Students’ Perception of Creativity-Supportive Classroom Climate and Its Impact on Creativity Development During Elementary School

Author(s):

Caroline Theurer(presenting / submitting)Frank Lipowsky

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching

Format:

Paper

Session Information

27 SES 01 B, Learning and Creativity

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-02

13:15-14:45

Room:

B016 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Helmut Johannes Vollmer

Contribution

Creativity is considered to be an educational goal (Serve, 2000) and it is a widespread consensus that creativity is an important facet of human personality which should be fostered. It can be defined as ability to solve problems in an unusual but inventive and efficient way (Drevdahl, 1956) and, therefore, it is a meaningful prerequisite for learning processes (Runco, 2004). Even though creativity is named as an instructional goal in curricula for different subjects and different type of schools, there is still a research gap on investigating creativity and its predictors on a longitudinal database.

Theoretically, it is assumed that there are multiple determinants on creativity: In addition to (unstable and stable) individual factors like motivation, intelligence or traits (e.g. openness, unconventionality, perseverance or curiosity) it depends on domain specific skills. Beyond these individual factors, external conditions can strongly determine whether somebody acts creatively or not (Cropley, 1991; Urban, 1993).

Several empirical results reveal creativity development from first to second grade to be unequal and unstable (r_tt ≈ .10). Further analyses show major differences in the creativity development between classes and showed class affiliation to be an explaining variable for individual’s creativity (Freund & Holling, 2008; Theurer, Berner, & Lipowsky, 2012). Investigating creativity with regard to mean development, it could often be shown how children’s creativity drops when entering school. After a slow recover during elementary school, creativity typically decreases again before or when entering adolescence (for a review see Feldman, 1999; Urban, 2004). Results like these might indicate an influence of classroom characteristics on individual creativity development.

In an educational setting, characteristics on class level (e.g. acceptance of unconventionality, enhancing imaginativeness or trustful relationships towards classmates and teachers) are considered to compose a creativity-supportive climate and therefore might affect creativity development (Cropley, 1991). So far, there is only little empirical evidence for these theoretical assumptions. Neither this alleged dimensionality of creativity supportive classroom climate nor its posited effect on creativity development has been investigated sufficiently.

Research Questions

The study aims at explaining children’s creativity development throughout elementary school. Using data from a student survey it is analyzed which external conditions within the classroom contribute to it. Hence, the following questions are to be answered:

How does creativity develop during elementary school?

Does students’ perception of creativity-supportive classroom climate affect their creativity development?

Method

Data for the analyses derives from a research project which investigates students’ personality and achievement development throughout German elementary school (Lipowsky, Faust, & Kastens, 2013). The sample used for the current study consists of approximately 400 elementary school children (nested in 30 classes). Creativity was assessed at the beginning of first, at the end of second and at the end of fourth grade by using the “Test for Creative Thinking–Drawing Production” (TCT-DP; Urban & Jellen, 1996). The TCT-DP is a standardized test which assesses a person’s creative potential by ratings of a drawing. Measurement equivalence was tested. With slight compromises, partial metric measurement invariance is given over the course of four school years. To assess external conditions that might affect students’ creativity development, a student questionnaire was developed in order to measure “creativity-supportive classroom climate” (CSCC) at the end of elementary school. The students were asked to refer to their Arts-, Mathematics-, and German-lessons teachers. The students were asked to reflect - separately for each subject - on three different dimensions: (1) to what extent the lessons foster the students’ ideation, (2) in which way the teacher handles unconventionality and (3) how trustful they perceive student-teacher-interactions. Each of these three dimensions was assessed with several items which were parallelized for the subjects. After checking for subject-specific peculiarities, the data was aggregated over the three subjects and then, after checking for sufficient interrater-reliabilities by means of ICC(2), aggregated over classes. The dimensionality of CSCC was checked by means confirmatory factor analysis. It revealed a cognitive and an emotional dimension of CSCC. These dimensions were used as predictors in multilevel analyses.

