Creativity and Making in Early Childhood: Challenging Practitioner Perspectives 9781350003101, 9781350003095, 9781350003132, 9781350003125

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Creativity and Making in Early Childhood

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY Creative Development, Ashley Compton Creativity and Early Years Education, Anna Craft Digital Technologies in Early Childhood Art, Mona Sakr Early Childhood Studies, Ewan Ingleby Early Childhood Theories and Contemporary Issues, Mine Conkbayir and Christine Pascal Reflective Teaching in Early Education, edited by Jennifer Colwell

Creativity and Making in Early Childhood Challenging Practitioner Perspectives

MONA SAKR, BINDU TRIVEDY, NICHOLA HALL, LAURA O’BRIEN AND ROBERTO FEDERICI

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Copyright © Mona Sakr, Bindu Trivedy, Nichola Hall, Laura O’Brien and Roberto Federici, 2018 Mona Sakr, Bindu Trivedy, Nichola Hall, Laura O’Brien and Roberto Federici have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. Cover image © ImagesBazaar / GettyImages All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-0310-1 PB: 978-1-3500-0309-5  ePDF: 978-1-3500-0312-5  eBook: 978-1-3500-0311-8 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

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Contents Introduction  1 1 Looking for Creativity  15 2 Creativity and Identity  31 3 Collaborative Creativity  47 4 Time  65 5 Choice  83 6 Space and Materials  101 7 Digital Creativity  117 8 Child–Adult Interactions  135 9 Inspirations  151 10 Adult Expectations  169 References  183 Index  193

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Introduction

Welcome

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n this introductory chapter, we offer an overview of the book and ideas for how to get the most out of your experience of reading and engaging with it. Firstly, we outline our aims and indicate whom we have intended the book to be for. Secondly, we explain who we are as individuals and how we came to work together in a project looking at children’s creativity and making in early childhood education. Thirdly, we suggest practical ways of engaging with the book so that you deepen your understanding and challenge your own practice. We then offer an overview of each of the chapter themes and topics. Finally, we highlight some of the recurring themes that emerge throughout this book; these help to elucidate our orientation and what we hope will be the contribution of this book to policy, practice, and thinking in early childhood.

Our aims The overarching aim of this book is to challenge practitioners, ourselves included, to rethink practice in early childhood education, particularly in relation to young children’s creativity. Our title refers to ‘creativity and making’ in order to focus our thinking particularly on creative processes that involve using hands and interaction with physical materials. This is not to say that young children’s spontaneous vocalizations or dramatic performances are not creative, but these are not primarily the focus of this book. Most of the theoretical underpinnings and little narratives relate to the creation of physical objects or experimentation with tactile processes. In order to rethink early childhood practice around creativity and making, we explore aspects of children’s creativity by interweaving observations from practice, reflections on practice, findings from empirical research, and theoretical perspectives on early childhood creativity. We have tried not to organize these elements into a hierarchy; we do not see any of the elements as more important than the others. We see the project of engaging in a critical and productive way with practices in early childhood education as depending

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on the movement between different ways of thinking and between different types of material to think with. While there is sometimes a tendency in early childhood studies to see theory as the ‘difficult bit’, we hope that your experience of the theory we present in this book will not correspond to this way of thinking. As MacLure (2010, p. 277) argues, The value of theory lies in its power to get in the way, to offend and interrupt. We need theory to block the reproduction of the bleeding obvious and thereby, hopefully, open up new possibilities for trying and doing. MacLure suggests that it is through engaging with challenging theoretical perspectives that we can begin to rethink what we are doing and stop taking our everyday experiences for granted. Because of this desire for theory to ‘offend and interrupt’, we have engaged with a diverse range of theoretical perspectives in this book, many of which you may be unfamiliar with. This includes work from post-structuralist and post-human perspectives. You will find less mention than you are used to of the usual gamut of developmental theorists (Piaget, Vygotsky, etc.) who turn up repeatedly in courses on early childhood education, though these theorists have of course had a vital influence on more contemporary approaches. We encourage you to have an affective relationship with theory – to love some parts of theory and to rebel against others. Through this kind of relationship, theory can become the catalyst for your own explorations, curiosity, and risk-taking. In addition to sharing theoretical perspectives that are likely to challenge your ways of seeing the world, we are relying on small moments of naturalistic observation to unsettle our assumptions about the world and suggest new ways of seeing early childhood. We think about these moments of observation as ‘little narratives’ that have the potential to challenge the ‘grand narratives’ that have settled over early childhood education. For example, if there is an observation in this book that encourages you to think beyond developmental milestones and instead focus on a child’s experience as it unfolds in the moment, it will have done an essential job of unsettling the grand narrative of developmental psychology, which pervades early childhood education. Little narratives are ‘forms of local knowledge’ (Dahlberg, Moss and Pence 1999, p. 24). This means that they are not intended to be representative of truths that apply to everyone. Instead, they are specific to the contexts in which they occur, but applicable to you and your contexts because of how they inspire us to think and practice in new ways. More discussion of how we hope to contribute to future thinking and practice in early childhood is presented in the final section of this introduction, which focuses on our recurring themes.

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Reflection activities and more extensive activities (‘Activities to deepen your thinking’) appear throughout each chapter. The idea of these activities is to engage you in a more hands-on approach to interacting with theory and the little narratives that help to move our thinking forward.

Who is the book for This book is intended for current practitioners in early childhood education or those hoping to enter the profession. You may be studying for an academic qualification in early childhood studies or engaged in a professional training placement, or you may simply want to refresh and extend your practice. You may or may not be engaged in paid work in an early childhood setting. Everyone reading this book will have experience of working with young children in formal and informal settings and it is essential that you bring these experiences to bear on what you read here. We hope that you have an open mind as you read this book. By engaging openly with the ideas presented, we hope that your thinking and doing, and maybe even your personal and professional values, will go through important changes. As the subtitle to the book suggests, we hope that this book will challenge what you know or feel about early childhood creativity and help you to formulate alternative, perhaps more enriching, perspectives to inform your practice. Specific shifts we hope to inspire are elucidated in the final section of this introductory chapter.

Who we are We are a team of practitioners and researchers in early childhood education. We come from a wide range of backgrounds and bring different experiences to our discussions on early childhood creativity. Mona works at Middlesex University in London, lecturing on the BA Early Childhood Studies and BA Education Studies programme. Bindu, Nic, and Roberto all work in early childhood education settings in London, but of very different types. Bindu works in a children’s centre, which supports free childcare provision for two- to five-year-old children in North London and is integrated into the local community. Nic and Roberto both work in private nurseries. Nic works in a large preparatory nursery attached to a reputable independent school, while Roberto manages the family business, which began life as a small nursery in a private house. Bindu, Nic, and Roberto all have recently completed the qualification for Early Years Initial Teacher Training (EYITT), which offers

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them Early Years Teacher Status (EYTS). Laura has recently finished a BA in education studies; she studied for this qualification at the same time as gaining considerable experience as a teaching assistant in early childhood classrooms. Below is some more detailed biographical information which we hope will give you a sense of where we are each coming from. We have not attempted to disentangle our voices in this book; it will often not be clear which observations belong to whom. Although we have used a single voice to write this book, you will find diverse tones and approaches resonating in this voice.

Mona Sakr Mona is Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood and Education at Middlesex University. Her research focuses on art-making in childhood, with a particular focus on how the digital reshapes creative, playful and art-making experiences for young children. Currently, she is researching early years (EY) practitioners’ use of video to engage in reflective interpretations of children’s art-making and how they perceive their role in facilitating creativity and playfulness among children. Previous research projects include observation studies of collective digital art-making in the EY classroom and a case study of parent–child artmaking with different technologies in the home.

Bindu Trivedy Bindu has just recently completed her EYITT at Middlesex University. She has lived and worked in several west and east African countries in the last twenty years. Her background is in community work and her first degree was in development studies. She is passionate about early childhood and passionate about igniting the creative spark in every child.

Nichola Hall Nichola Hall is currently an EY teacher in the nursery in an independent boys’ preparatory school in Hertfordshire. She has recently completed her EYTS and before this had worked in advertising and print production for thirteen years. This background has been instrumental in her developing the more practical elements of creative play through introducing den making and woodwork in her setting to enhance the creative opportunities for the children to experience. Nichola loves the Forest School approach and can often be found tying rope

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to a tree to form a makeshift shelter with the children or using the natural resources around to build an elf or fairy village!

Laura O’Brien Laura recently completed a BA in education studies, while simultaneously working in a primary school in Hertfordshire as a teaching assistant. Before training in education, she gained four qualifications in art and design, which has given her a deep interest in the creative arts. She has a strong interest in imaginative play and children’s art-making, and she is often found at the art table in her setting, drawing butterflies or making paper aeroplanes.

Roberto Federici Roberto Federici grew up in a large Italian family of ten, living above the family’s nursery school business. He initially embarked on a career in law and qualified as a solicitor in 2014. However, his desire for a better quality of life ultimately led him back to where he started: working in the nursery school. He now manages the setting alongside his parents and sister, where the emphasis is on providing children with freedom and exploration opportunities within a structured environment.

How the project developed This project began life as a free training opportunity for practitioners in early childhood who were interested in exploring young children’s art-making through video observations. The opportunity was advertised to students at Middlesex University, studying on the BA programmes in education and early childhood or through EYITT. An initial workshop attracted eight student practitioners and explored the way that video observations can help to deepen our thinking about early childhood art. The premise for the training was twofold. Firstly, the training was based on the idea that when we focus closely on the process of children’s art-making – from drawing to junk modelling – there is a lot more going on than we often recognize in the busy environments of an early childhood education setting when there may be no time and space to really wonder about what is going on as children create. We might find ourselves saying ‘that’s nice’ or asking a question like ‘what is it?’ rather than encouraging the arts to be embedded in a process of open-ended inquiry. Secondly, the training responded to the potentials that

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video observations open up for us to look more closely at what is going on in front of us. In particular, video observations can help to refocus our attention on modes of interaction that we often fail to pay enough attention to, such as gaze, facial expression, and movement. We might find ourselves engaging readily with what children say about their art-making (and often we record this as captions onto artwork that is displayed) but not seeing how the other modes of communication and creativity feed into the process of art-making. Video observations also give us the chance to review what we have seen and to pay attention to details that may have passed us by the first time round. Following this workshop, four student practitioners (Bindu, Nic, Laura, and Roberto) agreed to be part of an extended project in which they would use video cameras in their setting to record children’s art-making in process. We agreed to engage in a process of collaborative reflection organized according to the principles of democratic reflective practice. Chappell and Craft (2011) refer to democratic reflective practice as a living dialogic space where academics, teachers, artists, and students co-participate in research and develop knowledge of their ‘lived space’ together. A second workshop gave us the chance to bring our favourite video observations back to the group and discuss what had surprised us about what we saw in terms of children’s art-making. What came out from this workshop was a shift away from the constraints of a focus on just visual art-making and reorientation to thinking about creativity more generally. This was because the practitioners had been drawn to many observations that did not fit neatly into the ‘art-making’ category but were thought to be exciting examples of young children’s creativity in action. We also found ourselves recounting observations that had not been recorded via video, though we also shared video observations. In addition, what emerged from the workshop was the importance of theory as a way to move our thinking forward and to make us uncomfortable. Based on these developments in the second workshop, we started to work together in new ways – focusing more broadly on creativity and making rather than just visual art-making, capturing observations through the means that best suited us at the time, and working more closely with theory in order to challenge our interpretations of what we were experiencing around us. It is through this mixture of observation, individual reflection, collaborative reflection, and discussions of theory and research that we developed our thinking and practice. We hope that this book embodies the same potent mix and will have a similarly transformative effect on you.

How to get the most out of this book This book is designed to get you involved. It is not just for reading. Throughout the book, we suggest reflection exercises and activities that you can do in order

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to deepen your thinking and apply theory to what you see around you. It is through engaging in this practical way that you will get the most out of this book. It will be even more effective if you are engaging in these activities with others who are also striving to expand their thinking and practice in relation to young children’s creativity. If you are using the book as part of a course, we hope that you will be able to engage in the reflections and activities with other students. If you are studying as an individual, consider setting up an informal study group with others that you know who have invested in early childhood education. Some of the activities in the book require that you volunteer or work in a setting. If this is something that you are doing or can arrange, it will support your understanding greatly. However, even if you are not engaged with a particular setting, we expect that you will be engaging with children in informal settings on a regular basis. Of course, carrying out observations and activities with children requires that you take the appropriate ethical measures to protect the rights of these children and the institutions and families in which they are based. The following section offers some insight and guidance with regard to the ethics of engaging in your own observations and primary research with children. Perhaps more important than your practical arrangements for interacting with children is the attitude that you bring to engaging with this book. The book is designed to challenge your thinking and it will present theories that are likely to push you out of your comfort zone. For example, the majority of degrees and qualifications in early childhood studies do not adopt the post-developmental slant that this book often adopts, in which we move away from developmental milestones and try instead to engage with children’s creativity in the here and now. It may feel uncomfortable to go beyond the developmental lens that so pervades early childhood studies, but other theoretical perspectives – such as sociocultural, post-human, and new materialist approaches – can be deeply enriching in your thinking and practice with regard to early childhood. You do not need to agree with every idea that is put forward, but if you adopt an attitude of ‘possibility thinking’ (see Chapter 1 for more on this), in which you are immersed, imaginative, playful, and happy to take risks, you will hopefully enjoy the newness of the theories and research you encounter. In short, we hope that you will keep an open mind and be prepared to experiment with how you see the world around you.

Ethical considerations The observations we share in this book are of different types and came about through different activities. Some of the observations originated in the

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context of research projects, for which ethical approval was sought through the university. Many of the observations, however, were collected as part of our daily practice in early childhood settings. As any practitioner in early childhood education is aware, observations are a vital part of working with young children. While these observations were collected as part of the day-today work in which we engage, through sharing them in this book, we have had to explore and carefully consider how to protect the rights of the children and adults that feature in the observations. When photographs have been used, we have obtained the permission of the parents/carers of the children who are visible in the photographs. Real first names have accompanied explanations of photographs when this has been the preference of the family. They have explicitly consented to specific photographs and first names being shared in this publication. When observations have comprised only written notes, we have anonymized the observations as far as possible and left out any details that would compromise the anonymity of the children and adults involved. As you will see, we encourage you throughout the book to engage in practical activities that involve observation and the collection of other types of data (e.g. interviews, focus groups, collecting documents). Through these activities, we are essentially encouraging you to do your own primary research; we think this is a fantastic way to develop expertise, understanding, and a feeling for theory as something more than words on a page. At the same time, because you are essentially engaging in research and acting as a researcher, you have a responsibility to consider the ethical issues that could arise through this research and what measures it is appropriate to take in order to safeguard yourself and those involved in the research. If you are currently a student at a university, find out from your course leader what systems are in place to support you in considering the ethical dimensions of your research activity. Your programme or department may have an ethics committee that will help you to review your ideas for research and support you to take the necessary steps in making your research ethical (e.g. obtaining informed consent from children and their parents). If you are going to engage with the activities first and foremost as a practitioner (rather than as a student), you will need to be aware of the systems that are in place in the setting where you are based. Involve the manager of the setting along with your colleagues with regard to what you want to do; have regular discussions with them about what would be appropriate and what steps you can take to ensure that the activities you carry out are ethically sound. Conducting research with children is similar to conducting observations more generally in that you need to be ready to read and respond to the multi-modal indicators in children’s behaviour which tell you whether a child is comfortable (or not) with what you are doing (Flewitt, 2005). It is not enough to get an ethics form simply ‘signed off’ by someone in a position of authority; even once you have this approval, you need to develop

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a constant responsiveness to the ethics of the situations you find yourself in and respond to these sensitively and openly.

Chapter overview The first chapter of the book explores what young children’s creativity looks like as it unfolds. It considers three theories relating to creativity: divergent thinking, flow, and possibility thinking; it also examines the behavioural indicators that relate to each of these processes. This chapter is intended to support you in noticing children’s creativity (as well as adults’ creativity) as it unfolds around you. This will help to develop the observational focus that is sustained throughout the book. The second chapter explores the relationship between creativity and children’s identities. It considers the themes and interests that arise in creative activities and the significance of popular culture in shaping these themes and interests. It suggests that the term ‘self-expression’ is problematic when applied to children’s creativity as it can suggest that creative activities are a process of externalizing something that is intrinsic to children, rather than seeing it as an active dialogue with the sociocultural environment that surrounds the child. Chapter 3 shifts the focus away from individual creativity and towards collaborative creativity. It looks at the potential for creativity to exist in the spaces between individuals and the environment that surrounds them. We investigate different ways of looking at creativity that prioritize the social dimensions of creativity to different extents. We consider what behavioural indicators we can use to look for collaborative creativity and we examine the educational practices that can help to support processes of collaborative creativity. The fourth chapter explores the relationship between time and creativity. We discuss whether there is enough time for creativity in early childhood settings and the potential for practitioners to facilitate ‘stretchy time’ which in turn supports creative thinking and activity. We examine the dominance of clock time in early childhood pedagogies and what can be done to unsettle clock time and introduce alternative approaches to time. In Chapter 5, the focus is on choice and how choice features in the process of fostering creativity. We debate whether choice (and how much choice) is helpful to children’s creative processes. We take a close look at the Montessori approach, which stresses a fine balance between choice and constraint. We also consider the lack of attention paid to children’s choices when it comes to the display of their artwork and how we respond to children’s choices to

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sometimes withdraw from creative activities that we would like them to engage in. In the sixth chapter, we examine how space and materials feed into children’s creative activities. We use the theory of affordances as a way of thinking about the different materials that we offer to children for their creative engagement. We also look more closely at the Reggio Emilia approach to space and materials in early childhood education, and particularly how physical provocations are used as a vital part of this pedagogic approach. In Chapter 7, we focus more specifically on digital resources and how these feed into children’s creativity. We consider digital environments, focusing particularly on how these shape the sensory dimension of children’s creative experiences. We look also at how adults facilitate and constrain children’s engagement with digital resources. In Chapter 8, we focus specifically on child–adult interactions in creative contexts. We look at notions of apprenticeship, guided participation, and participatory appropriation as ways of thinking about the role of the adult and how adults should interact with children during creative tasks. We also explore what we can learn from artists-in-residence who come into early childhood educational settings and often engage with children in different ways to those used by early childhood practitioners. Chapter 9 is a celebration of the inspirations that practitioners draw on when setting up and promoting creativity in early childhood. We explore the different sources of inspiration that practitioners draw from and how they think about their own creativity and playfulness. We examine the ideal of ‘democratic participation’ in early childhood and what this means for child– adult interactions and the process of pedagogic planning. The final chapter considers the expectations that adults tend to bring to their observations of children’s creativity. In particular, we challenge the tendency of adults to prioritize visual realism in children’s art-making and the achievement of developmental milestones. We offer post-developmental approaches that turn the focus away from these milestones and towards the sociocultural, material, and embodied context in which creativity manifests.

Recurring themes Throughout this book, some ideas emerge repeatedly and can be used as the basis for recommendations to improve practice in early childhood education. We present these below so that you are aware on a broad level of our orientation and what we are hoping will be the contribution of this book to practice and policy.

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Challenging the dominance of the developmental lens Early childhood education is dominated by developmental milestones. Statutory frameworks highlight what children should be doing at particular ages and the need for practitioners to move children towards achieving these milestones. While we are not arguing that developmental approaches have nothing to contribute to understanding young children’s creativity, this book has been an attempt to engage with alternative, post-developmental frameworks for understanding creativity. Too heavy an emphasis on development can lead to the marginalization of children whose abilities and behaviours do not fit normative patterns. Furthermore, it puts pressure on practitioners to focus children’s efforts and energy in particular directions, rather than following the children’s lead and being genuinely interested in what children do. Postdevelopmental approaches can take various forms. Sociocultural perspectives encourage us to understand children as active producers of culture, so that their creative outputs are not seen simply as an expression of their competencies, but instead as influential responses to the sociocultural environment that surrounds children. Post-human and new materialist approaches offer another way of moving beyond dominant developmental paradigms. In these approaches, the emphasis is on the relationship between children and the non-human elements in their environment. Rather than seeing the child as the user of the materials around them, creativity is understood as existing in the spaces and relationships between human and non-human elements. Throughout the book we have encouraged you to practise looking through a post-developmental lens in order to engage with the riches of children’s creative activities. Despite the pressure to observe children relative to developmental milestones, it is enriching to move away from milestones for at least some of the time that we are with children, and closely observe other dimensions of their activity.

Being in the moment When we consider a child’s experiences only in relationship to development, we are prioritizing the passing of time – where they have been and where they are going – rather than focusing on the present situation. A recurring theme throughout the observations, research spotlights, and reflection activities in this book has been the importance of presence in the moment when working with young children. Expert practitioners welcome opportunities to ‘meddle in the middle’ (Craft et al., 2014); that is, they get stuck in with children’s creative play rather than only observing from afar. However, being constantly responsive to what is happening in the moment can be emotionally

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and physically exhausting, as Taggart (2015) suggests. Practitioners and managers need to think carefully about what can be done in early childhood education communities to help practitioners to develop and sustain being present in the moment. How can settings be structured so that practitioners have opportunities to engage in co-playing without feeling that they are not completing the required observations of children from afar?

Creativity as a network Throughout this book, we have presented creativity as a network rather than as an individual trait that children possess in different quantities. Even in the chapter that focuses on children’s creativity in relation to their individual identities, we understood creative identity as something that is generated and enacted in the sociocultural context, rather than a quality that exists inside of individuals and is simply externalized through creative activities. Creativity as a network involves various facets including physical space and materials, time, cultural expectations, and the many social interactions that surround and shape creativity. Thinking of creativity as a network is an important step for early childhood settings to make, since it empowers practitioners to actively explore how they can foster creativity through changes to different parts of the network. For example, this type of thinking turns our attention to evaluating the physical environment in which children create, the materials they are using in their creative activities, and the way that the adults around them talk about creative activities and engage with them. Rather than completing observations only of individual children (e.g. to go in learning portfolios), we need the time and space to write observations that focus on different parts of the creative network. Practically, this can be done by focusing on a particular physical area in the learning environment or a particular time of the day.

Multimodal observations of creativity Our observations of children can often emphasize language at the expense of other modes of communication such as gesture, body position, and gaze. In our observations and the activities we have suggested for you to complete, we have tried to focus on the diverse modes through which children communicate and how these come together in creative activities. When working with young children, understanding diverse modes of communication is particularly important. For example, children might be unable or unwilling to verbally articulate that they are in a state of creative flow, but there might be multimodal indicators that this is the case, such as an intent gaze or purposeful movement (see Chapter 1). The tools we use in observation can turn our

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attention towards particular modes of communication. For example, written narrative observations might prioritize language over other modes, since it is unrealistic for practitioners to write about the detailed shifts in gaze or posture that occur during children’s creative activity. On the other hand, photographic and video observations are much more likely to highlight the role that modes other than language are playing. Because of this, it is important to conduct different types of observation when working with young children and challenge ourselves to use different tools as part of this. Rintakorpi (2016) notes that while practitioners often have good intentions when it comes to documenting children’s activities in creative ways, there are a range of practical barriers to doing this in everyday life. These include the availability of equipment and the technical know-how required to make the most of this equipment. Individuals need confidence to practise and experiment with observation tools, but they also need a supportive community that vocalizes encouragement and provides dedicated time for experimenting with observation methods and tools.

Creativity of the practitioner Using different tools in observations of children is part of practitioners’ own creative expression. The confidence of practitioners in relation to creative activities is an essential part of the creative network. Inspiring and fostering creativity in young children depends on an adult’s sense of creative identity and their willingness to take risks and be playful. For example, Knauf (2015) found that in settings where practitioners were willing to experiment with different styles and forms of pedagogic documentation and did not confine themselves to standardized types of observation, the children were more likely to be seen and treated as agentive creators. Kind et al. (2007) highlight the need for practitioners to embrace their artist-selves and argue that this requires having time for critical reflection and dialogue that focuses on the practitioners’ own creative expression and playfulness. A creative approach to observations is not simply another item on a practitioner’s ‘thing to do’ list; early childhood settings need to be structured in a way that helps practitioners to develop spontaneity, fun, and risk-taking. Practically, this might mean that some of practitioners’ training relates to their own creativity and developing an artist-self.

Taking risks at an individual and institutional level The ideas and recommendations outlined in the preceding sections are about taking risks in our practice – risks that may be challenging in the everyday context of early childhood education. Moving away from an exclusive focus

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on children’s development requires courage since the developmental lens is so dominant in the context of early childhood education. In an achievementoriented educational system, parents often want to know from practitioners how their children are performing against normative standards. A practitioner’s alternative focus on the sociocultural context of creativity or children’s relationship with the physical materials that surround them might be seen as tangential. Similarly, practitioners who place an emphasis on being in the moment and on co-playing with children rather than observing them from afar might receive criticism for failing to document children’s activities in a way that makes clear which developmental milestones have been achieved. Finally, being creative with how we conduct observations and being prepared to experiment with different observational tools requires time and space that most settings are unable to spare. In the recommendations we have put forward, there are implications not just for individual practitioners, but also for communities of practice and the policy makers that steer the direction of early childhood education. For example, adopting new methods for observing children depends on the willingness and capacity of practitioners to experiment with how they observe, but this in turn relates to a myriad of structural factors including the hours that practitioners work, how valued they feel, the transience of those who work in early childhood education, the way that parents interact with practitioners, and the mentoring and training that practitioners receive. With this in mind, we hope that individual practitioners will not only complete the activities in this book alone but will look for opportunities to talk to others about what they are doing and how it challenges not just individual perspectives but the wider structures at work in early childhood education.

1 Looking for Creativity

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n this chapter we explore what creativity looks like and how we know when it is occurring among young children. As practitioners in early childhood, carefully observing children is a fundamental aspect of our work. Observing creativity depends on understanding the creative process and linking what we know to how children appear when they engage in a creative process. In this chapter, we use observations from our practice to consider what children’s creativity is and what it looks like. Firstly, we consider the concept of divergent thinking, which can help us to examine what creativity involves from a psychological perspective. Secondly, we will explore the concept of flow and its relevance to the creative process, considering what physical indicators suggest when a child is in a state of flow. Finally, we introduce the possibility thinking theory of creativity, which offers us a framework for identifying essential ‘what if’ moments in childhood creativity, and also challenges us to examine the role that we as adult practitioners have to play in inspiring children to adopt a ‘what if’ attitude in their activities. To get the most out of this chapter, you are invited throughout the chapter to reflect on the creativity of children and adults that you see around you on a daily basis, and to consider how these moments of everyday creativity relate to the observations and the theories we present here. The Research Spotlight sections draw your attention to research that has been carried out to explore divergent thinking, flow, and possibility thinking in action.

Experimenting with shells and water I had set up the water tray with different objects, including shells. Three girls played side by side at the water tray. They were feeling the shells and holding the shells to their ears to see if they could hear the sea. Daniella, the

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youngest of the girls, put a small cylinder upside down inside a larger one. She then put shells into the cylinder and started to add water and watched intently as the shells rose inside the cylinder. She paused and looked and then added more water. As the shells rose further, she said loudly ‘look’ and the other two girls watched the shells as they rose further up and eventually fell out of the cylinder in a cascade. There were cries of delight and joy as this experimentation turned into a key discovery about the world around them.

Creativity as divergent thinking In the preceding observation, the activity has no right answer. The discovery that the three girls make about the shells, water, and cylinder is one of many discoveries that could have come about through their exciting experimentation with the resources. The observation shows us divergent thinking in action, since the children are trying out many different responses to the materials in front of them, rather than trying to find a single solution through a linear process. The concept of divergent thinking – as a type of thought important to intelligence and creativity – was introduced by the American psychologist G. P. Guilford in the 1960s. The contemporary educationalist Ken Robinson argues that divergent thinking is a skill that children readily show at an early age but that as educational experience increases, divergent thinking actually decreases. He uses this finding to suggest that our current education system does not foster individual creativity, and instead encourages students to conform to a norm and avoid original and flexible modes of thought (Robinson, 2010). Psychologists conventionally measure divergent thinking through the ‘how many uses’ test. In this test, an individual is asked to explain as many uses for a random object (e.g. a paper clip, car tyre, or water bottle) as they can think of within a specified time limit. The answers given by the person taking the test are judged in terms of quantity, originality, flexibility, and the level of elaboration. While these tasks might help us to pin down creativity in laboratory conditions, we need to consider how they can help us to observe creativity among young children in the spontaneous and naturalistic settings of their everyday life. When we observe divergent thinking in everyday life, we can look for an open-ended process in people’s thinking and behaviour. Rather than rushing to get to one particular end product, there is an enthusiasm for trying different things out and for changing directions in the activity. While this might lead to discoveries along the way (as in the preceding observation), there is no sense of a final answer or product that demarcates the end of the process.



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Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Keep a diary for twenty-four hours, jotting down your activities in either written or pictorial form. Which of the activities that you do involve divergent thinking? Describe the examples of divergent thinking that you engage in.

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Have a go at a traditional divergent thinking task. For example, in one minute, list as many uses of a water bottle as you can. Reflect on your experience of doing the divergent thinking task. Do you think this task was a fair measure of your creativity? If so, why? If not, why not?

Research spotlight Kim, K. H. (2011). The creativity crisis: The decrease in creative thinking scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Creativity Research Journal, 23(4), 285–95.

Aims The research investigated trends in the normative data produced by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) from 1966 to 2008. The TTCT measures divergent thinking, which is considered to be an important measurable facet of creativity according to psychologists. TTCT data was collected in 1966, 1974, 1984, 1990, 1998, and 2008 for a total of 272,599 individuals ranging from kindergarten age to twelfth grade. Kim’s analysis focused on whether creativity, as measured through the TTCT, had shown an increase or decline at different time points in this chronology of testing.

Methods The TTCT is a test made up of two parts, verbal and figural, each of which is completed by an individual in thirty minutes. The TTCT verbal involves verbally articulating possible uses of an object, while the TTCT figural test involves picture completion activities. The outcomes produced by individuals are measured according to fluency, originality, elaboration, abstractness, and the resistance of the individual to closure (i.e. the desire of individuals to keep going rather than bring their ideas to an end). Statistical analyses were applied to the normative data collected between 1966 and 2008 to look at whether creativity had increased or declined, and within this, how the trends related to particular facets of creativity.

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Findings Kim’s analysis revealed that between 1998 and 2008, fluency, elaboration, abstractness, and resistance to closure had decreased. There was a slight increase between these years in originality. Beyond the TTCT, scores on a creative strengths personality assessment had also shown a decline. Based on this data, Kim argues that children have become less emotionally expressive and less creative. The greatest decline observed was for the youngest children – those in kindergarten through to the third grade. Kim argues that children’s interactions with technologies are inhibiting their creative expression, and that there is a pressing need for greater psychological safety and freedom if children are to feel free enough to share their ideas and do well on measures of creativity. Kim advocates a reduction in structured learning time and an increase in children’s free time as a way to ensure that creativity levels rise in the future.

Making T-Rex During a free-flow play session in a reception class (four to five year olds) a boy stands cutting up pieces of yellow paper. At first glance it looks as though he isn’t cutting anything in particular but because I don’t often see this boy at the art table, I’m eager to know more about what he is doing. I approach him and ask what he is making. He replies: ‘I’m making a T-Rex.’ I step back and watch as he continues. After cutting out two long straight pieces of paper, the boy sticks them together and carefully positions them onto some paper he has already prepared, his tongue sticking out and eyes focusing intently. After deciding where he would like his new piece of paper to sit, he grabs a glue stick, dabs a small amount onto the paper, and sticks the two pieces together, placing the glue lid on tightly when he had finished. He reaches out for a red whiteboard pen and draws two dots and a straight line underneath the dots. He says, ‘Now I need to draw some teeth’ as he looks up at the other colours of pen available. Picking up a black whiteboard pen, he explains to me ‘his teeth are black because um … I’m doing them black so he can look scary’ and he begins to draw a zigzag across the red line he had previously drawn. When he has finished he steps back to allow me to observe his work, to which I say, ‘Oh wow, those teeth really do look scary.’ He smiles at his work and puts the black pen back into the pot.



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He continues, ‘Now all he needs is a tail’ and begins to cut a square out of another piece of yellow paper. He turns to me, showing off his new cut up paper and says ‘that’s not a tail’ and giggles at his attempt; he says: ‘A tail is meant to be long.’ Setting aside that piece of paper he grabs another piece and cuts four thin strips. Again he takes the glue stick and dabs it onto one of the new strips, he picks up what he made previously and, with his tongue sticking out, proceeds to position the paper onto his work. As he is sticking this piece of paper down, his friend comes up to him calling his name repeatedly, trying to show him what he has made out of Lego. The boy looks up, diverting his attention for only a second to admire his friend’s work, and continues with his own creation. When he is happy with the tail, he holds it up slowly, his tongue stuck out throughout the whole movement and his spare hand ready to catch the paper should it fall apart. He shows his work to me and I respond with a long ‘wow’. The paper falls apart; this makes him laugh and he grabs the fallen pieces of paper to stick it back together. His friend comes back attempting to engage the boy in a role play, calling him ‘brother’ and talking about the spaceship he has created out of Lego. This time the boy does not divert his attention at all and holds his creation up high to show me. I announce, ‘He is one scary T-Rex’ and he looks at his work with a smile from ear to ear.

Flow When we think about children displaying true creativity, we tend to think about behaviours which display a heightened sense of engagement. In the preceding observation, the young boy appears to be in some kind of creative ‘zone’. We can see this through reading the physical clues in his body, such as the protruding tongue, the focused eyes, the moving mouth, and the pace of the deft movements. We can also see this through the social behaviours that the child exhibits: his ability to remain undistracted despite his friend trying twice to engage him in other activities. He exhibits an impressive level of perseverance. When developments do not play out as he had hoped, he remains positive and tries again until he completes the task to a point where he is clearly proud of the creation and shows it to the adult. Figure 1.1 shows the artwork he made. We can think about this state of creative engagement as ‘flow’. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi developed the concept of flow in the

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FIGURE 1.1  The paper T-Rex 1980s and 1990s to describe a state of mind in which individuals are fully immersed in an activity. Csikszentmihalyi developed an interest in flow when exploring how artists could become lost in their work and much less aware of what was happening in the world around them. Csikszentmihalyi suggested that the experience of flow is an important component of an individual’s wellbeing and as such studies of flow are a fundamental part of research in the field of positive psychology. Flow is relevant to studies of creativity because creative activities can be a domain in which people experience flow, becoming lost and fully engaged in the creative task they are pursuing. Flow is not the same as creativity and an activity can produce flow that is not typically thought of as a creative activity. However, the presence of flow is a marker of a special experience occurring, and this in turn can be related to the likelihood of whether we’re observing creativity in action. Furthermore, being in a state of flow may help to create conditions that are conducive to creativity. Activities that induce a sense of flow are specific to individuals. What gives a child a sense of flow in their lives will be particular to them. In the observation, Laura noted that the child was not often found at the art table, suggesting that perhaps this was not an area of activity that often stimulated positive associations or feelings for him, though in this instance, these appeared to occur. While activities that induce flow are particular to individuals and specific times, they do tend to share some common elements. For example, flow occurs when there is the right level of challenge for the individual. If the task is too easy, the individual will become bored. If the task is too difficult, the individual will become demotivated. In making the T-Rex, the child in Laura’s observation was challenged by certain processes, such as making the tail look the way he wanted it to. However, his resilience enabled him to persevere with these elements and to find a way to create an effect he was pleased with and proud of.



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Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Flow activities are specific to each individual. What are your flow activities? To find out more about this, you can keep a flow diary for twenty-four or forty-eight hours. For each hour that you are awake, jot down what you have been doing and whether you have experienced periods of heightened engagement. If so, what were you doing during these times?

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Observe a child or children engaged in creativity and making activities, in either a formal or an informal setting. Jot down or photograph moments where they appear to be experiencing flow. What are they doing? What makes you think they are experiencing a state of flow?

