 learning experiences (Piazzoli, 2018; Stinson & Winston, 2011), there is scarce empirical evidence concerning what is actually taking place interactionally in L2 classrooms for adults. This article presents a bottom-up microanalysis of classroom interaction in an ESL class in Canada with over 16 adult learners designed to explore the potential and actual impact of educational drama on classroom discourse and students’ L2 learning experiences. Using a discourse analytic approach (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998; Goffman, 1981), I analyze the dynamic identity work of the class participants. The article presents empirically-grounded research findings that illustrate instances of interaction in and through which drama-based ESL pedagogy contributes to the development of dialogic and democratic classroom discourse and fosters a transformative empowering interpersonal space (Cummins, 2011).  Sur les plans académique et pédagogique, l’art dramatique est reconnu comme offrant de nombreuses possibilités de créer des expériences d’apprentissage stimulantes, multimodales et appropriées au contexte (Piazzoli, 2018; Stinson & Winston, 2011). Cependant, peu d’études empiriques se sont penchées sur les dynamiques interactionnelles en langue seconde dans des cours pour adultes. Cet article présente donc une microanalyse inductive d’un cours d’anglais langue seconde (ALS) au Canada, dans une classe composée de 16 apprenants adultes. Ce cours visait l’exploration du potentiel et de l’impact réel de l’art dramatique sur les interactions et sur l’expérience d’apprentissage d’une langue seconde. Suivant une approche basée sur l’analyse de discours (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998; Goffman, 1981), j’analyse le processus dynamique de construction identitaire des participants. Les résultats présentés dans cet article, basés sur des données empiriques d’interactions en classe, montrent comment une pédagogie de l’ALS fondée sur l’art dramatique contribue au développement d’un discours de classe démocratique et axé sur le dialogue. Une telle pédagogie encourage aussi la création d’un espace interpersonnel transformateur et valorisant (Cummins, 2011)

Designing Interactive Tools to Support Narrative Authoring for Elementary-School Children through Digital Enactment

Narrative is an important part of how humans make sense of the world and express their thoughts and feelings. For children, stories are the predominant way in which they organize and express ideas and imagination. Hence, stories have a significant role in children’s various play activities, especially pretend-play. At around the third to fifth grade period (8-10 years old), children are expected and encouraged to transition from embodied play to more formal linguistic modes of expression, such as writing. Supporting the child in this critical developmental stage is therefore very important in their development of writing proficiency. Research in writing support tools for children has generally focused more on facilitating the technical aspects of writing. But tapping into the potential of child’s embodied imagination capacity for writing support is less explored. This dissertation research poses the question that given the affinity children have for embodied activities and mediums, how can we use this potential in technology design to scaffold more formal types of expression. Within this scope, we present research that investigates the design of embodied technology to support narrative writing for novice writers during the third to fifth grade transition period. By developing a set of interactive tools and evaluating these tools with child participants, I explore how free-form play may be harnessed in systems to facilitate planning and writing an imaginative narrative at the elementary school level. Through this design exploration, I aim to extend the understanding of how using such embodied and interactive tools may augment the process in which children write stories and support them in writing more complex stories. We began our exploration by focusing on the development of a tool for capturing child’s enactment. Designed based on the concept of enactment-scaffolded authoring (also known as performative authoring), a story authoring system is presented whereby children’s story enactment is transformed in real-time into an animated video recording. Using this testbed system we investigated how children use enactment to plan their stories - as a “prewriting” activity. We also explored how features of the recorded video can augment the child’s experience and performance in the writing activity. Our studies provided evidence that using story-relevant avatars in the enacted video can support the child’s imagination, allowing them to focus on technical aspects of writing. We also uncovered that transforming the enacted story into written form is a challenge for children, so they need process support to translate the planned story into written form. We present design suggestions for children’s enactment-based authoring systems based on our findings. The next step of this research addresses the process support needed for children to transform a visual narrative into written form. We begin with a set of interviews with elementary school teachers to understand the general requirements for writing process support. An interface is developed that allows the child to watch an animated video and write the story in the video. The design is improved and finalized based on feedback from teacher interviewees. Using this system, we investigate two methods of implementing process support grounded in theories of multimedia learning and embodied cognition. Our results show that the cue design can affect how children respond to the cues, which in turn affects their writing performance. Temporally-situated cues support more structured and cohesive writing, while visually situated cues elicit more descriptive writing from children. The body of work that is presented in this dissertation contributes (i) An understanding of the opportunities and challenges of enactment-scaffolded narrative authoring for children and (ii) Design choices for embodied narrative writing support tools for children. The findings have significance in various domains of human-computer interaction research, including interaction design for children and interactive digital storytelling. Additionally, the interdisciplinary findings have significance in media studies, education research, and psychology to create more efficient educational content and pedagogical practice for the child audience

