Enhancing Creativity Through Story-Telling: Innovative Training Programs for School Settings [1st ed.] 9783030630126, 9783030630133

Citation preview

Enhancing Creativity Through Story-Telling Innovative Training Programs for School Settings Edited by Alessandro Antonietti Paola Pizzingrilli · Chiara Valenti

Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture

Series Editors Vlad Petre Gl˘aveanu Department of Psychology and Counselling Webster University Geneva Geneva, Switzerland Brady Wagoner Communication and Psychology Aalborg University Aalborg, Denmark

Both creativity and culture are areas that have experienced a rapid growth in interest in recent years. Moreover, there is a growing interest today in understanding creativity as a socio-cultural phenomenon and culture as a transformative, dynamic process. Creativity has traditionally been considered an exceptional quality that only a few people (truly) possess, a cognitive or personality trait ‘residing’ inside the mind of the creative individual. Conversely, culture has often been seen as ‘outside’ the person and described as a set of ‘things’ such as norms, beliefs, values, objects, and so on. The current literature shows a trend towards a different understanding, which recognises the psycho-socio-cultural nature of creative expression and the creative quality of appropriating and participating in culture. Our new, interdisciplinary series Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture intends to advance our knowledge of both creativity and cultural studies from the forefront of theory and research within the emerging cultural psychology of creativity, and the intersection between psychology, anthropology, sociology, education, business, and cultural studies. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture is accepting proposals for monographs, Palgrave Pivots and edited collections that bring together creativity and culture. The series has a broader focus than simply the cultural approach to creativity, and is unified by a basic set of premises about creativity and cultural phenomena.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14640

Alessandro Antonietti · Paola Pizzingrilli · Chiara Valenti Editors

Enhancing Creativity Through Story-Telling Innovative Training Programs for School Settings

Editors Alessandro Antonietti Department of Psychology Catholic University of the Sacred Heart Milan, Italy

Paola Pizzingrilli Department of Psychology Catholic University of the Sacred Heart Milan, Italy

Chiara Valenti Department of Psychology Catholic University of the Sacred Heart Milan, Italy

Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture ISBN 978-3-030-63012-6 ISBN 978-3-030-63013-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63013-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Since the 50s of the past century, the need to promote creativity in people has been stressed and many attempts have been made to devise methods, techniques and procedures to enhance individual and group creativity and to test the efficacy of such approaches. Educating creativity became one of the most salient goals of school instruction. The interest towards the possibility to foster creativity grew up further and nowadays it is still one of the eminent topics in education. Why is it still important to try to stimulate creativity? It is argued that habitual behaviours and thoughts may not be appropriate in a world that changes rapidly and where people have to face new challenges almost on a daily base. New answers to new questions must be rapidly found. These responses are expected to be faster and more adequate from creative individuals. Flexibility and imagination should be the qualities of the leaders of tomorrow. Hence, schools and companies are expected to prepare young people to develop those skills. Moreover, creativity seems to be particularly necessary in times of crisis. Because of the absence of traditional resources and opportunities, escape routes— which so far were not prefigured—are needed. Thus, it is hoped that someone may devise new paths, produce new discoveries, identify new strategies which can open unexpected horizons and allow persons to face difficulties and impasses, even where no way out can apparently be seen. A second set of reasons that justify the attention that schools should pay to creativity is as follows. Often parents, teachers and principals complain v

vi

PREFACE

of poverty of ideas that students show. They complain that behaviours are conformist and that judgements are aligned to the common way of thinking and feeling, without any personal reflection. Educating creativity is proposed as an antidote to this situation. It aims to stimulate a personal processing of the environmental stimuli so to overcome existing models and to explore new possibilities. Creativity challenges the individual, who is asked to ground his/her life on him/herself—on his/her beliefs, desires, dreams—and get to create something that can then be shared with others, starting from an internal and original source. Creativity asks persons to expose and express themselves starting from what characterises and distinguishes them. The hope is that giving the individual the opportunity to explain his/her way of seeing, thinking and acting can help him/her to become aware of his/her potential, so to be an active agent, but not just a passive observer, of his/her world. This should hopefully be a way to gain autonomy, independence and security in life. A third reason supporting the need to promote creativity refers to the link between creativity and well-being. It is well known that creative abilities are a powerful resource for resilience, i.e. the ability to cope with challenging situations, even dramatic, so to not only overcome them, but changing them in opportunities for development and learning. Environmental or historical circumstances of deprivation, or even more simply limitations or stressful situations, stimulate the ability to devise creative remedies and expedients or to reinterpret the current condition in a new way to succeed despite the external adversities. The perception of being able to cope with heavy situations and being able to play an active role is, in a proactive and not just reactive perspective, a component of subjective well-being. This is accompanied by perception of control, sense of agency, autonomy, adequate self-efficacy and self-esteem, which are aspects that creativity promotes. In addition, we must not forget the motivating force that a creativity process requires—as well as the sensations of pleasure and satisfaction or fulfilment that exerting creativity produces—are further aspects which increase well-being. Finally, it has to be kept in mind that creative skills are generally more enhanced in children and adolescents affected by some neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or dyslexia (Cancer & Antonietti, 2019; Cancer, Manzoli, & Antonietti, 2016; Manzoli & Antonietti, 2016). As a consequence, such skills might be appreciated and stressed to support the self-representation of students with