Recognizing flow through multimodal behaviours Children are not likely to tell us when they are in a state of flow. To recognize when flow is occurring we need to watch and listen carefully. There are likely to be physical markers that indicate whether a child is in a state of flow. When we look at Figure 1.2 for example, we notice the physical immersion of the child in the materials. He has plunged his hands into the wet clay and his movements have produced marks on his apron. Even though this is just a still photograph, we can see from these clues what sort of movement has been occurring before the photograph is taken. The child is looking intently at the materials in front of him and at the movement he seems to be engaged in. He does not appear to be distracted by the adult who is taking the photograph. We cannot hear the child and we are left to wonder whether he is speaking or making any sounds. Multimodality is a theory that emphasizes that human communication and interaction occurs through a wide range of modes (Bezemer and Kress, 2016). Language is only one part of an interaction, though it is often what we focus on and prioritize when observing interactions. We often record what children are saying while they are engaged in an episode of creative activity, but we typically spend less time paying attention to their gestures, or their gaze, or the movements of their body. When we look for flow, we can think about each of these alternative modes and what we are likely to see: ●●

Gaze: In flow, a child’s gaze is likely to be intensely concentrated on the activity they are engaged with. Attention is less likely to flit from one object to another, and this corresponds to the intensity of the gaze.

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FIGURE 1.2  Recognizing flow ●●

Movement: Children may engage in different movements during a period of flow depending on the type of creative process they are going through. Children may sway or dance as they create; this does not mean that they are distracted – the movement may be a vital part of the creative process they are going through. Wright (2010) describes how children’s making is situated in a context of multimodal play that often involves movement as well as other modes. On the other hand, we might notice the purposefulness of a child’s movements during a period of flow. In the ‘Making T-Rex’ observation, we see how the child moves deftly from cutting motions to selecting the materials that he needs. The pace and momentum of these movements are indicative of flow. In Figure 1.2, the child’s movements are likely to be repetitive as



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he explores the material and experiments with its textures and effects. Repetitive motion can also be indicative of flow. ●●

Facial expression: We can often see flow marked on children’s faces. A slack jaw, slightly open mouth, and flushed cheeks are all signs of heightened engagement and concentration. The child is both relaxed and extremely aware. Alternatively, the child may display signs of heightened positive affect, like a beaming smile that relates to their intense enjoyment of the activity and sense of satisfaction and fulfilment.

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Voice/Sound: A child’s utterances during a period of flow will possess certain qualities. They may babble or talk rapidly to themselves (this is known as ‘directive talk’ and is described by Dyson, 1986). They may make sounds, singing to themselves or experimenting with different noises (Knudsen, 2008). As with movement, this may be aesthetically related to the making activity they are engaged in – a multimodal backdrop to their creative process. Alternatively, the noises may play an affective role, spurring them on, or helping them to self-regulate in order to stay concentrated and in the zone.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

If you have identified an activity in your own life that helps you to enter a state of flow, video yourself as you engage in this activity. Take stills from the video that you make. To these you can apply an analysis of your movement, facial expression, and gaze. What do you notice about these modes and how does this relate to your understanding of flow? Watching the video, what sounds do you make (linguistic and non-linguistic) and how do these relate to the state of flow that you are in? Are there moments in the video when you move in and out of flow? If so, what do you notice about your body in these moments of transition? Could you recognize these moments of transition if you were not aware of them otherwise?

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Tour an educational setting for any age group. Make it your mission to find and record examples of individuals in flow. It wouldn’t be ethical to take photographs of people without informing them first, but you could jot down notes about and/or draw people you encounter who appear to be engaged in flow. Through these observations, you will build up your knowledge of physical indicators of flow, going beyond the ideas outlined in the preceding section.

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Research spotlight Custodero, L. A. (2005). Observable indicators of flow experience: A developmental perspective on musical engagement in young children from infancy to school age. Music Education Research, 7(2), 185–209.

Aims The research examined young children’s flow experiences in different music learning environments. The study aimed to explore indicators of flow that are observable to others, and to investigate how the experience and indicators of flow change with age.

Methods The research involved naturalistic observations of children engaged in music learning environments. Four environments were involved in the research. These ranged in the age of children involved (from young infants to eightyear-olds) and the approach to music learning taken by the facilitator of the group. Fine-grained analysis was applied to videotaped sessions from each group. The analysis focused on identifying flow indicators that were common across the groups, and then exploring how the indicators shifted in their expression and frequency depending on the age of the children involved.

Findings The research identified a series of indicators of flow. These were grouped into challenge-seeking indicators and challenge-monitoring indicators. The former comprised children’s behaviours in seeking environments and activities that would help to develop their skills further, while the latter related to how adults set up a level of challenge that would foster a state of flow among the children. While both challenge-seeking and challenge-monitoring were observable across all of the groups observed by the researchers, there were shifts in the extent to which these behaviours occurred depending on the age of the children. Challenge-seeking increased from infants to pre-schoolers, but declined once children were in the early years of formal schooling. On the other hand, challenge-monitoring by adults increased as children became older, with adults more tuned in to changing the level of challenge involved in a task, and children less involved in organizing this for themselves.



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So there’s going to be a wiggly worm? The following observation comes from a study of child–parent art-making in the home. It captures a five-year-old child and her father as they engage in making a collage together. They have a range of resources that they can use including large coloured sugar paper, smaller pieces of coloured card, old Christmas cards, playing cards, magazines, glue, scissors, and sticky tape. They are engaged in the activity at the child’s grandparents’ dining room table. They sit side by side and both have access to use any of the resources. At one point the child is cutting and she says, ‘Hey, I’m cutting a wiggly worm … I’m cutting a wiggly worm.’ The father replies, ‘Good job – so there’s going to be a wiggly worm in our picture?.’ The idea develops further as the child agrees, ‘Yeah, we’re going to make the soiled [sic]’, and the father says ‘So is our picture going to be under the earth?’ ‘Yep’, says the child; all the while she continues to cut out her worm shape. The father offers positive validation: ‘Wow, that’s a good idea.’ During this exchange, both the child and the father are engaged in the making activity. They do not stop exploring and working with the materials while discussing together what they are going to do and the possibilities for the collage they are making. At different points during the episode, the father played a supportive role to the child’s independent thinking about possible developments. He would make suggestions for how they could divide up the individual tasks between them and how to distribute the resources equally so that they both had what they needed in order to contribute. The child demonstrated confidence in the task when she decided to delegate some tasks to her father. For example, she gave him a card to cut and suggested that he cut some little squares for her to stick on.

Possibility thinking The observation of the child and her father making a collage demonstrates possibility thinking in action. Possibility thinking was conceptualized by Anna Craft and colleagues to explain how children’s creativity manifests on an everyday basis. In possibility thinking, individuals are engaged in asking questions about the world and posing problems, as well as considering how to solve them. This type of thinking is ‘the means by which questions are posed or puzzles surfaced’ (Craft et al., 2008, p. 88) and it is concerned with ‘the identification of problems and issues’ (Jeffrey and Craft, 2004, p. 80), just as much as with the identification of potential solutions. Possibility thinking depends on a transition in a child’s mindset from ‘what is’ to ‘what might be’ (Craft, 2000, 2002, 2011).

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In making this shift, children leave the definite reality that surrounds them in favour of a state of wondering about how things could be. In empirical studies of creativity, the concept of possibility thinking has been explored through the identification of eight behavioural characteristics that children display: playfulness, immersion, innovation, posing questions, risk-taking, being imaginative, having self-determination, and intentionality (Burnard et al., 2006; Craft et al., 2008; Craft, 2010). It is through the presence of these characteristics that we can say whether possibility thinking is present or not and to what extent. For example, if a child is playful, fully immersed, posing questions, and taking risks, the child is likely to be engaged in possibility thinking. We can apply these eight behavioural characteristics in our analysis of the preceding observation: ●●

Playfulness: giggling, humour, affectionate exchanges, for example, tickling, tone of voice.

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Immersion: fully engrossed in the activity, observable through the gaze, intense activity.

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Innovation: coming up with ideas, for example, the idea of representing wiggly worms in the soil.

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Posing questions: for example, the question, ‘What shall we do with this?’

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Risk-tasking: the child is engaged in cutting before they have decided what it is that they want to represent; they are confident in their actions, not inhibited by the fear of judgement by others.

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Being imaginative: the idea for the wiggly worms in the soil comes from an unknown place in the shared imagination of the child and father.

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Having self-determination: the child is able to navigate their way through the collaborative exercise, so that they can work out what they want and can make this a reality.

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Intentionality: a sense of purpose in the activity, a desire to get to a point of ‘finish’ (which is self-defined).

Facilitating possibility thinking Studies of possibility thinking have placed an emphasis on the pedagogic strategies that can be used to encourage possibility thinking among young children. For example, a study by Cremin, Burnard, and Craft (2006) documented three ways in which adults could actively facilitate children to



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engage in possibility thinking. Firstly, adults can employ the ‘standing back’ strategy, helping children to enter a ‘what if’ mindset by posing questions from a distance, which means they are not encroaching on children’s sense of independence. In the preceding observation, the father does this by waiting for ideas to be put forward by the child and then showing encouragement for developing these further. For example, the idea of the wiggly worm starts with the child. Although the father asks questions about this in order to stimulate the development of the idea, he does not take over the idea generation, but stands back and waits for the child’s ideas to flow. Secondly, adults can seek to develop learner agency by looking for opportunities in which they can help children to voice their own ideas and thoughts about the creative process. The father’s positive validation throughout the activity helps the child to feel that her ideas are worth voicing. When the father gives suggestions, they are voiced as options rather than commands, and the child has the self-determination to ignore these suggestions when she feels differently. For example, the father suggests that they stay in their seats when they swap cutting and sticking and just swap the place of their resources, but the child is determined that if they are going to change activity, they should also change their places at the table. The father acquiesces and changing places is what they do. Finally, adults can practically find time and space in which children are free to engage in possibility thinking, for example, setting up activities in which there is no right or wrong or judgement of the possibilities that children wish to explore. The preceding observation shows this kind of practical support in action through the father offering to pass the child materials that she needs and are difficult to reach. More generally, adults provide this kind of support by giving up time and space for these sorts of open-ended and creative activities to occur.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Observe children engaged in a creative task, in a school or home setting – look for the eight behavioural characteristics of possibility thinking and make notes on what you observe in relation to each characteristic.

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Record yourself engaging with children, ideally via video. Viewing the recording, reflect on your facilitation of possibility thinking. Where do you facilitate possibility thinking and how do you do this? Where do you constrain or inhibit possibility thinking and how do you do this? Identify three critical moments in which you impact on possibility thinking and write a short paragraph reflecting on each of these moments – what they involve and why they have the impact they have on the child’s possibility thinking.

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Research spotlight Kucirkova, N. and Sakr, M. (2015). Child–father creative text-making at home with crayons, iPad collage & PC. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 17, 59–73.

Aims The research investigated how a child’s possibility thinking and her father’s encouragement of possibility thinking would change depending on the materials used in their collaborative creative text-making. The study explored how the affordances of four different sets of materials, two digital and two non-digital, would shape the creative activity of the child and father.

Methods The researchers carried out eight observations of the same child and father engaged in creative text-making. Across the eight observations, four different sets of materials were used (two observations of each set of materials). These materials were collage, crayons and paper, the drawing software Tux Paint, and iPad photography and story-making. The observations were videotaped and analysed according to Craft’s theory of possibility thinking and the strategies that adults can use to foster children’s possibility thinking. Examples of the indicators of possibility thinking (playfulness, self-determination, immersion, question-posing, innovation, risk-taking, being imaginative, intentionality) were coded through the videos, as were examples of the adult using pedagogical strategies to support possibility thinking (standing back, profiling learner agency, making time and space). These examples were compared across the different materials used to see whether possibility thinking and support for possibility thinking manifested differently and to a different extent depending on the materials involved in the creative task.

Findings Different materials appeared to lead to different manifestations of possibility thinking and different levels of support for possibility thinking. For example, the iPad and the software Tux Paint were strongly associated with risktaking, while immersion and innovation characterized the child’s behaviours when engaging in collage, and the crayons involved high levels of selfdetermination and intentionality. Thus, while possibility thinking occurred with each set of resources, it involved different behaviours in each condition. The father was shown to be most supportive of possibility thinking when the child was engaged with the non-digital resources of crayons on paper or collage.



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Chapter summary ●●

When we are looking for creativity in the activity of young children, we can look more specifically for examples of divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is a mode of thought which involves multiple discoveries, but does not work towards any one right answer or product.

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Creativity often coincides with the experience of flow. Flow is a sense of heightened engagement which individuals experience in particular activities that offer the right level of challenge and stimulation for them.

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We can look for experiences of flow through bodily characteristics. When a child (or adult) is experiencing flow, there will be changes in facial expression, gaze, movement, and voice. While flow is not the same as creativity, when we notice the physical indicators of flow, this can alert us to the possibility that a creative process is unfolding.

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Anna Craft and colleagues have written about creativity as ‘possibility thinking’. Possibility thinking is characterized by posing ‘what if’ questions about the world, rather than engaging only with ‘what is’.

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Eight behavioural characteristics help us to spot possibility thinking as it unfolds in children’s activity: playfulness, immersion, innovation, question-posing, risk-taking, being imaginative, having selfdetermination, and intentionality.

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Adults can support children’s possibility thinking through three key strategies: standing back, promoting learner agency, and offering time and space to activities in which possibility thinking is more likely to occur.

Activities to deepen understanding 1 Creativity is fascinating to observe. Often we have an intuitive sense

when we are watching a creative process as it unfolds but it is much harder to explain in words how we know that we are watching creativity. The theories introduced in this chapter help us to do this. To deepen your understanding of these theories and how you can apply them in your everyday experiences with children, engage in as much observation as possible. By observing children and noting down or photographing moments when you think creativity is unfolding, you will start to unpick the behavioural characteristics that are associated with creativity.

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2 If we always do our observations in the same way, we often end

up seeing the same things repeatedly. When we write narrative observations for example, we are likely to notice the same aspects of a child’s behaviour. When we use other modes of observation and documentation – such as photography, drawing, mapping, video or audio recording – it can help to shake up and change what we see. Visual methods in particular are good at helping us to see how children’s behaviours change as they move in and out of the creative process. Try out some visual modes of observation that you are less comfortable with and see what new things you notice about the creativity of young children. 3 Work with a partner. Adopt the role of the child and ask them to adopt

the role of the adult facilitating your possibility thinking. Complete an open-ended task (e.g. creating something with play-dough). Video record the observation and watch it back together. What strategies do you notice your partner using in order to facilitate possibility thinking? How did these strategies change your experience of the task? Did the presence and involvement of your partner enhance your creativity? If so, how did this happen? Identify critical moments that shaped the experience.

2 Creativity and Identity

Introduction

I

n this chapter we explore how children’s creativity can be a window into their individuality and developing sense of identity. As practitioners we can learn a lot about individual children through their episodes of creative making, both through what they choose to make and the process through which this unfolds. In this chapter we use instances from our own experiences along with theoretical ideas to probe and challenge the way we think about children’s creativity in relation to their identity. Firstly, we look at how children can become particularly engrossed in making that relates to certain themes. Secondly, we consider where these themes emerge from: the role of everyday experiences but also popular culture in forging children’s sense of identity. Thirdly, we reflect on whether thinking about these themes can change the way we think about children’s creativity on a deeper level and whether we conceptualize it as something fundamentally different from the creativity of adults. Throughout the chapter, there are reflective questions and summaries of research to help you to think about your own experiences and opinions and how these relate to our understanding of the relationship between creativity and children’s developing sense of identity.

‘I’ve made Tower Bridge’ Ethan is obsessed with trains, railways, and bridges. He loves building structures linked with these. Figure 2.1 shows how he is often found in the midst of a building experiment, working with construction materials to make bridges that function in particular ways. I know from talking to Ethan’s parents that he has had this fascination since a young age. Photographs from his nursery show him engaging in this kind of building activity at the age of two to three years. The fascination is fostered by activities shared with his dad. Each

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FIGURE 2.1  Ethan with his model of the Tower Bridge night they talk about man-made structures and natural events like tsunamis, using information books and videos on the iPad to find out more. When they spend time together on weekends, they go on trains and talk together about what they can see out of the window. It’s hard to know whether Ethan’s fascination prompted this kind of sharing with his father, or whether sharing this time with his dad is what got him interested. It’s probably a cycle. Observing Ethan over the course of more than a year has shown me how children can have fascinations and interests that go far beyond the learning that takes place in the classroom. These preoccupations develop for individual children and if there is the space and time for them to be pursued, they can be a source of pleasure and impressive levels of learning.

Self-representation and subject matter specialists The observation of Ethan clearly shows how creativity and making can be linked to a child’s particular interests and the preoccupations that feature



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strongly in their sense of identity and selfhood. The idea of a relationship between making and the self has a long history. In the twentieth century, children’s drawing practices were popular among psychologists as a means for gaining insight into a child’s intelligence, mood, and personality (e.g. Harris, 1963; Koppitz, 1968; Lowenfeld, 1947; Machover, 1949). Projective drawing tests were used in order to find out more about the inner life of the child on the basis that drawings were an externalization of the individual’s mind. In the second half of the twentieth century, these tests were largely discredited among psychologists as unreliable, but for educators the link between children’s art-making and the child’s developing identity has persisted. When we look at a child’s creative practices and their art-making, what can we learn about children’s individual identities? Thompson (1999) explored children’s individual identities in a study looking at the self-initiated drawing of three- to five-year-old children over a year. She collected pictures made by the same group of children in preschool and kindergarten settings during free-flow activity time and showed that while for some of these children, drawings were based on general and varied subject matter, for other children the drawings were a way of engaging intently on particular themes that they were drawn to. These children, whom Thompson referred to as ‘subject matter specialists’, would repeatedly practice the same schemas in order to produce a series of very similar drawings. In another study, Ahn and Filipenko (2007) observed the narratives that five-year-old children spontaneously created during visual art-making activities. They suggested that narratives in art-making acted as a form of ‘self-representation’ for the children and the artefacts that children created constituted a ‘personal externalisation’ (p. 280) of the self. The children’s drawings and junk models were analysed by the researchers as a territory in which the children could explore their emerging sense of ‘self’ and how the ‘I’ related to others. This was described by the researchers as ‘engendering’, a process in which the children explored their ‘identities as moral, social, cultural and gendered beings’ (p. 283).

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

In your own experiences of working or being with children, are there episodes that come to mind in which you have learnt about the particular interests of a child?

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Do you know any children who engage repeatedly with the same themes in their creative activities? What do you know about where these themes come from?

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Research spotlight La Voy, S. K., Pedersen, W. C., Reitz, J. M., Brauch, A. A., Luxenberg, T. M. and Nofsinger, C. C. (2001). Children’s drawings a cross-cultural analysis from Japan and the United States. School Psychology International, 22(1), 53–63.

Aims This research explores how culture shapes children’s drawings and how they represent themselves within drawings. The study specifically compares the drawings of Japanese and American children.

Methods The research looked at the drawings of 52 seven- to eight-year-olds who were all asked to draw a house, a tree, and a person; half of the children were Japanese and half of the children were American. Based on previous research looking at cultural differences between Japanese and American society, the researchers compared particular facets of the drawings from the two children. They looked at the (1) emotional expression depicted on the figures drawn, (2) levels of detail added to the drawing, and (3) size of the figure drawn, which was taken to be a representation of the child’s sense of societal worth. In order to compare between the two groups, they carried out a statistical analysis.

Findings The research found a series of statistically significant differences between the drawings of Japanese and American children. There was a lower frequency of smiles depicted in the drawings of the Japanese children, which was related by the researchers to the wider cultural differences in the expectations and norms that surround emotional expression in public. The research also showed a significant difference in the amount of detail added to the drawing, with Japanese children including more detail in the drawings. This was used to suggest that Japanese children are taught to place more value on completing a process in a thorough way. Finally, analysis of the drawings revealed a difference in the size of the human figures included in the drawings (though not in the size of the house or the tree), with Japanese children drawing bigger figures than the American children. Based on this, the researchers suggested that Japanese children had a greater sense of their societal worth and group identification.



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‘This one is Leonardo’ Jack was at the art table surrounded by pieces of paper and felt-tip pens. Jack is a quiet boy and tends to keep to himself. When asked about his interests, he always talks about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT), and the characters in TMNT appear in his artwork and role-plays. On this particular day, Jack drew all of the characters from TMNT one after the other from memory without any visual aids. It was clear from the images he created that he was well-practiced in drawing the characters from TMNT since they were easily recognizable. Jack was proud of his drawings and asked to stick his pictures in the display area and together we pinned them to the wall. He stood back looking at his pictures on the wall, smiling and admiring his work. When his mum arrived at the setting to pick him up, they had a conversation about the characters he had drawn. She was unsurprised to see what he had drawn since TMNT preoccupies a lot of his attention at home as well as in the nursery. This observation demonstrates how a child can become particularly engaged by a theme and how much of their creative activity can relate back to this theme. In Jack’s case, the theme was TMNT, which he may have learned about through books, the television programme, or the film. While Jack was introduced to these characters through his engagement with popular culture, it is clear from this observation and others that the characters had a life in Jack’s imagination that went beyond what he had seen in others’ cultural artefacts. Jack created drawings and role plays that used TMNT creatively, going further than the artefacts that others had already made.

‘Rajkumari Rapunzel’ When I worked with Reception School children during my early years teacher training I was privileged to see a lot of subject matter specialists at first hand. An example that comes to mind is a new arrival, with very little spoken English. This five-year-old drew very heavily on Bollywood culture and drew intricate drawings of princesses in beautiful flowing and colourful attire. After having been exposed to the story of Rapunzel, she proceeded to repeatedly draw Indian princesses set in medieval castles with long hair flowing over the castle wall. When I asked her about her drawings, she would say in Gujarati that she was drawing a ‘rajkumari’ – a princess.

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The role of popular culture in children’s developing identity Earlier in the chapter we introduced a study by Thompson (1999), which considered how some children were repeatedly drawn to particular subject matter in their spontaneous drawings. Jack in the first observation would be a good example of this phenomenon, since he was known both at nursery and home to repeatedly draw images of the TMNT. The observation of Jack also demonstrates how the subject matter that children become fascinated with can relate to popular culture references that surround them rather than to experiences in their everyday lives. The second observation also demonstrates the importance of popular culture references (Bollywood, Rapunzel, etc.) and how these can be blended together in children’s creative activities. Thompson’s study demonstrated the same thing: that popular visual culture was a recurrent feature in what children chose to draw. References from television had real importance and influence for the children in her study, but she also found that this influence was downplayed by the adults who surrounded the children. Practitioners in particular were keen to show how children’s drawing related to their immediate surroundings, such as their walk to school or depictions of their families and friends. While Thompson did find examples of such drawings, a large proportion of the children’s creative artefacts actually related to experiences or characters they had seen on television. Thompson explored this further in a study in 2003 which showed how children would often engage with images from television in their drawings and that the adults around them would avoid focusing on this and instead prioritize ‘real’ life experiences (Thompson, 2003). Other researchers have made similar findings about early childhood practitioners, who are likely to see ‘real’ life experiences as wholesome components of a child’s developing sense of self, while popular culture references are seen as an intrusion or an adult-led imposition on their creativity (Dyson, 2003).

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Of the ‘subject matter specialists’ that you know, where does the specialism come from? Is the subject matter based on first-hand experiences of the child or on popular culture references or a mixture of both?



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Research suggests that adults often downplay the importance and influence of popular visual culture in children’s art-making. Do you agree with this? Is this what you have seen among the adults that you know or work with? What about you – do you downplay the importance of popular visual culture for children and if so, why?

Research spotlight Dyson, A. H. (2003). ‘Welcome to the jam’: Popular culture, school literacy, and the making of childhoods. Harvard Educational Review, 73(3), 328–61.

Aims Dyson’s research explored children’s relationships to popular media, and in particular the film ‘Space Jam’. She explored how experiences of popular media featured in contemporary childhood and interrelated with official school literacy practices.

Methods The research was based on an ethnographic study of a small circle of friends, who were all African-American children in the first grade of the same public school in America. Dyson collected qualitative data on the group’s engagement with popular media through written observations, audio recordings, and artefacts which were created by members of the group. The data was collected over the course of a year, during which Dyson visited the same classroom for 4 to 6 hours of a week, and also followed the same group of children into the playground to observe their interactions in this space.

Findings Dyson’s findings highlight the extent to which this group of children made use of popular media – in this case the film Space Jam – as an access point for free play and also official literacy practices. The children engaged together with Space Jam and remade the material in this film in order to incorporate it into different types of experience and play. It featured in their singing, drawing, and dramatic play. Dyson emphasizes the extent to which the children creatively recontextualized the popular media material with which they engaged, rather than being passive in how they related to this material. Dyson’s observations demonstrated ‘borrowing, translating and reframing media material’ on an everyday basis, so that the popular media references became meaningful to these individual children in distinct and idiosyncratic ways.

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‘The mermaid is sliding down the hill’ Summer was in the outdoor play area. She approached a nearby adult with a bit of chalk and the adult drew a circle with the chalk on the floor and roughly coloured it in. Summer sauntered off seemingly not interested but a few minutes later came back with three chunky chalks and kneeling down started to draw on the ground. Her first attempts were a revelation to her and she stopped and looked intently at the effects of the chalk marks on the ground. She also looked at the chalk itself with an expression of wonder. Then with intent she moved to another area, took another piece of chalk and with rapt attention worked on her project with increasing concentration. Finally, she made lots of dots around the first drawing. ‘This is the sun’, she declared pointing to the larger drawing, ‘this is the moon’, pointing to the second one, ‘and this is the mermaid. The sun is biting the mermaid and the mermaid is sliding down the hill!’ I find the observation that I made of Summer quite astonishing. Summer’s drawing with chalk related to numerous reference points: the sun and the moon, a mythical creature that she has probably seen through Disney films, and the hill in the setting that she herself enjoys sliding down. She has taken these elements that surround her, which are meaningful to her in the context of her everyday experiences, and she has put them together to make an original and imaginative picture. This observation shows how children can reveal and express their interests in the world through episodes of creative making, and how these interests can relate simultaneously to first-hand experience as well as references to popular culture.

Creative making as remix The observation of Summer demonstrates that there is not a sharp division in children’s making between the influences from ‘real’ life experiences and the influences from popular culture. Not only are both of these influences likely to contribute somehow to creative activities, but they will come together in imaginative and original ways. Summer’s mermaid came from a television or book in order to slide down a hill that she knows as part of her everyday experiences. We can think about the interaction between different popular culture references and everyday experiences as a type of ‘remix’. The term ‘remix’ has become popular among researchers interested in digital literacy; it describes



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how children and adults can copy and paste stimuli from different sources which are readily available in the age of the internet and put these together to create something new and original (Lankshear and Knobel, 2006; Knobel and Lankshear, 2008). Other researchers have described the same phenomenon as ‘mash-up’ (Lamb, 2007) or as parody and iconoclasty (Ivashkevich and shoppell, 2010). We can see this process in the observation of Summer, where the mermaid and the hill are brought into the same image; we can also see this process in the observation of Jack, since he describes how he takes the characters from TNMT and sets up new fantastical plotlines for them in his role-play and drawing. These plotlines are likely to be influenced by other stimuli in Jack’s life.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Observe children as they engage in creative activities. In your observations, how do different types of stimuli influence what the children make? Can you disentangle the influences of popular culture and the influences of experiences that the children have in the world around them (e.g. everyday interactions with family)?

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How have you seen the process of ‘remix’ in action? Can you think about an instance where a child has taken a character from a popular culture reference and created a new storyline or experience for this character? Or perhaps you have seen a child combine influences from different parts of their life (including their consumption of popular culture) to create something new?

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What happens when we offer visual stimuli to children that relates to popular culture references? Often, in early childhood educational settings, we tend to stay away from colouring books or stencils of Disney or other popular characters. But what would we see if we offered these resources to children? Observe children as they engage with images or templates of popular characters. What do you learn about children’s identity by watching them as they engage with these materials? Do you see any remix processes in action?

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Research spotlight Sakr, M., Connelly, V. and Wild, M. (2018). Imitative or iconoclastic? How young children use ready-made images in digital art. International Journal of Art and Design Education, 37(1), 41–52.

Aims The research explored how children use ready-made images in their digital artmaking. It sought to contribute to the debate as to whether digital resources and particularly the prevalence of ready-made images in digital environments would constrain or facilitate children’s creativity and individuality.

Methods The study involved observation of eighteen individual children aged four to five years as they engaged in digital art-making for twenty to twentyfive minutes using the PC software Tux Paint. For each observation, written notes were made along with an audio recording. The product of the digital art-making was also stored and analysed. Across the eighteen episodes of art-making, analysis focused on how children incorporated ready-made images into their art-making in different ways and whether they were using the images to achieve different purposes. Five episodes were subject to a more in-depth examination and commentary. These episodes were chosen on the basis that they each appeared (according to the preliminary analysis) to involve the use of ready-made images for a distinct purpose.

Findings The research highlighted at least five different ways that children can use ready-made images in their art-making. These were (1) for aesthetic impact; (2) as part of physical and visual experimentation; (3) to build oral narratives; (4) to stimulate conversations; and (5) as part of a coherent pictorial representation. The research emphasizes the importance of seeing the different ‘child agendas’ (Dyson, 2010) at work when children involve ready-made stimuli in their creative processes. Rather than seeing children at the mercy of adult-supplied images, we can investigate and celebrate the idiosyncratic meanings that children create through the use of images.

Creative making as the production (not expression) of self When we consider the important role of popular culture in children’s developing sense of identity, and in turn in their creative making experiences, we are



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challenged to explore more deeply how we tend to think about children’s creativity. If external stimuli play such an important role in children’s making practices, then what they make cannot be understood simply as an expression of something internal to the child. Instead, the making process is an active dialogue between the child and the world around them, and the identity of the child is actively produced in the act of making (Marme-Thompson, 2017). This viewpoint challenges how other theorists conceptualize children’s creativity. For example, Ahn and Filipenko (2007) refer to children’s making practices as ‘personal externalisation’ and ‘self-representation’. This implies that through creativity children are expressing a self which pre-exists the creative act. Hawkins (2002) suggests that this is typical of how early childhood educators tend to understand children’s creativity. He argues that too often we use the term ‘self-expression’ to describe children’s creativity and making practices, and that this term wrongly presents the child as having a pure self which exists internally and is brought into the world through creative acts. He argues instead that art-making is not about expressing something which predates the art-making episode, but instead constitutes an active construction of the self, which only exists in the moment of the making. Malin (2013) argues similarly that we need to avoid overly romanticized views of children’s making practices that construct children as ‘uncorrupted and unintentional conduits of creativity’ (p. 7). Sociocultural interpretations of what the self is and how children create a sense of the self emphasize the importance of understanding the self as something that is constructed through or as a network of interactions between individuals and the material and social world that surrounds them.

Research spotlight Malin, H. (2013). Making meaningful: Intention in children’s art making. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 32(1), 6–17.

Aims Malin sought to investigate students’ experiences and perceptions of art-making. She focused on the intentions that children bring to their experiences of art-making and the different ways in which art-making becomes meaningful to them as individuals.

Methods The study was based on an ethnographic approach to investigating artmaking in middle childhood. It focused on children in the first grade to fifth

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grade (six to eleven years) in the same school. The research involved field observations, interviews with children, and analysis of artwork created. The observations occurred in art classes but also in other contexts, such as after-school clubs and homes. Across the data, different intentions that the children brought to art-making were coded and illustrative examples were shared in order to show how the different intentions manifested.

Findings Malin coded five different types of intention that emerged from the data. These were (1) storytelling, (2) representing self, (3) experimenting, (4) making the imagined real, and (5) relating to others. The research emphasizes the importance of understanding children as agentive creators in their artmaking, rather than framing them only in developmental terms. Instead of focusing on what children can and cannot do based on development, a sociocultural perspective like the one adopted by Malin can help us to see how children find meaningful experiences in the context of art-making. In relation to identity, Malin found that children sometimes used art-making specifically to represent themselves and their experiences, but that they also used it as a vehicle for engaging with others and for escaping into fantasy worlds.

Is children’s creativity any different from adults’ creativity? We can take our critique of the term ‘self-expression’ further. McClure (2011) suggests that the term not only wrongly suggests that children’s making involves the representation of a pure, internal self, but that it also constructs children’s creativity as something fundamentally different from adults’ creativity. She argues that too often we think about children as conduits of inherent creativity when in fact they are just like adults in their art-making, in the sense that they use art-making as a way to actively explore and contribute to the cultural environment that surrounds them. In this perspective, children are agents of cultural production and construct identities that exist in relation to a myriad of sociocultural reference points. This relates back to the work of Thompson (1999, 2003), which suggests the importance of popular visual culture in children’s making practices and how they make sense of their individual identities. McClure’s argument goes even further in its emphasis on children as not just cultural consumers, but active cultural producers. She presents observations



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of children’s art-making to support this idea. For example, in the 2011 study, she introduces the self-portraits of two seven-year-olds which show them depicted as pimps, wearing chains with dollar signs around their necks and with gold teeth. McClure contends that through these images, the children are constructing an idea of the ‘pimp’ which is a remix of various images that surround them and their interpretations of these reference points. While practitioners and parents might be disturbed to see children creating these images, and blame the popular culture that surrounds children, McClure argues that we have to engage with children’s creative and agentive engagement with the surrounding culture. Rather than judge this type of artwork negatively, we can use it as an opportunity to open dialogues with children about their everyday lives and the various influences that they interact with. In addition to this view of children as cultural producers, Gardner’s (1993) exploration of individuals in history who have been recognized as particularly creative highlighted what he saw as similarities between these adult individuals’ approach to the world and the approach taken by young children in their creative explorations of the environments around them. As McClure explains, however, it is important not to romanticize notions of children’s creativity by considering all children to be inherently creative. If we think of creativity always in its sociocultural context, children will be no less vulnerable or resistant to the social and cultural influences on creativity than adults.

Practitioner views on children’s creativity and self-expression Nic: Children’s creativity is different to adults’ creativity because children are less aware of others’ opinions. Adults often don’t feel creative and get frustrated quickly in the context of creative activities while children are happier to work independently on creative tasks and don’t require the intervention or approval of others. Children are most creative when they have freedom to choose what they want to do and are given lots of resources to choose from. They can enter a state of flow in creative tasks that many adults might find hard to achieve because we are too concerned with how things appear to others. Bindu: I tend not to use the term ‘self-expression’ myself as I see children firmly rooted in their circumstances and their attempts to make sense of their world and their part in it. One very poignant example that comes to mind is a five-year-old boy’s attempt to make sense of his world during the time his parents’ relationship was breaking down. All his drawings depicted him holding his younger brother’s hand in the garden, his dad in the house upstairs, and his mum downstairs. Knowing a child well, knowing the cultural background

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that the child is rooted in, the family circumstances and the uniqueness of each child is what we have privy to and looking at a child holistically enables practitioners to understand children’s creative expressions.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Do you use the term ‘self-expression’ in relation to children’s creativity? If so, what exactly do you mean by it? Do you agree with Hawkins and McClure that the term ‘self-expression’ constructs a false idea that children have a pure, stable, and internal self, or do you think it can sometimes be helpful?

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Do you see children’s creativity as different from adults’ creativity? What similarities and differences do you see? Can you think about observations you have conducted that show these similarities and differences in action?

Chapter summary ●●

Children can become fascinated with particular themes in their creative making, which helps us as practitioners to understand their interests and preoccupations. Thompson describes children who engage repeatedly with the same themes as ‘subject matter specialists’.

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The themes that children become interested in representing and exploring can stem from various influences. When we look at children’s creative making, we can often see traces of their engagement with popular culture (e.g. what they watch on television) as well as evidence of them making sense of their everyday lives and experiences.

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Following on from the point above, children’s creative making often involves not just the presence of various influences, but the remix of these influences. The term ‘remix’ is used to describe how children can take features from their own lives and from their engagement with popular culture, and intertwine and reimagine these sources. In this chapter, the observation of a child drawing ‘a mermaid sliding down the hill’ demonstrates how a character from popular culture (the mermaid) can be reimagined in a context which is part of a child’s everyday life (the hill).

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Some research suggests that adults – both parents and practitioners – can downplay the importance of popular culture in children’s creativity.



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Theorists such as Thompson (2003) and Malin (2013) suggest that this occurs because there is a general desire among adults to romanticize children’s creativity and imagine it as ‘free’ from the influence of adultcreated content. ●●

There is a theoretical distinction between understanding children’s creative making as the representation of a self that already exists, and seeing it instead as the active production of the self. Sociocultural perspectives emphasize that in episodes of creative making, a child is actively producing and projecting a self into the world. They critique the term ‘self-expression’ on the basis that it implies the existence of a pure, internal self which predates the creative act.

