Interaction Between Multiculturalism and Framing on Creative Task Performance

Research has consistently demonstrated the benefits of multicultural experiences for individual creativity (e.g. Çelik, Forthmann, & Storme, 2016; Saad, Damian, Martinez, Moons, & Robins, 2012). The present study will explore the interaction between framing and multiculturalism on creativity. Seven hundred and eighty eight participants who identify as multicultural will be randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups looking at framing (success/failure) and culture priming (present/not present). After being primed with an oral prompt, participants will complete the Alternative Uses Test to measure two aspects of creativity: originality and idea generation. Success framing is expected to be associated with higher creativity scores compared to failure framing. Presence of culture priming will be associated with higher creativity scores compared to no presence of culture. And success framing paired with presence of culture will have the highest creativity scores compared to other groups. Implications for creativity, identity and multicultural experiences are discussed

Concepts of creativity operating within a UK art and design college (FE/HE) with reference to Confucian heritage cultures: perceptions of key stakeholders

Cultural norms determine where creative ideas and products arise and how they are judged; yet despite the prevalence of literature on creativity, ambiguity persists about global understandings of the concept. The internationalisation of higher education has resulted in multicultural classrooms that provide opportunities for intercultural communication and creative collaborations yet risk misunderstandings and cultural essentialism. There is a lack of empirical research into student learning in art and design and even less that takes cultural contexts into account. The main methodological models that have emerged since the mid twentieth century endorse an understanding of creativity as an internal cognitive function. As the majority of intercultural creativity research is based on assumptions about individual and collective societies the antipathy between creativity and conformity has been perpetuated. The literature reveals multiple functional definitions of creativity operating in the UK and a value paradox between Western and non-Western models of creativity. Using semi structured interviews with stakeholders in a UK art and design college as well as analysing institutional documents, the research investigates how previous teaching and learning experiences impact the understanding, teaching, practice and assessment of creativity in a multicultural environment with particular reference to Confucian heritage cultures. The study explores individual and societal level themes and concludes that contemporary creativity cannot be separated from cultural context and proposes a model of intercultural creativity in concurrence with confluence models combining a number of individual and cultural factors. Creativity is conceived as the fusion of individual creative potential with a favourable social context manifested in a collaborative learning culture. Recommendations are made with regard to the necessity of raising intercultural awareness amongst students and lecturers

Build an Assessment Rubric of Student Creativity in Higher Education

[EN] Attention to student creativity has triggered a number of educational transformations in higher education. However, widespread measures of creativity in higher education are primary based on norm-referenced assessment, which provide minimal information of student performance against the learning development in creativity. In reponse to the lack of effective measures and criteria to link assessment with instruction in creativity education, this article discusses the process of building an assessment rubric of creativity based on the standards-referenced model. It is intended to help teachers and students better understand the learning objectives related to creativity, as well as to monitor and guide the development of student creativity. Xu, W.; Tognolini, J. (2022). Build an Assessment Rubric of Student Creativity in Higher Education. En 8th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'22). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 135-142. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd22.2022.1469513514

Is it true that young drama practitioners are more creative and have a higher emotional intelligence?

Drama studies can provide adolescents and young adults with learning opportunities that can help them to develop creative and socio-emotional skills. In interviews and discussion groups, when given the opportunity to talk about their experiences, young drama students explain the creative and emotional benefits they feel they have received from their participation in the arts. This research study investigates whether engagement, and particularly engagement over time, in drama is significant in stimulating creative and socio-emotionally intelligent behaviour in young people. It compares the creative and socio-emotional levels of adolescents and young adults who participate in drama studies routinely, to both those who have participated for two years or less and those who have no experience in this field. The research sample comprised 222 young people between the ages of 13 and 21. Findings analysed for this sample suggest that, those who have taken part in drama studies for two years or more develop higher levels of fluency, flexibility, originality and self-perceived creativity than those whose participation is less or nil. No significant differences in socio-emotional skills were noted in relation to different degrees of participation. The results are discussed in relation to the benefits that participation in drama activities can have for the development of skills during a key stage of life for young adults, replete with challenges