PREFACE

vii

those disorders (and also the representation that parents and educators have of the students in question) by leading them to recognise that, despite the deficits associated to the disorder, they have some potentialities. Further, it is possible to engage them in creative activities, where they should excel, to motivate them. Rehabilitation activities can become more interesting for them if presented in a creative way as well. Cultivating the creative aptitude of these students can result also in providing them strategies they can apply to address school works in non-standard manners, which match the way they process stimuli and reason, so to circumvent the difficulties produced by the disorder. Two main approaches can be followed in order to lead people to learn to be creative (Parnes & Harding, 1972). The first approach originates from suggestions provided by active pedagogies and, more specifically, by the learning-through-discovery movement. The main purpose is to arrange learning settings to induce individuals to express personal ideas, to freely imagine unusual situations, to look for new and not obvious solutions to problems. Usually no specific materials are devised for these aims; Educators are generally invited to modify traditional ways of managing learning activities by paying attention to their attitudes and communication styles, so to create a climate which facilitates learners’ expressivity and ideational fluency (Barron, 1968). The second approach consists in employing sets of exercises useful for stimulating creative ways of thinking. For instance, learners are asked to devise several manners to use a given tool, to figure out possible ends of an uncompleted tale and to find alternative linguistic expressions for the situations described. Funny games, curious experiments and practical trials are employed to stimulate creativity, sometimes through the manipulation of concrete materials, graphical signs and visual patterns. Six main questionable assumptions seem to be shared by many of the past attempt to enhance people’s creativity: 1. Creativity consists of a unique mental mechanism. Thus, people can be trained in such a single mechanism. For instance, a single creative technique like brainstorming (Osborn, 1957)—one of the wellknown creativity techniques, focused on the free, abundant production of bizarre ideas in order to promote innovation-—is proposed as a general approach for developing creative ideas and skills. 2. Trainees are like a tabula rasa, that is, before being instructed they know virtually nothing about how to be creative; They are meant as

viii

PREFACE

having no ideas or opinions about creative strategies and are not able to control them. All this has to be “imprinted” into their allegedly “empty” minds. 3. Even though trainees are instructed with non-ecologically valid materials (such as puzzles, riddles and so on), the training programmes can succeed in prompting the subsequent spontaneous transfer of creative strategies to everyday situations. 4. The development of creative thinking can be induced by simply asking trainees to perform a specific mental operation a given number of times. In other words, getting some practice in executing an operation should be sufficient to allow people to learn it. 5. Creativity is only a matter of cognitive processes. Therefore, trainees must be taught only to activate particular kinds of cognitive operations, without any reference to the complex interaction of these operations with other cognitive processes, emotion, motivation and the context. 6. Creativity can be promoted as a general ability, without making reference to specific domains. Given these assumptions, it is not surprising that the traditional programmes designed to stimulate creativity often failed to reach their goals. In fact, ordinary situations where creative thinking is needed are usually complex situations that involve multiple mental operations. Furthermore, in everyday life explicit hints to employ the relevant strategy are seldom given, so that individuals need to be able to identify by themselves the specific features of the situation in question and choose the appropriate way to deal with it. Finally, individuals must not only know how to think creatively, but also must want, namely, be inclined or motivated to process situations creatively. These remarks stressed the need for a different approach to promote creativity. More precisely, various components have to be identified in creativity; More attention to common reasoning and to complex real-life situations is required; The role of metacognition in the acquisition of new competencies has to be highlighted. On these grounds, in order to produce in trainees a stable aptitude to think and behave creatively in extra-training contexts, it seems that educational tools should:

PREFACE

ix

1. Develop an integrated structure of various mental mechanisms, each playing a role in a particular kind of situation or in a particular phase of the creative process; 2. Use materials that mimic real-life situations or, at least, help trainees to recognise the relationship between the training tasks and such situations; 3. Consider individuals’ spontaneous beliefs and tendencies towards creative thinking and begin teaching from their naïve creative competencies, with the hope of changing spontaneous beliefs, tendencies and strategies by means of an internal restructuring process; 4. Show a metacognitive sensibility, that is, train learners not only to perform creative strategies, but also to control their execution (for instance, to select the strategy to be applied and to monitor its application); 5. Encourage a creative attitude, e.g. encourage learners to accept the risks and discomforts that creativity involves, to avoid the tendency to stick to familiar responses and to look for novelty. Various attempts to integrate cognitive, emotional and personality aspects of thinking have been made (Antonietti, Colombo & Memmert, 2013). A constructivist point of view—aimed at substituting the spontaneous beliefs and tendencies of an individual with new and evolved strategies by means of an internal restructuring process—is shared by many contemporary creativity programmes. The features of current training materials are in agreement with the issues discussed previously. First, they induce individuals to learn a set of reasoning strategies that can result in a creative way of thinking. Further, they make people aware of the strategies they employ, of their relevance, of their benefits and costs. In other words, the programmes should stimulate a metacognitive attitude. They also try to encourage autonomy in the management of thinking strategies. Moreover, the critical situations where learners are trained to be creative are real situations or have obvious counterparts in real life. Finally, the application of a given thinking technique is linked to the development of a corresponding attitude, such as to be open to the experience, to recognise the emotional states, to look for novelty or to accept contradictions. Experimental investigations carried out to test the validity of such training materials generally showed that a larger increase of creativity

x

PREFACE

scores is found in the training conditions as compared to the control conditions. Learning materials are more effective when implemented by ad hoc instructed educators, who were trained to control their feeling, attitudes and communication patterns. In general, a clear superiority of well-structured programmes over simple and isolated tasks emerges. In particular, highly creative individuals increase their creativity levels only when a well-structured intervention is carried out by expert trainers (Antonietti, 1997). In conclusion, people can learn to be creative. Such learning is possible, however, only if teachers and educators employ instructional materials that are consistent with the complex nature of creativity stressed by recent research and that involve learning procedures that are not based simply on repetitive activities. To do so, training materials should allow learners: 1. To know various creative strategies and the conditions under which each of them is adequate; 2. To be aware of the mental operation that they are activating in order to monitor its application; 3. To recognise the attitudes and emotions that accompany the implementation of a creative strategy and be inclined to adopt such attitudes and emotions. The final message that can be drawn from recent investigations is that a particular learning environment is needed and that creativity requires a global involvement of individuals, who should be taught to manage by themselves the mental mechanisms that promote creativity (Gardner, 1991). In the present books some training programmes devised to enhance creativity in children and adolescents are described. They are grounded on a tradition in which attention to the educational aspects of creativity has been paid (Antonietti & Cornoldi, 2006) and have been designed in accordance with the assumptions mentioned before and, even if they were elaborated in different periods and in different circumstances, they all share the same general theoretical approach. The description of each training programme includes examples of the materials and activities included in the programme. In some cases the training programmes have been also tested in experimental studies, whose findings are summarised in the book.