Activities to deepen your explorations 1 Engage a child you know or work with in a creative making activity

(e.g. junk modelling, drawing, painting, sculpting). Before you begin, mindmap everything that you know about the life and interests of the child. After you finish the activity, mindmap everything that you now know about the life and interests of the child. What did you learn through their creative making about their interests, passions, fears, everyday experiences, relationships with family or friends, places they visit, things they remember and so on? 2 Identify a piece of artwork by a child – either one which you observed

being made or one which you only know through the concrete product. By examining the artwork, try to disentangle and identify the influences that feature in the artwork. These might be references from popular culture or these might be pointers to a child’s everyday experiences and relationships. How are these influences interacting with each other? Have they been remixed in a way that you can explain? 3 Interview as many practitioners and parents as you can, using just

one question to get a conversation going: ‘Is children’s creativity any different from adults’ creativity?’ Compare the responses that you collect and link these comparisons to the theoretical distinctions explained in this chapter (e.g. between those who see children’s creativity as the representation of a pure self and those who conceptualize children’s creativity as the active production of self and therefore more akin to our understanding of adult creativity).

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3 Collaborative Creativity

Introduction

I

n this chapter we explore children’s collaborative creativity, focusing on when children engage in creative processes together. Although we may often see creativity as an individual tendency and pursuit, it is important to refocus our attention on the ways that creativity can allow children – even the youngest children – to engage with each other and work together. We offer insights from our own experiences working with children along with different theoretical perspectives on collaborative creativity in order to develop an understanding of children being creative together. Firstly, we investigate different paradigms of creativity: ways of looking at and thinking about creativity that engage with collaboration and social processes to different extents. Secondly, we consider the multimodal interaction that is involved when children are creative together. Thirdly, we explore the concept of ‘moments of meeting’ (Stern, 2000, 2004), which offers a framework for looking at special moments in collaborative creative processes, where individuals feel a sense of physical and spiritual communion. Finally, we critique the spaces that different learning communities offer in terms of how they support or inhibit collaborative creativity. Throughout the chapter, we encourage you to reflect on your own observations and experiences of collaborative creativity, as well as introducing specific pieces of primary research to show how theoretical notions can be applied in practice.

Paradigms of creativity We can think about creativity in different ways. From a traditional psychological perspective, creativity is a measurable facet of each individual mind (e.g. Karwowski, 2008). Individuals can be seen as more or less creative, and creativity can be measured through tasks that individuals complete alone. On the other hand, from the perspective of cultural psychology and other

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sociocultural approaches to creativity, creativity is a phenomenon that occurs between individuals. It exists in the spaces between individuals, interactions, and socio-material environments, rather than in individual minds (Hamalainen and Vahasantanen, 2011). When we consider the practitioner explanations of creativity below, we can ask which of these perspectives they represent. Do they suggest that creativity is a facet of each individual’s mind, or do they present creativity as a social phenomenon that exists between individuals? Creativity is a process we have all experienced in our lives. We are surrounded by the creative works of others: the buildings we visit, the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the books we read, and so much more; yet so many people have difficulty in seeing their own creative potential. (Laura) Creativity is being able to use what you know or have experience to make, create, act, articulate to yourself or others. It is the opportunity to express yourself through different media. I am most creative when I have no restrictions or guidelines. Creativity is letting go and having a go. There is risk in being creative or showing creativity for fear or people not understanding or liking you choices. (Nic) Both Laura’s and Nic’s explanations of creativity place an emphasis on the individual. Laura discusses the ‘creative potential’ of each person, while Nic talks about creativity as an opportunity to ‘express yourself’. Although Nic mentions the different media that it is possible to be creative with, and Laura mentions the way that we are surrounded by the creative products of others, neither explanation positions creativity as something that happens between individuals or through a dialogue between the individual and their sociomaterial environment. If we were to use the terminology of Glăveanu (2010, 2011) to explain the practitioners’ focus on individual creativity, we would describe their approaches as situated in the I-paradigm of creativity. Glăveanu (2010, 2011), a cultural psychologist, explores how research on creativity has approached creativity at different points in history. Glăveanu introduces these different ways of seeing creativity as three creativity ‘paradigms’: the He-paradigm, the I-paradigm, and the We-paradigm. The He-paradigm presents creativity as a capacity that belongs to only particular individuals who we recognize as special and different. This paradigm references ‘He’ because, as Glăveanu explains, the individuals typically recognized as especially creative tend to be male. Within this paradigm, we associate creativity with Picasso, Mozart, or Einstein, rather than seeing creativity as something that is more general across individuals or groups. Glăveanu suggests that the popularity of the He-paradigm declined in the West in the 1950s and was replaced in popularity by the I-paradigm. According to the I-paradigm,



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creativity is a capacity that everyone has the potential to demonstrate. While the I-paradigm continues to be a popular way of understanding creativity, Glăveanu argues that researchers are increasingly engaging with creativity through the We-paradigm where the emphasis is on the interactions between people and environments through which creative activity unfolds. When we approach observations of children’s creativity through the We-paradigm, we are more likely to pay attention to how creativity unfolds in the moment-by-moment interactions that children engage in. It would not make sense within this paradigm to attempt to measure creativity as a trait of individuals, and to position particular individuals as more or less creative than each other. The creativity which individuals demonstrate would be entirely dependent on who and what they are interacting with, and the creative phenomenon would be an aspect of the interaction rather than something that belongs to the individual mind. In terms of early childhood education, the We-paradigm prompts us to challenge the individualism associated with how practitioners set up and support children’s creative activity. An example of this might be the common practice of encouraging children to put a name label onto their drawings and to keep them in an individual safe place (e.g. a labelled classroom tray), ready to take home and show others. This sort of practice suggests that it is typical for the products of creativity to be seen as belonging to individuals rather than to whole groups or to belong to no one in particular.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Without thinking too hard about it, jot down a one-sentence definition of creativity in your own words. Now analyse the definition in relation to the creativity paradigms. Does your definition reflect the He-paradigm, I-paradigm, or We-paradigm of creativity?

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Without thinking too hard about it, create an image of creativity. Now analyse the image in relation to the creativity paradigms.

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Ask others to write one or two sentences explaining what creativity is to them. Apply the same analysis to their explanations: Do they reflect the He-paradigm, I-paradigm, or We-paradigm of creativity?

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Mainstream classroom practices around creativity often reflect the I-paradigm of creativity, whereby creative products are seen as owned by individual children. What would it take to turn this on its head? How could we organize a classroom according to the We-paradigm of creativity and place more of an emphasis on collaboration and interaction in children’s creativity?

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Research spotlight Burnard, P. (2002). Investigating children’s meaning-making and the emergence of musical interaction in group improvisation. British Journal of Music Education, 19(02), 157–72.

Aims The study investigates how group improvisation between children manifests and what strategies children adopt in order to foster effective collaboration in music-making. Burnard was interested in how children negotiate situations of group improvisation, and the potential for these insights to suggest ways in which group improvisation could be more effectively incorporated into musical education in schools. The understanding of creativity as something that emerges through these interactions in improvisation suggests that this research is an application of the We-paradigm of creativity. Although this study involves participants in middle childhood, the findings of the research are relevant in discussions of creativity in early childhood.

Methods Eighteen children aged twelve years were observed as they engaged in twenty-one music-making sessions. The researcher acted as a participant observer, collecting data through interviews, focus groups, stimulated recall, and video observation. Her analysis focused on the multimodal means through which children negotiated the situation of group improvisation.

Findings The findings of the research highlight various techniques that the group of children used to enable collaborative improvisation to occur. For example, the data shows how children had particular cooperative strategies that were useful for enabling ideas to flow initially, or how as a group they would make a decision for a piece of improvisation to come to an end. The research demonstrates the importance of understanding improvisation as an unfolding interaction, in which roles and relationships between individuals take centre stage, rather than the creative capacity of particular individuals.

Collaborative drawing between five-year-olds The following photographs and written captions relate to an observation of children engaged in a collaborative drawing task. The children were video recorded as they played a game called Squiggle, in which one of the children would begin a drawing and the other child would finish the drawing, turning



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it into something else. The written captions highlight the way that the children interacted with each other through their bodies and negotiated the collaboration involved in the creative task through different modes of the interaction including gaze, facial expression, movement, and body position. The girl begins the drawing. The boy waits for his turn to continue the drawing. He watches the drawing as it emerges; his gaze is transfixed. He smiles. Using his left hand, he plays with his right hand, jiggling one of his fingers. He bounces up and down in his chair, demonstrating excitement. His fixed gaze shows that he is engrossed in the game and looking forward to his opportunity to contribute (Figure 3.1). It is the boy’s turn to continue the drawing. The girl cranes round to see what he is drawing. As the boy did initially, she is holding her hands together. Perhaps this is a sign of waiting; by clasping hands, it shows that active involvement is being inhibited. The boy is bent low, fully immersed in the drawing process. She smiles, suggesting positive emotional engagement with the task (Figure 3.2). At another point in the activity, (Figure 3.3), the girl and the boy are playing the same game but they are both beginning drawings at the same time. They draw side by side in silence. Their body language demonstrates that they are intent on their own drawings. Their gaze stays fixed on their own drawing; they do not glance at the work of each other. Similarly, their body position is one of individual ownership over their drawings; their arms create a frame around the paper in front of them which acts as a barrier to the involvement of the other in their drawing. As the observation continues, the children play the same game but this time on the iPad instead of on paper. The boy begins a drawing on

FIGURE 3.1  Collaborative drawing – first frame

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FIGURE 3.2  Collaborative drawing – second frame

FIGURE 3.3  Collaborative drawing – third frame the iPad. He takes much longer than he does with the paper. He violates the expectations of the game by continuing to fill the screen of the iPad with coloured lines, using his finger, rather than initiating a collaborative drawing with just one doodle that could easily be turned into something else. His facial expression and rapid pace of movement suggest that he enjoys the motion of



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FIGURE 3.4  Collaborative drawing – fourth frame going round and round with his finger on the iPad screen. Initially, the girl takes up the same stance as when she was waiting for the boy to begin a drawing on paper (Figure 3.1). She leans forward, she fixes her gaze on the iPad and she clasps her hands to indicate that she is waiting patiently. However, as the boy continues to draw without acknowledging her presence, suggesting that he has forgotten the collaborative nature of the game in favour of his enjoyment in the current physical activity, the girl flicks her eyes away from the screen and towards the observer (Figure 3.4). This may suggest that she is questioning whether the adult will intervene and suggest that the boy has had long enough, or to remind him of the rules of the effective collaboration in the game.

Multimodal interaction in collaborative creativity Collaborative creativity can be thought of as two or more individuals’ ideas building on one another in a creative activity. For Craft and Wegerif (2006), however, collaborative creativity is about more than just a correspondence between different individuals’ cognitive processes. They argue that collaborative creativity also depends on a particular type of physical exchange between individuals. This suggests that when we observe collaborative creative activity, as well as looking for how ideas develop through the verbal

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interaction, we can focus on the participants’ non-verbal engagement with each other and with the activity. In the above observation for example, the photographs and written captions focus on how the participants engage in collaborative creativity through their gaze, facial expression, manipulation, gesture, posture, and movement. The terms ‘multimodality’ and ‘multimodal’ refer to the consideration of the various means through which we communicate, rather than focusing only on language as we can sometimes do (Bezemer and Kress, 2016; see Chapter 1 for a discussion of multimodality in relation to creative flow). By considering the multimodal interaction involved in children’s collaborative creativity, we can learn more about how children work together to be creative and what this looks like from the outside. When we approach children’s collaborative creativity in this way, the focus is on how actions and interactions unfold rather than on what children produce through their collaboration. Children’s collaborative creativity may be accompanied by particular features of their speech and voice. Vass et al. (2008) observed seven- to nineyear-old children as they engaged in collaborative creative writing tasks and noticed that certain ‘discourse markers’ (i.e. types of speech and vocalization) were present when children were working together to create something new. Some of these discourse markers were strongly tied to emotion, such as giggling, which enabled the children to feel emotionally connected to one another. Another of the discourse markers that appeared in this situation was ‘collaborative floor’ (Coates, 1996). A collaborative floor occurs when the interaction between individuals involves a high level of interruptions and overlapping pieces of talk. While collaborative floor can sometimes be seen as negatively impacting collaboration (because ideas may not be heard by the other), Vass et al. suggested that in this situation collaborative floor actually demonstrated the participants’ full commitment to the collaborative task and thereby strengthened the connection between them. In addition to speech and vocalization, collaborative creativity is supported by other modes of interaction. In Kucirkova and Sakr’s (2015) observation study, gaze was essential in establishing strong interpersonal connections in an episode of collage-making between a child and her father. The participants’ gaze moved between the physical resources involved in the activity and each other. This created a triad of attention comprising each participant and the materials of the activity. Through this triad and the use of gaze to maintain the triad, the child and the father could both contribute to the creative activity in a hands-on way while maintaining a strong awareness of each other and being responsive to one another’s ideas. Goodwin’s work (e.g. 2000, 2007) has highlighted the importance of establishing this type of participation framework through multimodal interaction in collaborative tasks. In the observation of children engaged in collaborative drawing, the children demonstrated



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their commitment to each other and the collaborative nature of the task by maintaining gaze on the paper/iPad. They continued to keep their gaze on the artefact, even when they were not the one currently engaged in drawing. This demonstrated their interest and engagement to the other person. However, it is interesting that when the boy violated the girl’s expectations about how

Research spotlight Vass, E., Littleton, K., Miell, D. and Jones, A. (2008). The discourse of collaborative creative writing: Peer collaboration as a context for mutual inspiration. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 3(3), 192–202.

Aims The research explored peer collaboration in a creative writing task. It sought to identify patterns in the discourse between children as they wrote together and strategies that they used in order to support the collaborative creative writing process. The researchers were particularly interested in the role of emotional engagement in the process and the patterns of turntaking that would facilitate this. Although this study involves participants in middle childhood, the findings of the research are relevant in discussions of creativity in early childhood.

Methods The study was based on longitudinal observations of year three and year four classrooms in the UK (children aged seven to nine years). The researchers made video and audio recordings of pairs engaged in collaborative creative writing activities. The analysis focused on the transcripts of these activities, and considered how emotional engagement and turn-taking manifested in different stages of the writing task.

Findings The research highlighted the significance of emotions in the collaborative creative writing process. The researchers observed that recreating previous emotional experiences was important for the children in generating content together. Furthermore, non-verbal affective communication was the most vital strategy used in the evaluation of content. Through ‘glances, smiles, giggles, grunts and grins’ (p. 198) the children communicated their feelings about the ideas they shared, rather than through reasoned verbal articulation. In addition, the researchers observed the importance of overlapping speech. While we might typically think that interruptions are detrimental to collaboration, in this creative activity, overlapping speech (‘collaborative floor’) was seen to indicate heightened involvement and intensity.

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long he would take to begin a drawing on the iPad, she broke the triad of gaze explained by Goodwin (participant-participant-artefact) and her gaze settled on the external observer. This shows how the seemingly small details of multimodal interaction can be especially important in how collaborative creativity unfolds and the possibilities of being creative together.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Have a go at conducting your own multimodal observation of collaborative creativity in action. Create a short video observation of a collaborative creative task (e.g. collaborative collage). It does not matter whether it’s children or adults who participate in this task. Once you have your video observation, choose a short segment to analyse in depth (one to two minutes). Watch this segment five times. Each time you watch you will focus on a different mode of observation, jotting down anything you notice about how that mode is contributing to the collaboration between participants. The modes you will focus on are (1) gaze; (2) speech – what is said (i.e. the words used); (3) speech – rhythm, volume, and intonation; (4) body position; and (5) facial expression. What do you notice about how collaborative creativity works across these different modes of the interaction? What different strategies were being used by the participants to negotiate their collaboration with each other?

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Vass et al. (2008) suggested that the ‘collaborative floor’ (i.e. a high level of overlapping speech and interruptions) was supportive of children’s engagement in a collaborative creative writing task. Make an audio recording of a collaborative creative task in progress (this could be the same task as in the above activity). Listening back to the audio recording, can you identify any examples of collaborative floor? In your interpretation, are these instances of collaborative floor helpful to collaborative creativity or did they hinder the creative process? There is no right or wrong answer to this – it is a matter of interpretation. Compare your analysis to another person’s analysis of the same audio recording. Do you have the same interpretation of the role of collaborative floor?

‘We’re just gonna scribble it’ A five-year-old child and her father are drawing together in the child’s grandparents’ home at the dining room table (Figure 3.5). They are using



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FIGURE 3.5  ‘We’re just gonna scribble it’ crayons and paper. The girl is attempting to draw herself with the support of her father. She becomes increasingly frustrated with the drawing because she feels disappointed with her representations in comparison to the ideas she had for the drawing. She quietly says, looking down at the drawing, ‘I think everyone will laugh.’ The father laughs suddenly and loudly. He then adopts a more serious tone and asks, ‘Will they laugh at our drawing?’ The child smiles and nods, still looking at the drawing. The father replies, ‘We need to change it into something else … shall we just …’ and he pulls a nearby soft toy that is on the dining room table towards the paper so that the drawing is covered by it. The child’s eyes widen and she smiles. ‘No’, she says loudly and reaches for a crayon. ‘We’re just gonna scribble it,’ she says. The father removes the soft toy and replies ‘ok good idea’. The child begins to scribble over the drawing with enthusiasm saying, ‘And then no one can see it … the children in the picture, they won’t see anyone’.

Moments of meeting At first sight, the above observation could be interpreted as an act of collaborative destruction rather than collaborative creativity. After all, the child and her father decide together that they are going to cover over and then scribble over the drawing that they created initially. However, when we focus on process rather than product, we can see that this is an important moment of collaborative creativity since it constitutes a special moment of closeness

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between the child and her father, when they come up with a new idea and direction for the activity together. This special moment can be understood as a ‘moment of meeting’. The psychologist Stern (2000, 2004) introduced the term ‘moments of meeting’ to describe moments of particular closeness between parents and children. Moments of meeting occur when these individuals are attuned to one another so that there is a ‘mutual knowing of what is in the other’s mind’ (Stern et al., 1998, p. 4). Through these moments, Stern suggested that the dyad would experience a new level of shared joy and the overall relationship would be strengthened. Although the concept of moments of meeting was initially applied to parent–child relationships, there is no reason to think that moments of meeting cannot occur outside of this particular relationship. Peers involved in collaborative creative activities may experience moments of meeting also. Typical moments of meeting might be explosions of joint laughter over a shared joke, or eye contact at an important point of idea generation in the creative activity, or perhaps helping one another to achieve something that by themselves would not be possible. We can read these moments of meeting through bodily interaction, shared gaze for example, or shared spontaneous vocalizations. Goodwin (2006) suggests that we can look for closeness through indicators of affective alignment, whereby visible emotions in two individuals mimic each other, for example, when facial expression is mirrored or gaze is met. Previous studies suggest that collaborative creativity might be a particularly rich context in which moments of meeting can occur. Literature from the field of art therapy has shown that shared artistic activity can offer opportunities for increased levels of togetherness and responsiveness. For example, Hosea (2006) collected video observations of mothers and children engaged in visual art-making together. Through these observations, Hosea noticed instances of affective alignment in which the creative nature of the activity offered new opportunities for closeness to emerge. For example, the artmaking enabled colour to become a language through which emotions could be expressed and then responded to, thereby facilitating attunement overall. Other studies of collaborative creativity have shown something similar. Liebmann (2004) found that the cooperation involved in shared art-making supported closeness, while Springgay (2005) argues that the emphasis on physicality in collaborative art-making enables individuals to connect with one another in new ways. The importance of non-verbal communication in collaborative creativity could help individuals to attune to one another and become more responsive to the subtleties of emotion and how this visibly manifests.



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Research spotlight Sakr, M. and Kucirkova, N. (2017). Parent-child moments of meeting in artmaking with collage, iPad, tuxpaint and crayons. International Journal of Education and the Arts.

Aims The research aimed to explore child–parent closeness during collaborative art-making, and how this is shaped by the resources that are used in artmaking. Four different resources, two digital and two non-digital, were considered and parent–child closeness was examined by looking for moments of meeting. As discussed previously, moments of meeting are instances of particular attunement between two individuals (Stern, 2000, 2004).

Methods The research involved eight video observations of a three-year-old child and her father engaged in collaborative art-making. Art-making with four different sets of resources was recorded: collage, crayons, PC software Tux Paint, and iPad photography. The video observations were analysed using multimodal interaction analysis, which focuses attention on all modes of communication and interaction including language, body position and posture, movement, facial expression, and gaze. The analysis identified moments of meeting and then considered how the resources were shaping the potential of these moments to occur and the way in which they manifested.

Findings The research documented moments of meeting across all of the episodes of collaborative art-making. Moments of meeting manifested in different ways across the episodes. Sometimes there was attunement in moments where the father was helping the child to use the resources in a way she had not tried previously (e.g. with the iPad photography); at other points, the moment of meeting occurred through a shared emotion like joy or frustration. How these moments of meeting occurred and the extent to which they arose was not dependent on whether the resources were digital or non-digital. All of the resources offered opportunities for moments of meeting to occur. The particular characteristics of the resources shaped how closeness manifested, but this was not according to a sharp divide between the digital and the non-digital resources. For example, both using the crayons and iPad photography led to moments of closeness through the adult modelling a new skill to the child and the child watching closely and then imitating the adult’s actions.

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Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Think back over the last twenty-four hours of your life. Write down moments of meeting that you experienced in the last twenty-four hours. Whom was the moment with? What did it involve? How did it feel? How did the moment relate to the definition of a moment of meeting as a ‘mutual knowing of what is in the other’s mind’ (Stern et al., 1998, p. 4)?

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Set up a brief collaborative creative task for others (e.g. collaborative drawing in which one person finishes off a drawing started by another). During the task, you will attempt to observe moments of meeting between the individuals. Capture your observations through photographs if possible. Through annotating the photographs you can show how the moments of meeting are made visible through the bodily interaction. How are gaze, facial expression, body position, and language part of how the moments of meeting manifest between the individuals engaged in the task?

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What do moments of disconnect look like? Just like moments of meeting, moments in which collaborating individuals do not understand each other are visible to us as observers. In the same task mentioned above, look for moments when the participants do not understand one another and are not affectively aligned. Again, capture these observations through photographs or videos, and use annotations or a voice-over to explain how what is visible relates to what is going on in the collaboration at a deeper level.

A community display The display boards in my setting were being updated. I made the most of the transition by laying out the old backing paper for the children and offering it to them as a space for adding whatever they liked. Over the course of the two days, they had the opportunity to add whatever they liked to the backing paper. There were no set rules about what they could put onto the backing paper. Some children wrote their name; others drew their families or added stickers showing their favourite television characters. Some scribbled onto the paper and others stuck pieces of scrap paper onto the backdrop.

Collaborative creativity among two-year-olds As we have had an intake of younger twos in September it was a challenge to capture observations on young twos collaborating – as we all know young



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twos can get very upset if another child so much as breathes the air that is in their space! The other challenge was that a lot of the young twos have been settling in. For some this is their first time of being with other children and they naturally veer towards what they know from their young lives – primarily water play; most of them would go to the water table and play side by side in parallel play except if a particular bottle would take their fancy and some grabbing and pushing and snatching would ensue! Where then could one plan for collaborative play? Fortunately, Cath, our resident artist gave me an idea which yielded very good results with our terrific twos. With some very basic open-ended material – old CDs, large buttons, pipe cleaners, shiny plastic colourful material with holes in them, pine cones, and shiny sticky tape – we embarked on a project that was a hit with our curious little toddlers, as well as the not so little ones, who found it fascinating to see the pipe cleaners slip in so swiftly through buttons and other material. In the area we set up, children work side by side. With ample resources we have had little or no squabbling, and the older ones stand side by side talking about what they are doing and what they are going to use next asking for help when they need to tie up the pipe cleaners onto the wire frame and also give each other a button or a pine cone that they want. Once the frame is full we take it off and hang it in the Explore and Discover areas in the underthrees room.

Community spaces for shared creativity Both preceding observations describe spaces that were created in order to facilitate an ongoing creative dialogue between children. These observations show that collaborative creativity is not necessarily just about interactions between two individuals that unfold in the moment. Collaborative creativity can also develop over a longer period of time and involve children having ideas in parallel and experiencing a sense of togetherness by sharing the space in which these ideas are expressed. The first observation describes how the different fragments of individual children’s creativity come together in a community expression of creativity and the second observation shows how children who we might think of as too young to collaborate can actually inspire and enthuse each other in a creative environment where the resources are abundant. Building a sense of community through creative projects and environments is central in the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. In Reggio Emilia, the environment is in reciprocal relationship with the community of learners (Fraser, 2006). This means that individual learners can shape the

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space that they are in but also that the environment has the potential to shape how learners engage. The communal display board in the first observation represents this reciprocity. The practitioner offered children a chance to shape their environment together, but the display board also represented how much collaborative creativity was valued and encouraged children to move fluidly between individual and collective creative expression. Simple interventions and provocations such as the ones outlined can challenge the tendency to focus on individual creativity.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

How do you see children claiming individual ownership over their creative work? What classroom practices encourage them to do this?

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What examples of reciprocity have you come across in the early childhood settings you have experience of? What additional opportunities for reciprocity and community spaces for shared creativity can you see in the educational settings where you work or volunteer?

Chapter summary ●●

People understand creativity in different ways. Glăveanu presents three paradigms of creativity: the He-paradigm, which suggests that only particular individuals, are creative; the I-paradigm, which suggests that we all have the potential to be creative as individuals; and the We-paradigm, which repositions creativity as something that exists between individuals. Glăveanu suggests that over time, Western cultures have shifted in how they understand creativity, moving from a He-paradigm to an I-paradigm, and that we are currently moving more towards the We-paradigm.

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Collaborative creativity unfolds through multimodal interaction. Observations of collaborative creativity that focus on multimodal interaction place an emphasis on the various modes through which individuals are creative together. Rather than just focusing on language, multimodality looks at how gaze, facial expression, posture, movement, manipulation, and gesture are all used in order to establish and maintain collaborative creativity. When we conduct observations in this way, our focus shifts from thinking about collaborative creativity only in terms of individuals’ ideas and how these relate to each



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other to thinking about the emotional and physical dimensions of the collaborative creative process. ●●

Collaborative creativity often involves moments of meeting between participants. Moments of meeting are moments of particular attunement and affective alignment. These moments take different forms but are essential in helping to strengthen relationships.

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As well as seeing collaborative creativity in particular interactions and episodes of activity, we can look at it as a longer-term feature of learning environments. We can examine environments to look for spaces that enable and encourage children to work together creatively or to engage in an open dialogue about their creative processes. Reciprocity is an important feature of environments that facilitate collaborative creativity, because it invites individuals to use the physical environment around them as a way to engage with others and the wider community.

Activities to deepen your explorations 1 What can you learn from the observations and theoretical overviews

in this chapter about how practitioners can practically support collaborative creativity in early childhood settings? Turn your learning into a set of practical guidelines for practitioners about encouraging collaborative creativity among young children. 2 Observations of collaborative creativity suggest that the age of

children affects how collaborative creativity manifests and how it can be supported. Launch an investigation into the impact of age on collaborative creativity. Observe collaborative creativity among twoyear-olds, three-year-olds, and four-year-olds. What do you notice? How does interaction change depending on the age of the children? Do your observations surprise you, or do they reinforce your predictions about how age will impact on collaborative creativity? 3 Have conversations with children about what they think creativity is.

You could stimulate these conversations through drawing, modelmaking, or pictures that you provide. Consider what children say about what creativity is in relation to the paradigms of creativity. Do children tend to think through the I-paradigm, We-paradigm, or He-paradigm of creativity? How does this compare with a sample of adults?

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4 Time

Introduction

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n this chapter, we explore the relationship between time and children’s creativity. We focus particularly on the way that time is organized in centres of early childhood education, such as nurseries and children’s centres. Firstly, we consider how much time is dedicated to children’s creative exploration in early childhood settings and the academic pressures that can impose on this time and place constraints on pedagogy. Secondly, we look at the concept of ‘stretchy time’, which has been linked to children’s possibility thinking. Following this, we examine what has been called by some the ‘tyranny of clock time’ in early childhood settings, that is, the dominance of schedules in pedagogic practice and how this can negatively impact on children’s creative thinking. Finally, we consider the emphasis placed in EY pedagogy on transitions and question the distinctions that we make between smooth and difficult transitions. We suggest that we are often overly concerned with minimizing the time that transitions can take and that through this emphasis, we are failing to engage fully with the intensity of children’s creative activity. Observations throughout the chapter are presented as a way to prompt further thinking about how the theoretical ideas presented in the chapter relate to everyday practice. You are encouraged to engage in your own thoughts and experiments about practice. For the reflection activities we suggest in this chapter, it will be helpful if you have access to a particular early childhood setting, whether through work or through volunteering. This is because the explorations of time that we present relate predominantly to time as it is organized in institutions, rather than time as it is experienced and perceived by individuals.

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Is there enough time for creativity in your setting? Laura: There are few limits to how much time can be spent on creative processes within my setting. The children are given lots of free time to choose their own activities. This means that many of the children are able to complete their creative processes without pressure to finish in a certain length of time. Even when there are specific literacy or numeracy tasks that we have to complete, we try to incorporate fun ways of using craft materials. For example, recently I developed a ‘colour my teeth in’ activity. I drew a picture of a smiling person and the children were given a math problem (e.g. 10 − 2) which they could find the answer to by colouring in the teeth. This activity proved to be very popular with the children and I later found them drawing their own versions of the activity and testing each other on maths by using the teeth. Bindu: We are very fortunate at our Children’s Centre in that a very high value is given to the expressive arts so much so that not only do we have indoor facilities where children have the opportunity, time, and space to create to their heart’s content but all that we offer indoors we offer outdoors too, throughout the year. Working in a free-flow setting ensures that apart from fifteen minutes at the end of the day for group time our two- and threeyear-olds are not restricted in any shape or form and are free to follow their interests and that their interests are taken into consideration and put into the planning. Resourcing and adult input is carefully thought about to extend the children’s understanding and interests.

Creativity takes time The practitioners’ reflections above are indicative of the play-based approach that most EY settings take in the UK. EY pedagogy in the UK is characterized by an emphasis on child-centred learning that occurs primarily through play (Stephen, 2010). Children are free to choose, for much of the day, the activities that they engage with and when to start and finish chosen activities. On the other hand, observations of practice as its unfolds in everyday contexts suggest that practitioners are actually dedicated to both the interests of the children they work with and externally created learning objectives (e.g. that appear in statutory guidance; Pramling Samuelsson and Asplund Carlsson, 2008). Adults think carefully about their involvement in children’s early learning. Standing back in order to allow children to take a lead

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and solve problems for themselves is favoured as a way of facilitating creative thinking among children (Cremin, Burnard, and Craft, 2006). The pedagogic practice of allowing children to make decisions about the activities they engage in relates to the educational conditions for creativity as described by Prentice (2000). Prentice argues that while governments can pay a lot of lip-service to the idea that creativity in education is important, we need to make sure that our provision of education actually creates the conditions in which creativity can thrive. Prescriptive tasks limit creativity while exploratory learning based around ‘action knowledge’ (Meek, 1991) and a focus on using the hands – on making – facilitate creativity. While this appears to mesh well with the abstract ideas about EY pedagogy voiced above, Prentice notes that government initiatives to promote formal learning in literacy and numeracy in the early years can stifle these creative approaches. Prentice wrote shortly after the introduction of the national literacy and numeracy strategies in the UK which encouraged teachers of young children to spend a dedicated amount of time per day to the teaching of literacy and numeracy. More recently, there has been a drive in the early years to support children to develop their phonics knowledge in preparation for starting school (at the age of four to five years; Wyse and Styles, 2007). There is a clear distinction in the pedagogies promoted in the early years versus in Key Stage 1 of the UK system. While a child-centred play-based pedagogy is promoted in the early years, when children move into Key Stage 1 (under the authority of the national curriculum), there tends to be more of a focus on formal, teacher-led learning (Fisher, 2009). The sharp shift experienced by children has been a cause for concern among educators. In addition, the achievement of prescribed early learning goals as a basis for Key Stage 1 causes tension between these two pedagogic approaches and puts pressures on the less formal dimensions of the EY approach. Practitioners in the early years are under pressure to ensure that children develop particular skills, particularly in numeracy and literacy, in anticipation of starting school. This might explain Flewitt’s (2005) finding that preschool environments tend to prioritize children’s speech, without paying adequate attention to other modes of communication that children engage in. Flewitt focused on the additional embodied modes that children use in their interactions, such as gaze and movement, and compared how these were encouraged and supported in preschool versus home settings. She found that practitioners often failed to notice how these modes were used by children, instead focusing disproportionately on the speech of the child. This may be because speech is seen as being directly relevant to children’s later capabilities in literacy and therefore a requirement in the ‘school readiness’ agenda. While Flewitt focuses on embodied modes of communication, we can extend this study’s finding to disembodied modes of communication, including practices of making.

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Research spotlight McInnes, K., Howard, J., Miles, G. and Crowley, K. (2011). Differences in practitioners’ understanding of play and how this influences pedagogy and children’s perceptions of play. Early Years, 31(2), 121–33.

Aims The study sought to explore the relationship between how practitioners thought about play theoretically and how they interacted with children in everyday practice. The study distinguished between settings in which children see adult presence as a cue to distinguishing between play and not-play (i.e. the presence of an adult suggests that the child should not be playing) and settings in which adult presence does not constitute this kind of cue. The research aimed to make comparisons between these settings in terms of how child–adult interactions played out on a daily basis, and how practitioners planned their involvement in children’s learning.

Methods The research was based in two settings. In setting A, adult presence was not a cue used by children to distinguish between play and not-play. In setting B, adult presence was a cue to distinguish between play and not-play. This difference between the settings was determined through a photographic sorting task completed by the children. This difference existed despite the fact that both settings described themselves as promoting play-based learning. The researchers conducted observations and interviews in both settings. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with practitioners in the settings, focusing on planning and daily practice. Four target child observations were conducted in each setting over a set period of time, to see the range of interactions that children were engaged in.

Findings The interviews showed that while practitioners in setting A were proud of the level of choice that children had, practitioners in setting B commented more on the constraints in their practice, which included a lack of time for playful activity. One of the practitioners in setting B commented, ‘We can’t be playful.’ The observation of child–adult interactions in both settings showed that in setting A children had more choice over their activities, including when to start and finish activities. They made statements such as ‘I’m cold now – I’m going to go inside’ which show that they were in control of transitioning from one environment or activity to another. On the other hand, children in setting B were more likely to ask practitioners before making a transition, suggesting that they had less choice and control over how they organized their time and activity.

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Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Think about settings in which you currently work or volunteer or where you have worked or volunteered in the past. Is there or was there enough time for children to be creative? How self-directed was children’s activity? How much was play a part of the day? What adultled activities were present in the setting and how did these impact on the time allotted for children’s play and their self-directed creative expression?

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The research of McInnes et al. (2011) demonstrates the complexity of pedagogic approaches in practice. While two settings might both say that they take a play-based approach, this might manifest quite differently in the day-to-day activity of the setting. Carry out an investigation into how practitioners and children think about play and how play unfolds in a setting that you have access to. You could use a photographic sorting task (as in McInnes et al., 2011) to see whether children see adult presence as a cue to the difference between situations of play and not-play. You could interview practitioners and children about their perceptions of what counts as play and how constrained or free they feel in their everyday lives to engage in playful behaviours. You could also observe child–adult interactions to see how much choice over their time and activity children appear to have. Examine what children say and do as a way of gauging how much freedom they have over how they spend their time.

When activities grow I was leading a group of six children in a creative task that involved them writing a story as a group, and then drawing collaborative and individual pictures of their favourite part of the story. Initially, this was designed and implemented in order to fulfil the learning objectives of just one of the children in the group. However, the children were enthusiastic and seemed to be gaining a lot through the activity. It developed into a larger scale activity that extended across the week, and we started to display the children’s work on a display board at the children’s height, which they were free to add to. The children took great pride in showing this display board to their parents and other visitors to the room.