Storying the ‘good’ teacher: Figuring Year 6 mathematics

A new statutory mathematics national curriculum for primary schools was introduced in 2014 to address the perceived underperformance of English pupils in international tests. This curriculum included content previously taught in secondary schools and came with an invitation to teachers to take ‘the freedom to develop more innovative and effective approaches to teaching’ (Minister of Education Michael Gove, 2012). This freedom sits uncomfortably in the wider context of the neo-liberal education system where results are valued over pedagogical integrity and pupils are increasingly viewed as data. In 2015-16, primary school teachers, working at the sharp end of primary school accountability systems in Year 6 classrooms, were teaching this curriculum for the first time and preparing pupils for revised key stage 2 (KS2) national curriculum tests. Many critics have described teachers’ professional integrity as suffering under a ‘performative’ system, finding that teachers often focused solely on achieving test results. This thesis explores how Year 6 teachers see themselves as doing a ‘good’ job in this context. This research presents a qualitative study focusing on the work of three Year 6 teachers over one academic year. Video recordings of mathematics lessons provided a rich stimulus for discussion in termly interviews, which were analysed through the twin lenses of Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner and Cain’s (1998) Figured Worlds theory, and Bakhtin’s work on dialogism. Being an ‘expert-insider-outsider researcher’ proved to be both useful and problematic: my existing relationships with participants presented methodological and analytic insights while also raising ethical issues across the course of the research. The three case studies reveal the different ways in which Year 6 teachers narrate themselves as being ‘good’ at their work, suggesting a connection between their ‘histories-in-person’ and their interpretation of the educational discourses related to their work in Year 6. Cases also reveal the extent to which I co-constructed teachers’ stories. This thesis demonstrates the impact of local and personal contexts on how Year 6 teachers work and on how they talk about their work. It shows the value of my chosen theoretical lenses in providing tools for understanding teacher identity, and the varied ways in which teachers both orchestrate educational discourses and enact policy

New stories of identity: Alternatives to suspension and exclusion from school

School suspension and exclusion practices are currently under the spotlight. Many schools go to great lengths before employing these disciplinary options. However even in the midst of practices of care for young people, very little attention is paid to the discursive conditions in which exclusion and suspension arise. In this thesis I theorise and research an alternative response to suspension and exclusion. I engage in post-structuralist discursive analysis to propose that young peoples’ actions, including unacceptable behaviours, are not so much evidence of a personality to be fixed, managed or disciplined, as they are the effect of prevailing discourses about how young people ought to act. Calling on narrative therapy practice I then propose that young people’s discursively shaped identity stories and reputations can be re-authored within communities of care. Such re-authoring produces a range of changes including in a young person’s actions at school. In this study I use case examples from two New Zealand schools to demonstrate how prevailing discourses shape the language and responses of participants at times which may lead to suspension or exclusion from school being considered. I explore how the development of alternative identity stories and reputations for young people can lead to significant changes in young peoples’ actions and those of their teachers at school. To achieve this I analyse interview transcripts and school records concerning a situation which led to a suspension. I highlight the presence and effect of prevailing discourses (discursive analysis), and the way participants’ words intend a desired effect (performative language) and draw on familiar stories to enhance desired effect (intertextuality). In this thesis I offer a critique of rationalist interpretations of young peoples’ actions, and explore alternative discursive and narrative models of interpreting and responding to young peoples’ actions. My research findings highlight: the effectiveness of discursive awareness and re-authoring as a response to young people at times of suspension and exclusion being considered; the need for on-going support for emerging alternative reputations; the need for cultural safety and awareness in providing a place for Pakeha researchers to work effectively with Māori young people and communities; and the need for discursive and narrative practices to be offered in dialogue with schools’ particular ethical purposes. I argue that the practices I research in this thesis offer a way for schools to further reduce the use of suspensions and exclusions at school