PREFACE

xi

In the first chapter the theoretical model at the basis of the training programmes which are reported in the book is explained. The model tries to synthesise the main theoretical positions about creative thinking in order to define a coherent framework to be applied in education. Three general mental operations seem to rely on the basis of creativity: Widening (W), Connecting (C) and Reorganising (R). W concerns the tendency to keep an open mind and to deal with a great number of elements. C refers to the capacity to establish relationships among different elements and to combine them in unusual ways. R consists of changing the perspective and inverting relationships among elements. The model of creativity resulting from the integration of W, C and R is described by reporting several examples coming from everyday life and from cases of innovation in the field of arts, science and technology. In the second chapter two training programmes aimed at increasing the creative skills inspired to the WCR model and targeting the youngest children are described. The first training programme is addressed to kindergarten children and to children attending the first years of the primary school. It is based on a set of short stories whose protagonists are common objects which can be found at home. The second training programme is addressed to children attending the last years of the primary school and consists of four tales. Each tale is framed in a different scenario and it is divided in episodes corresponding to work units. In both training programmes activities (verbal, pictorial/graphic and practical) aimed at developing creative skills are included in some points of the narration. In the third chapter a structured training programme—addressed to children aged 4–8 years—consisting of an interactive story in which it must be discovered why a volcano is extinct is illustrated. In the story some tutors accompany children in search of the secret of the volcano. During such a search children meet characters who personify psychological features which obstacle creativity. Children have to overwhelm the non-creative aspects of the situations they encounter and to adopt a productive and innovative perspective. The training programme was designed to induce children to learn a set of creative strategies and to stimulate metacognitive skills. It also tries to encourage autonomy in the management of thinking strategies. Furthermore, the critical situations where children are trained have obvious counterparts in common life. Finally, the application of a given thinking technique is linked to the development of the corresponding attitude. The program has been tested in two studies involving, respectively, 300 4 to 6-year olds and 900 4

xii

PREFACE

to 8-year olds. There was evidence that classes engaged in the program resulted in a significant higher test-retest increase of the creativity scores as compared to control classes. Besides these quantitative results, teachers who applied the training programme reported modifications of children’s behaviour and attitudes in other school tasks. The fourth chapter is about a more recent training programme designed to be implemented in primary and secondary school (a distinct version is available for each school level). Each version includes two different kinds of training: the metacognitive approach and the symbolicimaginative approach. Both approaches have the same narrative plot, but they present two different styles: It is more structured in the metacognitive approach and more provocative in the symbolic-imaginative approach. The episodes of the training programme are about some students who have to deal with situations of both scholastic and personal life. The main characters present some stereotypical features that help students to identify themselves with them. Furthermore, each character shows resources and limits. The focus is on positive and negative aspects that every person/situation has. Each training activity included in the story is not separated from the curriculum, but actually it refers to some scholasticrelated contents that can be dealt by the teacher in the class. With reference to the first approach, the aim is to develop a metacognitive-reflexive attitude in students so to help them to generate self-awareness acts and remarks about different aspects of their mental functioning. Self-awareness acts can be produced in three different temporal moments: before an action, during it or at the end of it. These acts are about different aspects: strategies, resources, difficulties, processes and individual/personal experience. The three creative operations of the WCR model are empowered with activities put on three different levels: modelling (a model is presented; It can motivate, invite to the personal assimilation, suggest transformation prompts), research (a problem-solving request is proposed that stimulates individuals to find unconventional answers) and interrogation (the generation and the discovery of questions is stimulated). Each episode of the training presents, in some points, different activities focused on a creative operation. After each activity, some metacognitive stimuli are presented: They invite to reflect on previous activities, on observed difficulties, on the possibility to improve the process. The symbolic-imaginative approach is less structured than the metacognitive one. In this case, there are not activities to be carried out, but the narration is interrupted by “evocative stimuli” in some points. They provide

PREFACE

xiii

indications about how to use creativity empowerment tools that activate imaginative, identification and transformative skills. They consist of suggestions about the use of creative mental operations in order to favour a symbolic and emotive approach. The symbolic process has a circular structure and it involves two principal lines: symbolisation of reality (the internal self generates the external reality) and exposition to symbolisation (the external reality evocates the internal self). The whole training programme has been tested in a large-scale study which involved about 400 students in Sicily and in other small-scale studies carried in different regions of Italy. The book is addressed to researchers interested to learn about new approaches to train creativity skills and to know which empirical findings support the validity of the proposed programmes. Hence, a goal of the book is to contribute to disseminating updated notions about the enhancement of creativity. The book is addressed to professionals as well, for instance, teachers and educators who are interested in knowing what practical activities can be implemented in their work setting if they should increase the level of children’s and adolescents’ creativity. Milano, Italy

Alessandro Antonietti Paola Pizzingrilli Chiara Valenti

References Antonietti, A. (1997). Unlocking creativity. Educational Leadership, 54 (6), 73– 75. Antonietti, A., Colombo, B., & Memmert, D. (Eds.) (2013). Psychology of creativity: Advances in theory, research and application. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers. Antonietti, A., & Cornoldi, C. (2006). Creativity in Italy. In J. Kaufman & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), International handbook of creativity (pp. 124–166). New York: Cambridge University Press. Barron, F. (1968). Creativity and personal freedom. Princeton: Van Nostrand. Cancer, A., & Antonietti, A. (2019). Creativity and dyslexia: Theoretical insights and empirical evidence supporting a possible link. In S. Kreitler (Ed.), New frontiers in creativity (pp. 125–148). Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.