Investigation of the effects of group composition and conference structure on group creativity and induvidual perceptions of transactional distance in university students

PhD ThesisThe main purpose of this study was to investigate online collaborative activities based on the differences of individual students, to enhance creativity in small groups and reduce transactional distance (TD) in an online learning environment. The relationships among gender, thinking styles, individual creative ability and group creativity were also explored. Both experimental and survey data were collected to provide a rich understanding of the related issues. Different grouping and structuring strategies were developed and manipulated in this work. The 3 x 3 factorial quasi-experimental design employed a pretest-posttest comparison group, with two independent variables: thinking styles and conference structure. The dependent variables were group creativity and student perceptions of transactional distance. One hundred and thirty-eight second year students from three intact classes at Southern Taiwan University were selected as the participants for the main study. Four research instruments were used to collect data: the Thinking Styles Inventory (TSI), the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA), the Creative Product Semantic Scale (CPSS), and the individual’s perceptions of transactional distance questionnaire. The findings confirmed that male students tended to prefer the legislative thinking style more than the female ones. There was no significant difference between male and female students in the overall creative ability. However, the male students had significantly higher creative ability with regard to originality. The findings also supported Sternberg’s argument that ability is different from style. In addition, this study found that there was no significant association between the average group member creative ability and the overall group creative performance. As for the test results for the influences of the two proposed factors in terms of group composition and conference structure on group creativity, no significant differences were found for these two factors or their interaction on group creativity. In addition, group composition and conference structure had no significant interaction effect on any dimension of transactional distance, but two main effects were significant. Group composition had a significant effect on the learner autonomy dimension of transactional distance. The level of conference structure had a significant effect on individual perceptions of interaction, conference structure and interface transactional distance. Moreover, in the context of the present study, using synchronous online conferencing, a high degree of TD - interaction was associated with a high degree of TD - conference structure, TD - learner autonomy and TD - interface

Performance on Well and Ill-Structured Problems in University Physics: The role of Instruction in Cooperative Learning

In this study, I explore the learning opportunities that emerge from ill-structured activities in a university physics course and how collaboration enables performance under different teaching conditions. The study was conducted over two months on three sections of an introductory physics course in a University in Northern Chile. Each section utilized a different variety of teaching strategies and combinations of problems (well and ill-structured) for assessing content on the day of data collection, students were asked to work in groups and ill-structured activity in physics. I gathered audio of students' discussion in four groups for a total of 26 participants, and I collected the generated problems from the whole sample. From the audio, I explored the emergent processes students engaged while solving the problems. Student generated activities were coded to investigate combinations of concepts and problem characteristics, which were later combined into a measure of problem elaboration. Later, I explored students’ social networks to determine how different instructional strategies led to different social configurations and their differences in academic performance. For this, I collected data on students' performance on a physics test designed with well-structured problems and problem elaboration, and I asked students to respond to an on-line peer-nomination survey related to their social interactions engaged for information seeking to solve problems. I tested the effect of different network structures over academic performance on both types of activities by setting statistical linear models. Generating problems is an opportunity for students to propose ideas and make decisions regarding the content and the contextual details to introduce into their problems, as well as to engage in problem solving strategies. The combination of concepts and attributes for problem elaboration showed students' familiarity with particular portions of the content and characteristics, with differences across sections. Finally, students who actively sought out information from multiple peers were less likely to achieve good performance on well-structured problems, whereas for ill-structured problems, this effect depended on the features of the learning environment enacted in each section. These results suggest that teaching and instructional strategies have a key role in the way cooperation lead to good performance

Understanding The Role of a Regional Magnet School in Creative Identity Development of Ethnically and Culturally Diverse Adolescents: A Case Study