TOK : a tangible interface for storytelling

We present the design of the first prototype of TOK - a tangible interface for children to create their own stories. Based on data collected with two groups of five years old preschoolers we present our findings regarding the interaction design of the system. The picture cards have shown to generate ideas, acting as input for the creation of stories, promoting creativity while proposing a framework that supports and guides the construction of logical structures. This is a first step in an effort to build a toolkit of tangible interfaces allowing children and teachers to build their own digital enhanced learning activities.FCT-QREN-COMPETE-U

The complexities of 'otherness': reflections on embodiment of a young White British woman engaged in cross-generation research involving older people in Indonesia

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.If interviews are to be considered embodied experiences, than the potential influence of the embodied researcher must be explored. A focus on specific attributes such as age or ethnicity belies the complex and negotiated space that both researcher and participant inhabit simultaneously. Drawing on empirical research with stroke survivors in an ethnically mixed area of Indonesia, this paper highlights the importance of considering embodiment as a specific methodological concern. Three specific interactions are described and analysed, illustrating the active nature of the embodied researcher in narrative production and development. The intersectionality of embodied features is evident, alongside their fluctuating influence in time and place. These interactions draw attention to the need to consider the researcher within the interview process and the subsequent analysis and presentation of narrative findings. The paper concludes with a reinforcement of the importance of ongoing and meaningful reflexivity in research, a need to consider the researcher as the other participant, and specifically a call to engage with and present the dynamic nature of embodiment

Girl Talk: A Dialogic Approach to Oral Narrative Storytelling Analysis in English As a Foreign Language Research

Research in the fields of Applied Linguistics (AL) and Second Language Studies (SLS) has begun addressing the ways in which second and foreign language (L2) use is a “material” struggle to understand, acquire and author L2 words for one’s own creative purposes – particularly in the face of ideologies about language learning and language use (Squires 2008; Suni 2014). This struggle has implications for the subjectivity, agency and ultimate acquisition and use of the target language by L2 users. This dissertation seeks to augment scholarship in this area by demonstrating how material struggle can surface in the process of data collection (a research interview). It presents an analysis of a recorded narrative of an English as a foreign language (EFL) user, who was a second year graduate student enrolled in a university in the southwest US. She was invited by the author -- a native speaker of English -- to tell an oral narrative story in English to a group with whom she met regularly. However, in positioning the EFL subject as “non-native” in the recruitment process, the author as a native speaker failed to anticipate the manner in which her request was interpellative (Althusser 1971[2001]), thus reproducing and subjecting the “non-native” to the ideology and discourses associated with that category and setting into motion a creative authoring of response to this interpellative call. In approaching the analysis from this perspective, this dissertation adopts an approach to oral narrative story analysis that is based on the Bakhtinian-inspired notion of dialogism (Bakhtin 1981, 1986). Dialogism underscores the resultant narrative as a collection of utterances poised to respond to the request to “tell a story,” while simultaneously addressing the ideology and discourses associated with this request. Additionally, the analysis explores the dialogic nature of the narrative from the standpoint of “tellability” (Norrick 2005; Ochs and Capps 2001), thus highlighting aspects of the narrative that render this tale of friendship, an extramarital affair and a friend “in hatred” meaningful in the context of its telling. Guided by an interest in Bakhtinian dialogism and driven by a concern for narrative tellability, three differing, yet complimentary, analyses of the narrative are explored: 1) ‐ 9 ‐ genre, register and vague (“vaguely gendered”) language, 2) face work, framing and cooperation and 3) gossip, stance and the representation of speech and voice. These analyses likewise uncover three themes that underlie the narrative context of the tale. These themes are: the backgrounding of nativeness and foregrounding of gender, the simultaneous and ambiguous struggle for solidarity and power, and the display of personal style through moral stance in the presentation of a continuous self over time and place. The implication of this work for future research and assessment in AL and SLS is addressed