xiv

PREFACE

Cancer, A., Manzoli, S., & Antonietti, A. (2016). The alleged link between creativity and dyslexia: Identifying the specific process in which dyslexic students excel. Cogent Psychology, 3, article 1190309, 1–13. 10.1080/233 11908.2016.1190309. Gardner, H. (1991). To open minds. New York: Basic Books. Manzoli, S., & Antonietti, A. (2016). Gli studenti con dislessia sono creativi? Uno studio nella scuola secondaria di primo grado. Psicologia Clinica dello Sviluppo, 20, 121–134. Osborn, A. F. (1957). Applied imagination: Principles and procedures of creative thinking. New York: Scribner. Parnes, S. J., & Harding, H. F. (Eds.) (1972). A source book for creative thinking. New York: Scribner.

Contents

1

2

The Mechanisms of Creative Thinking Alessandro Antonietti, Barbara Colombo, and Paola Pizzingrilli 1.1 Three Main Theoretical Perspectives 1.2 Widening 1.3 Connecting 1.4 Reorganising 1.5 Conclusions References Short Stories for High Goals: The “Creativity in the Classroom” Programmes Chiara Valenti and Alessandro Antonietti 2.1 The Training Programme “Creativity in Classroom 1” 2.1.1 Outline of the Training Programme 2.1.2 The Creative Activities 2.1.3 The Training Programme as an Assessment Tool 2.1.4 The Training Programme and the Curriculum 2.1.5 An Example of the Stories 2.1.6 Assessment Sheets 2.2 The Training Programme “Creativity in Classroom 2” 2.2.1 Outline of the Training Programme 2.2.2 The Training as an Assessment Tool

1

2 5 7 9 12 13

15 16 16 17 17 18 19 24 33 33 34 xv

xvi

CONTENTS

2.2.3 An Example of the Adventures 2.3 Conclusions References 3

4

In Search of the Volcano’s Secret: The “Programme to Develop Children’s Creativity” Alessandro Antonietti and Luciano Cerioli 3.1 Assumptions Underlying the Training Programme 3.2 Outline of the Training Programme 3.3 Examples of the Story 3.4 Testing the Efficacy of CCDP 3.5 Conclusions References A Special School Year: The Programme “Developing Flexible Thinking” Alessandro Antonietti, Luciano Cerioli, Paola Pizzingrilli, and Chiara Valenti 4.1 Supporting Creativity Using Metacognition and Symbolic-Imaginative Thinking 4.2 Outline of the Training Programme 4.2.1 The Approach 4.2.2 The Episodes 4.3 Two Approaches to Foster Creativity 4.3.1 The Metacognitive Approach 4.3.2 The Symbolic Approach 4.4 An Example of the Episodes 4.5 Testing the Training Programme 4.5.1 The Objectives of the Project 4.5.2 Methods 4.5.3 Results 4.6 Conclusions 4.7 General Overview References

Index

35 44 45

47 48 49 51 63 65 67

69

71 72 72 72 74 75 79 80 84 84 85 87 90 92 95 97

Notes on Contributors

Alessandro Antonietti he is full professor of psychology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, where he is director of the Research Center for Vocational Guidance and Career Development and of the Service of Learning and Educational Psychology. His research interests concern the enhancement and rehabilitation of cognitive functions and life skills both in children and adults. Luciano Cerioli he is an educational and clinical psychologist. He collaborated with the University of Milano Bicocca, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Politecnico, and Accademia delle Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. Barbara Colombo she is associate professor of psychology at Champlain College, where she is also the chair of the Neuroscience Lab. Her research interests focus on the assessment and empowerment of cognitive skills (creative thinking, decision making, problem solving), as well as the use on non-invasive brain stimulation to promote neurorehabilitation, emotion regulation, and well-being. Paola Pizzingrilli she got her Ph.D. in Psychology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. Her research interest focused on the creation of instruments and training programmes aimed at investigating and fostering children’s creativity. She is currently employed at the Career Service of the same University, Research and Development Area.

xvii

xviii

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Chiara Valenti she is psychologist and psychotherapist in training. She is specialized in Learning Disabilities and ADHD. Her research interests are related to the field of general psychology. She built and validated different assessment and empowerment training tools related to children’ and adolescents’ socio-cognitive skills, above all creativity.

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

2.3 2.4 2.5a 2.5b 2.6a 2.6b 2.7a 2.7b 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1

Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3

Fig. 4.4

An example of combination of shapes Example of shapes to be employed in a picture combination task Materials of the task requiring to compose a square Examples of the cartoon recombination task The necklace problem: the outcome to be achieved The necklace problem: the starting, incorrect situation The hidden faces task: the staring picture The hidden faces task: the solution The hidden master task: the starting picture The hidden master task: the solution The drawing as it appears at the beginning The drawing after the first change The pets-tutors Total WCR mean scores before and after the training considering the typology of training as between-subject variable Total WCR mean scores before and after the training considering the school level as between-subject variable Widening subtest mean scores before and after the training considering the typology of training as between-subject variable Widening subtest mean scores before and after the training considering the school level as between-subject variable

20 21 22 23 24 24 37 38 43 44 53 54 59

88 89

90 91

xix

xx

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 4.5

Fig. 4.6

Fig. 4.7

Fig. 4.8

Connecting subtest mean scores before and after the training considering the typology of training as between-subject variable Connecting subtest mean scores before and after the training considering the school level as between-subject variable Reorganising subtest mean scores before and after the training considering the typology of training as between-subject variable Reorganising subtest mean scores before and after the training considering the school level as between-subject variable