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Extending and embedding I had in previous years not really thought much of using shaving foam in my messy play timetable. But with our coming science week we were considering what we could offer our young twos and rising threes. In my research I came across an activity using paint and shaving foam to create a volcano. This proved so successful with the children that it seemed a shame to have it on offer for just one week; therefore the following week, as part of continuous provision and extending and embedding children’s understanding, we did prints with the paint and shaving foam creating craters and sprinkling the prints with glitter to add a surreal effect.

Stretchy time As we have discussed previously, possibility thinking can be thought of as the shift from ‘what is’ to ‘what might be’ (Cremin, Burnard, and Craft, 2006). Cremin, Burnard, and Craft (2006) conducted a co-participatory exploratory study in an early childhood centre to explore how pedagogy can foster children’s possibility thinking. Using a range of qualitative methods including observations, interviews, and video stimulated recall, the researchers aimed to explore how interactions between children and adults can foster children’s possibility thinking. As discussed in more detail in Chapter 1, the researchers highlighted three strategies used by practitioners that were helpful to possibility thinking. These were standing back, profiling learner agency, and the creation of time and space. The last of these strategies relates to how practitioners conceive of time and implement practice in terms of time. Practitioners who were successful in fostering possibility thinking typically had a commitment to ‘stretchy time’, whereby they would find ways to help children dedicate more time to activities that were particularly interesting and creatively exciting for children. This links to the research of Davies et al. (2013), which involved a systematic review of how school culture can support children’s creativity. One key facet identified in this review was the capacity of children to set their own pace for activities, so that they could decide when to persist with an activity and when to move on. Similar findings to those above were reported by Craft et al. (2014) who conducted a micro-ethnographic study of two English primary schools particularly noted for their creative approach. The research involved observations and interviews with teachers and governors in both schools. The findings suggested the primary importance of co-constructing learning in both schools. At a practical level, this involved a commitment to flexible

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planning in which children’s interests would readily feed into the practitioners’ plans for learning. This happened across age groups. With younger children it tended to happen in a more immediate way, impacting on the shape of the day. With older children, their interests would feed into longer-term planning so that, for example, termly topics were clearly related to the expressed interests of members of the cohort. This approach to learning requires a flexible relationship with time. An entire year (or a month, or a week, or even a day) cannot be planned in advance if children’s interests are to be seriously considered and responded to. The research of Craft et al. (2014) highlights the need for responsiveness among practitioners, which in turn requires practitioners to feel relaxed in relation to time. If practitioners feel rushed and that there is never enough time to get everything done, they will struggle to be responsive to children’s interests and to facilitate the co-construction of learning. Craft, McConnon, and Matthews (2012) highlight the importance of practitioners having the capacity to ‘be in the moment’ in order to foster possibility thinking in children’s play. When adults feel free to immerse themselves as co-players and to avoid seeing activities ‘from above’ (and in relation to a schedule for the day, week, or month), they are better able to support children to sustain their creative thinking. Craft, McConnon, and Matthews (2012) observed how practitioners who adopted this stance in children’s play were in a better position to move children beyond moments of frustration in their play, so that they sustained a line of creative thought. This is in contrast to a situation in which a practitioner feels that they are watching from the outside and having to regulate children’s play in terms of time and space.

Research spotlight Robson, S. and Rowe, V. (2012). Observing young children’s creative thinking: engagement, involvement and persistence. International Journal of Early Years Education, 20(4), 349–64.

Aims The study is an exploration of young children’s creative thinking through observations of everyday activities in an early childhood setting. The researchers were interested in how children’s creativity would be expressed in a range of activity contexts.

Methods The study involved observations of thirty children aged three to four years, as well as the practitioners in the setting that they interacted with, and

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other professionals. Video recordings were made over a five-month period. Fifty-two recorded episodes were subjected to an analysis according to the Analysing Children’s Creative Thinking (ACCT) framework (see Fumoto et al., 2012 for further details of this). Ten sub-behaviours of the ACCT framework were coded against characteristics of the activity being completed by the child, such as whether it was child-initiated, adult-directed or adult-led, and the type of activity that it was (e.g. pretend play vs. music vs. outdoors play, and so on).

Findings The researchers found that children’s open-ended exploration of materials was particularly conducive to creative thinking. This did not need to happen in terms of crafting materials – this type of exploration could also occur in the context of gardening or cooking for example. Adult involvement was important for supporting children to try new types of activities, but the highest levels of involvement and persistence occurred in the context of child-initiated activities in which no adult was present or present adults took a step back and observed children rather than interfering in the activity.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

When have you stretched time as a response to children’s interest and involvement? Describe how the activity started out and how it developed over time. How did you know that the activity was worth more time than what you had initially planned for it? Were there any constraints on you when it came to stretching the time allocated to the activity (e.g. the schedule of the setting you were in)?

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Conduct an observation of the same child engaged in three to five different activities. If you can, record the observations using a video camera. This will enable you to analyse the observation in more detail. Use the ACCT framework (Fumoto et al., 2012) to code the child’s creative thinking in the context of the activity. How was creative thinking facilitated differently in each of the activities? Write a comparison of the activities in terms of the creative thinking they supported.

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The ‘tidy-up’ tambourine Episode 1 Amy is on the board stamping the same image over and over again, really quickly all over the board, using lots of fingers. Masha is watching while sitting in front of the laptop. In the background, you hear the tambourine, which means it’s time to tidy up. The video ends.

Episode 2 Amal is working quietly at the laptop, using the programme Tux Paint to experiment with stamping different images onto the screen. Each time she puts a new flower on the screen, she sits back proudly and lets out a quiet, long ‘wooow’. As I record Amal’s activity, I am close to her and I mirror what she says. She looks back each time she puts a different flower on the screen. At one point, she claps her hands together, folds her lips inwards, smiles and looks directly at me – I exclaim, ‘pretty’. You hear the tambourine behind us and the video abruptly ends.

The tyranny of clock time In the context of EY pedagogy, we tend to think about time in terms of chunks. For example, we think about the chunk of time that takes us from snack to lunch, or about the chunk of time in which children will explore a particular activity with the help of a teacher. These chunks of time are punctuated by moments in which one activity has to end, regardless of how creative it has been. In the examples above, the ‘tidy-up’ tambourine signals the immediate end of an activity. The abrupt end to these observations relates to the expectation that children will simply finish an activity, no matter what point they are at in the creative process. Butcher (2015) argues that thinking about time in this way limits how we engage with children in creative processes. The deep exploration of materials, which is an important part of the creative process and an important context for creative thinking (Robson and Rowe, 2012), might not be emphasized in an environment where time is seen as a set of limited chunks that need to be portioned out carefully. Similarly, Pacini-Ketchabaw (2012) discusses the clocking practices that govern EY environments and Kraftl (2015, 2016) discusses how educational spaces shape daily habits enacted through children’s bodies.

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When we put an emphasis on clock time, we make a commitment to starting and ending activities at a particular time, and we might neglect to emphasize the intensity of activities. A short activity is not necessarily less important than a long one. Rose and Whitty (2010) also argue that the way we think about time in early childhood settings can undermine the implementation of our pedagogical values. The temporal structures at work in early childhood centres – the ‘clocked scripts’ (Wien, 1996) of everyday activities – make us think in a particular way about the activities of young children. While we might want to value free-flow play, this might be jeopardized when we emphasize clock time and schedules, since the clock is associated with work: It ‘calls people to work, to work efficiently, to work faster and to work more productively’ (Rose and Whitty, 2010, p. 260). While we might wish to engage in pedagogic practices that value slowing down, such as waiting for children to work out problems for themselves, clocks can bear down on us and make us think that we need to work quickly and more efficiently. In addition, since young children are often excluded from the interpretation of clock time and its control, an emphasis on clocks empowers adult practitioners who are responsible for ‘portioning out time’ (p. 261) to children in their care. The dynamic research of Wien and Kirby-Smith (1998) began with the premise that clocks in early childhood settings can inhibit children’s creative activities since they encourage educators to act as timekeepers rather than facilitators of the creative process. They explored this further in a case study in which they removed all clocks and watches from a particular early childhood setting and observed how this changed practices within the setting. They found that practitioners were prompted to critically reflect on the schedules they had previously lived by. They introduced new scripts of activities, which in turn enabled children to engage in more creative thinking and activity. Rose and Whitty (2010) conducted a similar experiment. They reported findings from a semi-structured focus group with practitioners in one early childhood centre following the removal of clocks and watches for a two-week period. The practitioners discussed the ‘frustration of their clocked lives’ (p. 264) prior to the removal of the clocks, which stemmed from the feeling that they were constantly either having to run to stay on time or impatiently waiting for the next transition to occur in the day. With the removal of the clocks, there was a shift from clock time to relational time. The practitioners ‘relaxed, listened’ (p. 265) and had more respect for the slowness of tasks which enable communal living, such as serving food and cleaning up. This relates to practice in Reggio Emilia, where ‘a time of reflectiveness, of pauses, of memory, and interior listening’ is prioritized (Edwards and Rinaldi, 2009, p. 14)

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Research spotlight Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. and Kummen, K. (2016). Shifting temporal frames in children’s common worlds in the Anthropocene. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 17(4), 431–41.

Aims The study challenges how we think about time in early years pedagogy. It explores how temporalities other than clock time (such as geological time) can be brought into the everyday activities of early childhood and the reflections of practitioners. The researchers frame their research around the notion of ‘common worlds’ from Latour, who uses the term to expand the ‘understanding of the social’ (p. 432) so that it contains non-human as well as human elements.

Methods The overarching study involves ethnographic research in two early childhood centres in Canada. The research study led to the creation of narrative observations, two of which are presented in this paper. These narratives were chosen by the researchers because they challenge the dominance of clock time in early childhood settings, and present openings for other types of time in the day-to-day practice of early childhood.

Findings The first narrative presented by the researchers is a visit to the forest. They highlight how ‘times intersect in the forest’ (p. 433). While the pedagogy of the classroom often relates to sequences of activities, which are scheduled by an adult, the forest encourages us to attend to the synchronicities alive in ‘common worlds’. A visit to the forest highlights how a moment in the life of the child is also a moment in the life of trees and landscapes and geological shifts. The second narrative recounts a child’s encounter with a crow and how this encounter enables the setting to come into contact with ‘crow time’ as an alternative to anthropocentric clock time. The encounter with the crow is enriching for the whole nursery because it enables a temporal shift away from clock time. Both narratives prompt us to recognize the agentive force of nature and the potentials this has to enrich our pedagogies in early childhood.

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Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

How dominant is clock time in the setting where you work or volunteer? What transitions are children expected to make during the day? How are these transitions punctuated (e.g. the tidy-up tambourine)?

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Focus on the particular moments where important shifts in activity occur (e.g. 12 pm lunch or 2.30 pm outdoors time). Over the course of a few days, focus on a particular child at these moments of transition. What happens to the child’s processes of thinking and activity when the moment of transition arrives? Do they stop what they are doing immediately? Do they attempt to persist in the activity? What interactions with adults spur them on to make a transition quickly and effectively? You could create drawings, photographs, or written notes in order to investigate these moments.

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Can you convince the other practitioners in your setting to experiment with removing clocks and watches? This might be appropriate for a larger scale research project (such as a final-year dissertation). If so, conduct a focus group after the experience to find out how the change affected how practitioners thought about the day and structured their own involvement with children’s activities.

Observing transitions A child in the class was enjoying a cutting and sticking task during teacherled group time. This child was so engrossed in the activity he did not want to move on to the next activity when the teacher said it was time to. He became very distressed when he was removed from the table by another teacher who was leading the next activity, which was a writing task. He refused to look at the adult who was trying to talk to him, and continued cutting and sticking. When the adult took his arm in an attempt to get his attention, he wriggled away making a grunting sound. I calmly told the child that he could come back to cutting and sticking once he had done some writing for the other teacher, to which he turned his body away from me and continued cutting a piece of paper. After some persuasion from the other teacher, he eventually put down his cutting utensils and walked over to the other activity table with heavy, stomping feet, crossed arms, and his body hunched over as he walked. When he reached the other activity he sat turned away from the table and refused to do any work for the teacher. Once dismissed, he came back to the art table to finish his work.

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Research spotlight Register, D. and Humpal, M. (2007). Using musical transitions in early childhood classrooms: Three case examples. Music Therapy Perspectives, 25(1), 25–31.

Aims The study explored the potential for music to support children in making transitions from one activity to another. The researchers hypothesized that transition time would decrease if songs were used to indicate to children that they were about to transition from one activity to another.

Methods The researchers reported on three different early years settings, working with three- to five-year-olds. They conducted observations of transitions that occur in music therapy sessions for the class, such as gathering for group music time and putting away instruments. The researchers compared how long these transitions took when verbal directives were given versus when song was used.

Findings In all of the observations, the researchers found that transitions took less time when instructions were given through the medium of song as opposed to verbal directives. The researchers argue that the implications of this are that music has an important role to play in helping children to transition from one activity to another quickly and efficiently.

Smooth versus difficult transitions In early childhood practice, we often think about transitions as something that need to be controlled and made smoother. Incidents as in the observation above are troubling because the transition is seen as a difficult one, in which the child was reluctant to move from one activity to the other. On the other hand, in the preceding Research Spotlight, the researchers were concerned with how music could help to ‘smooth out’ transitions from one activity to another. Pacini-Ketchabaw (2013) highlights the emphasis that is placed on transitions in early childhood settings and problematizes the distinction we make between difficult and smooth transitions. In the research of Register and Humpal (2007), a smooth transition is defined as one that takes as little time as possible. Is this a valid way of thinking about successful transitions, or do we need to be more critical in how we think about transitions between activities?

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A particular transition that is often considered in EY learning environments is the transition from indoors to outdoors activities (and back again). Practitioners have access to a wealth of practical guidance about how to achieve this transition as smoothly as possible. For example, Garrick et al. (2010) and Bilton (2010) both suggest that children should have free-flow access between the indoor and outdoor environments. They argue that time spent waiting by children to go outside is time wasted in which frustration will build up. Maynard and Waters (2007) highlight some of the factors that can prevent this smooth transition from indoor to outdoor activities, such as weather and practitioners’ fears of safety. They suggest that some EY learning environments, such as those in Scandinavia, have a better attitude towards the indoor–outdoor transition and implement practical procedures (e.g. with regards to clothing) that help to make the transition less problematic. Having illustrated the attention we pay to a particular type of transition in early childhood settings (indoor–outdoor activity), it is important to take a step back and challenge the way we think about transitions in general. Pacini-Ketchabaw (2013) suggests that the way we think about transitions depends on a particular conceptualization of time in which time is broken down into units. When time is chunked into a sequence of moments, we can become rigid in how we engage with time. As discussed in the previous section on ‘clock time’, our practices can become rigid when we pay too much attention to particular chunks of time and adhering to a schedule. Are we only concerned with the smoothness of transitions because we feel the need to keep to the limitations of clock-time schedules that have been set? For example, are we only concerned with getting all of the children outdoors at a particular time of day in as little time as possible because the schedule has one set time for outdoors activity? Rather than chunking time, we can engage with time as an ‘intensive flow’ (Colebrook, 2002, p. 42) in which moments endure as much as they pass. In this perspective, time has intensity as well as duration. Rather than looking for the moments in which children ‘move on’ from one activity to another, we can think about the intensity of the experiences they have and how these run and spill into each other. This in turn challenges the ideal of the ‘smooth transition’ in which one activity is simply left behind altogether in favour of a new activity which is picked up wholeheartedly. This shines a different light on the observation of the boy who was cutting and sticking and became frustrated at the abrupt adultdirected change in the activity. While to begin with his behaviour might seem problematic, perhaps we need to pay more attention to the intensity of the cutting and sticking activity that was so engrossing to him. Is this not more important than the difficult transition from one activity to another? Rose and Whitty (2010) also point out how transitions are rushed by practitioners when they are overly focused on clock time. In our schedules for the day, we often have one start time for particular activities, such as outdoors

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play at 10.30 am or lunch at 12 pm. They suggest that lengthened opening times for activities could enable transitions to happen in a more relaxed way, in which helpful and interesting social interactions are prioritized. For example, the day might involve a lengthened arrival time, in which parents/ carers can drop children off in a fifteen- to twenty-minute window. Similarly, an open snack time means that children can regulate their own appetites and food consumption rather than having this done rigidly according to a clock or watch. When we think about lengthening transitions, we are also challenged in terms of what we think constitutes a ‘waste of time’. In Plowman and Stephen’s (2005) research on how digital technologies are incorporated into the activity of an EY setting, they suggested that the time spent by children negotiating access to the classroom computer was essentially wasted time. When we rethink transitions though, we can question this perspective and wonder whether the time spent negotiating access was just as important (and therefore worthy of time) as the activity set up on the computer by the adult.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

What difficult transitions have you observed in settings where you volunteer or work? Describe the transition and how the child or children behaved during this transition. What made you think about it as ‘difficult’?

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What easy or smooth transitions have you observed? Describe the transition and how the child or children behaved during this transition. What made you think that the transition was ‘smooth’?

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Compare the difficult and smooth transitions that you have observed. Is it fair to distinguish between the two types of transition in the way you have? Is it meaningful? Have you focused mostly on the time that the transition took and/or the compliance of the child to adult instructions?

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If you have the opportunity, experiment with ‘opening up’ some of the transition times in your setting. For example, what happens when children have an open snack time rather than particular snack times during the day?

Chapter summary ●●

Creativity thrives in educational environments that place an emphasis on exploration and ‘action knowledge’. While this is seen by most EY practitioners as important, and most settings in the UK

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state a commitment to child-centred and play-based learning, there is increasing academic pressure on young children to achieve a state of ‘school readiness’ by the end of the foundation stage. This can lead to constraints on pedagogic practice, with more time for formal, teacher-led activities designed to help children fulfil particular early learning goals, and less time for deep exploration. ●●

Possibility thinking is facilitated by ‘stretchy time’, in which activities can be given more or less than the planned time depending on children’s levels of interest and involvement. When supporting children to sustain creative thinking, practitioners need to allow themselves to be ‘in the moment’. A focus on schedules can prevent this and inhibit the practitioners’ responsiveness as a result.

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In early childhood practice, we often conceptualize time in terms of chunks. The dominance of clock time can undermine our pedagogic values. While we might value slowing down and listening to children, clocks can encourage us to do the opposite – to speed up and prioritize efficiency. Engaging with other types of time (e.g. in the natural world) can productively challenge the dominance of clock time.

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Transitions are another important aspect of early childhood practice. We tend to think a lot about the ease or difficulty of children’s transitions from one activity to another. Transitions seen as smooth are often those that take the least time. We need to challenge this perception of transitions and experiment with opening up the time for transitions and allowing shifts to happen more slowly and with more of a focus on the social dimensions of the experience.

Activities to deepen your thinking 1 What happens when you remove clock time from your life? Live a

twenty-four-hour period without reference to a timepiece (this will include your phone). Reflect on the experience. How do you think about time differently as a result of this experience? How did you engage differently in activities during your day? In what ways was the experience problematic or challenging? In what ways was the experience pleasurable and exciting? 2 Interview children about their experience of how time is organized

in the setting they attend. Design interview questions that probe their perceptions of time and how it is organized. For example, find

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out whether they feel they have enough time to do the things that they want to do. Find out whether they would like to organize their days differently to how they are currently organized. Investigate their perception of transitions: Are there transitions that they find difficult? 3 Think about the types of time that you encounter which aren’t ‘clock

time’. Pacini-Ketchabaw and Kummen (2016) present narratives in which ‘forest time’ and ‘crow time’ present a challenge to clock time. What types of time do you encounter that offer a similar challenge? Write some narratives in the style of Pacini-Ketchabaw and Kummen in order to document these encounters.

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5 Choice

Introduction

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n this chapter, we investigate the role of choice in children’s creativity. Firstly, we question the importance of choice in fostering creativity. While we might typically think that the more choice children have the better, we examine this proposition and ask whether some types of constraint on the activities children engage in can actually facilitate their creativity. Following on from this, we take a closer look at the Montessori approach to children’s learning, which emphasizes a balance between choice and constraint in the way materials and activities are organized. We ask whether the Montessori way, limiting the materials available to the child and avoiding noisy or cluttered environments, can actually support creativity while limiting the individual choices that children make. Next, we consider an area in which children’s choices are often neglected in early childhood art experiences: displaying artwork. We consider why children are often not consulted when it comes to sharing their creative products with others. Finally, we explore the choice of some children not to engage in creative activities, the various reasons that can underlie this reluctance, and what strategies practitioners can employ to engage children in creative activities who might otherwise move away from them. Short observations and practitioner reflections help to link these questions and topics of investigation to everyday practice in early childhood. By reflecting on your own experiences in relation to the ideas in this chapter, you will deepen your thinking around choice and develop a critical approach towards both theory and the practice that surrounds you.

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A very sorry-looking caterpillar: What happens when we over-prescribe activities For the theme ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ I had cut out segments of egg cartons, and laid out some green and red paint, pipe cleaners, and goggly eyes for the children to make their own hungry caterpillars. I had made a model of what I thought was a fairly good resemblance for the children to emulate. After dabbing a few strokes of paint the two children whom I was working with got bored whilst I was trying to drill out holes for them to put the pipe cleaners through. One child got so irate that he picked up a pencil and punched holes in every single segment of the egg carton, much to my chagrin, and so I was left with two children who voted with their feet and left the art table and one very sorry-looking caterpillar! This was a very important lesson to me and initiated me on the journey of the importance of not setting prescribed art-making activities for children, whatever their age. How much more rewarding it was to recently see one of my new key children spend twenty-five long minutes in total concentration applying paint and baby bath soap onto a foam paper plate, drizzling glue and watching with rapt attention as the wet paint and glue mixed to make patterns before he finally scrunched up bits of crepe paper and stuck them onto the plate. Even more fascinating for him was the time he discovered the experience of peeling off the glue from his little fingers and holding the paper-thin bits of glue and watching them fall onto the table.

Colouring outside the lines Space-themed colouring sheets had been laid out on the art table. One child who was very interested in space came over and started to colour. As he coloured, he explained to me what he was colouring and facts he knew about the planets, stars, and so on. Moving on from the colouring, he started to add his own drawings onto the sheet – he drew stars and planets onto the sheet that he believed should have been on the page. As he did this, he explained each added item to me.

How important is choice in children’s creativity? In art education, a distinction between arts and crafts is often drawn. While arts activities involve open-ended exploration that honour individual expression

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and creativity, craft activities are those that involve close-ended activities with a pre-defined product where children have little choice about what process to follow and what product to create (McLennan, 2010). Examples of craft activities described by McLennan include the assembly of pre-cut shapes in order to make an animal model, colouring in, and the use of stencils and templates. Many would argue that creativity is less likely to emerge in the context of a craft activity because there is less scope to pose questions and take risks. On the other hand, as the preceding observation of colouring in demonstrates, the use of a resource that suggests a particular outcome or product does not necessarily limit children to creating just this. The child in the observation felt free to add his own drawings to the colouring sheet and to use the activity as a way to follow and develop his own interests. This suggests that the distinction between arts and crafts may not be as clear-cut as McLennan suggests. As the first observation in the chapter shows (‘A Very Sorry-Looking Caterpillar’), children can become restless and bored when creative activities are prescribed and have to follow a pace set by an adult practitioner. On the other hand, this does not necessarily mean that all limitations on choice have a negative influence on children’s engagement. When we suggest that closed, skill-based making tasks are less creative than children’s more open explorations, we are subscribing to a particular view of what creativity is. We are placing the emphasis on divergent thinking, in which the aim is to generate multiple ideas and for these to be as original as possible. See Chapter 1 for a discussion of the divergent model of creativity. Other approaches to creativity, however, prioritize the integration of ideas, as well as divergent thinking. Craft activities can facilitate the development of skills that in turn facilitate the integration and expression of ideas. Knowing how to cut out shapes, for example, can mean that children are more capable of expressing their own ideas in the future. This corresponds to the findings of Hallam, Hewitt, and Buxton (2014) from their study of students’ experiences of art classes; the researchers found that the students placed a high value on learning particular artistic skills and did not feel constrained by the structure needed in order to learn these skills. Rather than distinguishing between arts and crafts, a more helpful way to conceptualize choice in relation to creativity might be to think about the difference between learning objects and learning acts (Samuelsson et al., 2009). Samuelsson et al. suggest that in early childhood education, the teacher has a responsibility to consider learning objects – to think about what they would like children to take away from particular activities and tasks, in terms of skills and understanding. However, they suggest that prescribing particular learning acts without having a clear learning object underpinning the act constrains children’s experience of learning unnecessarily. For example,

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a teacher who is planning a music activity for children can ask, ‘What do I want the children to do?’ (focusing on the learning act), or they can ask a deeper question: ‘What do I want them to develop in terms of musical ability?’ (focusing on the learning object). When teachers focus on learning objects, rather than learning acts, they are less likely to be prescriptive and to make decisions that constrain choice only when this is necessary in order to achieve the learning object. To demonstrate how learning objects can be a productive constraint on children’s experiences of creativity, Samuelson et al. give the example of an activity set up by a teacher in which children gathered around a table covered in paper. They were told by the teacher to paint the feelings in the music that was playing, and when the music stopped, they had to move around the table and paint on a different part of the paper. Initially the children were unhappy about having to move on from their part of the paper and to leave their painting exposed to the input of others, but after a while they began to enjoy the movement and the experience of collaborating with each other. When asked about the activity and why she had designed it in that way, the teacher explained that she had wanted to encourage the children to collaborate with each other in the context of a creative activity. The learning act was prescribed because it helped the children to fulfil the learning object. This kind of structure might be initially frustrating for children, but ultimately enables new experiences, skills, and attributes that can in turn facilitate creativity.

Research spotlight Brown, R. (2015). Engaging families through artful play. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 16(8).

Aims The research explored how playful art experiences can extend the use of outdoor public spaces by children and families. Observations of these playful art experiences focused on how the families engaged, as well as the role of the artists who facilitated the families’ open-ended exploration of the space. Particular attention was paid to which materials the artists chose to present in the spaces, and the role that these materials played in enabling a playful, experimental, and collaborative experience.

Methods The study involved observations of families’ experiences in artist-facilitated experiences in underused public outdoors spaces. The experiences occurred over an eighteen-month period and comprised both drop-in sessions and

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pre-booked sessions. The paper reports on the observations of twelve one-hour sessions, in which the artists offered relaxed and open-ended experiences for families to engage with. The observations were analysed through a process of ‘collaborative researcher reflection’ (p. 5) which aimed to develop a wide range of voices reflecting on the phenomena, rather than a singular interpretation of the experiences.

Findings The observations highlight the importance of ‘sensory-rich and readily transformable materials’ (p. 6) in enabling playful experiences for families. Many parents commented on their child’s active engagement with the resources and their desire to experiment; this was contrasted with how children interact with manufactured toys that were seen as limiting the children’s imagination. The materials chosen by the different artists prompted investigation, in a way similar to that seen by the ‘provocations’ used by practitioners in the environments of Reggio Emilia (Edwards, 2002). The researchers also commented on the extent to which children and parents appeared to be in a state of flow, and this was in turn linked to the sense of discovery and challenge. The artist facilitators played an important role in setting up creative challenges – these helped to extend play, but the challenges remained ‘open to possibility and could be readily manipulated’ (p. 11). Thus, there was a careful balance between prompting investigation without leading or directing it. Finally, the researchers noted that the experiences offered children and parents special opportunities to connect with each other in an atmosphere of positive affect and concentrated collaboration.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Observe a child or children as they engage in a prescribed making activity (e.g. colouring in, or making a model from pre-cut shapes). Reflect on their engagement with the task. How creative are they in the context of the activity? Do they manage to ‘open up’ the activity in some way or do they remain constrained throughout?

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In the setting where you volunteer or work, look at some recent planning that has gone on around creative expression. It might be planning that has been written down or it might have been a verbal discussion. Using the distinction drawn by Samuelsson et al. (2009), analyse whether the starting point of the planning was the learning object or the learning act.

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Using Brown (2015) as inspiration, set up a creative challenge for children in the context of an open-ended exploration of materials. While the challenge is a structured invitation to the children, it should also be ‘open to possibility’ (p. 11). Reflect on the experience of offering the creative challenge and how children engaged with this.

Butter beans and penne pasta We set out an open-ended activity with uncooked penne pasta, butter beans, and black-eyed beans. In addition, the children had access to any other materials they wanted in the room; these included paper, pipe cleaners, various sized containers, and spoons. I sat back to see what the children would do. Two children were fascinated by the butter beans. One picked up a container and started picking up the butter beans, turning them over and looking at them intently before placing them in the containers. One picked up an empty bottle and filled about a quarter of the bottle with butter beans. She then looked at the pasta and decided to fill the next quarter with pasta and then finally filled the rest of the bottle with black-eyed beans. Little Lucia picked up two pieces of penne pasta in each hand and then tried to join them together. She looked at me. I nodded. She then walked over to the resources trolley, picked up a pipe cleaner and brought it over to me to make a knot. She then went on to string the pasta and after stringing half a dozen of them came over to me and said ‘snake!’.

Less is more? One way in which practitioners can constrain a child’s creative choice is through the materials that they make available. In some pedagogic approaches, limiting the materials that a child can use is seen as productive and helpful. For example, in Montessori education, children are limited in various ways. An ordered environment is particularly important in Montessori education, and clutter is seen as inhibiting children’s sense of flow and immersion in learning (Edwards, 2002; Rambusch, 2010). A balance exists between regulation and choice, with children seen as capable of making genuine choices when they are in a carefully ordered environment. An emphasis on silence, for example, is seen as enabling children to connect with an inner voice that can in turn direct them towards the activities they truly want to engage in (Rambusch, 2010). So through control, the individual child is liberated. Not all of the

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instinctual urges of the child are encouraged in a Montessori approach. For example, spontaneous imaginative drawing is often discouraged and instead observational drawing is seen as helping a child to stay grounded in practical reality (Cox and Rowlands, 2000). Lillard (2013) explores further the tension between freedom and structure in Montessori education: ‘freedom within structure and structure within freedom’ (p. 161). In our first encounters with a Montessori setting, it will typically seem that children have a high level of choice. The children appear to be self-directed in their activities, moving freely from one part of the environment to another. There is little adult-directed time where the children learn in whole groups. Instead, individual children follow their own interests and adults observe and facilitate without intervening. On the other hand, in traditional Montessori settings, the objects that children engage with are very specific and children cannot choose to play with materials that adults have not yet introduced them to. Contrast this with the preceding observation and the way in which Lucia was encouraged to use a wide range of materials. Similarly, children are typically discouraged from using materials in other ways than the way demonstrated by the adult, as this is seen as unconstructive. Lillard suggests that Montessori learning is rigid on a micro-level but values freedom in the larger pedagogic structures at work. So how does the Montessori balance between choice and constraint play out in relation to children’s creativity? Various studies have been conducted to find out whether children in Montessori settings demonstrate more or less creativity than children learning in other types of environment. Cox and Rowlands (2000) investigated the expressive drawing capacities of children learning in three types of setting: mainstream settings teaching the English National Curriculum, Steiner schools, and Montessori schools. They found that only children in the Steiner settings showed higher scores on a measure of drawing creativity. Similar findings were made by Kirkham and Kidd (2015) more recently, when they compared pretence and creative drawing across these three settings. The children completed two drawings and these were rated according to fourteen criteria including humour, expressiveness, and unconventionality. The ratings showed an advantage for only the Steiner pupils. On the other hand, Besançon and Lubart (2008; see Research Spotlight) found that children in a Montessori school outperformed children in a mainstream setting in terms of visual and verbal creativity. Depending on how we understand creativity, we need to engage cautiously with these comparative studies. They present creativity as something that can be measured individually through tests that can be numerically analysed. Studies have not compared Montessori with other approaches on the basis of in-depth naturalistic observations of creativity in action.

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Research spotlight Besançon, M. and Lubart, T. (2008). Differences in the development of creative competencies in children schooled in diverse learning environments. Learning and individual differences, 18(4), 381–9.

Aims The research aimed to investigate how pedagogy impacts on individuals’ creativity. The study compared mainstream learning environments with two alternative learning environments (Montessori and Freinet) to see whether they have different effects on children’s creativity in the primary school years.

Methods Two hundred and ten children aged seven to twelve years were tested. These children came from three different learning environments: 119 children attended a mainstream school, 40 attended a Montessori school, and 51 attended a Freinet school. The children were tested on four measures of creative performance – two divergent measures from the Torrance tests of Creative Thinking (one visual and one verbal) and two integrative measures (‘invent a story’ and ‘invent a drawing’). The children were tested on these measures twice, with roughly a year between the tests.

Findings Overall, there appeared to be a positive influence of the Montessori learning environment on children’s creative performance. Children attending the Montessori school scored higher on all tests. Within this, there appeared to be an interaction between age and learning environment, so that children in the different environments appeared to be on a distinct trajectory depending on the type of school they were attending. The findings suggest that Montessori’s structured approach to learning, in which fantastical thinking is not actively encouraged, does not inhibit creativity in children and might in fact benefit children’s creative development.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Reflect on your attitudes to clutter and noise. Do these inhibit creative flow as suggested by the Montessori approach? Capture observations of children working in conditions of clutter and/or noise. How is their creative trajectory influenced by the conditions of the surrounding environment? Alternatively capture observations of children working in quiet and ordered environments. What difference does this make?

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Compare images of a traditional Montessori setting with a mainstream nursery. What differences do you notice? What would be the potential impact of these differences on children’s creativity?

Displaying children’s artwork: Practitioner reflections ●●

It’s the children’s classroom and it shouldn’t look like it’s just ready for the adults to walk in and look at it because that’s – you know – the children are in from nine until three every day.

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The process of their doing it is more important to them than the finished kind of article.

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Since we value the process rather than an end product at our setting we tend to not have too many displays of the children’s work.

Displaying children’s artwork: Who makes the decision? The tendency to prioritize process over product in young children’s creativity means that display is often overlooked as an important part of the creative process. The last two points made by practitioners above highlight this approach, suggesting that displays of children’s artwork can suggest an interest in the products of creativity rather than helping children to value the creative process as it unfolds. In some settings, this approach will translate into a lack of displays (as in the setting of the third practitioner quoted above). In contrast, other settings will use the emphasis on process as permission to make decisions about how to include children’s creative products in display without consulting children. After all, there are a wide range of purposes that displaying children’s artwork can fulfil from an adult’s perspective. These include sharing and celebrating children’s interests (Kirchenbaum and Reis, 1997; Mace, 1997), demonstrating progress and brightening up the environment (Seefeldt, 2002), and using the displays as a learning tool for children in the class (Derham, 2001; Boone, 2008). Phenomenological research on children’s experiences of having their artwork displayed demonstrate that children do care about what happens to their creative work after they have produced it (Boone, 2008; Twigg, 2011). From a child’s perspective, it is not just the process that matters. In fact, Twigg’s research (see Research Spotlight) suggests that the processes of making and displaying cannot be disentangled from each other. Display is

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part of the process. Despite this, adults typically make choices about how to display artwork and children are excluded from this decision making (Boone, 2008). Shulsky and Kirkwood (2015) suggest that displaying artwork is vital for children’s sense of independence and empowerment. Through displaying their artwork, children can open up discussions with peers around what they have created and enable them to engage in meaningful dialogues about the creative process. Display is therefore one area of creative experience where children often have little choice.

Research spotlight Twigg, D. (2011). Look out below (and above)! challenging adult understandings of displaying young children’s artwork. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 12(3), 262–73.

Aims The research aimed to explore how children aged four to six years experience the display of their artwork in school. The paper challenges traditional methods of displaying children’s artwork and the dominance of the adult in making these decisions about display.

Methods Twigg adopted a phenomenological approach to the research, whereby the focus was on the individual experiences of children. She conducted both observations and interviews in one school. Some of the interviews involved visual elicitation, where she focused on specific artwork and asked children questions about their experiences of display in relation to this artwork, for example, ‘What did you think when you saw your picture on the wall?’ Twigg analysed the data thematically and used illustrative descriptions of particular episodes of experience as a way to demonstrate the themes in action.