The purpose of this dissertation exploratory case study was to examine the creativity-supportive practices at an innovative regional magnet school shaping Ethnically & Culturally Diverse (ECD) students’ creative identity development as perceived by different stakeholders including ECD students enrolled in the first three cohorts, teachers, and school administrators of RichTech Regional Magnet High School [RRMHS] (pseudonym). This single qualitative case study employed a small component of a quantitative survey, the results of which guided in part the design of interview protocols and sampling procedures for recruiting qualitative participants. Using a pragmatic research lens, I obtained and analyzed the diverse qualitative data including interviews with ECD students, teachers, and school administrators, open-ended qualitative survey responses, my field notes, and reflective memos. The findings of this dissertation study demonstrated that the creative identity development of ECD students can be supported in the context of an innovative regional magnet high school in three ways: (a) through facilitation of creative learning opportunities encompassing open-endedness and flexibility, non-linear synergy, student-centered future orientation as well as productive interactions of diverse perspectives; (b) through augmenting unique strengths of an innovative regional magnet school entailing limited size of student enrollment, intentional design of integrated diverse learning environment, as well as formulation of an innovative curricular and pedagogical model; and (c) through the promotion of teacher autonomy, the sustainable rapport between teachers and school administrators, development of sound beliefs by teachers and school administrators about student creativity as well as through leveraging teachers’ prior practical experiences of teaching ECD adolescent students. These key findings, recommendations, and implications for practice and future research are discussed in light of the limitations of the present study. With the limited research on the role of unique learning environments such as an innovative magnet school in promoting ECD adolescents\u27 creativity, this study is a small first attempt to better understand the magnet school-based salient opportunities for and experiences of ECD students’ creative identity development

Cultivating Creativity of Graphic Design and Multimedia Students: The Perceptions of Arab Faculty and Experts

While a consensus has emerged on the importance of creativity in graphic design and multimedia field, little systematic research has attempted to understand its facilitators or inhibitors in the graphic and multimedia education across colleges and universities. The current investigation surveys a sample of experts as well as professors teaching across the Arab World concerning their perceptions on the most significant correlates of creative thinking among students. Results point to the importance of: (1) instructors’ engagement; (2) appropriate use of instructional strategies, tools, and resources; (3) institutional support; (4) peer support; and (5) the removal of red-tape regulatory frameworks. Most importantly, this research highlights the need to move away from the rigid higher education creativity model assuming perfection, precision, accuracy, and optimal effectiveness to a more flexible creativity framework. The Multi-Layered Autonomous Phases Model (MLAPM) is proposed as an alternative approach to cultivating creativity at the higher education level. The MLAPM applies to all levels beginning with the students and the instructor in the classroom and all instructional tools applied, moving upward to the institutional administration levels. The model offers cost-effective, flexible, dynamic, and effective practices that improve levels of creativity and creative thinking among students without the need to invest in new costly equipment, tools, curriculum, or instructional programs

Impacting openness, conscientiousness, and creative self-efficacy through group music making: A Quasi-experimental collaborative music based intervention study

This quantitative, quasi-experimental study of 44 undergraduate entrepreneurship students employed a pre-post comparison group design to examine whether music-based interventions could impact the Big Five personality factors of Openness to Experience and its aspects of Intellect and Openness, and Conscientiousness and its aspects of Industriousness and Orderliness as well as Creative Self-Efficacy. The study further examined how participants in the experimental group processed and made sense of their experiences in the music-based interventions across three perspectives: Adult Learning, Constructive Developmental, and Creativity theory. Openness to Experiences, Conscientiousness, and Creative Self-Efficacy were chosen as variables due to their relationship to creativity and creative output. Music was selected as the basis of the interventions based on the demonstrated clinical and evidence-based connection of music and personality, as well as its use in clinical contexts. The findings revealed a significant decrease in the Industriousness aspect of Conscientiousness in the experimental group. In the control group, they revealed a significant increase in the Orderliness aspect of Conscientiousness. Neither Openness to Experiences and its aspects, nor Creative-Self Efficacy were affected with any significance by the music-making interventions. Though overall satisfaction with the music-making experiences was high, there was no evidence that participants in the experimental group thought differentially about the experience, or processed the experiences discretely from the Constructive Developmental, Adult Learning, or Creativity perspectives. Findings provide evidence that music-based interventions have the potential to impact certain aspects of personality