92

93

94

95

List of Tables

Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 4.5

The main characters of the training programme Schematic representation of self-awareness acts before in three temporal moments Evocative stimuli included in Episode 3 Number of students and age according to school levels and experimental conditions The basis of the WCR test

73 76 80 85 86

xxi

CHAPTER 1

The Mechanisms of Creative Thinking Alessandro Antonietti, Barbara Colombo, and Paola Pizzingrilli

Abstract The theoretical model at the basis of the training programmes which are described in the book is explained. The model tries to synthesise the main theoretical positions about creative thinking in order to define a coherent framework to be applied in education. Three general mental operations seem to rely on the basis of creativity: widening (W), connecting (C) and reorganising (R). W concerns the tendency to keep an open mind and to deal with a great number of elements. C refers to the capacity to establish relationships among different elements and to combine them in unusual ways. R consists of changing the perspective and inverting relationships among elements. The model of creativity resulting from the integration of W, C and R is described by reporting

A. Antonietti · P. Pizzingrilli Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] P. Pizzingrilli e-mail: [email protected] B. Colombo (B) Champlain College, Burlington, VT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Antonietti et al. (eds.), Enhancing Creativity Through Story-Telling, Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63013-3_1

1

2

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

examples coming from everyday life and from cases of innovation in the field of arts, science and technology. Keywords Creativity · Divergent thinking · Productive thinking · Fluency · Flexibility · Originality · Remote associations · Combination · Restructuring · Insight

1.1

Three Main Theoretical Perspectives

The perspective according to which creativity concerns primarily the production of abundant and diverse ideas still survives. Starting from Guilford (1950), and according to the Factorialistic perspective, creativity is linked to the ability to produce many ideas from a stimulus. This ability is characterised by the richness of the thinking flow and the ability to follow new directions in order to achieve uncommon and original outcomes. The generation of fluid, flexible and original ideas often comes from changing existing ideas (Perkins, 1988; Simonton, 1999; Weisberg, 1993): By analysing scientific discoveries, technological innovations and artistic masterpieces, it was found that they usually originated from existing ideas that have been modified through gradual adjustments to fit the specific problem or goal the creator had in mind. In fact, information that people gradually obtain while testing solutions that progressively come to their mind by trying to solve a problem leads them to change the direction of their reasoning. Not all changes, however, lead to something useful and valuable. Proposed changes have to be selected. The creative process, hence, becomes similar to the evolution process (Campbell, 1960), which is determined by the generation of variations of the characteristics of existing species. The selection of these variations leads to the maintaining of those that provide greater survival capacity (Johnson-Laird, 1998). Secondly, associationism is also a resistant conception of creativity. From this perspective, the production of creative ideas would be achieved through the unusual combination of known ideas. Bizarre associations often led scientists and artists to mature brilliant insights. Vygotsky (1932) was one of the first authors who proposed a conception of creativity based on the idea of “association”. According to Vygotsky,

1

THE MECHANISMS OF CREATIVE THINKING

3

creative activity consists of the recombination and processing of information already known or previously acquired, which leads to the production of new realities. Mednick (1962) argued that creativity can be identified by the ability to connect ideas which are distant from each other. According to him, creativity is the ability to combine, in a new and unusual way, disparate elements that apparently have little in common. This perspective has been renewed by Koestler (1964) under the concept of bisociation: The creative act consists of bringing together two structures of reasoning usually considered incompatible or to find similarities between different fields of knowledge. Innovative thinking would be implemented when two independent ways of reasoning come to an intersection, producing something that did not previously exist. The assumption that creativity derives from the association of elements usually considered as unrelated is also present in more recent theories. For example, Rothenberg (1979) identified creativity with Janusian thinking (a name derived from Janus, the ancient Roman goddess having two faces looking at opposite directions). This form of thinking allows one to combine the terms of an antithesis, that is, to simultaneously keep in mind two opposing elements and to attempt their integration. The creative person, therefore, will be able to combine two different elements and to make antagonistic elements coexist in the same line of thought. This aspect of creativity is stressed in the Geneplore model (Smith, Ward, & Finke, 1995), according to which original and innovative outcomes can result by a process in two phases: the generative phase, in which an individual constructs mental representations, and the exploration phase, in which these representations are interpreted in order to lead them to suggest creative discoveries. In the generative phase, the representation results as a consequence of an associative process through which elements are combined together. Thirdly, some of the suggestions derived from the Gestalt tradition have been used to define an “updated” concept of insight . Gestalt psychologists did not generally use the word “creativity”, even if they dealt with acts of thought that produced discoveries and inventions. What is commonly meant by “creativity” refers to what Gestalt psychologists called productive thinking , which, as Wertheimer (1959) claimed, allows individuals to identify new properties of the given elements, which are then conceived and used in new or different roles or perspectives. This implements a restructuring act, which represents: (a) the transformation of the point of view from which the situation is analysed; (b) the