Findings Twigg’s findings are organized into three key themes. Firstly, she argues that making and displaying cannot be separated in the experience of individual children. Secondly, she highlights the dominance of adults in making decisions about how to display children’s artwork. Thirdly, she suggests that children care deeply about how their artwork is displayed. Twigg recommends that there should be more adult awareness of young children’s desires with regard to the display of their artwork and that they should be more practically involved in this decision making.

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Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

How much choice do children have in the setting where you work/ volunteer when it comes to displaying artwork? Whom are the displays for? What are they intended to achieve? Launch a small-scale investigation into the purposes and practices of display in your setting. How do your findings relate back to the research presented in this section?

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Observe children as they engage in making practices and document the process that they go through when it comes to deciding what to do with what they have made. How do children make this decision? Who else is involved? What messages do they pick up from the learning environment about what they should be doing with the creative product?

Backing off from messy play One afternoon, I laid out a messy paint activity where children were allowed to walk through paint and across a large sheet of paper. One child who did not enjoy messy play came over to observe the session. I offered to help her get involved in the play by painting her feet, like I had for another child, to which she refused and continued to sit beside the activity watching other children. As the activity drew on, she slowly came closer to the activity and I tried to engage her in the activity again by offering ideas where she could join in, such as using her hands, or a paintbrush. She shook her head and walked away.

Reluctant makers: The choice not to engage While studies with children and young people suggest that the arts and creative activities are extremely popular in the schooling context (Hallam, Hewitt, and Buxton, 2014), observations such as the one above demonstrate that some children are reluctant to engage in some creative activities. Some children seem to be reluctant to engage because they have a negative sensory or affective reaction to the materials that are being used. Crescenzi, Price, and Jewitt (2014) and Price, Jewitt, and Crescenzi (2015) note that some children find it difficult to engage in messy play or intense forms of sensory activity. As a result, some children are more likely to want to engage in finger-painting via

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a screen (e.g. the iPad) rather than finger-painting with ‘real’ paint on paper. The experience of having paint directly on the fingertip was unsettling to a small group of children in these studies, who appeared to prefer the less textured surface of the iPad screen. There are other potential reasons for why children choose to disengage from creativity and making activities. Bentley (2011) presents the case study of a young boy called Alex who became upset whenever he was encouraged to engage in art-making, stressing repeatedly that he just wanted to carry on playing. In her paper, Bentley explores the strategies that she used to engage Alex in art experiences despite this initial reluctance. She noted that Alex often worried during art-making experiences in the studio that he was ‘missing out’ on the play that his friends were doing. This concern was eased when the art-making was brought into the centre of the classroom. Another strategy employed by Bentley was to look for themes in Alex’s play that could be extended through the art-making. For example, Alex enjoyed a phase of make-believe play surrounding volcanoes. This could be transformed into a 3D art-making project, and the products of the artmaking could be reintegrated into the play. While Bentley had generally seen her role in children’s art-making as a silent observer, not interfering, with Alex she realized that she needed to develop a different approach. He was most engaged when she engaged alongside him as a co-player, helping him to actively make the links between art-making and play. Bentley’s reflections demonstrate the need to critically analyse why some children may refuse to become involved in creative activities, and to be prepared to change approach in order to help them to feel a greater sense of interest and engagement. Some research has suggested that girls and boys engage differently with typical creative activities like drawing. For example, Ring (2006) found that the early childhood practitioners she interviewed were aware that boys tended to draw less. She linked this to differences in how boys and girls approach drawing, and the extent to which what they produce is valued by the adults around them. She suggests that while girls are more likely to draw members of the family through clear pictorial representations, boys are more likely to embed their drawing in noisy and dramatic play and their drawings are more likely to be dismissed by adults as ‘scribble’. While girls may receive lots of positive reinforcement for their drawings, boys may become reluctant drawers on the basis of adults misunderstanding their use of drawing and failing to value it. In Ring’s study, practitioners explored how to counter this through changing how they presented drawing in the context of the early learning environment. Practitioners noted that boys were

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more likely to be engaged by a wider range of materials (e.g. flipchart paper and 3D materials), while small pieces of paper and coloured pencils on a table were less appealing. In another setting, they noticed that boys liked to draw standing up and that they felt more excited by drawing when it was connected physically with other areas and activities in the room, such as the construction blocks. While not focusing on the reluctance of children to engage, other researchers have highlighted how unusual materials can draw children into creative activities. Sakr, Connelly, and Wild (2016) found that digital artmaking could engage children who did not necessarily think of themselves as being ‘good at art’ because the digital tools available had not been labelled by them as involved in the creation of ‘art’. Without the label, children were less constrained by their self-perceptions. Solberg (2016) reported on young children’s experiences of land art, where engagement with the natural environment constitutes art-making. In the particular case study reported by Solberg, children went into the snowy woods and arranged natural objects in patterns through collaborative activity. When they returned, the objects had been snowed over, and the artwork had disappeared. This shift away from the usual patterns of art-making can shake up which children feel an affinity with the activity. Another important aspect of the learning environment to consider in relation to children’s reluctance to engage in creative activities is the confidence and competence of the adults in the environment. How confident teachers and teaching assistants feel in relation to creative activities will shape how children feel about these sorts of activities. If inhibition appears to be the norm among adults, this will become the norm among children. In Ring’s (2006) study, one of the practitioners noted the importance of modelling drawing, of getting down on the floor and making his own drawings as a way of helping other children to feel inspired and uninhibited. Teacher confidence has been explored further in relation to singing and music. Heyning (2011) conducted an intervention study with pre-service teachers to help them to feel more confident about singing. When teachers feel shy about singing, they are less likely to celebrate the place of music in the classroom and to engage children in enthusiastic musical explorations. Heyning designed a programme to improve the confidence of pre-service teachers in singing and found that teachers felt newly empowered to bring singing into their own classrooms. This emphasizes the importance of giving teachers an opportunity to develop themselves as artists and creators so that their enthusiasm can be passed onto the children whom they work with. This is explored further in Chapter 9 on inspirations.

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Research spotlight Hallam, J. L., Hewitt, D. and Buxton, S. (2014). An exploration of children’s experiences of art in the classroom. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 33(2), 195–207.

Aims The research aimed to explore children’s classroom experiences of art. The study built on previous research that had considered reasons for an apparent decline in the popularity of spontaneous art-making among children in middle childhood. What could be learned from students’ experience that would elucidate this reported shift in interest?

Methods The researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty-four children and young people, who were equally divided across the four key stages that make up UK mainstream schooling. The interviews focused on the students’ experiences of art as a subject in school, with questions such as ‘What makes a good art lesson?’ and ‘What support do you get from teachers in art?’ The interviews were transcribed and analysed thematically.

Findings The interview responses demonstrated that all of the participants in the study enjoyed and readily engaged with art experiences in school. All participants expressed a desire to spend more time doing art. This leads us to question whether there really is a decline in art engagement during middle childhood, or whether it is more the case that the space for art in the curriculum decreases. Students expressed some discontent around the restriction of their choice in the subject matter they explored through art. Alternatively, other students suggested that prescribed subject matter helped to broaden their experience and understanding and was therefore beneficial. Students in secondary school emphasized the importance of teacher feedback, underpinned by strong subject knowledge of art teachers, while children in the earlier key stages did not highlight teacher feedback and this seemed to play a much smaller role in their experience of art in school.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Describe a time when you tried to engage a child in a creative activity but they were reluctant to get involved. Could you tell what their reluctance was stemming from? How did you change your approach or the activity in order to overcome their reluctance? Were you

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successful or did you give up? Reflecting back now, would you have approached the situation in a different way? ●●

Think about the setting where you volunteer/work. Are there some children that engage readily in creative tasks while others are more reluctant? Does this distinction follow any particular patterns (e.g. boys vs. girls, or exposure to creative activities in the home)?

Chapter summary ●●

A common distinction in early childhood arts education is between arts activities and crafts activities. Arts activities are those that are open-ended and exploratory, while crafts activities have a predetermined outcome that is difficult to deviate from. While McLennan (2010) suggests that craft activities involve lower levels of creative thinking among children, learning particular skills through craft activities can advance children’s capacities for creative expression. Furthermore, some activities might suggest a predetermined product to children, but children do not necessarily go on to create this product. They might adapt the craft resources to their own creative ends. Because of this, the distinction between arts and crafts is not as simple as it first appears.

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An alternative way of thinking about structured activities and creativity is through the distinction of learning objects versus learning acts (Samuelsson et al., 2009). If activities are designed with a learning object in mind (skill or understanding for the child to build), structure is not just imposed for the sake of it (as when a learning act is the focus) and can be used purposefully to facilitate children’s creativity.

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The Montessori approach to education prompts us to question whether deeper levels of creative choice can be enabled through some types of constraint and the imposition of order. In Montessori environments, there is an emphasis on order and control. This is seen as facilitating children to connect with their inner voice in order to work out what they really want to do next so that choice is the ultimate goal, but occurs in a context of constraint.

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It is not clear from empirical studies whether Montessori education leads to children scoring higher on creative tasks when compared with children attending other types of school. The results from studies such as these are mixed. In addition, there is a lack of research offering in-depth observation as to how children in different settings engage

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with the creative process and how this is shaped by the environment they are learning in. ●●

One area of creativity and making that is often lacking in choice for children is display. Phenomenological studies suggest that children care deeply about what happens to their creative work – so much so that the making cannot really be disentangled from the processes of sharing and display. Practitioners need to be much more aware of children’s desires around display and draw children into decision making about how to display their artwork.

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Although art is a very popular subject in schools, not all children engage readily with creative tasks and making. Some feel reluctant to engage, and this might be because their preferred forms of engagement have been de-valued by others. For example, some boys who integrate their drawings into their dramatic play may have had their drawings dismissed as ‘scribble’ by adults around them. This can make them reluctant to engage in creative activities in environments where they will be observed by others.

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Practitioners can use a variety of strategies in order to engage those children who are often reluctant to get involved in creativity and making. In particular, changing the space and materials that are associated with art-making in the classroom can shake up notions of who is ‘good at art’ and who is not. For example, when art is made in the outdoors environment, or with digital technologies, children who are typically reluctant to get involved with creative tasks might come to the fore.

Activities to deepen your thinking 1 Is choice always a good thing? Is there such a thing as too much

choice? Complete a series of observations with the same child looking at how they engage in creative processes when you offer them more or less choice in terms of activity and material. Think of a spectrum all the way from complete choice and freedom to engage in whatever activity they like (as long as it’s safe) and with whatever materials they want to use, to the other extreme – a prescribed task, using a specific range of materials and creating a predetermined outcome. If possible, video or photograph the observations so that you can reflect on them more fully afterwards. Compare the child’s creative process in these different scenarios. How did choice appear to influence

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how they engaged and the level of creativity you perceived them to demonstrate? 2 Audit the displays in the setting where you volunteer/work. For each

display of children’s artwork, answer the following questions: (a) Who coordinated the display? (b) How much were children involved in putting the display together? (c) Who is the display for? (d) What purposes does it achieve? Use your audit as a starting point for some collaborative reflection with other adults in the setting. Do children have enough choice when it comes to displaying their artwork? 3 Focus on one child you know who is reluctant to engage in creative

activities (e.g. drawing or messy play). Using Bentley’s (2011) case study of Alex as your inspiration, explore this child’s reluctance to engage. Where does it come from? Following on from this exploratory phase, develop strategies to engage the child. This might involve changing the space in which the activity unfolds, the materials involved in the activity and/or the tone you adopt in relation to the activity. You could record the process you have gone through in a photo-journal. See Bentley (2011) for more ideas.

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6 Space and Materials

Introduction

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n this chapter we explore how space and materials shape children’s creative processes. As practitioners, we think a lot about the conditions that maximize opportunities for creativity in early childhood. The physical environment is an important element of these conditions. We use observations from our practice in early childhood education to explore how space and materials feature in creativity and making; our observations are deepened through theoretical ideas about environments in early childhood. Firstly, we look at how different physical materials are drawn into children’s making processes, and we explain the theory of affordances as a way of conceptualizing the different opportunities that arise when different materials are used. Secondly, we engage with the principles relating to the physical environment that have arisen within the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. Building on this, we consider how spaces for young children can be organized around physical provocations that invite creative responses and negotiations among adults and children. Finally, we present creativity as a network, in which the material qualities of the interaction are active players in every creative process. Over the course of the chapter, you will be invited to engage in your own reflections about space and materials and how these shape creativity among young children that you know or work with. We hope that through these reflections, you will develop a stronger sense of the importance of the physical environment and an understanding of how it can help and hinder creativity.

Pipettes, straws, and teaspoons I am often struck by how children are so creative despite adults’ interference and agendas. In June, I set up an activity for the children that involved powder

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paint, water, white sheets of paper, pipettes, and straws. I modelled mixing the paints, using the pipettes to squirt out paint on the white paper, and using the straws to blow onto the paint and watch the effects. Some of the children had difficulties in using the pipettes which require the use of fine motor skills. I did not want them to get so frustrated that they would leave the activity, so I got some teaspoons and encouraged them to put teaspoons of the paint onto the paper before putting the straw onto the paint and blowing through the straws. One child tilted their paper, allowing the paint to run from one side of the paper to another. I demonstrated the effect of this to other children in the group – how by holding the paper and tilting it from side to side we could create ‘spider webs’. This captured the imagination of many of the children around the table and they started talking about zombies, monsters, lions, and tigers being caught in the spider web. We abandoned the pipette and straw activity and everyone started on their own spider web paintings, peering into their webs to imagine what they had caught.

Affordances The preceding observation shows how different materials can afford different types of creative process and engagement. The actions that materials allow and the actions they inhibit are known as ‘affordances’. Affordances are the suggestions that aspects of the physical environment make about how to physically interact with them. For example, the key affordance of a chair would be to sit on it, while less popular affordances would be standing on top of the chair or lying down underneath it. The concept of affordances was introduced in the 1960s by the ecological psychologist Gibson. Gibson argued that when we look at the world around us, we do not see objects separate from ourselves; instead, we perceive the actions that the physical world is inviting us to participate in. Our perception of affordances has both a physical and social dimension (van Leeuwen, 2005). Returning to the example of the chair, we experience the key affordance of sitting as a result of the physical dimensions of the chair and what it physically enables and makes comfortable, as well as a result of the sociocultural expectations that surround the chair, that is, what is socially acceptable. Affordances are present when we consider materials that are engaged in creative processes. In the observation, the paintbrushes, pipettes, and straws were each associated with the movement of paint in particular ways, and it took flexibility and encouragement for the children to break away from these ways of doing things. Golomb (2004), Kress (1997) and Matthews (1999)



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have explored the affordances of materials that are typically present in early childhood setting and used in creative activities, including clay, play-dough, and pencils. In the case of the pipettes, the practitioner noticed how the children were becoming frustrated with using the tool to pick up the paint, though there was nothing to stop the children from using these tools to interact with the paint in other ways, for example, to cut through the paint on the paper and reveal the paper underneath. Rasmussen (2004) suggests that part of children’s creativity is seeing alternative ways for engaging with spaces and materials that adults have intended for the use by children in particular ways. In line with this, the practitioner notes how the children’s engagement with the activity she had set up broke away from her expectations about how they would use the physical environment. This suggests that there is a role for the practitioner in supporting children to move away from the typical affordances associated with the spaces and materials drawn into creativity. Practitioners can help children to see alternative ways of interacting with tools or to see a multiplicity of opportunities for physical engagement that do not coincide with a norm set by adults.

Research spotlight Glăveanu, V. P. (2012). What can be done with an egg? Creativity, material objects, and the theory of affordances. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 46(3), 192–208.

Aims Glăveanu’s research (2012) focuses on understanding the role of objects in the creative process. While psychologists have tended to underplay the importance of the material environment in creativity, cultural psychology places an emphasis on how the material world can mediate the creative process. This paper considers in particular how we can understand creativity in relation to the affordances of objects. Affordances are the actions that are invited by an object through physical possibilities and social associations.

Methods To investigate the role of objects in creativity, Glăveanu focused on a case study of Easter egg decoration in rural Romania. Using interviews and observations (including video observations), Glăveanu used this particular instance of creative activity to consider how the affordances of objects related to what we consider to be creative.

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Findings Glăveanu observed that individuals decorating Easter eggs in rural Romania were creative through generating novel affordances. These affordances were initially unperceived or unexploited by the individuals engaged in the activity. When they were unperceived, it was often through accidents that the affordances – the new things that could be done with the Easter egg decoration – were discovered. When they were unexploited, it was through the breaking of cultural norms that the affordances could be realized. For example, the use of egg decoration as part of Christmas (rather than Easter) celebrations is a creative act.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Look around your immediate environment. What objects are in the environment and what affordances are associated with these objects? Could you engage with the objects in the environment in alternative ways that challenge the typical affordances? How so?

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Consider a creative activity you have set up for children in a formal or informal setting. How did you set up the space and what materials did you introduce? How did you expect the children to use these materials? Did you see any interactions that challenged your expectations about how the space and materials would be used? What was your reaction to these challenges? For example, did you embrace them, or were you dismissive?

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If you were setting up the activity again, how would you open up children’s experience of the affordances associated with the space and materials in order to enhance their creative experience?

Spaces for creativity and making Take a look at the following photographs of areas in a nursery associated with children’s creativity and making. What do you notice about each space and the materials contained in the spaces? How would these spaces facilitate and/or constrain creativity? See Figures 6.1 and 6.2



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FIGURE 6.1  The drying rack

FIGURE 6.2  The creative table and surrounding displays

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Principles of space from Reggio Emilia Thinking about the preceding photographs prompts us to consider more generally how we organize spaces and materials to facilitate children’s creativity. In a Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education, the space in which children create and learn is seen as a fundamental aspect of the experience, with the physical environment understood as the ‘third teacher’. Spaces in Reggio Emilia are organized according to certain principles, each thought to play an important role in supporting children to create and learn. Fraser (2006) presents eight principles according to which Reggio Emilia spaces are produced and organized. When we consider these principles in turn, we can think about how they apply to different spaces that we know and how we select and organize materials within an EY setting. For each of the principles below, consider how it applies (or does not apply) to the preceding photographs. What could you do to improve these spaces using the following principles as inspiration?

Aesthetics The principle of aesthetics refers to the carefulness with which we select and present sensory information in the world. Vecchi describes aesthetics as a ‘slim thread or aspiration to quality that makes us choose one word over another, the same for a colour or shade, a certain piece of music, a mathematical formula or the taste of a food’ (2010, p. 5). In the case of EY settings, an appreciation of aesthetics would be discernible in the carefulness with which the environment is set up. When the aesthetic dimension is thought to be of importance, practitioners are likely to pay more attention to the materials that they put out for children to use and how these materials are organized. In response, children may be more aware of their own aesthetic decisions and these may impact on the creative trajectories that they follow.

Transparency Transparency refers to the belief that the materials in a learning space for children should be accessible and readily available to children. Since the space is intended for the children, the materials that are visible in the environment should be those materials that children can choose to use. For example, having paint that sits on top of a cupboard but that cannot be accessed by children when they choose to would contravene the principle of transparency. On the other hand, having materials that sit at the eye level of the children, are clearly



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labelled in child-friendly ways, and are available for use at the time wished by the child would all support the principle of transparency. Transparency is important for young children’s creativity since it helps children to feel that the space belongs to them and that their creative processes are valued and supported by the adults responsible for the environment. Of course, children’s interactions with the physical environment depend not just on their sense of ownership of the space, but a strong sense of responsibility. Practitioners in Reggio Emilia help children to feel that they are responsible for the physical environment and must take care over how it looks and feels.

Active learning In an environment that supports active learning, experience and interaction are of central importance. Each physical aspect of the environment will be something that children can interact with. Displays on the wall that are seen as fixed and non-negotiable would inhibit active learning, while interactive displays on the wall, that children can choose how and when to add to or edit would support active learning. Active learning is fundamental in supporting creativity since children’s creativity depends on risk-taking and possibility thinking, and these are encouraged through uninhibited hands-on activity.

Flexibility In our discussion of affordances, we mentioned how creativity is supported through a perceived flexibility in the associations of different materials. That is, materials that are drawn into creative processes need to be seen as having a degree of ‘slippage’ (Denmead and Hickman, 2012) so that they can used in a variety of ways, rather than being associated with a right/wrong way of interacting with them. The principle of flexibility relates to the importance of materials and spaces that can be flexibly used, and the encouragement by practitioners to use materials and spaces in new and unusual ways. For example, while our primary association with glue might be the activity of sticking, in a Reggio Emilia environment, children may be invited to consider the other aspects of action that glue can be involved in – such as pouring, peeling, or making surfaces shiny.

Collaboration Reggio Emilia environments place an emphasis on collaborative creativity. Children’s creative processes are not understood as emerging from single

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individuals, but instead come about through negotiations and dialogues between multiple individuals. While this can sound unquestionably positive to all EY practitioners, setting up creative spaces and materials that invite true collaboration can actually challenge our typical practices. For example, many EY settings invite children to feel a sense of personal, individual ownership over their creative work. This is part of how the physical environment is set up, for example, in the personal tray or box systems that nurseries will have, in which children can store their individual work and take it home to show to their families. Similarly, there is a general encouragement for children to write their names (or for adults to write the name for them) on their pieces of creative work, so that the product can be associated with the ‘right’ individual. On the other hand, when we value collaboration over individual ownership, we design spaces in which children’s creative work is left open to the adding and editing practices of other children. On a practical level, this might manifest through leaving a child’s drawing out (rather than storing it in a box or tray) and making it available to the interactions of other children.

Reciprocity The principle of reciprocity suggests that people exist in a reciprocal relationship with the physical environment. The space that surrounds us is not simply a static shelter with a fixed organization which has been determined by particular adults; instead, the space around us is constantly acted upon by us. We constantly create and recreate the physical environment. In Reggio Emilia, children are invited to feel empowered to act upon the spaces that surround them. In their interactions, children turn an environment into a living, breathing place for creativity.

Bringing the outdoors in In Reggio Emilia, an emphasis is placed on the relationship between creativity and an appreciation for the natural world. Where better to find patterns, colours, and creative inspiration than in outdoors environments? How we construct spaces for creativity can invite more or less dialogue between the inside and outside environment. To bring the outdoors in, we might choose materials from outside (pebbles, leaves, sticks, insects, etc.) and bring these into the internal space, arranging them as materials to be used in the creative process. We also need to think about the access points that exist between the outside and inside environment. How easily can children move into the outdoors and can this be done at a time of their choosing? What are the barriers to moving



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freely between the outdoor and the indoor spaces, for example, appropriate clothing, practitioner–child ratios, and the positioning of the doors to outside?

Relationships The final principle in Reggio Emilia environments is that of supporting the development of close relationships between individuals. While the principle of collaboration relates to the support of particular moments in which individuals come together to create with one another, the principle of relationships relates to the sustained development of friendships. Individuals are more likely to develop close relationships and to have moments of emotional attunement when they are in particular types of environment. Small nooks and crannies in the physical environment can provide an opportunity for children and adults to be close to one another and to listen carefully.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Choose a space that is sometimes used by children for creativity and making activities. This might be a space in a formal educational setting (e.g. a nursery) or it may be an informal space that you know of (e.g. in a family home). Consider the space in relation to each of the eight principles outlined previously. Which principles does the space currently enact and which are not apparent? If you were to change the space using the principles as inspiration, what changes would you make?

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Set up an environment for children’s creative processes from scratch using the eight principles as inspiration. If it is not practical for you to set up an environment in reality, design an environment on paper using rough sketches and annotations to show how you have embodied each of the eight principles in the space and materials you have chosen and organized.

Ice: An observation by Laura During a family fun day held at the nursery where I work, there was an ice play activity laid out. Children could melt the ice to get objects out of the ice, including sea animal models, confetti, glitter, and seashells. Bowls were laid out for the children to pour water over the ice and some children used the warmth

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of their hands to try and melt the ice. One child managed to melt the ice with water and took pieces of confetti out which he saved in a bowl. Another child caught a small fish toy, which he held onto as he tried to melt more ice. When another child managed to get another fish toy out, the boy initiated a role-play with the child saying in a high-pitched voice ‘Hello, what’s your name?’ whilst bouncing the toy on the surface of the water, moving towards the other child. All children continued to work to get all the toys out of the ice, some working alone and some working with other children encouraging each other and giving each other tips on how to get the ice to break. Some children engaged in role-plays with one another as they completed the task, others showing off their prizes to parents and other children who watched the activity.

Setting up provocations This observation offers an excellent example of a provocation designed to stimulate creative inquiry and experimentation among children. The notion of provocations in the early childhood setting has become popular through the dissemination of ideas from Reggio Emilia. In Reggio Emilia, the educator sees their role in terms of provocation: as opening and facilitating dialogue and experimentation among children (Edwards, 2002). When we think about our role in this way, the space and materials of the setting play a key part in helping to provoke curiosity and creativity among children. In her article describing Reggio Emilia spaces, Tarr (2003) highlights areas that had been designed by educators to invite children to explore and investigate the physical world around them in open-ended ways. For example, Tarr noted small spaces made up of entirely black materials, including velvet, or spaces where all of the materials were transparent. Children would explore these spaces through touch and movement. These areas were a starting point for expression through various modes, without dictating to children what specifically they should make or create in response. Tarr also explains how art materials themselves are set up as a provocation: ‘the value of materials as invitations for children’ (p. 10). Provocations are a challenge to conventional planning. We may be used to setting up activities for children that involve a more clearly defined outcome in our minds. Sometimes this is an obvious part of the activity – an adult-created example of the outcome that the children can essentially copy – or sometimes it is less tangible and exists in our mind as an ideal outcome the children will produce. Provocations on the other hand are vaguer than this, since they invite children to respond in their individual way in a mode of expression that suits them. Setting up provocations and observing how children respond to them



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challenges us to rethink our conception of the child and shift from thinking about children as reproducers of culture to creators of culture (Tarr, 2003). With the ice in the observation, there was no clear pathway down which the children would travel. The practitioners could not have planned for the role-play that emerged in the space and this role-play would not necessarily occur again with a different group of children or in a different time and place. It is interesting to note that the ice activity took place at a family fun day rather than as part of the everyday activities of the setting. Had it been part of the everyday learning, would the practitioners have felt comfortable articulating the activity to each other and explaining it in terms of the developmental frameworks that are often used in planning? While provocations may seem like a simple idea in the context of any early childhood setting that values free-flow play, they actually require us to see the children and their expression differently: as ever-becoming and constantly under negotiation.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

In your experiences of different early childhood settings, what provocations have you come across? What did these provocations involve and how did the children respond to the provocation?

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Set up a provocation in an educational setting. This can be anything you like as long as it facilitates curious and creative inquiry and experimentation among those who encounter it. Your provocation need not necessarily be for children. If you don’t have access to an early childhood setting, you could set up a provocation for older children or adults in an educational or public space.

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Observe how individuals encounter and engage with the provocation that you have set up. You might photograph or draw these encounters, rather than write them. What do you notice about the responses you observe? How could you build on the responses with further provocations or projects?

Kymarni and the wallpaper Two-year-old Kymarni usually hangs back with two fingers in his mouth watching the slightly older children as they engage in painting or messy activities. On this occasion, he wandered into the Discovery area of our setting, which is a free-flow area for two- and three-year-olds. Large rolls of wallpaper had been

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laid down on the floor with several tubs of paint beside them, intended for a roller-printing activity. Kymarni watched the children as they dipped the rollers into the tubs and rolled them out. When Kymarni was invited to join in he shook his head slightly. The adult turned back to work with another child who needed her attention. When she turned around again, she saw Kymarni taking off his shoes and socks and putting one foot tentatively into the tub, then the other. He took his fingers out of his mouth and gingerly walked onto the wallpaper amid shrieks from the older children: ‘look, look!’ Kymarni seemed oblivious to the commotion his action had created as he walked across the wallpaper and then onto the floor. With a beaming smile, he pointed at the trail of footprints he had left behind. The clapping, laughing adult encouraged all the other children to peel off their shoes and socks and the roller-printing activity changed to a foot-printing activity.

Creativity as a network and ‘thing-power’ When we focus on the creative potential of spaces and materials, as in the preceding observation, we are encouraged to think about creativity as a network rather than as an individual trait. In traditional conceptualizations of creativity, it is seen as something that exists within some individuals. Glăveanu (2010), who represents the perspective of cultural psychology, describes this as the ‘I-paradigm’ of creativity: a belief that creativity is something that takes place within the individual. See Chapter 3 for more on this topic. Glăveanu argues that the ‘We-paradigm’ of creativity is currently challenging the I-paradigm. According to the We-paradigm, creativity does not exist in the minds of individuals, but instead exists between individuals and all other aspects of the social, cultural, and physical environment. This means that creativity arises in particular situations, rather than being something that individual children put forth into the world. If we apply this to the observation, we will think about the situation of the wallpaper, paint, other children, and Kymarni as generating creative activity, rather than simply labelling Kymarni as ‘a creative child’. One way to emphasize the role that physical materials have to play in creativity is to use the idea of ‘thing-power’ (Bennett, 2004). The concept of thing-power arises in the context of post-human philosophy and builds on actor-network theory (Latour, 2005), which suggests that we need to move beyond attributing agency and power only to humans. In these approaches, non-human materials are seen as having vitality and acting upon the world to the same extent that humans act upon the world (Schulte, 2015; Clark, 2014; Pacini-Ketchabaw, Kind, and Koche, 2017). If we apply this to the observation,



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we see that the wallpaper and the tubs of paint have creative potential and play as fundamental a role as Kymarni is in generating the creativity that emerges. When we consider creativity as a network and we respect the thing-power of the physical environment and materials, we see creativity as something that emerges rather than something that is expressed by individuals. Traditionally, early childhood educators have seen creativity as something that begins in the mind of a particular child that is then put into the world through the creative act (e.g. the creation of a drawing or a song). If creativity is emergent, there is no such thing as a creative idea that precedes the creative act: there is only the activity which takes its own direction based on various factors including the self-determination of the child and the thing-power of the various materials in the environment. This is explained in Knight’s (2013) and MacRae’s (2011) accounts of children’s creativity. They both describe children engaged in creative activity – drawing and junk modelling, respectively. They do not describe the activities as beginning with a child’s idea which is then externalized. They instead present the drawing and the junk modelling as something that emerges in unpredictable ways through a social, cultural, and physical network of activity. They use the term ‘lines of flight’, which was originally used by the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari to describe the unpredictability of the creative action that emerges in the situations they observed.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Think about what creativity means to you. How do you tend to think about creativity – as something that belongs to individuals or to networks of activity? Do you tend to describe particular children as being creative or are you more likely to think about situations as being generative of creative activity?

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When have you seen ‘thing-power’ in action in children’s creativity and making? Have you seen striking examples of creativity that emphasize the role that physical materials play in the creative activity?

Chapter summary ●●

Spaces and materials in the physical environment have affordances. Affordances are what objects suggest about how they should be used or engaged with. For example, a chair suggests the action of ‘sitting’

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so much that when we see a chair, we see the action associated with it rather than seeing the chair itself. ●●

Affordances develop as a result of the material’s physical limitations, but also as a result of social conventions. For example, when we write on a post-it note, the way we write is shaped by the size and shape of the post-it note, but it is also shaped by what we have learnt about the type of communication typically expressed through a post-it note.

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Since affordances develop as a result of social convention, creativity can arise when we disturb typical affordances and engage in alternative forms of engagement with physical materials. Encouraging children to see flexibility in the affordances of the materials around them is an important aspect of supporting creativity to emerge. For example, helping children to see that glue can be used for more than just sticking supports children to engage in creative activities involving glue.

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How we set up space for early childhood creativity is particularly important in the educational approach of Reggio Emilia. In Reggio Emilia the physical environment is positioned as the ‘third teacher’ and given central importance. Eight principles shape how spaces are set up in Reggio Emilia to support children’s creativity. These are aesthetics, transparency, active learning, flexibility, collaboration, reciprocity, bringing the outdoors in, and relationships.

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Another idea from Reggio Emilia is the introduction of provocations in early childhood spaces. Provocations are objects or organizations of space that open and facilitate dialogue and expressive responses from children. A key role of the early childhood educator is designing and implementing provocations that will inspire children to express themselves in individual ways. Provocations challenge traditional ways of planning for children’s creativity and making, since the outcomes are unpredictable and can occur in wide range of modes of expression.

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In cultural psychology, creativity is seen as a network of activity rather than as a trait that belongs to individual minds. Glăveanu (2010) describes this as the We-paradigm of creativity. In this paradigm, creativity exists in the relationships between individuals, wider society, and the physical environment that we interact with. This challenges our tendency in early childhood education to see creativity as something that starts with ideas in the minds of children and is simply expressed through the physical world.



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Theorists in post-human philosophy and actor-network theory have emphasized the important role that physical materials have to play in creative activity. The impact that physical materials have can be described as ‘thing-power’ (Bennet, 2004). When we observe creativity in action, we can challenge ourselves to re-position creative force in the thing-power of the physical materials and spaces in which children play, learn, and create.

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When we think about creativity as an ever-becoming network, it is a less linear and predictable process than when we think about it as a process that starts in an individual’s mind and is simply externalized. The term ‘lines of flight’, which was originally used by the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari, has been applied to describe children’s creativity and making as a way of highlighting the unpredictability of children’s creativity as it emerges in each unique network of activity.

Activities to deepen your explorations 1 Set up a creative activity for children or adults that involves playing and

experimenting with the affordances of materials. Before you begin, mindmap the typical affordances associated with the materials you have chosen to use in the activity, and all of the alternative affordances that you can think of. For example, if you are using glue, the typical affordance might be ‘sticking’, but the alternative affordances might be ‘pouring, peeling, rubbing, wiping, dabbing, making shiny’. During the activity, use these alternative affordances to inspire others to engage in creative ways with the materials. Document the experience of the activity in any way that suits and inspires you – photographs, videos, sound recording, written notes, and so on. 2 Observe a child or adult engaged in a process of making something.

Jot down notes during the observation. After the activity is complete, write out two narrative observations. In the first narrative observation, position yourself as a traditional creativity theorist who sees creativity as something that exists in the individual mind and is simply expressed through physical materials. In the second observation, position yourself as a theorist who understands creativity as a network that is as dependent on physical materials as it is on individual people. In the second observation, you might want to phrase the observation so that the materials are positioned as actors

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(e.g. ‘the paint sits on the table; when it is rubbed onto the cardboard, it transforms the effect of the junk model’). 3 Engage in a creative making activity of your choice. Set up a range

of materials that you can use – anything from charcoal to leaves to recycled tin cans. Apply the idea of ‘lines of flight’ by avoiding starting with an initial idea for what you are going to make. Instead, experiment with the materials in front of you and see what emerges. Afterwards, reflect on the ‘lines of flight’ that emerged during the activity. Has the experiment made you feel differently about supporting children’s creativity? You might want to create a photojournal to record this process.

7 Digital Creativity

Introduction

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his chapter considers children’s creativity in digital environments. We focus on how digital technologies are shaping the creative activities available to children and how children engage in digital making processes. The chapter begins with an exploration of the idea of digital affordances, that is, affordances that are typical of digital environments and thereby often shape children’s digital creative experiences. We then consider the sensory dimension of creativity and making in digital environments. After this, we look at adults’ involvement in children’s digital creativity and the various ways that adults tend to restrain children’s creative use of digital tools and technologies and the reasons underpinning this. We then look at two aspects of digital creativity that while not specific to digital environments appear to be enhanced through the affordances of digital resources in relation to creativity: personalization and the use of ready-made material. Throughout the chapter, there will be observations of children engaged in creative processes in digital environments, relevant theoretical links, and the Research Spotlight sections that offer a more focused summary of relevant research studies in this area.

Customizing photos on a mobile phone Ellie, a child of a family friend, regularly asks to use my mobile telephone to make ‘drawings’. She uses an app on my phone called Snapchat that allows her to take a photo and then draw over it or add ‘stickers’. After she has completed her work, she then sends it to others, and sits eagerly waiting for a reply. On one occasion, she took a photo of me and added a moustache and ‘crazy hair’, and afterwards took a photo of herself and gave herself ‘princess hair’ and a tiara. When she finished she showed me the two pictures and I laughed at the moustache she had given me. Since then, she has continued

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FIGURE 7.1  Digital photo-drawings created using Snapchat to draw moustaches, and even draws them on herself now, which she finds hilarious (Figure 7.1).

