Understanding collaborative creativity: An observational study of the effects of the social and educational context on the processes of young children's joint creative writing
Drawing on socio-cultural theory, the research presented here examines the nature of productive group work in the context of children's collaborative creative writing. The thesis explores the role of friendship in mediating the processes of joint creative writing, and examines the effects of other contextual features in the classroom-context - task design, instructions and writing medium - in structuring and supporting shared creativity. The study draws on preliminary observations of Year 5-Year 6 classrooms (children aged 9-11) and longitudinal observational data of ongoing classroom activities in Year 3 and Year 4 classrooms (children aged 7-9) in England. It offers a contextualised, qualitative analysis of the social and cognitive processes linked to shared creative text composition via the in-depth study of verbal interaction. For the analysis of joint creative writing discourse a functional model was developed.
The research study contributes to the theoretical debate on collaborative learning by studying peer processes in the context of creative writing and by exploring the mediational role of friends and features in the learning context in influencing classroom-based collaboration. The findings show that the pairs' discourse varied in the level of collectivity and individualism they displayed and that, for most part, the variations can be explained by the differences in their relationships. Thus the study demonstrates the potential affordances of friendship pairing for shared creativity. Furthermore, the research presented in the thesis shows the mediating effects of task design, instructions and the writing medium, highlighting the inextricably linked nature of contextual features in structuring shared work in the classroom