4

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

reorganisation of available informational data; (c) the discovery of new relationships and (d) the identification of new functions of the available material. Gruber and Davis (1988) pointed out that not all innovations and discoveries must necessarily proceed from a sudden reorganisation of the conceptual field. For example, Gruber (1974), by reconstructing the development of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, emphasised the presence of slow and incremental changes in the theoretical system that the British naturalist was gradually formulating. Schank (1988) also maintained that some sort of restructuring is at the basis of creativity. This author suggested that to understand reality we must have specific knowledge structures. A knowledge structure used several times to explain an event constitutes a pattern of explanation. Facing a stimulus, the most economical strategy is to treat it as something familiar, namely, trying to apply a pattern of explanation which refers to other known situations. Creativity emerges with new situations. In this case people can apply an “unexpected” pattern of explanation. The creative process comes from a deliberate misapplication of an explanation pattern: Facing an event, a person does not apply the usual pattern of explanation for it but tries a completely different pattern. Is it possible to find a way to synthesise those different positions, in order to define a coherent framework to conceptualise creativity and to inspire attempts to educate creativity? Apart from the specific aspects that characterise each theory, we can identify three major mental operations, which appear to be the basis of creativity. The first group of authors fundamentally claims that creativity comes from the widening of the mental field. If the individual is capable of producing many different and unusual ideas (Guilford), if the individual takes something that exists and tries to change it (Perkins, Simonton, Weisberg), if the individual generates different solutions in order to identify at least one surviving evaluation (Campbell, Johnson-Laird), the individual will discover many mental elements, increasing the probability of finding among them one that could lead to something new and valuable. Hence, expanding the mental horizon through the discovery or invention of new elements contributes to creativity. The second group of authors recognises, however, that creativity emerges when people establish a relationship between realities which are very different from each other (Vygotsky, Mednick, Koestler) or even opposite (Rothenberg). According to this perspective, connecting mental

1

THE MECHANISMS OF CREATIVE THINKING

5

fields usually considered remote, and possibly antithetical, is the basic process of creativity. Finally, the third group of authors thinks that a creative act occurs when there is a reorganisation of the mental field. This can happen through restructuring (Wertheimer and Gruber) or through the application of an interpretive scheme that usually applies to other situations but that, when applied to the present one for which it is not the conventional scheme, produces a new vision in which it is possible to grasp not obvious and interesting meanings (Schank). The WCR model of creativity (Antonietti & Colombo, 2013, 2016; Antonietti, Colombo, & Pizzingrilli, 2011) tries to integrate these operations—Widening (W), Connecting (C) and Reorganising (R)—to help teachers and trainers design interventions which can enhance each different aspect of creativity. Widening concerns the tendency to keep an open mind, to be aware of the great number of elements that can be identified in a given situation, to recognise possible, not obvious, meanings, to discover hidden aspects and to overcome apparent constraints. Connecting refers to the capacity to establish reciprocal relationships among different elements, to draw analogies between remote things, to combine ideas in odd ways and to synthesise the multiplicity of disparate elements into an overall structure. Reorganising consists of changing the perspective, assuming a different point of view, seeing things by inverting relationships between their elements, asking original questions and imagining what should happen if unusual conditions occurred.

1.2

Widening

The first mechanism that we see operating in creative thinking consists of coming out from the limited conceptual framework within which people spontaneously pigeonhole situations and breaking all the “thinking bonds” that often restrain them. To produce something new and original, it is important to move in a wider mental field that will mobilise ideas and lead to new directions of thinking, helping to find new opportunities and new meanings. A good example is related to marketing. For decades, manufacturers of tennis rackets were bound to a standard shape and size, when actually no regulation prevented the use of different rackets. Breaking this implicit constraint, the owner of a sporting goods company successfully launched onto the market the “big racket”, a tennis racket with a wider

6

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

than usual tailpiece. A tennis racket with this shape and this size offers several advantages over traditional rackets: First, beginners are more likely to intercept the ball; Second, a larger tailpiece allows tennis players to give more strength to the shot; Finally, the effects of the return stroke on the elbow ligaments are lower. The designer of this “big racket” expanded the field of mind, acknowledging that tools with better and different features could be produced. This link between creativity and breadth of the mind field within which people move can be found in early childhood. For example, when faced with disconnected data, individuals enact categorisation strategies in order to gather more data within the same class. In such situations it is possible to stress individual differences. On the one hand, there are those (broad categorisers) who tend to form broad categories; On the other hand there are those (narrow categorisers) who tend to make a lot of subtle discriminations among data and gather them under the same class only on the basis of close similarities. A positive correlation between broad categorisation and creativity has been proven. In fact, broad categorisers—as happens with creative individuals—are prepared to process large amounts of information, not based—as happens with narrow categorisers—on well-structured principles, and proceed by changing their own thought patterns and integrating new ideas in a quickly changing mental organisation (Wallach & Kogan, 1965). A situation similar to that previously described and likely to bring out individual differences in “style” of thought is made up of a task of conceptualisation in which, faced with fifty images of everyday objects, people have to group them into classes and justify their choices. In this task subjects may adopt different criteria. There is, first of all, who classifies objects on the basis of analytical-descriptive criteria, that is, based on physical characteristics and perceptual aspects. Then there are those who sort objects based on categorical-inferential criteria, that is, based on the fact that certain objects are all examples of a given concept (for example, the objects “fork”, “glass” and “cup” are grouped into as members of the category “dish”). Finally, there are those who divide the objects on the basis of relational-thematic criteria, inserting objects into broad categories (for example, the objects “comb”, “clock”, “port” and “lipstick” are grouped as representatives of the concept “ready to go out”) (Kogan, 1974). It is observed that individuals with high intelligence and low creativity prefer the categorical-inferential criteria and shun the thematic

1

THE MECHANISMS OF CREATIVE THINKING

7

relationships, whereas individuals with low intelligence and high creativity employ the relational-thematic criteria but not the categorial inferential.