Digital affordances In the previous chapter on space and materials, we introduced the concept of affordances. To recap, affordances are the actions that are allowed and suggested by objects in the physical environment around us. For example, a chair affords sitting down. Affordances come from both the physical properties of these objects and how they allow our bodies to interact with them, and the social associations of these objects, that is, how we have learnt to engage with the objects (van Leeuwen, 2005). Over time, the affordances of objects will become more ‘fully and finely articulated’ (Jewitt and Kress, 2003, p. 2) as the social expectations that surround the object become more established. When we consider the relationship between creativity and digital technologies, we can ask whether digital technologies afford creative processes and engagement, or whether they stifle creativity. Of course, the term ‘digital technologies’ applies to a diverse range of digital resources that are available. When exploring digital affordances, we need to be aware of the wide variety of hardware and software that is available. The affordances of a tablet will be different to the affordances of a mobile phone, and to those of a desktop computer. For example, while tablets and phones afford portability, desktop computers do not. While tablets have a screen that affords watching video, phone screens may afford this less readily because



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of their size. As well as differences between types of hardware, digital affordances depend on the software that is being used. On an iPad, a wide range of ‘apps’ are available and these each have distinct affordances. Even apps that are all intended for art-making will be distinct in their affordances. For example, some may afford the inclusion of ready-made images while others do not and some may afford the inclusion of photographic material while others do not. While we can highlight the differences between distinct types of digital technology and their affordances, some affordances have been strongly associated with digital technologies in general. These are elements of the digital environment that, while not always present, often shape our engagement with the environment. For example, there is a growing body of research that suggests that digital technologies afford new types of touch due to the rise of touch screen interfaces (Crescenzi, Price, and Jewitt, 2014; Price, Jewitt, and Crescenzi, 2015; Flewitt, Kucirkova, and Messer, 2014). Other researchers have highlighted the opportunities for personalization enabled by digital environments (Kucirkova et al., 2014; Kucirkova, Sheehy, and Messer, 2015). Personalization is visible in Laura’s observation above, which demonstrates how the child can easily upload a picture of themselves (taking a ‘selfie’) and make this the subject matter of their creativity activities. Others have highlighted the presence of ready-made materials and the way that these in turn encourage remix practices and multiple authorship (Burnett et al., 2014; Sakr, 2016; Lankshear and Knobel, 2006; Knobel and Lankshear, 2008; Lamb, 2007). In the example above, the child has the option to include ready-made ‘stamps’ onto her photograph, drawing on a bank of ready-made stimuli in order to create something new. Another affordance often discussed is the connectedness of digital technologies, that is, the frequency and ease with which users can share their creative products with others (Mavers, 2007). In the observation, the child ends the creative process by sending the product to others and eagerly awaiting a response. In the following sections, we explore some of these affordances in more depth and link them to children’s creativity and making activities.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

What affordances do you associate with digital technologies in particular? How do you think digital technologies invite children to interact during creative tasks that might be different from their interactions when using non-digital resources? Make a list of the key digital affordances that come into your mind. To inspire this list, it might help to observe a child as they engage in a creative task using a digital technology.

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Drawing through touch on the iPad Two children aged five years are playing the game Squiggle on the iPad. This involves one of them starting a drawing and the other finishing it off. As soon as the girl is given the iPad she begins drawing using long strokes with her finger. The boy watches and shows increasing signs of excitement. He waves his arms around and sings ‘la la la, da!’, and then rubs his hands furiously over the table. He smiles throughout while the girl’s gaze is more serious and intent on the iPad screen. The girl slides the iPad over to the boy, who takes it with both hands and almost immediately begins to draw on the screen using his finger. He mumbles under his breath as he draws, then looks up and says ‘rainbow’ to explain what he has drawn (Figure 7.2).

Sensory experiences with digital technologies When early childhood practitioners talk about children’s creativity, they tend to focus heavily on the sensory experiences and exploration that will occur during creative activities. For example, in interviews with EY teachers and teaching assistants reported in Sakr (2016), practitioners described how messy and rich tactile experiences were an essential part of children’s artmaking activities. They suggested that digital art-making was ‘not that early years-ish’ because it was too clean, without the tactile feedback that would occur when children were involved in painting or junk modelling or using play-dough. Similarly, Løkken and Moser (2012) emphasize the importance of

FIGURE 7.2  Playing digital Squiggle on the iPad



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materiality and the senses in children’s creativity, describing childhood art as an ‘entwinement of places, bodies and materialities’. Of course it would not be correct to describe digital technologies as immaterial; digital environments are accessed through physical devices and bodily actions. However, how touch affects digital environments and produces digital output is fundamentally different to how touch interacts with physical environments. When a finger is moved through paint, the finger receives tactile feedback from the paint and there is a physical effect and physical sensation that match each other. On the other hand, when a finger is moved on the screen of an iPad when a painting app is being used, there is no physical sensation to accompany the effect created. Mangen (2010) describes this as the ‘intangibility’ of digital screens, and suggests that digital technologies create a ‘phenomenological detachment between action and perception’ (p. 425). This means that through digital environments we can create visual effects that are not associated with physical sensations. In the observation above, the children are rapidly changing what is visible on the screen but their sensory experience of the iPad remains essentially the same, as they feel their finger sliding across the cool, smooth screen. While Mangen’s (2010) account of sensory experience in interactions with digital technologies suggests that the sense of touch is lost, others suggest that touch is changed rather than lost. Flewitt, Kucirkova, and Messer (2014) for example suggest that the disconnection between visual reality and touch experiences can actually lead to new kinds of touch. The researchers observed children with disabilities interacting with iPads in the classroom and noted instances of vicarious touch, where touch did not directly manipulate the digital environment but, in seeing the manipulation of visual material in the digital environment unfold, children experienced a different kind of touch sensation. In the observation above, when the girl is drawing on the iPad, the boy is clearly engaged with her physical actions and turns this into a heightened sensory experience. He rubs his hands over the table in an excited way and this produces some of the touch sensation that he associates with the girl’s activity on the iPad. This could be seen as a type of vicarious touch experience. Flewitt, Kucirkova, and Messer suggest that experiences with digital technologies can involve a ‘further layering of haptic experience’ (p. 108) even if sensory experience appears to be reduced at a more superficial level. One striking characteristic of the observation above, which recurs again and again in other observations of children using digital technologies, is the fast pace of the activity. The children engage immediately through touch with the iPad, not pausing to think about what they might want to draw. As they work, the drawing unfolds at a rapid pace and they quickly fill the screen. This quality of the interaction contrasts with what Denmead and Hickman (2012) describe as an important characteristic of art-making: ‘slowliness’. Denmead and Hickman interviewed adult artists about the relationships they cultivated with the different

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materials that they worked with. They found that artists enjoyed using materials that enabled ‘slowliness’, which they explained as an ‘immersive pleasure state free from past prescription and future expectation’. Some materials would help to facilitate slowliness because they encouraged the artist to develop a spontaneous and emergent physical relationship with them. They gave the example of masking tape which affords a diverse range of interactions. On the other hand, the artists interviewed were sceptical about the potential of digital technologies to enable this kind of interaction. They suggested that digital technologies are over-stimulating to the senses and as a result they do not allow those engaging with them to enter an immersive sensory zone.

Research spotlight Crescenzi, L., Price, S. and Jewitt, C. (2014). Paint on the finger or paint on the screen: A comparative study. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 140, 376–80.

Aims This study looked at touch in finger-painting with preschool children, comparing how touch was used during finger-painting on paper or the iPad. The researchers were interested in whether different kinds of touch would occur in either environment.

Methods Seven children aged two to three years were observed as they fingerpainted on paper or on the iPad. They were video recorded from three different perspectives: screen capture, a camera on a tripod, and a camera embedded in the iPad looking up at the face of the child using the iPad. Analysis focused on the nature and extent of touch and comparing these between the physical and digital environment.

Findings The results from the study showed that the children used a wider variety of touch types and engaged in more touch when they were finger-painting on the iPad. The researchers suggested that this was due to the physical affordances of the iPad which enabled children to continue finger-painting without having to stop in order to pick up more paint with their fingers. While there was more touch in the digital environment, the researchers also noted how the digital environment could be seen as reducing the children’s experiences of touch. Although the children used more diverse types of touch in the iPad, what they actually felt did not ever change in the way that it did when finger-painting on paper.



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Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Observe a child as they make art on a digital technology such as the iPad. Observe the same or another child as they make art on paper, using paint or pencils. Focus your observations on the sensory experience and compare this dimension across the situations. Are there differences in the sensory engagement with the resources? How is this visible to you?

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In the observations, do you see moments of ‘slowliness’ as described by Denmead and Hickman (2012) and explained in the section above? Is ‘slowliness’ equally present in both conditions of art-making or is it more present in non-digital art-making, as predicted by the artists interviewed in the Denmead and Hickman study?

Helping Salma to hold the iPad Salma, aged two years, is drawing on the iPad using different ‘colouring’ apps that involve characters from her favourite television shows. She begins, settled on the sofa next to her mother, but quickly becomes more mobile, sliding off the sofa and placing the iPad in front of her on the floor or sofa. At one point in the activity, she picks up the iPad and holds it up high. This takes a lot of effort because the iPad is heavy relative to Salma’s strength. The reaction from

FIGURE 7.3  Salma holds up the iPad; her mother helps to hold it up

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the adults in the room – her mother and grandparents – is one of concern that the iPad is going to be dropped. The mother instantly goes to help Salma in holding up the iPad, holding the top of the device (see Figure 7.3).

How adults regulate children’s creative use of digital technologies The observation above demonstrates how adults can support a young child’s use of the iPad, while also controlling and restricting the child’s interaction. In this episode, the iPad is seen by the adults as a potentially fragile device that would be expensive to replace. Because of this, they control the child’s physical handling of the device to stop it from being dropped. This type of control is common in a context in which children tend to use digital technologies that belong to other individuals in the family or to the family as a whole. On the other hand, large surveys such as the survey conducted by Ofcom (2016) demonstrate that a growing proportion of young children own their own devices, for example, 15 per cent of threeto four-year-old children own their own tablet. These shifts in ownership may change the extent to which adults feel the need to control family interactions and protect devices while they are being used by children. In addition, a growing number of accessories are available to make digital technologies more robust and better suited to the often rough and messy activity of early childhood. Research suggests that parents are generally supportive of children’s use of digital technologies, though they may be anxious about how best to regulate interactions so that they remain positive (Palaiologou, 2016). At the same time, Palaiologou’s research also suggests that many parents see practitioners’ attitudes as much more restrictive regarding digital technologies. Many of the nurseries attended by the children in the study had a ‘no digital technologies’ policy and this was confusing to the parents, who believed that appropriate technologies could enrich children’s play and creative experiences. When we explore why practitioners often feel negative about digital technologies in the context of early childhood education, some reasons are value-driven, but others relate to the practical implications of introducing digital technologies into the early childhood setting (Sakr, 2016). For example, Sakr’s research on the interactive whiteboard (IWB) in a reception classroom of four- to five-year-olds found that the teacher in the class was concerned that regulating the children’s use of the IWB would be a struggle. She was most concerned about the children’s sharing behaviours



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and what would happen if they were not able to manage their own sharing. As a result, the teacher had introduced a sand-timer next to the IWB, and the children had to move on and use other resources in the classroom when the sand ran out. While this prevented conflict around the resources it also prevented any collaborative creative activity from emerging, on a device that was designed with collaborative interaction in mind. Rather than working together, the children queued up to use the IWB and refrained from engaging with each other as they drew on the IWB. Another concern that adults have around children’s interactions with digital technologies is safeguarding children in online environments. In the UK, the Bailey Review (2011) suggested that childhood is becoming increasingly sexualized and commercialized and that children’s engagement with media and online technologies have had a significant part to play in this. Free apps available for children and the advertising that happens in the context of apps can expose children to content that has not been approved or checked by adults surrounding children. Before the Bailey Review, however, the Byron review (2008) argued that a greater emphasis needed to be placed on empowering children to make good and safe decisions in online spaces, rather than reinforcing a discourse in which media and technology inflict harm on children. On the other hand Duerager and Livingstone (2012) suggest that the emphasis should be placed on parents to actively mediate children’s online experiences and to share positive internet experiences with their children, as a way of enabling children to make better decisions in these environments. Rather than engaging in ‘reactive supervision’ (Plowman and Stephen, 2005), interacting only when children have issues with the digital technology, adults need to engage more readily with children’s experiences of technology and be proactive in working out how best to support children to engage with digital technologies and online environments in ways that are creative but still safe.

Reflecting on your own experiences Engage with a child or group of children in a creative task using a digital resource, for example, drawing on the iPad. If possible, video record yourself as you engage in this task. Afterwards, reflect on your involvement. In what ways did you support the child/children to engage with the digital technology and in what ways did you control or regulate their interaction? Did you engage in a way that demonstrated you were worried about any of the concerns mentioned above (fragility, scarcity, and sharing, safeguarding)?

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Scaring ‘Daddy’: Personalized iPad story-making M (six years old) and her father (F) are engaged in personalizing a story using the iPad app Mr Glue. The app allows them to personalize a story by choosing the characters’ names, by adding drawings and audio recordings to the ‘pages’ of the story, and by choosing elements in the story such as the setting, props, and identity of the villain. M and her father call the main character in the story Daddy. They have come to a point in the story where Daddy receives a note that scares him. Underneath this part of the story is a space left blank for drawing or writing to be added. M begins drawing and F says ‘this is supposed to scare me remember’. While continuing with the drawing M replies: ‘Yep I’m trying to scare you … if it doesn’t … I’m just trying my best.’ F gasps loudly looking at what M is drawing; then he gasps again and laughs. He shouts in a mock dramatic voice: ‘No don’t draw anymore, I can’t take it!’ M responds by giggling. F says, ‘It’s a stegosaurus. I knew you were going to draw a stegosaurus. No it’s supposed to be a T-rex because it’s got the scales on the back.’

Personalization in digital environments Personalization is the incorporation of personally meaningful content into an environment or activity. Personalization is different to customization or individualization where individuals can make choices according to a predefined script or template, but are not invited to insert material that has a personal meaning to them. Personalization can occur in digital and nondigital environments. In non-digital environments, a typical example of a child’s personalization might be the inclusion of photographs and drawings in a scrapbook that they keep. In digital environments, a typical example of personalization could be in a story-making app which invites the child to add photographs, drawings, or audio recordings to a narrative that appears on the screen, as in the app used in the observation above (Mr Glue). While personalization can occur in both digital and non-digital environments, personalization is strongly associated with digital technologies because of the ease with which digital designers can build in the capacity for personalization. For example, story-making apps on the iPad can readily include the potential



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for children to take a ‘selfie’ and use this as a representation of the main character in the story. This would be much more difficult for a story that appears in print. Research has demonstrated that personalization can have positive effects on children’s engagement, particularly in the context of creative literacy tasks. Kucirkova et al. (2014) presented two case studies of personal story-making on the iPad in special schools. They showed through these case studies that personalized story-making could enhance motivation and interest among children when it came to literacy tasks and achieving literacy-related targets. Kucirkova (2016) argues that personalization is a motivating force on children because through personalization features, they realize their own authorial agency and the capacity to change the environment and activity according to their own aesthetic preferences. When they see an environment changing as a result of their decisions and actions, it feeds back into their self-esteem and motivation. Other research on digital personalized story-making suggests that it can have a positive impact on the social relationships between those using the app. As explained in more detail in the Research Spotlight (Kucirkova et al., 2013), personalized story-making on the iPad can bring children and adults closer together as they engage with one another over personally meaningful material. This can also be seen in the observation above, where the six-year-old child and her father are brought together through the personalization features of Mr Glue – particularly the naming of the main character and the opportunity for the child to create a personalized illustration. The child has to consider what drawing will scare her father and chooses content that has personal meaning to both of them: a particular kind of dinosaur. In demonstrating this awareness of her father’s preference, the relationship is strengthened. What does personalization mean for children’s creativity in digital environments? On the one hand, personalization appears to offer a broad range of authoring choices to children so that they can be more agentive in creating and sharing narratives. Rather than simply digesting narratives created by others, personalization enables children to shape narratives through personally meaningful content, such as photographs and drawings. On the other hand, personalization in digital environments depends on some kind of template. With Mr Glue, the overarching themes of the narrative and the basic plot structure have already been determined by the designers of the app. While a child can add and feed into this narrative, the breadth of authoring choices available would be even greater in the context of free graphic-narrative play (as described in Wright, 2007) where children come up with plots, characters, and settings from scratch.

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Research spotlight Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., Sheehy, K. and Flewitt, R. (2013). Sharing personalised stories on iPads: A close look at one parent–child interaction. Literacy, 47(3), 115–22.

Aims In this study, Kucirkova et al. aimed to develop insights into the nature of interactions that could occur when a parent and child engaged in personalized story-making on the iPad in the home context. They were interested in the affordances of a particular app Our Story and how these would contribute to the interaction that unfolded between a mother and daughter as they made a story together.

Methods The researchers adopted a case-study approach. They focused on one mother and her daughter aged 33 months old. They observed the mother and daughter as they made a story using Our Story on the iPad. This app enables the users to collect and curate photographs, audio recordings, and written text in order to make a highly personalized story. The observation was video recorded and analysed using multimodal interaction analysis, which focuses on the various modes used for communication (e.g. gesture, body position, and facial expression, as well as speech.

Findings The observation of this particular episode of personalized story-making involves a harmonious and smooth interaction between the mother and daughter. While this of course relates to more than just the nature of the digital interaction and the personalization available in the app they were using, the researchers did suggest that the close physical connection that was involved when the mother and daughter used the app together, and the personal meaningfulness of the content they were engaged in, were important parts of the positive interaction and atmosphere observed.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Download one of the apps mentioned above (Mr Glue or Our Story) or another app designed to enable children to engage in personalized story-making. Have a go at using the app yourself. After the experience of using the app, write a reflection on your experience: How did the personalization features impact on your experience?



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Did they increase your motivation and interest in the task? Did you experience creative constraints in the activity? ●●

Use an app with personalization features with a child that you know. Through observation or an interview with them that follows the experience consider the questions that you explored in your own reflection. How did the child engage with the different personalization features? What did they think of the different personalization features? How did you interact together around the personalization features – did they bring you closer together?

‘On my way to school, I saw a frog’ This observation was made during free-flow activity time in a reception classroom of four- to five-year-olds. The children had free access to the IWB, which was connected to the teacher’s laptop. A few children were using touch to engage with the IWB through the art-making software Tux Paint, which allows children to draw freehand or to add ‘stamps’ to the screen. The stamps available in Tux Paint are a mixture of photographic images of everyday objects and cartoon images (see Figure 7.4). Corey watches the activity unfolding on the laptop computer. He points at things as they happen on the screen and shouts out suggestions to the children using the IWB about what they should add next. At one point, a frog stamp is used by one of the children engaging with the IWB and a large frog appears on the laptop screen. Corey shouts ‘Frog!’ and points at the screen. He says to me: ‘I don’t like frogs. … When we were walking to school I saw a frog and I picked it up and I bringed it to school and chucked it away.’

FIGURE 7.4  Corey reacts to the frog stamp

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Ready-made material in digital creativity Digital environments for creativity are often characterized by the presence and prevalence of ready-made material. For example, in digital art-making environments it is often possible to select and insert ready-made images, and in digital music-making environments there are typically ready-made sound clips to choose from. If we consider the art-making software Tux Paint that Corey is seen interacting with in the observation above, it is typical in this respect. It allows the user to incorporate ready-made material through the ‘stamps’ tool, which offers access to a large bank of images of different types. The images available are a mixture of photographic and drawn images, and they range from everyday objects (such as a nutcracker, jug, and hammer) to more fantastical objects (such as a cartoon alien). The involvement of ready-made material in children’s creativity is controversial. For some, ready-made images constitute an imposition of adult representations of the world onto children’s creative outlook. For example, McLennan (2010) argues against non-digital activities that involve ready-made images such as the use of stickers, collage, and colouring outlines. McLennan argues that such activities limit children’s expression and shape their thinking and mental representations in particular ways. Similarly, Szyba (1999) argues that open-ended creative activities are much more rewarding for children than activities that are based on adult representations of the world. There is an important distinction to make however, between the activities that designers intend for children and the activities that children actually engage in. If we think of colouring books for example, these might well be limiting for children if they are used simply for colouring, but we see that children often use colouring books in imaginative ways that go beyond simply colouring between the lines. This debate is also discussed in Chapter 5, which focuses on the relationship between choice and creativity. In contrast to the arguments of McLennan and Szyba, others suggest that ready-made images are always a part of children’s creative processes, regardless of whether they are physically available or not. For example, Klerfelt (2006) suggests that children’s art always draws on what children see around them on an everyday basis, and what they see largely comprises ready-made images that are part of popular visual culture. So to try and rid children’s artmaking of ready-made images simply would not make sense. We looked at these ideas previously in Chapter 2, which focused on the relationship between children’s identity and their creativity. If popular culture is such an important part of children’s everyday lives, perhaps it is pointless to try and clear the environments in which children create of any reference to images and other types of material relating to popular culture.



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In addition to suggesting that ready-made material is always present in some sense in children’s creativity, researchers have celebrated the part of remix in children’s making. Remix is the process by which individuals take ready-made material and re-make it. The celebration of remix in children’s artmaking is not new and not specific to observations of digital creativity. For example, Wilson and Wilson (1977) talked about the way in which children’s copying of images when drawing was an important aspect of their creativity, and even led to children having a more critical approach to the popular visual culture that surrounds them. Heydon (2012) observed young children and adults in an intergenerational art class engaged in collage, and found that children tended to use the images in their collage in more experimental and non-literal ways in comparison to the adults.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Download a selection of free art-making apps for children. Document whether ready-made images or other types of ready-made material feature in these apps. If so, what kinds of material are available and how do you think these will shape how children use the apps?

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Observe children as they engage in an app which has ready-made images available and one that does not. Compare the process between the two apps. How is it similar or different?

Chapter summary ●●

As discussed in the previous chapter on space and materials, affordances are how individuals are likely to engage and interact with the physical environment around them. Different resources involved in creativity have different affordances. The affordances of crayons and felt-tip pens are different. Similarly, the affordances of different digital technologies – such as a tablet and a desktop computer – are distinct from each other.

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While all types of digital technology come with their own affordances, we can see that some affordances are strongly associated with digital technologies more generally. For example, capacities for personalization, easy sharing and connectedness, and the incorporation of ready-made materials are all features that characterize

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how digital technologies are often used and involved in children’s creativity and making. ●●

One of the concerns that surround young children’s use of digital technologies is the potential loss of rich sensory experiences. The experiences that children have when they interact with a smooth and cold screen are less tactile than those they might have when engaged in painting or other non-digital activities. On the other hand, some researchers argue that it is better to think about touch in digital environments as being different rather than seeing it as impoverished.

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Adults offer support to children when they engage in creativity and making via digital technologies. At the same time, they can also impose control and restraint on how children engage with digital technologies. In the home, this can stem from concerns about the fragility of digital technologies. In educational settings, practitioners are more likely to be concerned about how to practically manage the digital resources available, for example, in terms of ensuring that the resources are shared fairly across the children in the setting. These issues may relate to the finding that EY practitioners tend to be less involved in children’s use of digital resources than other types of resources; they engage in ‘reactive supervision’ rather than becoming more positively involved in children’s digital creativity.

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As noted above, personalization is a common feature of digital environments for children’s creativity. Personalization can be more readily achieved in digital contexts than non-digital contexts because of how easily external information from users can be incorporated into the environment. Personalization has been shown to have positive effects on motivation and engagement; it can also heighten closeness between users who engage together in personalization, since they experience the sharing of meaningful personal content.

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Another typical feature of digital environments is the presence and prevalence of ready-made material, such as ready-made images in art-making environments. This is a potentially controversial aspect of digital making, since some suggest that such ready-made material limits young children’s creativity through the imposition of adult representations of the world. On the other hand, some arts educators argue that ready-made images are always a part of children’s creativity, and that images are always remade by children through the process of art-making.



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Activities to deepen your thinking 1 Conduct a survey of children’s digital creativity that is going on around

you. If you know young children through family and/or friends, find out what types of digital creative activities they engage in as part of their everyday lives in the home. If you are gaining experience in an early childhood setting, find out what types of digital environments and resources the young children have access to, and what (if any) creative activities they engage with through digital technologies. If you are able to find information about both home and nursery/school, make some basic comparisons. Do children have access to the same resources in the home as in their educational environments? Do they engage in the same activities? 2 Interview some early childhood practitioners about their attitudes

to young children’s use of digital technologies. What do they see as some of the potential benefits of using digital technologies for young children? What do they see as some of the concerns around children’s use of digital technologies? 3 Choose a particular feature/affordance of digital technologies to focus

on. This might be personalization, ready-made material, the distinct nature of touch experiences, or another feature that you choose for yourself. Observe a child or group of children as they engage in a digital activity that involves this affordance. Write a commentary on the observation about what you notice about the affordance and how it shapes the children’s experience.

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8 Child–Adult Interactions

Introduction

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n this chapter we focus on child–adult interactions that occur during or around creative activities. We are interested in what role the adult plays in facilitating children’s creativity, and specifically how this can be achieved (or hindered) through verbal and non-verbal interactions around creative processes. We offer our experiences of interacting with children and our observations of others interacting with children during creative activities as a way in to thinking about how adults can engage with children around creativity, and whether some ways of interacting are better than others. We start by looking at Rogoff’s notions of apprenticeship, guided participation, and participatory appropriation. These can be useful concepts when exploring the role of the adult in facilitating children’s creative efforts and helping them to learn new skills, while at the same time not dampening their opportunities for creative expression. Secondly, we focus more specifically on child–adult conversations that occur during or after creative activities. We consider here how different adults may engage with children during creative processes, and how this in turn can influence a child’s involvement and attention. Finally, we explore what artists-in-residence can help us to learn about our interactions with children during and around creative activities. In this section, we also consider the potential pitfalls of relationships between teachers and artists, and what needs to be in place to support an artist-in-residence programme to be successful. Throughout the chapter, you will be invited to reflect on your own experiences of interacting with children during creative activities. Research Spotlight sections will offer alternative insights into child–adult interactions around creativity.

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iPad photography in the home A three-year-old girl and her father are taking photographs together using the iPad. They are taking photographs around the girls’ grandparents’ home. This is the first time she is using the iPad for photography. The four moments below show how the father supports the child to take photographs.

Moment 1 The father and child (M) are holding the iPad together. M leans in towards the iPad, looking intently at the screen. The father asks, ‘Shall we tap it?’ and M whispers back: ‘yeh’. The father taps the button on the screen that shifts the camera so that it is looking back at them. He says, ‘That’s me and you, shall we take a photo?’ Again, M whispers ‘yeh’, still holding the edges of the iPad. The father responds: ‘Press the button then’ and M presses the button.

Moment 2 As in the first moment, the father and M are both holding the iPad. The father is positioned behind M holding the edges of the iPad and gently directing the direction of the iPad. He says, ‘And when you’re ready, we’ll press the button, ok, shall we take one of Mona?’ The father gently reorientates the iPad while M continues to hold onto it. They rotate the angle of their bodies and the iPad towards the observer and then take a photograph.

Moment 3 M and her father move around the house, taking photographs of the environment. The phone in the house rings and the observer goes to pick it up. M and her father follow the observer, who picks up the phone and says, ‘hello’. The father stands back while M walks right up to the observer, holding the iPad out in front of her. The father lays a hand on the child’s shoulder and whispers: ‘That’s it, stand here.’ He moves M backwards a bit while M’s gaze is intent on the iPad screen. The father crouches down and helps M to position the iPad so that the image of the observer on the phone is clearly framed, and M takes the photograph.



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Moment 4 M and her father are walking through the hallway. M crouches down to take a photograph of the telephone handset in the corner of the hallway on the floor. The father asks ‘And what’s down there?’ and immediately follows this with ‘wait to take it’, suggesting to the child that she should be still before she presses the button to take the photograph. She takes the photograph and he comments: ‘That’s it.’ The father then walks towards the closed door of another room. Holding the door handle, he asks M ‘Shall we go into the front room?’ but the child does not reply. She is repositioning the camera closer to the telephone handset and taking multiple pictures of the object from different angles.

Apprenticeship, guided participation, and participatory appropriation Barbara Rogoff is an educational theorist who considers the processes of learning from a sociocultural perspective, building on the work of Vygotsky. She is interested in how children learn through the adults and more experienced children who surround them, and how this process is different depending on the culture in which it takes place. Rogoff suggests three key concepts in thinking about the social dimensions of the learning process. These are apprenticeship, guided participation, and participatory appropriation. When we consider the observation of a child and father engaged in a creative task together, we can see how these three concepts are applicable in practice and how they can enable us to think about the support we offer to children as they engage in different stages of a creative task. Apprenticeship is simply the participation of a less-skilled person and a more skilled person in the same task. Apprenticeship occurs all the time in and out of formal learning contexts. For example, when we are in the kitchen cooking with another person, we may be learning new skills and techniques from them if they are more experienced or they may be learning from us. In the observation outlined above, the child was a complete novice in relation to iPad photography but was engaging in the task with a more experienced other. Through their joint participation, many learning opportunities arose, even when the adult was not particularly intent on teaching or demonstrating particular skills. The concept of apprenticeship highlights the value of participating in creative activities alongside children, without the need for a particular learning outcome, objective, or process to be planned.

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Guided participation is the means through which a more skilled or experienced person can facilitate the participation and learning of a less-skilled or experienced person. The term ‘guided participation’ refers to the many types of interaction that go on during apprenticeship, which enable or catalyse the learning process. If we use again the example of cooking together, if we are more experienced than the person we are cooking alongside, we may slow down certain actions, or we may talk them through the process we are engaged in, so that they have a better opportunity to learn from us. Similarly, in the observation described above, the adult engaged in particular types of interaction to facilitate the child’s learning. He used language to suggest next steps or to instruct the child. He also used physical manipulation and gentle touch to guide the physical process of handling the iPad and reorienting the camera. In addition to these modes, gaze, gesture, and movement were also ways in which the father supported the child to learn new techniques. Participatory appropriation is the process of the less-skilled person becoming more confident and more independent in a task, to the point where they are able to direct the task for themselves. Through participatory appropriation, learners feel empowered to engage in tasks in ways that most inspire them, rather than relying on the guided interaction of a more skilled or experienced other. In the fourth moment of the observation above, we see the child directing the photography task for themselves. They are no longer listening to the instructions of the adult or relying on the adult’s physical guidance. Instead, M took photographs of the objects that were of interest to her and ignored some instructions of her father about how to take the image. For example, she did not listen to his instruction to wait to be still before taking a photograph; instead, she caught images in motion. When we support a child with a creative task, we are working towards participatory appropriation: We are hoping that they will be empowered to adopt the process as their own.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Give yourself an opportunity to simply engage in a creative task alongside a child. It might be playing with play-dough, building with blocks, making a junk model or whatever you like. Don’t think too much about your participation – try to participate in a way that feels comfortable and enjoyable for you. After this experience, reflect on how you found the experience. Was it difficult to simply engage in the task without thinking too hard about the child’s learning experience? How often do you have a chance to do this? What opportunities for learning arose that perhaps surprised you?



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Video record yourself as you engage in a creative task with a child. This might be the same task as in the exercise above. Analyse the video: What means of guided interaction do you see yourself using? Do you use speech, physical manipulation, touch, gaze, or movement in order to enhance opportunities for the child to learn? Try to identify three key moments of guided interaction.

Research spotlight Matusov, E. and Rogoff, B. (2002). Newcomers and old‐timers: Educational philosophies‐in‐action of parent volunteers in a community of learners school. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 33(4), 415–40.

Aims Matusov and Rogoff were interested in understanding more about parents’ forms of involvement in children’s education. They observed a school programme that involved parents coming in to work with small groups of children. They focused on the parents’ different educational philosophies, and how these manifested through interactions with children. They compared parents that were new to the programme with parents that were more experienced to see whether there was a shift in the educational philosophies-in-action that the parents adopted. They were particularly interested to see whether more experienced parents would take a more collaborative approach to working with children, rather than directing the activity more rigidly or allowing the children to do what they liked.

Methods The researchers conducted observations of forty-five parent volunteers working with small groups of children. The parent volunteers were divided into two groups: twenty-one ‘newcomers’, who were relatively new to the programme, and twenty-four ‘old-timers’, who had more than three years of experience in the programme. They videotaped the interactions and analysed them to determine the educational philosophy-in-action that these interactions represented. In order to do this, they focused on various aspects of the interaction including how the parent volunteer helped children who were struggling, how they organized the space, how they monitored progress in relation to the goal set at the beginning of the task, and how they sought to motivate the children. In addition to the analysis of the videotaped interactions, the researchers also interviewed the parent volunteers and collected self-evaluations from the parent volunteers. Although analysis of these materials was initially qualitative, in order to consider how the experience of the parent volunteers appeared to shape their interactions, they used statistical methods.

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Findings In line with their expectations, the researchers found that there was a shift among the parent volunteers towards a more collaborative approach as they became more experienced. While only 10 per cent of the ‘newcomers’ adopted a collaborative approach to their interactions with the small groups of children, 46 per cent of the ‘old-timers’ did this. This shift occurred despite the fact that the volunteering programme did not offer explicit training in adopting a collaborative approach. Instead, the researchers suggested that the shift occurred through the cumulative discussion and reflection between parents and teachers following the parental involvement sessions. This research is important for demonstrating how adopting a collaborative approach when working with children can develop gradually over time, through opportunities to reflect on particular interactions.

Trying new things with the help of an adult I have had a new key child who recently joined the under-threes in January. Well into his fourth week in nursery he would not engage in any messy play or indoor or outdoor play. Mum had spent a week settling him and whilst she was with him during that period I saw that he liked playing with cars and rolling them back and forth. As I spend about half the mornings in the outdoors he would follow me and watch the other children playing but would refuse my invitations to join in. In the Discover area of the setting he would hang back and watch and not engage. The breakthrough came when we had a painting activity. I invited the children to count out four scoops of powder paint on four different parts of the table. I then put out small quantities of water and asked the children to add the water to the paint and mix it with their hands. As these children had already been exposed to hand-printing and had permission to get messy they went for it with gusto. Paris came over and with a little car in his hand started rolling his car on the edges of the table. I let him do this for a while. He avoided the paint but moved the car around the table. I asked him: ‘Do you want to drive the car in the paint Paris?’ He looked at the paint and then at the car uncertain of what was expected. I then went and got a car and then moved the car in the paint. ‘Look Paris look at the marks the car is making.’ Paris imitated my actions, driving the car around in the paint for a while. I then put out a piece of paper and said, ‘Now drive the car on the paper Paris.’ He did and stood looking at the marks on the paper.



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This episode seemed to help Paris to feel more confident in messy and creative activities. In the next few days, I watched him engage in a range of open-ended messy art activities: sticking pasta onto plates, sticking crepe paper, and doing handprints and loving the experience.