Expected Outcomes

During four years of elementary school the children’s creativity develops unstable and individually different: The creativity score at the beginning of elementary school does not affect the creativity score at the end of elementary school, which means that creativity in first grade is no predictor for creativity in fourth grade. Two-year stabilities are about r≈.1. Regarding mean structure, creativity increases until the end of second grade but then stagnates. Using the two classroom characteristics as assessed by the student survey (cognitive and emotional) partly reveals predictive power: Students’ perception of how stimulating their classes are (cognitive dimension) affects individual creativity development. However, the coefficient remains non-significant (β=.29, p=.23) which might be due to the relative small sample size for conducting multilevel analyses. Nonetheless, the students’ evaluation of how trustful student-teacher-interaction are (emotional dimension), strongly predicts individual creativity development (β=.57, p<.001). If students feel like their teachers are interested in them as well as in their ideas and if they perceive their teachers as trustful persons who act fair and benevolently, they seem to develop higher creativity. Interestingly, the emotional dimension of CSCC seems to be more important for creativity development than the cognitive dimension. In concordance with other studies elementary school children’s creativity development seems unstable. It emphasizes the need for identifying its predictors in order to learn more about how to foster creativity in school. It showed that creativity development is affected by external conditions. Those investigated in the current study can be influenced by teachers in several subjects. The results could therefore be useful for teacher education or teacher-training courses. The conducted student survey provided data which – from a theoretical perspective – are crucial for a creativity-supportive climate. But it only focused on teacher behavior and teacher-student-interaction. Following studies should complement student-student-relationships.

References

Cropley, A. J. (1991). Unterricht ohne Schablone: Wege zur Kreativität. [Class Without Former Plate: Tracks Toward Creativity.] München: Ehrenwirth. Drevdahl, J. E. (1956). Factors of importance for creativity. Journal of Clinical Psychology, (12), 21–26. Feldman, H. (1999). The development of creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity (pp. 169–152). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Freund, P. A., & Holling, H. (2008). Creativity in the classroom: A multilevel analysis investigating the impact of creativity and reasoning ability on scholastic achievement. Creativity Research Journal, 20(3), 309–318. Lipowsky, F., Faust, G. & Kastens, C. (2013). Persönlichkeits- und Lernentwicklung an staatlichen und privaten Grundschulen. Ergebnisse der PERLE-Studie zu den ersten beiden Schuljahren. [Personality and learning development in public and private elementary schools. Results of the first two years of the PERLE-study.] Münster: Waxmann. Runco, M. A. (2004). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, (55), 657–687. Serve, H. J. (2000). Fundamente (grund‐)schulpädagogischer Kreativitätsförderung. [Basements of Fostering Creativity in (Elementary) School.] In H. J. Serve (Ed.), Kreativitätsförderung [Fostering Creativity] (pp. 10–26). Baltmannsweiler: Schneider‐Verl. Hohengehren. Theurer, C., Berner, N., & Lipowsky, F. (2012). Die Entwicklung der Kreativität im Grundschulalter: Zur Messung der Kreativität im PERLE-Projekt. [Creativity Development During Elementary School: On the Measurement of Creativity Within the PERLE-Project.] Journal for Educational Research Online, 4(2), 174–190. Urban, K. K. (1993). Neuere Entwicklungen in der Kreativitätsforschung. [Recent Trends in Creativity Research.] Psychologie in Erziehung und Unterricht, 40, 161–181. Urban, K. K. (Ed.) (2004). Kreativität: Herausforderung für Schule, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft. [Creativity: Challenges for Schools, Science, and Society.] Münster: LIT. Urban, K. K. & Jellen, H. G. (1996). Test for Creative Thinking - Drawing Production (TCT-DP). Lisse, Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger.

Author Information

Caroline Theurer (presenting / submitting)

University of Kassel, Germany

Frank Lipowsky