1.3

Connecting

We consider now the second creative mechanism, namely, the mental operation which leads one to link together apparently disparate realities. Why do unusual associations support creativity? Sometimes not trivial or bizarre associations have led scientists and artists to mature brilliant insights. For example, Wilhelm Röntgen, while investigating the properties of cathode rays, discovered, almost by chance, that, on a screen near the table on which he was conducting his experiments, a green luminescence was produced. He associated this phenomenon to the rays he was studying and, carrying out specific experiments in this new direction, discovered the existence of X-rays. Similarly, Alexander Fleming, while studying cultures of bacteria, noticed that one of these cultures, carelessly exposed to air, had been destroyed. He associated the exposure to the death of the bacteria—two factors with apparently nothing in common—and came, on the basis of this insight, to the discovery of penicillin. Darwin reported that the insight that led him to develop the theory of evolution was prompted by the reading of an essay of demography and economics written by Malthus and from having established a connection between the dynamics governing the growth of human populations and those of the animal world. These cases of scientific findings suggest that establishing a link between aspects of reality that we usually separate can lead to identifying useful hidden similarities. This is also true of technical discoveries. For example, Leonardo da Vinci designed a system to automatically move a rotisserie, establishing a connection between the instrument itself and an environmental element that had nothing to do with it. When we cook a dish stuck on the spit over the fire, it produces smoke. Would it not be possible to establish a link between smoke and spit? If the smoke is conveyed in a hood at the end of which is placed a windmill, the smoke, going up, will set it in motion. Such bloodstream motion of the whirlwind can be transmitted, with appropriate couplings, to rotate the spit without any human intervention. In a similar way, Henry Ford was able to reduce the production cost of the Model T, an innovative car that was launched on the market, demanding that the goods supplied to the factories were packed in boxes of a defined size and with the screw holes made in specific

8

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

locations. The walls of the boxes were actually used, being designed with the right dimensions, as the floors of the cars that were built in the factory. The ingenious idea was to establish a relationship between two elements usually conceived as distinct: packaging material and the product inside the package. A particular case of combination is analogy, which consists in transferring what is known in a familiar domain to a different, possibly new or unfamiliar, domain. Analogies suggested discoveries and inventions. For example, technologies for the operation of radar devices were inspired by the mechanism of emission and reception of ultrasound by bats. The current research aimed at improving the systems for humidification of the passenger compartments of cars are inspired by studies on the anatomical structure of the nose of the camel. To design a roof that was white to repel heat in summer and dark in winter to absorb heat, the behaviour of the scales of a fish in particular situations suggested a stratagem to achieve this. The flounder, when swimming in the water, takes on the colour of the surrounding environment. This happens thanks to the chromatophores, vesicles of dark pigment that is retained when pressure exerted on the skin of the animal is not high (as happens when the fish is near the surface of the water) and is released when the pressure is high (as happens when the fish swims deep), so allowing the fish to be indistinguible from its surroundings. This phenomenon suggested the idea of building a roof completely covered with black plastic small white spheres. These beads were dilated with the heat making the roof lighter, while the cold would be restricted, making the roof darker. Also the ability to combine ideas thanks to analogies is connected to cognitive style. Field-independence, as shown by investigating individual differences in analogical reasoning (Antonietti & Gioletta, 1995), is one of the personality traits related to the connecting phase of problem solving by analogy: Mapping the solution strategy embedded in a familiar situation onto a novel problem, so as to integrate two different frameworks, is more likely to occur in field-independent than in field-dependent individuals. Consistently, creativity can be increased by stimulating people to look beyond the immediate cognitive field and to perceive the opportunities which are at hand in other fields. In fact, training students to make analogies is a successful way to enhance creativity (Antonietti, 2001).

1

1.4

THE MECHANISMS OF CREATIVE THINKING

9

Reorganising

If we were asked to determine the volume of a ball, we could use our school memories trying to recall the formula to calculate the volume of the sphere. But if we were required to determine the volume of an irregular solid (e.g. a small rock), there would be no formula or past experience that could help us. Instead, we might think to immerse the rock in a graduated jug, partially filled with water, and measure the resulting increase in the level of the liquid. The increase corresponds to the volume of the dipped rock. In this case the success is caused by setting the problem in different terms: not related to formulas, but as a practical-operational problem. Assuming a new perspective allows us to find an original and effective response. Another example: If I want to help a depressed friend, rather than following the obvious path and trying to comfort him, I could reverse the relationship, pretending to be the one needing help. Reversing the roles—in order to help my friend, the one in need, I ask him to help me—can, in some circumstances, lead to solution. Also a historical case can be relevant, particularly relating to the Thirty Years’ War. The Spanish army had defeated the French and was spreading out into French territory, destroying villages and raging on the population. A small village received the news of the arrival of the Spanish army and people gathered to decide what they could do to defend themselves. It was clear that trying to oppose the enemy troops with barricades would be futile, given the disproportion between the number of attackers and the villagers. Hence, the men of the village decided to do just the opposite of what people would expect: Rather than trying to resist the enemy and defend their home and family, they escaped, leaving in the village only children and women. This reversal of attitude—to leave their loved ones and their properties rather than defend them—proved to be a winning solution. When the Spanish army reached the village, they entered it without a fight. If the soldiers had fought, they would then have had the “right” to persecute the losers, but since they not have “earned” the looting right, according to their military code they would had been men without honour if they used violence without having to fight for this right. Hence, the Spanish army passed over, respecting the people and properties in the village. As a more recent case, we can remind that during the Second World War, when Nazi occupied Denmark, they wanted to impose the obligation in that country for Jews to wear the armband with the Star of David. The Danish king did not agree, but he had no power to oppose