Child–adult conversations during and about creative processes As children engage in creative activities alongside an adult, the conversation between the child and adult will shape how the activity unfolds and the child’s creative exploration and engagement. Eckhoff (2013) argues that because of this, informal conversation is a key pedagogical method in the early arts experiences of young children. It offers an alternative to activities that are too teacher-led and over-emphasize the products of a creative activity. At the same time, conversation can be a way of encouraging children to be effortful and concentrated in their creative exploration; it can also facilitate careful observation and skills of analysis. Thus, good conversation about creative experiences offers a halfway point between simply letting children ‘get on with it’ and imposing structures and instructions that are too rigid to allow children’s creativity to emerge. In the following Research Spotlight, focusing on Eckhoff’s study of an artist-in-residence and how they interacted with children during arts activities, we see how the conversations initiated and sustained by the artist have particular qualities. Most importantly, the artist was always encouraging in her interactions with the children, while not offering an abundance of generic praise. She noted progress carefully, but did not readily evaluate children’s artwork through statements such as ‘that’s great’ or ‘how beautiful’. Furthermore, the artist’s conversation was characterized by a commitment to open-ended inquiry, so that suggestions, questions, and comments were designed to open up the possibilities for the children’s next steps in the task. Although the preceding observation is more about encouraging a child to participate in art activities for the first time, we see some similarities between the practitioner’s approach and that of the artist observed by Eckhoff. For example, the practitioner adopts an encouraging tone without offering generic praise. She also encourages the child Paris to look at what he is doing: ‘Look Paris, look at the marks you’re making.’ While Eckhoff focuses on the conversations that arise between adults and children as a creative process unfolds, Bell (2011) comments on the conversations that practitioners can inspire among children about the artwork of others. Bell suggests that carefully posed open questions asked

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by a practitioner can help children to engage with artwork in different ways. Some questions prompt closer looking for example, while other questions encourage us to analyse the processes and techniques that an artist used in creating the artwork. Some questions provoke narrative engagement with the artwork, so that children are inspired to tell stories, while other questions invite us to evaluate an artwork and discuss our impression of the artwork in relation to our personal desires and appreciation. Bell also highlights the potential for inquiry around artwork to unfold not just through language. Children can engage in hands-on interactions that deepen their understanding and appreciation of an artwork, for example, the incorporation of the artwork into socio-dramatic play. Good conversations about creative processes, whether they are conversations that take place as a child engages in a creative activity or conversations about the creative outputs of others, depend on the right conditions. Bell (2011) describes the importance of children feeling safe enough to express themselves verbally in creative contexts, and also the importance of children having regular opportunities to do so, so that they become increasingly familiar with this type of conversation. Practitioners need to be fully committed to a process of open-ended inquiry, and prepared for the products of the task to be intangible or perhaps very different from what they had expected initially. In addition, there needs to be the time and room for children to reflect and converse with each other about creative processes, so that each individual can pursue the inquiry at their own pace. In addition to these conditions, both Eckhoff and Bell note the extent to which these types of conversation are concept and language rich. This means that in order to ask the right questions (i.e. open-ended and exploratory), practitioners themselves need to feel confident in relation to the creative process or product. Many adults do not feel confident in having a conversation about an artwork in a gallery. They are not in the habit of looking or listening deeply, of analysing what they see, or turning their impressions into rich descriptive accounts or narratives. While artists may feel safe and comfortable in these processes, early childhood practitioners are much less likely to be confident in this respect. Facilitating good conversations between practitioners and children about creative processes depends on empowering practitioners to feel relaxed in creative environments. Perhaps the way we train EY practitioners requires a greater focus on their own creative exploration and expression, so that the conversations flow from this starting point.



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Research spotlight Eckhoff, A. (2013). Conversational pedagogy: Exploring interactions between a teaching artist and young learners during visual arts experiences. Early Childhood Education Journal, 41(5), 365–72.

Aims Eckhoff aimed to explore the role that informal conversation can play as a pedagogical tool in the early arts experiences of children. She focused on the discourses that emerged between an artist-in-residence and young children as they engaged in collaborative art-making together, and sought to identify which aspects of the discourse were supportive of children’s creativity and motivation in art-making.

Methods Eckhoff engaged in intensive observation of an artist-in-residence programme that occurred over six weeks through daily two-hour sessions. She made video-recorded and audio-recorded observations of the session, as well as keeping written notes of what she saw. In addition, she conducted semistructured interviews with the artist and the teacher of the class in which the artist was based. She also collected video and photographic documentation of the artwork. In this journal article, Eckhoff presents one ‘telling case’ – a single episode of interaction to illustrate how informal conversation can play a fundamental role in facilitating children’s creative exploration and expression.

Findings The ‘telling case’ shows particular characteristics of the conversation that were important to the nature of the child–adult collaborative art-making experience. Eckhoff noted the way in which the artist modelled the slow consideration and discussion of artists’ work – noting colour, shape, and movement when looking at images of artists’ work, and encouraging the children to do the same. The artist invited the children to participate in an activity inspired by looking at the artist’s work, and noted the children’s progress during the activity through neutral statements such as ‘this is going to be very wide’. Though she noted the children’s progress, she did not impose any time constraints. During the sculpture task, the artist created her own piece of work and sometimes narrated what she was doing. Perhaps the most significant aspects of how the artist engaged in conversation with the children was the extent to which it was encouraging but also pertinent and open-ended while still remaining meaningful.

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Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Video/audio record yourself as you engage alongside children in a creative activity. What questions, comments, or suggestions do you make to the children during the task? Evaluate your interaction in relation to Eckhoff’s (2013) analysis of an artist’s conversations with children during creative activities. What aspects of the interaction are you proud of? What do you notice about how you could improve the style of interaction in order to develop the children’s open-ended creative inquiry?

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Start a conversation with a child (or children) about a piece of artwork that you show to them. Have a conversation that encourages careful looking, analysis of the artist’s processes and techniques, storytelling, and evaluation of the child’s impression. Use Bell’s (2011) recommendations as an inspiration in this task. Reflect afterwards on the experience. How comfortable did you feel? How readily did the conversation flow? What might you have done differently? If possible, do the same again with different children and/or with a different artwork. You do not have to use a visual artwork – it might be that you want to discuss a piece of music or a piece of dance that you watch via video.

Working with Giles Just before Christmas we had an artist called Giles who spent a whole day with us (in the under-threes group) and we were thrilled with the way he used scrap material and plain plastic bottles and got the children to transform them into lanterns. It was a very exciting time for all of us. The only thing he had required us to do was collect plastic water bottles. That was quite easy to do. For the preparation of the activity he got two adults – myself and another practitioner – to cut little windows through which an electric tea light could be placed and on the top of the bottle he asked us to tie a pipe cleaner which would serve as handles for the children to carry. He placed glue and pieces of crepe paper and the children applied glue and stuck the crepe paper. The engagement and eagerness with which the children took to the task was remarkable. One of our more creative children decided that he wanted to make a boat, and in no time at all with a little bit of tweaking a boat took shape.



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Working alongside an artist for just one day gave me a small glimpse of how easily accessible everyday materials can be used to engage children in activities, which could lay the foundation for a lifetime of creativity. Giles was able to inspire me by giving me tips about how to make fish out of willow branches and drums out of cardboard tubes. Since Christmas we have transformed plastic bottles and different-sized beans into shakers which we use regularly in our music sessions.

An artist-in-residence at Rowland Hill Nursery The photographs in Figure 8.1 are on display at Rowland Hill Nursery in Haringey, London. They document a project coordinated by the artist-inresidence at the nursery. The project focused on children’s explorations of light and shadow. You can see in the photographs some of the activities that were involved, including playing with body shadows on a lit wall in a darkened room. As well as photographs, the display includes written captions of some of what the children said as they carried out these explorations.

FIGURE 8.1  Documentation of the light and shadow project

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Artists-in-residence Artists-in-residence can play a vital role in facilitating children’s creativity in EY settings. The idea of having an artist-in-residence has developed in popularity with the growing influence of the Reggio Emilia approach in EY education, which involves the presence of an atelier (an art studio) and an atelierista (an artist who facilitates children’s work in the atelier). The atelierista is an important part of the commitment within Reggio Emilia to empowering children to express themselves in a variety of ways (Vecchi, 2010). In Reggio Emilia, practitioners consider the ‘100 languages of the child’, that is, the various ways in which children can communicate and express themselves, whether this be through drawing or sculpture or dance or dramatic play. As adults we have a tendency to focus on verbal and written language and to promote these forms of communication at the expense of others. Artists, though, have a special relationship with alternative modes of expression and interaction. Because of this, they are in an exciting position to support children in presenting their ideas in other modes. Studies of artists-in-residence have focused on how they can support teachers to become more confident and knowledgeable in arts pedagogy. As Eckhoff (2011) notes, research indicates that practitioners in early childhood often feel that their understanding of art is lacking and that they feel unsure about how best to support children’s experiences in the arts. By observing an artist engage with children, practitioners may learn new ways to add value to children’s arts experiences. Eckhoff observed how a teacher in an early childhood centre developed a new approach through working with an artist in the setting. Documentation of the six-week project involving the artist showed how the artist brought new ways of working with children which involved: extended time, small groups, new materials, focused aims, and opportunities to view and discuss artwork. The teacher in turn was influenced in tangible ways by seeing these interactions unfold. For example, she began to integrate art-viewing and art-making experiences for the children in a way that she had not done previously. While Eckhoff (2011) notes the potential benefits of having an artist-inresidence in a setting, others, such as McArdle (2008), have documented the ways in which the relationship between artist and teacher can be challenging and even detrimental in some cases. McArdle observed an artist-in-residency programme that changed little or nothing about how classroom arts pedagogy was occurring. Indeed, she noted that the presence of an artist-in-residence actually reinforced art as a marginal experience and subject that the teachers felt needed to be ‘left to the experts’. Rather than helping the teachers to feel more confident in teaching art, some demonstrated resentment about the artists’ ways of working, which were seen to be chaotic, messy, and even underpinned by an anti-school agenda. In addition, the artists involved in these programmes can feel stifled having to work within the rigid constraints of



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time, space, and money placed upon them by the school. As a result, they can feel that they are simply producing more ‘school art’, rather than offering a new perspective and way of doing things. Kind et al. (2007) observed the difference in artist–teacher partnerships that came about depending on the beliefs held by the particular artist. Artists who understood art as self-expression tended to encourage independent work and were reluctant to intervene. As a result, the teachers observing them felt that they had little to take away from the observations, since they were already warm and encouraging in the way that the artist was. On the other hand, when the artist adopted an ‘art as skill’ approach, placing an emphasis on the formal properties of colour, line, and shape, the teachers felt much more positive about their experience and believed that they had learnt important new techniques and pieces of knowledge that would support them in interacting with children. However, the researchers highlighted the potential for this approach to be limiting in the long term, with teachers becoming overly focused on art as skill and not opening up in a deeper way to engage with children’s art-making and creativity. So what makes the difference between an artist-in-residence programme that facilitates deep professional development of practitioners in the setting and one that creates no meaningful change? Kind et al. (2007) argue that there is an urgent need for more critical dialogue between teachers and artists during artist-in-residence programmes. They suggest that it is not enough to just expose teachers to artists’ ways of interacting with children; instead, there needs to be an opportunity to reflect together on how things are done and what can be learnt from one another. The researchers call this the ‘third space’ and suggest that within it, artists can develop as teachers and teachers can grow their artist-selves. It is the teacher’s ‘artist-self’ that will empower them to embrace children’s creative expression, and to enjoy exploring arts pedagogy.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Have you had the opportunity to see an artist working with children on a creative project? If so, what did you notice about the interaction? Did it encourage you to think differently about your own interactions with children during creative activities?

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If you are based in a setting (as a practitioner or volunteer) that does not have an artist-in-residence, research the possibilities for bringing an artist into the setting. Are there local or national organizations that will support you to do this? Speak to your colleagues: Would they be excited to have an artist in? What are their concerns (if any) about this, and what would they hope to gain from the experience?

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Research spotlight McArdle, F. A. and Spina, N. J. (2007). Children of refugee families as artists: Bridging the past, present and future. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 32(4), 50–3.

Aims The researchers aimed to explore the place of art in the lives of young children of refugee families in Australia. Rather than applying a lens of art as therapy, the researchers were interested in seeing how the children could and would use art as a language to explore and express identity, tell stories, and form social connections in the present moment.

Method The article provides a rich account of workshops conducted by an artist working with refugee children. The artist Peg conducted three visual art workshops in a school, working with nine children aged approximately eight years. The children came from a wide range of countries and had different levels of competence in verbal English. The art workshops were documented through video, photographs, and written field notes. The workshops involved a self-portrait project, in which the children explored the self-portraits of others and then created their own work through drawing and painting and by applying recycled materials.

Findings The researchers noted how Peg was able to balance opportunities for the children to learn about the artwork of others and to make their own. Through the former, she helped the children to develop their thoughts about art and its formal properties. Through the latter, the children explored different aspects of their identity and forged connections with each other in the present. Through the project, the children did not place an emphasis on depicting traumatic memories; instead, they used art as a language to connect in the here and now.

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Kind et al. (2007) draws attention to the importance of teachers developing their ‘artist-selves’. Do you have an artist-self? If so, how does your artist-self develop and where/when does it have an opportunity to grow? If not, do you feel that this is an aspect of yourself that has been lost or never existed? What is your honest response to the idea that developing an artist-self is an important aspect of developing as an early childhood practitioner?



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Chapter summary ●●

Rogoff’s concepts of apprenticeship, guided participation, and participatory appropriation are helpful in thinking about how we support children during creative processes. Apprenticeship describes the simultaneous participation of two people with different levels of experience in the same activity. Guided participation is the means through which the more experienced individual will support the less experienced individual with the activity. Finally, participatory appropriation is the process through which the less experienced individual becomes more confident and feels a greater sense of ownership and independence in the activity. These terms are helpful in understanding the extent to which learning and development can occur when we simply engage in a creative activity alongside children without a clear learning objective in mind.

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Eckhoff argues that informal conversation is a key pedagogical method when it comes to creative activities. Through careful conversation, practitioners can create balanced support for a child’s focused concentration and their independent exploration and expression. Eckhoff developed ideas about what this informal conversation should entail through watching an artist as they interacted with a small group of children during an arts project. She noticed that while the artist offered encouragement, they did not offer generic praise. Additionally, the artist maintained a commitment to open-ended inquiry at all times.

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Both Eckhoff and Bell note that supportive and enriching child–adult conversation during creative activities depends on the creative knowledge and understanding of the adult. These conversations are language and concept rich and therefore depend on adults feeling comfortable and confident in relation to the creative process the child is engaging with. This highlights a potential gap in most early childhood practitioners’ training, which does not tend to place an emphasis on creative activities.

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Artists-in-residence can show us new ways of interacting with children during creative processes. They can have a positive influence on early childhood practitioners by encouraging the practitioners to open and deepen their own interactions with children. On the other hand, the relationship can sometimes be a detrimental one if teachers feel that the presence of an artist simply absolves them of responsibility for this area of learning.

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Kind et al. (2007) argue that the success of the artist–teacher relationship depends on the space and time that the pair have for critical reflection and dialogue with each other. It is essential that both individuals have the chance to ask questions about each other and how things are done. In addition, teachers need space to develop their ‘artist-selves’, so that they feel empowered to engage with children around creative activities.

Activities to deepen your thinking 1 Set up a creative activity for you and a few friends. This can be any

kind of making activity, such as drawing, painting, or junk modelling. Set a loose aim for the activity; for example, ‘create a self-portrait using the materials in front of you’. Take it in turns to act as the facilitator of the task, each taking on this role for approximately ten minutes. Film the activity as it unfolds. At the end of the activity, ask each member of the group to write a reflection. Reflect both on the experience of being a facilitator and the experience of being a member of the group when another individual was the facilitator. Share your reflections and discuss what you found. Did different individuals have different styles of facilitation? What did these involve and what were the similarities and differences? Did members of the group respond differently to distinct styles of interaction from the facilitator? What style of facilitation enabled the members of the group to feel most supported, while still free to follow their own direction in the creative process? 2 Establish a relationship with an organization that sends artists into

schools, or with a setting which you know has an artist-in-residence. Ask to observe the artist in the school and the work they do with the children. What do you notice about how they interact with the children? What do you notice about how they approach creative activities, and how is this different to the teachers in the setting? What is the influence of the artist on the other practitioners in the setting?

9 Inspirations

Introduction

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his chapter focuses on the inspirations that practitioners draw on when engaged in pedagogic planning to encourage children’s creativity. Firstly, we explore the sources of inspiration that practitioners have in relation to setting up creative activities for children in educational settings. Secondly, we consider the importance of teachers’ own creativity in relation to their work with children. In particular, we look at practitioners’ presence and playfulness and what needs to be done to support practitioners in developing and maintaining these attributes. Thirdly, we examine in more depth the ideal of children’s democratic participation in the pedagogic processes that surround them and practical ways for children and adults to negotiate a creative curriculum together. Finally, we discuss different approaches to pedagogic documentation, which can support practitioners’ reflections on their practice. Practitioner reflections and some short observations of children are presented to support and further these discussions. Since this chapter primarily focuses on processes that practitioners engage in, it is particularly important that you engage in your own reflections. For some of the reflection activities, it will be necessary for you to have access to an early childhood setting, but some activities are more personal and delve into your own relationship with creativity and playfulness.

Foot-printing turns into foot-washing We set up a foot-printing activity because we wanted the youngest children to get fascinated by their feet as much as they were fascinated with their hands and making handprints. As children were supported to take off their shoes and socks and put them away, they talked about the patterns on the socks and what kinds of shoes they were wearing. Together, we counted and measured the scoops

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FIGURE 9.1 Foot-printing of powder paint, adding water before the children put their feet into the trays and mixed the paint with their feet. We broke into a rhythmic song with the children moving their feet sideways and forwards and back which required a lot of skill and balance. I supported them to move from the tray and to walk on large sheets of paper. There was much excitement in seeing the footprints emerge (see Figure 9.1). When Isaiah took hold of a paintbrush and painted the top of Lucia’s foot, I expected a shriek of protest from Lucia, but instead Lucia sat down and reached out for another paintbrush and used this to begin painting her own foot up to her ankle. We set up little trays of water on the floor with towels beside them. Children washed the paint off their feet as much as they could and dried their own feet before we helped them to put back on their socks and shoes. With those less able to manage washing their own feet, we helped to wash their feet, all the while counting, pulling, and tickling their toes amidst joy and laughter.

Inspired activities Adults who work with young children are constantly challenged to come up with new ideas for activities with children. Where do practitioners get the inspiration for their pedagogic planning? How do they strike a balance between

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offering a starting point for exciting learning interactions, while still observing children carefully and using this as a starting point for further planning? The idea of ‘curricula-as-lived’ can help us to understand this balance. This phrase captures the need for a structure in learning that emerges from everyday interactions. In the preceding observation, the foot-printing activity set up by the practitioners was developed on the basis of previous interactions around hand-printing and the excitement children had shown about this. The children’s interest in foot-washing emerged over the process of the interaction; as this was carefully noted by the practitioner making the observation, this might well inform future planning. Pedagogical planning can occur around various types of source material. Fredriksen (2010) explores how dream narratives, pieces of artwork, and music can be used by practitioners to work with children in participatory ways that invite their engagement and build on the interests and passions they express in response to the source materials. In the specific project documented by Fredriksen, an activity with young children started with a dream narrative shared by the researcher-practitioner about losing treasure on the beach. Following on from this, the children in the group went to the beach and looked together for lost treasure. The researcher-practitioner took photographs of the activity as it unfolded and these photographs were shared as part of a collective reflection with the children. Interspersed with images of artworks identified by the practitioner, the photographs prompted the children to discuss their experiences and find new ways of expressing and recording these experiences. In each of these stages of the interaction, the children’s actions in relation to the different sources of inspiration became further inspiration for pedagogical planning. Fredriksen highlights the delicate balance between the source materials introduced by adults and the children’s actions in relation to these materials. Some suggest that particular physical materials are fruitful in acting as a starting point for dialogic interactions. For example, Fredriksen (2012) suggests that ‘children’s encounters with the capacities and constraints of materials are considered extremely important for new understandings’ (p. 339). How some materials resist our bodily interactions with them can become the starting point for creative exploration. For example, how some fabrics resist being cut in particular ways can act as a springboard for further exploration about the qualities and textures of different materials. Similarly, Odegard (2012) explores the idea that materials which have a ‘lost function’, that is, they are no longer associated with a particular purpose, can engender exciting interactions, which in turn generate ideas for future activities. This was explored through a focus group of practitioners discussing junk modelling. The practitioners believed that junk materials encouraged high levels of creativity among children because the junk was undefinable and no longer had a clear and

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definite relationship with a particular use. This relates to the idea of ‘flexible affordances’ which was discussed in Chapter 6 on space and materials, whereby some materials are less tightly associated with a particular action or purpose. When children work with these open materials, the teacher’s role is to sustain the energy of the interaction ‘keeping the children’s ideas alive through attention and curiosity’ (p. 394). Nature might have a particularly important role to play in inspiring pedagogical planning because outdoor interactions are often more open and exploratory. Solberg (2016) offers a narrative of children and adults making art together in an open-air preschool. She documents the event of going to the forest area and forming shapes together with the children in the snowy landscapes using a range of natural materials. The practitioner carefully observed the outdoor experiences of the children and in response introduced the children to adultcreated land art as an inspiration. For example, the practitioner shared images of Robert Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty’ artwork with the children and used this to begin discussions with the children about how artwork changes over time when it is situated in the natural environment. This discussion primed the children to consider and anticipate the changes that their own artwork would go through. In the following Research Spotlight, Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw (2015) consider how children’s interactions with other species – in this case, ants and worms – inform their ecological understanding of the world and potentially how they appreciate or interact with other species. Thus, everyday micro-interactions in natural settings can become the starting point for discussions regarding much wider issues, such as our moral relationship to other animals.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Fredriksen (2010) offers just a small range of source materials that can be used with children to inspire activities – dream narratives, photographs, artworks, and music. What source materials have you used in your interactions with children, formally or informally? What responses were there to the source materials? You might want to choose a new source material to share with children and record how they respond to this and how your pedagogical planning develops as a result.

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Interactions in the outdoor natural environment can be particularly fruitful in sparking exploration and curiosity among children. Have a go at making a piece of land art with children – that is, a piece of artwork that is made with natural materials and in a natural environment. Reflect on this experience – what questions and ideas arose through the experience?

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Research spotlight Taylor, A. and Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2015). Learning with children, ants, and worms in the Anthropocene: Towards a common world pedagogy of multispecies vulnerability. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 23(4), 507–29.

Aims The researchers aimed to explore environmental education in the early years and how young children could learn to appreciate other species. The study was situated in the context of post-human research on childhood which aims to ‘reposition children within the full, heterogeneous and interdependent multispecies common worlds’ (p. 507).

Methods The researchers report on two multispecies ethnographies situated in two sites of early years education in Australia and Canada. Such an ethnographic approach is ‘longitudinal, situated, immersed, relationship-based and affectattuned’ (p. 573). The study describes interactions that arise between children, worms, and ants. The article presents a series of encounters and comments on the pedagogical dilemmas that arise in relation to these encounters.

Findings Based on the encounters recorded in this article, the researchers argue for the importance of taking note of other species and learning to be affected by other animals, such as worms and ants. They suggest that this is an integral part of the early years pedagogy. Interactions with ‘everyday small things’ (p. 525) offer an opportunity to transform the way we see ourselves in the world and to move beyond a perspective in which we only engage with humans and fail to adopt an ecological perspective.

Are you creative? (Bindu’s reflection) Prior to reading about being creative with a small ‘c’ I had not considered myself as being particularly creative. But on reflecting and in the course of writing and contributing to chapters in this book I can see how my teenage aunts and the way they weaved creativity into everyday activities have shaped me and to them I owe a debt of gratitude. By living in proximity to them and seeing them making do with few resources at their disposal they tried to bring colour,

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life, and joy into an otherwise very drab world. They made papier mache bowls and jugs with my sister and me; we saw them knitting, crocheting, and cooking creatively; they wrote poems in Gujarati for us and made up songs to make us laugh with delight. My early childhood was shaped by this. However, the rigid education system I experienced soon ironed all that out of me and it was not until I had my own children and a career change into early years brought out the creativity with the small ‘c’ in me. Nature was that which inspired me and the sea in particular was a gift beyond compare. I was also very fortunate in working with very supportive parents, who introduced me to a musician, a carpenter, a gardener, and a potter. Armed with a vast array of children’s books, wooden blocks, lego, a dozen puzzles, sari materials, and a wild garden, I had the great privilege of setting up a tiny preschool. For the next five years I was in my most creative mode and it is there that I was at my most creative and the children under my care flourished. Coming back to Britain and working in my present setting has been another period in my life as again I have been given the opportunity to work with a very supportive team who value creativity and support me in having continuous professional development, particularly in music. Just recently, I have had the opportunity of attending an outstanding nursery which is based on the Reggio Emilia approach with a forest and beach school.

Teachers as creators In order to support children’s creativity, practitioners in early childhood education need to be highly responsive and attuned to children. Maier-Hofer (2015) draws on the work of Olsson (2012) to describe this as a ‘thinner skin mentality’ – a term which highlights the way in which early childhood practitioners are readily affected by the events that occur around them and their unfolding relationships with others. Rather than assuming that they understand the children they work with, Maier-Hofer suggests that teachers should develop and maintain an acute responsiveness to children’s passions and their emotions. An attitude of uncertainty can help a teacher to open up opportunities for creativity and new experiences. These ideas are echoed by Taggart (2015) who discusses the extreme need for attunement in EY education and care, and builds on Gerber’s (2013) advocacy for an intent watchfulness when working with young children. Rather than thinking about the next part of the day or the next developmental milestone, early childhood

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practitioners support children’s creativity by bringing themselves into the present moment and staying there. Along with presence and attunement, playfulness has been noted as an important attribute among early childhood practitioners. Goouch (2008) discusses the need to develop ‘playful pedagogies’ that are ‘not technicist but human, not delivery but engagement’ (p. 94). Relating this to slightly older children, Walsh et al. (2011) advocate ‘playful structure’, which occurs when playfulness is seen as a dynamic of the interaction between a child and adult, rather than just focusing on whether an activity is child- or adultinitiated. If an adult can be playful in their interactions with children, even adult-initiated and structured activities can foster risk-taking, immersion, and playfulness among children. Glynn and Webster’s (1992, 1993) research into adult playfulness suggested five important characteristics that adults can develop in order to be more playful. These are spontaneity, expressiveness, fun, creativity, and being silly. This would suggest that if adults take the time to develop these attributes in their everyday lives – cultivating a sense of fun and expressiveness for example – this will impact positively on their interactions with children. In Bindu’s reflection on the development of her own creativity, her aunts’ sense of playfulness was an integral part of her childhood experiences and informed expressions of her own creativity, which occurred much later in her own life. While presence and playfulness are essential in enabling children to be creative, practitioners can find the cultivation of these qualities emotionally draining. Taggart notes that the intense emotional engagement of being attuned and responsive to children can be both a joy and a stress for early childhood practitioners, and that this is rarely recognized in official policy discourses relating to the early childhood workforce. Taggart suggests that mindfulness practice might be a practical way to support practitioners in developing their sense of presence and responsiveness in their work with children while avoiding exhaustion. In addition to mindful practice, early childhood practitioners may need to feel part of a dynamic community of practice in order to allow them to cultivate presence and playfulness in the long term. In the following Research Spotlight, Sumison (2002) explores how one enthusiastic and determined early childhood teacher lost her passion for early childhood teaching when she found herself increasingly isolated in an educational setting and unable to share her experiences with sympathetic others. In contrast, Bindu’s reflection highlights the impact of being surrounded by a supportive team and how this feeds her passion for developing a creative approach to teaching.

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Research spotlight Sumsion, J. (2002). Becoming, being and unbecoming an early childhood educator: A phenomenological case study of teacher attrition. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(7), 869–85.

Aims Sumison’s research aimed to explore the lived experience of early childhood educators by focusing in depth on one specific early childhood educator, who, over the course of seven years qualified, practiced, and then resigned from the role of early years educator. The study contributes to wider discussions about reasons for staff leaving early childhood education.

Methods The research employed a phenomenological case study designed to explore how one individual experienced the world. In-depth conversational interviews were conducted with one individual – Sarah – over a seven-year period. Particular attention was paid to the metaphors that Sarah used to make sense of her experiences as an early childhood educator; these metaphors were explored partially through discussions around drawings that Sarah made to reflect her experiences. The researcher engaged in an open and emergent coding process, developing themes that were reoccurring strands of thought and discussion in Sarah’s experience. This analysis was shared with Sarah and subject to discussion before publication in this paper.

Findings Sarah’s drawings and metaphors were an important part of Sarah’s reflective process. This aspect of the study suggests that creative arts practices can be an important part of helping practitioners to reflect on their experiences of working in early childhood education. Sarah’s drawings and metaphors suggested that she developed a strong sense of personal–professional identity in early childhood education, but that this occurred amidst feelings of isolation and a perceived lack of collegial support from colleagues. In turn, feelings of isolation led to Sarah feeling depleted and exhausted. Previous studies have shown a relationship between a lack of community and burnout. These factors were seen as rainclouds by Sarah: ‘Over time, the rain continued to dampen and eventually erode her passion for teaching’ (p. 880). The findings from this study suggest that in order to maintain passion and creativity, early childhood educators need to feel part of an inspiring and responsive community of practice. More attention needs to be paid to workplace dynamics, professional relationships and interactions that hold and feed the enthusiasm of early years teachers.

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Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Explore your own relationship with creativity and playfulness. Are you creative? Are you playful? Write a reflection in response to these questions. You might want to reflect on important experiences in your life, as Bindu did in her reflection – times when you felt most and least creative. In discussion with others, consider how your thoughts and feelings about your own creativity impact on how you engage with children.

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Engage in an episode of creative activity with a child or group of children. After the episode, reflect on how present you felt during the activity. Was your mind completely on what was occurring in the now, or did you find your mind wandering? If the latter, what thoughts and feelings were distracting you from the present moment? Document these in writing, as images, or in discussion with others.

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Imagine you are a nursery manager. An important duty you have is to look after the practitioners who work in the nursery and to protect them from the emotional exhaustion discussed by Taggart (2015) and Sumison (2002). Brainstorm the steps you will take to support the practitioners in protecting themselves from this exhaustion.

Washing up dinosaurs We have play-dough on offer as a continuous provision. Practitioners make it with the children, incorporating numeracy activities and language: measuring out the flour and salt, using the language of more or less, one more, and counting the number of scoops of flour during the process of making the playdough. Halfway through one play-dough playing session, some soapy sponge from the dolly washing activity found its way into the play-dough and this led to a washing up activity involving all of the objects that we use with the play-dough. The children started to wash up all the china cups, plates, and dinosaurs with play-dough stuffed in their mouths. They washed up the buses and cars that had become encrusted with play-dough and the forks and knives we use to manipulate the play-dough.

Democratic participation The observation above indicates that practitioners in early childhood are often trying to balance two types of planning: planning that leads to a particular activity (e.g. the numeracy objectives involved in making play-dough) and

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planning that arises in the moment from engagement with an activity (e.g. washing up objects in the play-dough area). Responding to children’s interests and passions as they arise is a central part of what has been described as ‘the negotiated curriculum’, ‘site-oriented pedagogy’ (McClure, 2011), ‘democratic participation’, or ‘curricula-as-lived’ (Fredriksen, 2010). In these ways of approaching early childhood education, the emphasis is on what children bring to their learning, rather than prioritizing predetermined learning objectives. Some frameworks in early childhood education build in this emphasis. For example, Norwegian legislation includes a commitment to the participation of young children in their own education (Fredriksen, 2010) and in the Reggio Emilia approach, the activities for the day, week, month, and year arise through site- and cohort-specific engagement. In these approaches, the same learning objectives and activities cannot be appropriate for all children and practitioners need to observe children closely to see what will be most relevant. One way of facilitating children’s democratic participation in pedagogic planning described by Richards (2014) is for practitioners to forge a ‘longterm commitment to understanding the themes and big ideas that children explore through art’ (p. 153). Richards explores how by looking at children’s art experiences closely we can reflect on the pedagogical support and planning we offer, including how we interact with children and how we structure the environment and resources that surround children. She followed four children’s art experiences over a year, both in the home and at nursery/school, inviting the children to photograph and discuss their experiences. Richards focuses particularly on one of the children – Lee, a four-year-old Chinese-Australian boy – whose personal themes were maps, games, and computers. These themes recurred repeatedly in Lee’s drawings. Richards noted a disjunction between art experiences for Lee in the home and those at the preschool. The routines of the preschool sometimes intruded on Lee’s experiences of drawings, and at times he became frustrated in communicating to others about his drawings, particularly when they were unreceptive to engaging with the three recurring themes in his art-making. Richards highlights that Lee’s inspiration from the environment around him was not based on how attractive the environment was, but rather in terms of how much relevant information and ideas there were in the environment for him to draw on. This suggests that a practical way of incorporating democratic participation is to pay particular attention to the themes that arise in children’s creative processes and introduce resources into the environment that respond to these themes. There is a crucial difference between child-centred pedagogies and democratic participation. Langford (2010) questions child-centred pedagogies on the basis that they often suggest practitioners should be invisible and that children should have complete choice. Langford challenges the idea that practitioners should just be a ‘stage manager’ and also suggests that

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the social expectations which surround every child mean that their complete choice is just an illusion. When we move towards democratic values in which all can participate, the practitioner becomes more than just a ‘stage manager’; they emerge as a ‘researcher and thinker, a reflective practitioner who seeks to deepen her understanding of what is going on and how children learn through documentation, dialogue, critical reflection and deconstruction’ (Dahlberg, Moss and Pence, 2007, p. 82). In turn, this suggests that we need to be concerned with the risk-taking, imagination, and playfulness of everyone in the setting and that this includes the adults as well as the children.

Research spotlight Serriere, S. C. (2010). Carpet-time democracy: Digital photography and social consciousness in the early childhood classroom. The Social Studies, 101(2), 60–8.

Aims The study explores how to develop curricular materials that respond to the diversity of the preschool classroom and the potentials of digital photography in this project. The research examines a particular method used to create time for collective reflections on social participation in the classroom.

Methods The researcher reports on a participatory photo-methodology that they developed working with children in a preschool classroom over three years. This photo-methodology involved the researcher taking photographs of children engaged in their everyday activities and using these photographs to elicit reflective conversations about social interactions and how these might unfold differently in line with the values of ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’. The researcher recorded their experiences of developing and embedding this approach through field notes, audio recordings, and social mappings.

Findings The experiences recorded by the researcher suggest that photographs taken of the class in action can be an important springboard for powerful discussions about social dynamics with children. This is a concrete way of introducing children to the concepts of equality and fairness and inviting them to reflect on them in relation to their everyday lives. Serriere suggests that this method could be the starting point for a ‘carpet-time democracy’ in which teachers lead children in lively discussions of photographs from the class of children engaged in social interactions.

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Research spotlight Bae, B. (2009). Children’s right to participate–challenges in everyday interactions. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 17(3), 391–406.

Aims The research investigates how the aim of democratic participation, which is a key aspect of the Norwegian Framework Plan for preschool education, plays out through everyday interactions in a preschool setting.

Methods The research was based on in-depth qualitative studies conducted in two Norwegian kindergartens serving children aged three to six years. Participant observation focused on the teacher–child relationships in these settings as they played out through micro-interactions. The study was conducted over an eight-month period and in an ongoing collaboration with the teachers in the settings. Seven hundred and thirty interactions were transcribed and analysed.

Findings The interactions recorded as part of the study were categorized broadly by the researcher as ‘spacious’ and ‘narrow’. Spacious interactions were those where children could exercise control and assume the role of an active subject, whereas narrow interactions were characterized by high levels of teacher control. The researchers noted the importance of embracing free play as a means of increasing the likelihood of spacious interactions. When play was embraced by practitioners for its own sake (rather than adopting a developmental psychological perspective and seeing play as a tool in achieving particular developmental milestones), children could exert more control over their environment. The researchers advocate ‘play as a practice where children exercise freedom of speech and of thought as well as resisting norms in their surroundings’ (p. 401).

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Spend the morning observing in a nursery setting. Pay particular attention to the two types of planning that practitioners often engage in: planning according to predetermined outcomes (e.g. activities designed to inspire numeracy learning) and planning that arises in the moment as a result of how events unfold. How much time and space is dedicated to each type of planning?

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If you are based in a setting, have a go at implementing the democratic participation model suggested by Fredriksen (2010). Start with a source of inspiration (e.g. a dream narrative) that can help children to design their own activities, with further input from you through other relevant sources of inspiration. Record how the project unfolds choosing modes and media that feel right to you.

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If you are based in a setting, have a go at implementing the ‘carpettime democracy’ described by Serriere. With permission from the setting, take photographs of the children engaged in critical moments of interaction during the morning, and in the afternoon of the same day, use the photographs as the basis for discussing social relationships and the concepts of ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’.

What type of documentation best helps you to reflect? (Laura’s reflection) I have found video observations to be most useful in that I am able to have a second look at the observations and then notice facial expressions and other details that I may not have noticed during the live observation. Although there is a lot more work involved with video observation (having the equipment ready, transferring the video file to another device, gaining consent from parents to carry out video observations, etc.), I have favoured these over other observation methods and will continue to use this method wherever possible in future observations. I find that this type of observation encourages me to pay attention to the small details of the interaction. These small details help to challenge me in the way I think about my work with young children. They prompt a deeper level of reflection in me.

