Visual art and craft activities are often found within the early childhood classroom, with learning objectives aimed to develop creativity through the production of artwork. Hence, creativity in the early years is an increasingly researched educational topic that is continuing to attract attention, where the consensus is to help young learners foster creativity and self-expression. Such that Hong Kong kindergarten guidelines encourage arts and creativity as a core learning area (Hong Kong Curriculum Development Council, 2017). However, little is known in regards to the theoretical learning process that is enacted into practice by the teacher’s instruction, especially early years educators who may struggle with the integration of arts into their strict outcome-based curriculum.

In the reviewed literature, it suggests difficulties in defining creativity as the term itself seems to be multifaceted (Cropley, 2000; Runco & Jaeger, 2012; Simonton, 2014; Spendlove, 2005), thus there is an assumption that research conducted to date remain inconclusive on the topic of creativity. Webster (1990) explains that the attributed value of creativity is complex and has become subject to a large variability, and hence, further suggested that in the context of arts education, the use of 'creative thinking' would be more appropriate because the focus will be placed on the creative process and its role within teaching and learning. Therefore, within this study, the term 'creative thinking' has been adopted to identify the intrinsic processes when young learners are creating artworks.

In theory, Vygotsky (2004) found that children tended to map the behaviours of their surrounding adults and peers. These basic actions are defined: a) reproductive activity – the recall and imitation of reality; and b) creative activity – the use of imagination and combination of thoughts and experiences. As both forms of activity produce an outcome, such as a thought, produced object, or related action, the emphasis is placed on the creative thinking that has been processed to achieve the output. Hence, it also aligns to support the social constructivist theory, where adults are pivotal in facilitating learning opportunities in young children, in comparison to learners exploring on their own (Liu & Matthews, 2005).

Other theorists also investigated alternative factors that may affect creative learning. Such as McKim (1980), who theorized a three-step developmental process of creating visual imageries from what we see, to then imagine, and finally to creation. He further described that for visual thinking to reach its full potential, the individual processes should interact and a process of exchange is present. Therefore, the emphasis is on the role of the educator in facilitating effective visual materials and quality instructions in contributing to young learners' creative thinking potential.

Such that Reunamo et al. (2014) found a child’s creative process could be scaffolded, or interfered, by an educator through the teacher-child interactions and social communication during activities in kindergarten settings. This further reinforces the importance of the role of the educator and their instructions in the kindergarten, therefore in the relevance of this study, teacher’s instructions are manipulated under the conditions of being reproductive or creative, in order to measure their effects on a child’s creative thinking and art production.

This paper aims to address two objectives:(1) To identify which teaching instruction encourages children’s initiative to share their creative ideas?; and (2) How do different teaching instructions affect the enhancement of creative and visual thinking in kindergarten children?

Accordingly, an experiment is designed to test the relative benefits of teacher instructions in promoting creative and visual thinking through art workshops. The results will contribute to the integration of effective teacher instruction in teaching art in early childhood settings.  

This doctoral research study adopts a mixed-methods experimental design (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2017), and the experiment has been designed to manipulate the teaching instructions of art workshops that are delivered to young children. Reproductive instructions are rigorous with direct answers, with the focus on the product-based outcome, whereas creative instructions are scaffolded discussions that encourage higher-order thinking, with the focus on the process-based outcome. Its main objective is to simulate teaching instructions that mimic teaching language found in the early childhood classroom, which models effective teacher-child interactions from the validated Classroom Assessment Scoring System (Pre-K) measure (Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008). In the duration of art workshops, each session is individually audio-recorded to document children's self-reports of their creative thinking process, which is then transcribed and categorised. Observations of each child's social orientation and level of focus are also documented. The assumption is that these verbal reports by participants illustrate any individual characteristics in their thinking process that may be attributable beyond the experiment designed. Therefore, children’s creative thinking is assessed using pre-and post-tests to measure possible changes from the experiment. This is followed by consensus evaluations of each outcome-produced artwork by the participating child to measure their concurrent creative and visual thinking after each art workshop. The evaluations aim to measure the artwork through a) creativity; b) technical skill; and c) aesthetic appeal. Furthermore, the grounded theory approach (Creswell and Poth’s, 2018) will be used to analyse the dialogue of interactions between the teaching instructions and children.

This research aims to support those who are responsible for curriculum design, teacher education, and professional development for teachers. The analysis will make it possible to identify teaching instructional strategies that help to enhance creative and visual thinking in the early years. Preliminary findings suggest that it can be expected that creative instructions will promote more opportunities for children’s self-expression, however further analysis on the effects of teaching instruction to their produced outcomes is yet to be confirmed. These results will have strong implications for early years educators to better understand and develop visual art activities in their kindergarten settings.

Creswell, J. W., & Plano Clark, V. L. (2017). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. SAGE Publications (Third). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications Inc. Retrieved from https://books.google.cl/books?id=6tYNo0UpEqkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2018). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches (Fourth). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications Inc. Cropley, A. J. (2000). Defining and measuring creativity: Are creativity tests worth using? Roeper Review, 23(2), 72–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783190009554069 Hong Kong Curriculum Development Council. (2017). Kindergarten education curriculum guide: Joyful learning through play balanced development all the way. Hong Kong. Retrieved from https://www.edb.gov.hk/attachment/en/curriculum-development/major-level-of-edu/preprimary/ENG_KGECG_2017.pdf Liu, C. H., & Matthews, R. (2005). Vygotsky’s philosophy: Constructivism and its criticisms examined. International Education Journal, 6(3), 386–399. McKim, R. H. (1980). Experiences in visual thinking (Second). Belmont: Wadsworth, Inc. Pianta, R., La Paro, K. M., & Hamre, B. K. (2008). CLASS: Classroom Assessment Scoring System Manual Pre-K. Baltimore: Brookes. Reunamo, J., Lee, H. C., Wang, L. C., Ruokonen, I., Nikkola, T., & Malmstrom, S. (2014). Children’s creativity in day care. Early Child Development and Care, 184(4), 617–632. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2013.806495 Runco, M. A., & Jaeger, G. J. (2012). The standard definition of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 24(1), 92–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2012.650092 Simonton, D. K. (2014). What is a creative idea? Little-c versus Big-C creativity. In Handbook of research on creativity (pp. 69–83). Spendlove, D. (2005). Creativity in education : a review. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 10(2). Torrance, E. P. (1963). Creativity. What research says to the teacher. National Education Association. Washington: National Education Association of the United States. Vygotsky, L. S. (2004). Imagination and creativity in childhood. Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42(1), 7–97. https://doi.org/10.2753/RPO1061-0405290173 Webster, P. R. (1990). Creative thinking in music: Creativity as creative thinking. Music Educators Journal, 76(9), 21–21. https://doi.org/10.2307/3401072