Creativity as Co-Construction

Sibylle Rahm and Barbara Vollmer
Creativity as Co-Construction
ICSEI Conference 2015 in Cincinnati Ohio (USA)
1. Objectives
Personal growth and team learning depend on opportunities to discover one’s own
potential in a rapidly changing world (Senge, 2006; Kruse, 2011; Rahm, 2011).
Consequently, PISA intends to examine the problem solving skills of students (PISA,
2012). Students‘ openness, willingness and drive to learn is essential for the development
of skills and knowledge (Hattie, 2009). Encouraging creativity in classroom teaching is
considered a main tool of instructional leadership (Guilford, 1950; Vigotzky, 1967, 2004;
Beghetto, 2010 Wiater, 2009; Bush & Middlewood, 2013). Students need to be better
equipped for handling their future successfully (Beghetto, 2010). Students develop their
own personal view of life during the learning process. Teachers motivate their students by
providing opportunities to solve tasks creatively. Thus, students and teachers are equally
part of a co-constructive problem solving process.
1. Theoretical framework
As teachers are daily confronted with antinomies dealing with uncertainty is a main target
for them (Helsper, 2012; Patry, 2012; Dalbert, 1999). During creative work the need for
self-efficacy and certainty are met. Artists fill gaps and deficiencies by comparing their
observations with their cognitive schemes, with their hypotheses (Torrance, 1965) and
their presumptions. The balancing procedure (Vollmer, 2010, 2012) is accompanied by
changes in the perception and appraisals ranging between “yes, this has worked” to “no,
this didn´t work”. Each of these thoughts leads either to the fulfillment of the need of
certainty or to diminishing feelings of certainty. This process may accelerate to the state
that Csikszentmihalyi (1999) calls flow. Therefore emotions and the fulfillment of needs
seem to play an important role for finding ideas. Furthermore diverging traits of creative
personalities are brought together looking at the creative process in a detailed way.
As teachers and students solve problems, disagreement or antagonism can be handled by
balancing which is how they adjust thoughts, emotions, vague presumptions and intuition
when constructing new ideas. By providing co-construction in balancing teachers change
their roles to moderators, creative artists, learners and visionary leaders (Reich, 2002;
Reusser, 2006) handling uncertainty in their own teaching as well as in the students
creativity.
3. Methods
Our fundamental research is premised on Torrance’s assumption that creative thinking
takes place „in the process of sensing difficulties, problems, gaps in information, missing
elements; making guesses or formulating hypotheses about these
deficiencies...“ (Torrance, 1965). In our experiment the participants have to deal with a task
that includes randomly generated meaningless sentences and a picture that induces
cryptic meanings. The assignment is to find creative ideas. Teachers’ and students’
responses to this uncertain situation are video recorded. They are requested to comment
their thoughts about the experimental set-up. In the simulation randomly generated,
grammatically correct sentences are combined with an ambiguous picture.
The material makes using familiar cognitive schemes difficult. This fact produces
uncertainty (Starker, 1998). Videos of the participants are transcribed in GAT2, and
analyzed in a detailed way (Bohnsack, 2011). Differing behaviors and their regulation are
investigated according to the Psi-Theory of Dörner (2008) which allows dynamics and
motivation in process to be carefully examined. Thus different approaches to challenging
situations may be reconstructed and different problem solving styles can be identified.
4. Data Sources
Our research is due to the fact that we are still missing a deep understanding of the
creative process. How do people interact in creative situations? Do they support each
other? What are their feelings and how do these feelings lead to different regulations of
behavior? Answering those questions seems an important contribution to explain high
level competencies of students. This means making a first step towards sustaining creative
learning processes in classroom teaching. Teachers may learn to consider themselves as
part of a creative process and they may contribute to improve teaching by offering
opportunities to solve problems creatively.
Our random sample included 16 participants. Six videos of students as well as teachers
have been analyzed so far. Our fundamental research was based on the simulation of
complex tasks that demand creative solutions (Dörner, 2002; Amelang/Bartussek, 2006).
The test arrangement included one picture with meaningless subtitles. The decision of how
long they wanted to deal with the given material was up to the participants.
5. First Results
First results showed that the subjects differed highly in dealing with the creative problem.
The drive for innovation was highly interrelated with needs and emotions. We may
distinguish two groups:
Some participants were preoccupied by anxiety being worried to be judged; trying to
prevent failure they remained in reliable ways of thinking. They were guided by criteria of
efficiency, f.e. time saving.
Others however exceeded the definition and description of picture and words by
presenting a meaningful interpretation of their impressions. They co-constructed with the
material trying to fill the gap between understandable and surreal sentences. These
participants looked for significance by searching mutual semantic concepts. They recalled
memories defining words and parts of the picture, used vague presumptions for inventing
environments and story lines. Those participants co-constructed a lot between picture and
text. Some even realized the esthetic value of the task. They saw connections, found
sense and beauty, thus being driven to keep constructing their own inventions.
6. Educational importance of this study
Knowing more about the creative process as a co-construction seems very important to
educate all children to their full potential. Better educational outcomes depend on our
knowledge about learning processes and the quality of teachers’ work (Harris, 2014).
Classroom teaching is not only about making students learn, but it is also about coconstruction of teachers and students in solving complex problems. Students are partners
in change. They should be encouraged to practice democratic engagement and mindful
learning (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009). Teachers may sustain students in finding their
creative capacities. They may encourage students to face complex situations and to
handle future problems. For this they should feel attracted by complex situations
themselves (Robinson, 2011).
Teacher training should be based on solid knowledge about creative problem solving. Our
research contributes to elaborating a theory of creativity as co-construction in classroom
teaching.
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Authors
Prof. Dr. Sibylle Rahm, Chair for School Education, Otto-­‐Friedrich-­‐University of Bamberg, Germany. sibylle.rahm@uni-­‐bamberg.de Barbara Vollmer, Chair for School Education, Otto-­‐Friedrich-­‐University of Bamberg, Germany. barbara.vollmer@uni-­‐bamberg.de