Pedagogic documentation Pedagogic documentation is the process of documenting children’s learning and using the documentation as a starting point for reflecting on pedagogic approaches and planning. In the preceding reflection, Laura discusses the use of video as a form of pedagogic documentation. By gathering small video files of children engaged in learning processes and watching these videos back, Laura’s reflections are enabled. The details available through reviewing the videos help to deepen Laura’s understanding and to challenge her initial

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perspectives of what was happening from the children’s perspectives. Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence (2007) suggest that through documentation, pedagogic practices are made visible and as a result they are opened up to reflection. Rintakorpi, Lipponen, and Reunamo (2014) evoke Ferraris’ (2011, 2013) distinction between weak and strong documents when considering documentation. While weak documents are just a record of what has happened, strong documents have an impact on individuals and institutions. With pedagogic documentation, we would hope to create strong documents that inspire change. Many have highlighted the diversity of pedagogic documentation in terms of the lens and focus that is adopted by those documenting. For example, Alvestad and Sheridan (2015) note that depending on the dominant paradigm for learning at work in a setting, pedagogic documentation will be conducted differently. If the dominant paradigm is developmental psychology, documentation is more likely to focus on competencies and milestones. If a sociocultural lens is adopted instead, the focus is much more likely to be on the relational learning process and the cultural, social, and material elements in the environment surrounding the child. Knauf (2015) highlights another tension in pedagogic documentation between the use of documentation as proof that specific learning outcomes have been achieved or as a way of engaging with the learning processes and interests of children. While much of the literature suggests binaries in how pedagogic documentation is achieved (developmental vs. sociocultural, outcomes- vs. process-focused), Knauf’s (2015) empirical research into the everyday realities of pedagogic documentation suggests that the differences between settings are more complex than this. Knauf’s study looked at forty case studies of pedagogic documentation across German early childhood centres. The study found that approaches to documentation could not be easily categorized as outcomes- or process-focused because these categories were not mutually exclusive. While a teacher could document with a focus on process, the documentation could later be used to demonstrate the achievement of particular objectives and milestones. Based on an open coding of the case studies, Knauf created a typology whereby each setting could be rated on two continuous scales: the importance placed on documentation and the standardization of the documentation (i.e. how much structure was imposed on the form of documentation). These scales corresponded to more fundamental differences in how children were positioned within the pedagogic process. For example, in a setting where there was low importance placed on pedagogic documentation and high standardization, children were seen as passive in relation to the pedagogic documentation. In these settings, documentation was a tool for assessment and tended to focus on individual children rather than group processes.

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Pedagogic documentation can be done in various ways. Most typically, settings use photographs, written notes (including narrative observations), and videos as a way of documenting learning processes. Each of these forms of pedagogic documentation comes with challenges as well as benefits. In Laura’s reflection, documenting through video enables repeated viewing which can facilitate a greater depth of reflection; at the same time, video can involve technical challenges. Laura notes that it can be difficult to have the equipment ready and to transfer video files to devices where they are easily shareable. Rintakorpi (2016) conducted a study on how early childhood teachers experience documentation as part of their everyday working lives. Thirty-five kindergarten teachers were sent questionnaires on the challenges, benefits, and effects of documentation. Challenges mentioned by the practitioners were issues of time and technical difficulties, as discussed by Laura. The practitioners also shared a deeper challenge around confidence in knowing how to document. Many teachers did not feel that documentation ‘flowed’ in their everyday pedagogic practices; they still felt hesitant in relation to the choices they were making regarding what to document and the most appropriate form of documentation to use. Despite these challenges, most practitioners were positive about pedagogic documentation and saw it as an essential part of professional identity and development, developing a sense of community (including parents), and for reflections on pedagogy and planning for the future. While some practitioners mentioned children’s participation in documentation, this was not the case for a majority of settings, and Rintakorpi suggests a particular need for development in pedagogic documentation in relation to the democratic participation of children in pedagogic processes.

Research spotlight Rintakorpi, K. and Reunamo, J. (2016). Pedagogical documentation and its relation to everyday activities in early years. Early Child Development and Care, 1–12.

Aims The study aimed to explore the relationship between pedagogic documentation and children’s everyday activities in centres of early childhood education. While many studies have collected qualitative data in relation to this area of exploration, few studies have gathered quantitative data. The researchers gathered quantitative data to examine potential correlations between pedagogic documentation and different aspects of early childhood practice and the experiences of children in early childhood settings.

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Methods One hundred and ninety-four early childhood settings in Finland took part in the study. Various methods were used to collect information about pedagogic documentation and the everyday activities and engagement of children. These included observations of 2,276 children through systematic sampling, evaluations of children’s skills conducted by the teachers, and evaluations of the learning environments. The data was analysed through statistical measures, predominantly focusing on correlations between the extent to which pedagogic documentation was used in a setting and the children’s activities and skills.

Findings Pedagogic documentation was correlated with other aspects of a childcentred approach, in which children’s ideas and interests were valued and used in planning. There was a significant correlation between documentation and creativity, self-expression, and the adult support of free play. There was also a correlation with the personalization of learning, so that in settings where documentation occurred frequently, there was more likely to be work in small groups rather than whole-class teaching. The observations of children in action showed correlations between pedagogic documentation and what the researchers deemed ‘high quality’ activities. Children in settings where documentation was common were more likely to show positive emotions and to show greater autonomy. There was also a correlation between documentation and safe attachment of the children to practitioners in the environment. These correlations suggest that pedagogic documentation is closely related to many positive processes surrounding learning in early childhood environments.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

What forms of pedagogic documentation are implemented in the setting where you work/volunteer? How does this correspond to the different approaches to documentation outlined in Alvestad and Sheridan (2015) and Knauf (2015)? Is the dominant paradigm influencing how pedagogic documentation is carried out developmental or sociocultural? Is the pedagogic documentation focused more on outcomes or processes? Where would you place the setting’s approach to pedagogic documentation on Knauf’s scales of importance and standardization?

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Chapter summary ●●

Pedagogical planning in early childhood is not an exact science. Practitioners are inspired in their planning by a wide range of different source materials and aim to strike a balance between introducing their own ideas and responding to the passions and interests of the children they work with.

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Some materials are particularly exciting as a starting point for creative activities. For example, Fredriksen (2012) suggests that the resistance offered by some materials (e.g. fabric) can help children to experiment and develop new understandings, and Odegard (2012) suggests that materials with a ‘lost function’ (e.g. junk) encourage high levels of creativity among children. These ideas were explored in more depth in Chapter 6, which focuses on space and materials in relation to children’s creativity.

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To support children’s creativity, practitioners need to be highly responsive and attuned in their interactions with children. This responsiveness flows from presence in the moment. Taggart (2015) suggests that this requires an intense emotional engagement from practitioners and that mindfulness practice might be a practical way of protecting practitioners against emotional exhaustion. The importance of supportive communities of practice has also been highlighted in research on early childhood practitioners leaving the profession.

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Some pedagogic approaches place a particular emphasis on what children bring to their learning. Various terms have been used to refer to this type of approach, including ‘democratic participation’, ‘siteoriented pedagogy’, ‘negotiated curriculum’, and ‘curricula-as-lived’.

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Langford (2010) notes an important difference between democratic participation and child-centredness. While child-centred pedagogies suggest that practitioners should adopt the role of ‘stage manager’, democratic participation is based on the idea that everyone in a setting, both children and adults, should make an active contribution. As a result, encouraging the creativity and playfulness of everyone is of central importance.

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Pedagogic documentation involves documenting children’s learning and using the documentation to inspire reflections on pedagogic processes. Approaches to pedagogic documentation will depend on various factors including whether practitioners adopt a developmental or sociocultural lens on learning, whether the primary focus is

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on outcomes or processes, the importance placed on pedagogic documentation, and how much standardization is expected in terms of the form that the documentation takes.

Activities to deepen your thinking 1 Interview practitioners about the sources of inspiration that they draw

from in their pedagogic planning. To elicit more in-depth reflections from practitioners about this, ask practitioners to discuss individual activities they have set up or been involved in over the last two to three days. Where did these activities come from? 2 Over a fortnight, engage in mindfulness practice. You can download

apps that support you to practice mindfulness, or find guided mindfulness meditations online (e.g. on YouTube). Taggart (2015) suggests that mindfulness could help practitioners to develop a stronger sense of presence in their work with children, as well as guarding against emotional exhaustion. How do you notice your interactions with children change as a result of the mindfulness practice (if you notice any change at all)? Reflect on this at the end of the fortnight. 3 What forms of documentation do you currently use? What

challenges and benefits do you associate with each of these forms of documentation? Experiment with different styles of pedagogic documentation (at least video, photographs, and written notes) and record your experience with each. Which is easiest and which is the most challenging? Which is the most thought-provoking? Are these the same types of documentation?

10 Adult Expectations

Introduction

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his chapter challenges the expectations and assumptions that adults tend to bring to their observations of children’s creativity. We look first at children’s visual art-making and the expectations that adults often have of this, and how this in turn influences how children engage with art-making. We then consider and challenge the importance adults tend to place on visual realism in children’s art-making. Linked to this, we consider how the dominant developmental perspectives on children’s creativity can limit the ways we engage with children’s creativity. Post-developmental approaches that focus on the sociocultural context and/or material and bodily dimensions of creativity offer an alternative to thinking in terms of normative milestones. By challenging ourselves to adopt a post-developmental perspective, we can move beyond the dominant paradigm that exists in early childhood education and appreciate and engage with children’s creativity in a broader, and perhaps more fulfilling, way. We include observations throughout the chapter designed to encourage you to think about how the theoretical ideas presented in the chapter come alive through concrete applications. Research Spotlight sections outline empirical studies that draw on and engage with the theoretical ideas considered.

Draw a picture as if you were three One of the activities Mona leads with her third year students on BA Early Childhood Studies and BA Education Studies involves asking all students in the seminar group to make a drawing as if they were three years old. Together the group looks at what things the drawings have in common – both in terms of what they have drawn and how they have drawn it. The vast majority of the drawings tend to be representational rather than abstract. Representations

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cluster around a few common images: Drawings of houses, the sun, flowers, and ‘stick people’ are extremely popular. Very few drawings involve the representation of characters from popular culture.

‘Good old-fashioned child art’ Thompson (2003) suggests that adults are attached to a notion of ‘good oldfashioned child art’ (p. 136) that constrains how they engage with the art that children actually produce. ‘Good old-fashioned child art’ refers to the type of art that we expect children to produce. When children’s art does not fall within the parameters of these expectations, we are more likely to ignore it or interact with it negatively. In the activity with undergraduate students outlined above, we can see the components of ‘good old-fashioned child art’ coming into play. For example, we see the students’ expectations that children’s art will be representational, that it will represent ‘real’ subject matter rather than ideas and images from popular culture, and that it will relate to healthy and suitable experiences for children. We can question these expectations and challenge ourselves to engage with child art that falls outside these relatively narrow parameters. In her study of children’s visual art, Kolbe (2005) notes that adults in the West tend to downplay the importance of abstract art in children’s art-making experiences. Kolbe notes that children can spend a lot of time experimenting with colour and pattern, but that because these types of visual art do not involve representations, they are often ignored by adults. When we look at children’s visual art, the question ‘What is it?’ is an easy starting point that can open up conversations about children’s experiences and ideas. On the other hand, it closes down the possibility that children’s art is non-representational. In addition to non-representational artwork by children, the representations created by children may not be easily discernible because rather than relating to objects, they may instead be a response to embodied meaning-making. For example, what may look like ‘scribble’ may actually represent the back and forth motion of a toy car, or the rocking of the train on which a child came to nursery that morning. Children may find it difficult to explain these representations when asked the question ‘What is it?’ In the activity described above, the most common representations were houses, suns, flowers, and ‘stick people’. Only a couple of students in the group produced a drawing that included an element taken from popular culture. When this was discussed among the group, the majority noted that the young children’s art-making they had most recently observed actually often involved representations taken from popular culture. This contradiction reinforces



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Thompson’s (2003) argument that while popular culture is extremely important in children’s art and their views of the world more generally, adults tend to downplay the importance of popular culture and ignore references to it. She suggests that this is because popular culture is seen as a contaminating force that interferes with children’s inherent and ‘pure’ creativity. This has also been discussed by Dyson (2010, 2013) in relation to early literacies, where children often produce stories through writing and drawings that build in characters and settings from television and film, but see this as falling outside of what is acceptable according to the adults in their lives. This is also discussed in Chapter 2 on creativity and children’s identity. In addition to ignoring references to popular culture in children’s creative expression, adults can also turn away from representations of experiences that are considered to be unsuitable for children. For example, McClure (2011) presents the example of two drawings made by children of ‘pimps’ – depicting individuals with big teeth and chains with dollar signs hanging around their necks. She suggests that adults feel uncomfortable when confronted with such images by children and will encourage children to produce other representations that are more comfortable for the adult to consider, thereby invalidating the ideas and images that children are actually working with in their everyday lives.

Research spotlight Rose, S. E., Jolley, R. P. and Burkitt, E. (2006). A review of children’s, teachers’ and parents’ influences on children’s drawing experience. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 25(3), 341–9.

Aims The researchers wished to find out more about how the attitudes and practices of teachers, parents, and other children influence how children experience drawing and the types and amount of drawing they produce. They also aimed to investigate further a potential decline in the popularity of drawing as an activity as children get older, as reported in previous literature.

Methods The research was based on a review of findings from seven empirical studies that looked at the attitudes of teachers, parents, and children towards drawing. The review was accompanied by the authors’ preliminary findings from their own survey of 270 five- to fourteen-year-olds and their parents and teachers. The research methods used in the seven studies included in the review ranged from direct observation to interviews and questionnaires.

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Findings The studies reviewed revealed mixed attitudes among adults in relation to children’s drawing practices. While Anning (2002) found that early years practitioners often position children’s drawing in relation to their emergent literacy, and do not particularly value the practice of drawing, Coutts and Dougall (2005) found that primary and secondary school teachers readily encouraged drawing as a practice among their students, but they also tended to promote the creation of lifelike representations through drawing. Coutts and Dougall suggested that the promotion of lifelike representations at the expense of other types of drawing may have been one reason why children felt discouraged in their drawing practices as they got older and were less likely to engage in drawing as an activity. Linked to this, the survey conducted by Rose, Jolley, and Burkitt (2006) suggested that children tend to value visual realism and they also express the belief that this is in line with what adults also value.

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Ask adults you know – family members and friends – to produce a drawing as if they were three. What do you notice about the drawings they produce? Do they correspond to the notion of ‘good old-fashioned child art’ as explained by Thompson? What expectations do they suggest the adults have about the type of drawings children do/should produce?

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In your formal or informal observations of children’s creativity, look out for examples of abstract art by children. This might be experimentations with colour or pattern-making as Kolbe (2005) discussed. Reflect on your experience of engaging with this type of child art. Is it difficult to engage in conversations about abstract art when there are no representations present to ‘hang’ the conversation on? Where do you find meaning in what the children have created?

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Consider the children’s drawings of ‘pimps’ which are presented in McClure (2011). Imagine that a child showed you one of these drawings as something they had made. How would you respond? What would you do/think/say? How would your reaction to the drawing constrain their future experiences and behaviours?



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‘Everyone will laugh’ A three-year-old child is drawing with her father at the home of her grandparents. They are sitting together at the dining room table, with paper and crayons laid out in front of them. Together they decide that they’re going to draw the necklace that the girl wore that day to nursery. The child begins drawing and this develops into a drawing of herself wearing the necklace. The child shows a lot of frustration as she continues her drawing and often asks her father to do bits for her. She says she ‘can’t do it’ about lots of different parts of the drawing and will give a crayon to her father and tell him what to do. When she’s instructing her father, she puts an emphasis on creating a representation that relates to ‘real life’. She tells her father to make the cardigan of the girl in the drawing ‘pink, pink’, pointing at her own pink cardigan and she instructs her father that ‘heads are oval’ and the hair should be ‘long long long’. The child seems to become increasingly disappointed with the drawing. She says that ‘everyone will laugh’ and she tries to turn over the drawing and start again. Her father laughs and asks: ‘Everyone will laugh about the drawing?’ The child nods and responds positively to her father’s laughter. The father suggests that they cover the drawing with a soft toy that’s sitting on the table. The child likes this idea but instead suggests that they should scribble over the drawing with a black crayon. She explains to her grandmother who is in the kitchen and can be seen through the wall hatch: ‘Nanna, we’re scribbling on it because it’s going to make everyone laugh and I’m scribbling on it.’ This observation also appeared in Chapter 3 on collaborative creativity but with a different emphasis.

‘It looks just like Olaf’ In an art-making activity, I set out pictures of ‘Olaf’ – a snowman from a popular Disney movie, along with glue, cotton wool, glitter, and colouring pens. Many children chose to use all media; however, one little girl chose to make her snowman look exactly like the character, and went to find a picture of him so she could copy and get all the colours right. When her dad came to pick her up at the end of the day he commented on how her picture looked just like Olaf, which made her very happy. I then overheard him say to another child, who showed him their Olaf (covered in pink and green glitter) that their snowman looked funny. The child seemed disheartened.

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Visual realism When asked about their preferences in art, children often say that they prefer lifelike representations and that they expect adults will feel the same way (Rose, Jolley, and Burkitt, 2006). This is representative of a tendency in Western art education to prioritize visual realism in art-making and to take the creation of lifelike representations as indicative of artistic skill (Duncum, 1999a). In the observations above, the children strive to create representations that are more ‘like’ something else. In the first observation, the child drawing at home with her father strives to produce a representation that corresponds to reality as she sees it. When she feels that she is hindered in doing this as a result of her skill she becomes increasingly frustrated and disappointed. In the second observation, the child’s drawing is celebrated for its likeness to another adult-created picture of a character. Another child’s art is publicly devalued because it moves away from the generic representation. These examples from experience reveal a tendency to appreciate ‘likenesses’ in artmaking whether this is likeness to ‘real life’ or to another image. Although lifelike representations are highly valued by children and adults, early childhood and primary school teachers often feel unsure about how to facilitate children’s development of visual realism. Perhaps as a result of this contradiction, children tend to be less satisfied by their drawing as they get older (Rose, Jolley, and Burkitt, 2006). Duncum (1999) presents a range of strategies that can be used in primary school classrooms to enhance children’s creation of lifelike drawings. Particular perceptual strategies can be used to encourage children to look more closely at the world around them while drawing. For example, children might draw what they can see but upside down so that they can rely less on pre-existing schema in their minds, or they might feel an object in a bag and then have a go at drawing the object without actually looking at it. Duncum also advocates copying from adult-created images, arguing that through this, children are able to see some of the ‘tricks of the trade’ that are used to develop lifelike representations. While Duncum presents strategies that can help children to develop skills in visual realism, he simultaneously highlights the importance of adopting a multiple pathways/multiple endpoints model of children’s artistic development. He argues that we need to move away from seeing visually realistic drawings as ‘better’ than those that are stylized or abstract. Linear models of development can constrain children’s engagement in art activities. Instead, we need to celebrate the different purposes and sociocultural contexts that children bring to their art-making. If we engage in the multiplicity of children’s experiences, children are less likely to experience the frustration and disappointment that features in both of the preceding observations of art-making.



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Research spotlight Rose, S. E., Jolley, R. P. and Charman, A. (2012). An investigation of the expressive and representational drawing development in National Curriculum, Steiner, and Montessori schools. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 6(1), 83.

Aims The research compared the drawing ability of children across three types of educational setting in the UK: Montessori, Steiner, and mainstream settings that follow the English National Curriculum. It looked at two types of drawing ability: expressive drawing and representational drawing. The study aimed to make links between different styles for the teaching of drawing and the way that children’s drawing develops as a result. The research built on previous research of Cox and Rowlands (2000) which suggested that children in Steiner schools have better drawing skills than children in both Montessori and mainstream educational settings.

Methods The study involved 135 participants, with 45 participants from each of the setting types: Montessori, Steiner, and mainstream. From each setting, fifteen five-year-olds, fifteen seven-year-olds, and fifteen nine-year-olds were recruited. All participants completed the same six tasks. This involved three expressive drawings, each of which was intended to be expressive of a particular mood (sad, happy, and angry), and three representational drawings – one observational drawing, one drawing from memory, and one free drawing. The drawings were all rated by two artists according to numerical scales. The ratings were subject to a statistical analysis designed to compare children of different age groups across the different educational settings.

Findings The children from Steiner settings produced expressive drawings that were rated more highly than the expressive drawings of children in either the Montessori or mainstream settings. For the representational drawings, the findings were more mixed. The five-year-olds in Steiner settings produced representational drawings that scored lower than drawings produced by children in the other settings; at age seven, they produced drawings that scored higher, and at age nine, there was no difference in the scores achieved by children in different settings. The findings support those of Cox and Rowlands (2000) in that they show more drawing skill among Steiner students in the context of expressive drawing. However, they contrast with the findings of Cox and Rowlands (2000) which suggested that Steiner students were also ahead in terms of representational drawing. The research presented by Rose, Jolley, and Charman (2012) needs to be questioned in terms of its judgement of what constitutes ‘good’ drawing, both in terms of expressive and representational drawing. The ratings of artists do not offer a definitive measure of children’s art-making, and we may be limiting our understanding of children’s art by comparing drawing skill across children as though it were something objective.

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Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

Collect a sample of children’s visual art. It might be art created by children that you know or examples from published research on children’s art-making. The sample should include examples of different types of art-making: representational and non-representational art, lifelike representations, and more stylized representations. Ask yourself to rank the examples in terms of drawing or art-making skill. Consider your ranking – what does it suggest about what you value in children’s art?

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Share your sample with children that you know. Ask them to judge the examples in the sample in terms of which are ‘good’ and which are ‘better’ than others in the sample. Encourage them to explain their judgements. What does it suggest about what the children value in terms of representation and visual realism? How does this relate to the research and theory presented in the previous sections of this chapter (e.g. Duncum, 1999; Rose, Jolley and Burkitt, 2006)?

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Work with a child or small group of children on a perceptual strategy designed to engage children in closer observational drawing. For example, you could ask them to draw something from ‘real life’ upside down, or you could ask them to feel an object in a bag and then have a go at drawing the object. Document their participation in the task (e.g. through a written observations and/or photographs). How do the children engage in this task? How does it change the way that they go about drawing?

Experimenting with paint: An observation focusing on development Some of the children who have turned three are due to move over after Easter from the under-threes over to the over-threes and as a team we have been trying to get the children ‘ready’ by providing rich and varied activities in the three prime areas. In order to refine their fine motor skills as well taking into account the children’s growing fascination with insects, monsters, and ghosts, and to provoke their imagination, this week I planned an activity to cover the ‘developmental milestones’ as set out in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) for 22 to 36 and the 30 to 50 months in the ‘moving and handling’



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section of physical development and ‘being imaginative’ in the Expressive Arts and Design part of the EYFS. As one parent had recently told me that her child was getting up in the middle of the night after having nightmares I thought that this activity would enable children to express their fears in an art form. The idea was that children would mix powder paint with water and then using a dropper/pipette draw the paint in before squirting it out onto paper then taking a straw and blowing onto the blob of paint, thereby making their individual paintings. The children were then to be asked questions about what they ‘saw’ in their paintings with adults to model the sentences beginning with ‘I think it looks like a ... what do you think it looks like?’ and thus encourage children to use their imaginations and verbalize what they saw. In the course of the first morning it became apparent that both the pipette and the straws were proving to be a challenge. The older children were able to draw in the paint in the pipette but not the younger ones. I had failed to take into account that young children see straws as sucking in drinks so we had a situation where the straws went straight into the pots of paint and straight into little mouths! The activity was abandoned and I decided that more work needed to be done on modelling the use of straws and blowing bubbles in order to stop the younger twos from swallowing the paint! By the end of the third day, we reintroduced a modified version with children doing bubble painting which was hugely popular and the activity was well accessed both by the rising threes and young twos.

Bubble painting: An observation less focused on development During group time I introduced an activity of getting the children to take turns blowing into a crocodile shaped whistle which proved to be a huge success. Talking about why it was important to clean the whistle after each person had a turn gave children the opportunity to learn about saliva, germs, and hygiene. Children learnt how to blow softly by taking in short breaths and by taking deeper breaths were able to make louder sounds. In a separate group time, I provided each child with a straw and encouraged them to blow out by placing their hands at the end of the straw. They experienced the air on their hands. The bubble painting was reintroduced without the expectation of having a finished product and children were provided with powder paints – red and

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yellow, water in small quantities, baby bath liquid, and straws. The children were allowed to experiment, with very little adult input, in blowing with different levels of force. This time round no instructions were given and the adult took on the observer role. One of our youngest children went to get herself a piece of paper, dipped the straw into the paint, and used the straw as a brush and made her painting first making small dots and then gradually making longer marks. She looked at her paper thoughtfully without any comment from an adult. When she looked up and pointed at her painting, the adult gave her a thumbs up and a smile. Two children went over to get paint brushes and covered the whole paper with paint and due to the baby bubble bath mixture found out that whilst painting tiny bubbles formed on the brushes and the paper. One child turned and showed her friend, and they had a conversation in Turkish. As I do not speak Turkish I was not able to understand but from the body language and facial expression I could tell that this girl had something that she wanted to share with someone who shared her language and could celebrate with her. Another child decided to empty half a pot of red bubble paint mixture into a yellow one and mixed it with the straw and watched as right before her eyes the colour changed – magical! ‘It’s orange look, look, look’ with squeals of excitement. This child taught herself at a very young age about colour mixing and that lesson will stay with her for life and more importantly the feeling of excitement and joy will give her something that one cannot quantify and cannot be ticked on the ‘developmental milestone’ tick list. One little boy stood watching and when invited to come and join the group scowled and said an emphatic ‘no’. He then went and got the shakers, which the children had made during the Christmas season which we use for start and stop activities from plastic bottles, unscrewed the top and emptied the uncooked pasta into a pot of bubble paint, fished them out one by one, holding the pot in his left hand and feeling the slimy pasta. He went to the washbasin and washed and dried his hands off and toddled off.

Developmental and post-developmental approaches In the context of education, the dominant paradigm through which we observe children is developmental psychology. We tend to situate ourselves in a language of linear development. Through observations, we measure what children can and cannot do and plot them in relation to generic developmental



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milestones that are applied to all children. The EYFS – the statutory framework for EY education in England – was created as a way to ensure that all children are supported to develop in different areas of learning. The reality of implementing the EYFS is that practitioners have to ask whether a child is on target and consider what activities and resources need to be provided in order to move them forward on the developmental scale. While development is clearly an important aspect to consider when working with children, it has become the dominant paradigm in EY education to the extent where it is now difficult to imagine alternative ways of being with children and committing ourselves to their education and well-being. Critiques have been levelled at the dominance of the developmental lens. These fall broadly into two categories. The first type of critique challenges the normativity of developmental approaches (e.g. Burman, 1994, 2008; Thompson, 2014). When we apply generic criteria to the development of all children, we tend to use labels that in turn marginalize children that do not meet these criteria. They become ‘abnormal’, ‘behind’, ‘at risk’, and so on. The second type of critique suggests that by only focusing on development, we are missing the richness of children’s activity. When we explore children’s creativity, there are so many fascinating dimensions at work. Creative experiences involve social, affective, and bodily engagement. We can miss the richness of these experiences when we look only at whether children’s behaviours are developmentally appropriate or ‘on target’ (Duncum, 1999, 2010). Alternatives to developmental approaches can be thought of as ‘postdevelopmental’. They are post- rather than anti-developmental because they do not argue that development is not present or important, but rather they suggest that there are other ways of being with children and seeing what they do. Post-developmental approaches can come in different guises. Some post-developmental theorists prioritize the sociocultural contexts in which creative activities take place. They see children as active producers of culture rather than passive subjects of development. For example, the work of McClure (2011) presents children as actively making sense of the culture around them and through creative processes and products, making significant contributions to this culture. Other post-developmentalists focus on the interplay between different elements of the environment – human and non-human. These post-human and new materialist approaches tend to look at particular instances of creativity and consider how the creative process emerges through a dialogue between the child, materials, and environment (e.g. Knight, 2013; MacRae, 2011). Through a close analysis of particular episodes, these theorists tend to prioritize the bodily and affective dimensions of the creative process, and they do not seek to generalize from the observations they make.

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Research spotlight MacRae, C. (2011). Making Payton’s Rocket: Heterotopia and lines of flight. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 30(1), 102–12.

Aims MacRae aims to think differently about children’s representational intent in their art-making by looking closely at a single episode of one boy’s junk modelling. The research moves away from the idea that children have an overriding purpose when they engage in a visually creative purpose. It focuses instead on how the materials that are used in a creative process can de-centre a child’s internal representational intent and enable ‘lines of flight’ to occur. This research is an important example of a post-developmental approach to children’s creative processes, whereby the focus is not on the child’s development and capabilities according to generic milestones, but instead on other dimensions of the process itself; in this case, there is a particular focus on the bodily and material aspects of children’s creativity.

Methods The research focuses on a single episode of junk modelling undertaken by a boy – Payton – aged four years. The observation was documented through film by the researcher, who was acting as a participant observer in the early years classroom where the observation occurred. The analysis of the data focused on stills from the film the researcher made, and used conceptual notions of heterotopia (Foucault) and smooth space and lines of flight (Deleuze and Guattari) to unsettle the tendency of the researcher as a former early years teacher to look for the child’s central purpose in creating their artwork.

Findings MacRae observed how Payton’s junk model was an evolving composition with each material addition existing more in relation to the former material component than to a central purpose. MacRae argues that this demonstrates the power of bodily and material elements in children’s creative processes: ‘Material encounters with the body produce lines of flight overriding signifying intentions’ (p. 104).

Reflecting on your own experiences ●●

How dominant is the developmental paradigm in how you think about children’s creativity? Catch yourself as you observe children in formal or informal contexts – how much of your thinking relates to what they can and cannot do and the developmental milestones they are hitting or missing?



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Write an observation from two perspectives: firstly from a developmental approach, and secondly from a post-developmental approach where you look at other aspects of the creative process and experience. Which type of observation do you find more enjoyable to write? Which type of observation do you find easier to write?

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In her research, MacRae encourages us to look carefully at the interplay between the child, materials, and environment in how creative processes unfold. Rather than prioritizing a child’s representational intention, she looks at how the materials that a child uses and their bodily engagement with these materials shapes how and what they make. Make an observation where you try out a similar focus, emphasizing the role of the materials and bodily interaction in shaping what and how a child makes.

Chapter summary ●●

Adults tend to have certain expectations when it comes to children’s visual art-making. Thompson (2003) describes the composite of these expectations as ‘good old-fashioned child art’, which is typically art that (1) is representational rather than abstract, (2) represents aspects of ‘real life’ rather than images from popular culture, and (3) represents a world that is sanitized and suitable for children, ideally happy depictions of family, homes, and nature. Children pick up messages from the adults around them about what adults celebrate when it comes to children’s art-making, and this in turn affects how they engage in visual art-making.

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Visual realism is often presented as the validated endpoint in the development of children’s visual art-making. Children increasingly strive towards lifelike representations and believe that adults also place most value on this (Rose, Jolley, and Burkitt, 2006). Despite the value placed on visual realism by children and adults, practitioners in EY and primary education often feel unsure as to how they can develop children’s skills in this area. The discrepancy between the value placed on visual realism and the support given in the development of the associated skills might help to explain the discouragement that children feel in relation to visual art-making as they get older.

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A multiple pathways/multiple endpoints model can displace visual realism as the ultimate aim in children’s art-making. This can in turn enable us to value other types of art-making, such as abstract experimentations in pattern and colour.

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When we observe children engaging in creative processes, we tend to adopt a developmental lens, focusing on what they can and cannot do and what generic developmental milestones their activity corresponds to. Through this preoccupation with development, our ways of thinking about children’s creativity can narrow to a set of normative expectations that miss much of the richness in children’s creativity.

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Post-developmental approaches move beyond a focus on development. For some researchers, this means focusing on the sociocultural context in which creative processes unfold. Others place more of an emphasis on alternative dimensions of the creative experience, such as the interplay between materials and bodies.

Activities to deepen your thinking 1 Design an interview with adults (parents or practitioners) about their

expectations of children’s art and creativity. Use the ideas in this chapter as a starting point for designing the interview questions. Conduct the interview with adults you have access to and analyse whether the expectations that emerge from these interviews relate to those comprising Thompson’s (2003) notion of ‘good old-fashioned child art’. 2 Gather responses from children to different types of artwork. Share

a selection of artwork with small groups or individual children. It might be artwork by adults or by children. Include representational and abstract art, relating to a wide range of themes. Do any of the children’s views and ideas that you come across in this activity surprise you? What do children seem to value when it comes to visual art-making? 3 In an EY setting where you work or volunteer, explore how strong the

developmental lens on children’s creativity is. Consider documentation and practices (including ways of doing observation). How much do these relate to developmental milestones and how much do they refer to other dimensions of the creative experience and process (e.g. the social, affective, and bodily dimensions of the experience)?

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Index abstract art-making  169–74 action knowledge  67 actor-network theory  112 aesthetics  40, 106, 127 affect  23, 55, 58, 87, 93, 155, 179 affective alignment  58 affordances  28, 102–4, 107, 115, 118–22, 128, 154 agency  27–8, 70, 112, 127 apprenticeship  137–8 artist-self  13, 147–8 artists-in-residence  135, 141–8 atelier  146 atelierista  146 child-centred pedagogies  66–7, 160, 166 clock time  73–81 co-constructed learning  70–1 collaborative floor  54–6 collage  25, 28, 54, 59, 130–1 colour  58, 106, 143, 147, 170, 178 colouring in  39, 66, 84, 85, 87, 123, 130 community of practice  13, 157–8 co-playing  12, 71, 94 crafts  84–5 cross-cultural analysis  34 cultural psychology  47–8, 103, 112 curricula-as-lived  153, 160 democratic participation  159–67 democratic reflective practice  6 developmental milestones  7–14, 162–4, 169–82 developmental psychology  2, 7, 11, 42, 111, 162, 164, 166, 169–82 digital art-making  40, 95, 120, 130 digital literacy  38

displaying artwork  60–2, 91–3, 98–9 divergent thinking  16–17, 85 Early Years Foundation Stage  176, 179 ethics  7–9 finger-painting  93, 94, 122 flow  19–24, 27–9 gender  33, 94–5 guided participation  137–8 identity  12, 31–45, 148 improvisation  50 individuality. See identity intent watchfulness  156 iPad  51–6, 59, 94, 119–28, 136–7 junk modelling  33, 113, 153, 180 land art  95, 154 lines of flight  113, 115–16, 180 literacy  37, 67, 127 little narratives  2–3 mash-up. See remix media  37, 125 messy play  70, 93, 111, 120, 140–1 mindfulness  157, 167–8 moments of meeting  57–60 Montessori  88–91, 175 multimodality  12, 21–3, 53–6 music-making  24, 50, 77, 86, 95 narrative  33, 126–7, 142 National Curriculum  67, 89, 175 negotiated curriculum  160

194 INDEX

open-ended activities  16, 72, 84–8, 110, 130 open-ended inquiry  141–3 outdoor environments  78, 86–7, 108–9, 154 painting  93, 101–2, 111–12, 122, 140, 148, 151–2, 177–8 participation framework  54 participatory appropriation  137–8 pedagogic documentation  13, 163–8 photography  13, 28, 59, 117–19, 128–30, 136–8, 153, 160, 161 playful pedagogies  157 popular culture  35–45, 130, 170–1 possibility thinking  25–30, 70–1, 107 post-human philosophy  2, 7, 11, 112, 155, 179 projective drawing tests  33 provocations  86–7, 110–11 reactive supervision  125 ready-made stimuli  40, 119, 130–3 reciprocal environment  61–2, 108

Reggio Emilia  61, 74, 87, 106–11 remix  38–9, 43, 119, 131 risk-taking  26, 28, 157 scribble  56–7, 94, 170 self-determination  26–8, 113 self-expression  41–4, 147 self-representation  32–3, 41 sensory experience  93, 120–3 site-oriented pedagogy  160 sociocultural theory  7, 11, 41–3, 48, 137, 164 standing back  27–8, 66, 70 Steiner, Rudolf  89, 175 stencils  39, 85 stretchy time  70–1 subject matter specialism  32–6, 160 templates  39, 85 thing-power  112–13 transitions  68, 74, 76–9 video observation  5–6, 163 visual realism  174–6