10

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

this law. Forced, he signed the requirement to bring this despicable badge of distinction, but he first began to wear the armband. In this case, it was impossible for him to do what he wanted to do (not signing the edict). Thus, he made the opposite. The king, instead of opposing to what the German occupiers forced him, conformed more than was required. In doing so, he found a decent way out of a situation that looked like a dead end. He expressed his opposition against the measure and his solidarity with the Jewish population and thus emptied it of its meaning as a symbol of disgrace. In fact, if the king was wearing the armband—the population thought—it was not so humiliating to wear it. Perspective reversal is a mechanism that we find at the basis of another of Leonardo’s inventions. For example, the conception of the cochlea, a tool designed to bring water from one level to the next, involves the mental operation we are discussing. The main aim of this instrument is to bring water upwards; But, to do that, it operates in the opposite direction, actually going down. The spiral wrapped around the rotating cone, “penetrates” the water tank placed in the lower level. Part of the water enters the first segment of the spiral. The rotary motion leads this segment at the top and the water contained in it falls down into the next loop, which, with the next rotation, finds itself at the top and so the water, lap after lap, reaches the exit at the top. The restructuring act appears to be the core of what De Bono (1967) calls lateral thinking . Lateral thinking is opposed to vertical thinking. The latter consists in the application of rigid reasoning patterns related to consolidated habits, routines and previous experience. It is characterised by sequential and systematic processing procedures in which the various steps are connected one another on the basis of logical links. Vertical thinking may be associated to the image of the ascent of a staircase (where each step rests on the previous one) or to the construction of a tower by means of the superposition of many cubes. In contrast, lateral thinking moves from one pattern of reasoning to another one and induces people to look at problems in new ways, to follow directions not explored previously and not usually considered to overcome the obstacles, to examine all alternative forms of reasoning. On other occasions De Bono has designated lateral thinking by using expressions such PO thinking (PO comes from suppPOse, POssible, hyPOthesise, words that suggest exploration and search) as opposed to the YES-NO thinking (logical thinking, critical and dogmatic) (De Bono, 1972, 1973), the water-logic (based on

1

THE MECHANISMS OF CREATIVE THINKING

11

perception, intuition, flexibility) as opposed to the rock-logic (based on the rigidity of the opposition) (De Bono, 1990). Reorganising can be facilitated by hinting to students at simulating mentally how it is possible to transform given situations. Visual images can be especially helpful to do this (Antonietti, 1999; Antonietti, Cerana, & Scafidi, 1994). Several autobiographical reports suggest a significant contribution to mental image in scientific creativity (Shepard, 1978). For example, the French mathematician Jacques Hadamard confessed that when he thought of algebraic problems, made use of visual representations that was building in his mind. Hadamard used these mental images especially when the problems became too complex, so the visual coding was the only one allowed to have a simultaneous understanding of all elements of the problem. A physicist who made extensive use of visual images to solve theoretical problems when it was committed was Einstein. For example, he reported having had the first suggestion that led to the subsequent processing of the special theory of relativity at the age of sixteen, when he imagined himself to travel at the speed of light sitting in the front end of a light beam with a mirror before him. In this scene happened that on the mirror you could ever reflect the image of the traveller. The light and the mirror, in fact, are travelling in the same direction and at the same speed, so that the mirror was always a little ahead of the beam and the latter could not reach the mirror. From this visual scene Einstein concluded that there can be no observer (i.e. no body) that can reach or exceed the speed of light. A particularly common use of mental images in the process of the invention was made by Nikola Tesla, inventor of the neon lights and self-induced engine-start. He in fact usually developed his own projects using imaginary mechanical models which worked mentally for a few weeks in order to determine what parts were subject to premature wear. For what reasons can mental images foster creativity? According to Kosslyn (1983) mental images play a facilitator role in thought processes as a means of simulation and symbolisation. As a simulation tool, images allow people to anticipate mentally the actual operations and physical transformations thanks to an internal representation that maintains correspondence with the analog world outside. As instruments of symbolisation, mental images of concrete objects or events can be replaced by conventional signs. In the first case mental images are useful because they offer the opportunity to view some consequences of the situation that the abstract representation does not make it immediately apparent. In the

12

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

second case imagery would help the subject to mentally manipulate the elements of the situation, encouraging the design of the structure of the situation and allowing a smooth and rapid transformation of the elements. With more specific reference to creativity, reorganisation is facilitated by images which are sensitive to structural symmetries and organisations. The images allow individuals to transform data so that the changes which are to be produced in reality can be simulated more flexibly in mind. Finally, images allow people to reorganise the way in which one represents a situation so that it can be reconsidered more productive. In short, the mental representation of information in visual form work can facilitate reorganisation by providing a pictorial support to abstract concepts, keeping various elements of the situation simultaneously present within a single scenario, encouraging a comprehensive view of the situation, supporting the identification of relationships between data. In short, mental imagery would promote creative thinking since it is a kind of representation which is very flexible and easily transformable (Antonietti, 1991).

1.5

Conclusions

The present chapter proposed an integrated view of creativity by highlighting that three main mental operations—Widening, Combining and Reorganising—can be meant as the core mechanisms of creative thinking. The WCR model can be meant as a basis to devise instruments to assess creativity skills. Such tools are useful in educational settings to evaluate students’ creativity levels and possible increases depending on age and/or instructions. The WCR model was also conceived as a framework to devise interventions to train creative thinking. It is possible to design training programmes which stimulate mental dynamics in students that favour the emergence of streams of thought which are rich, varied and original and to provide teachers and educators precise suggestions about the manner in which this can be done. Research showed that an “open” style of interaction is not always the best option to promote the development of the cognitive components of creativity. Instead, structured activities specifically aimed at this goal are needed. In order for them to be successful, the structured nature of such programmes requires part of the activities to be run in a “steering” way. Hence, a conduction marked by excessive freedom and acceptance—such

1

THE MECHANISMS OF CREATIVE THINKING

13

as those implemented by the “open” teachers—would be to not allow the educational occasions potentially provided by the training programmes to be fully exploited. This stresses the need that the attempts to enhance creativity should include precise exercises and instructions, as the training programmes which will be described in the next chapters do.

References Antonietti, A. (1991). Why does mental visualization facilitate problem-solving? In R. H. Logie & M. Denis (Eds.), Mental images in human cognition (pp. 211–227). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Antonietti, A. (1999). Can student predict when imagery will allow them to discover the problem solution? European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 11, 407–428. Antonietti, A. (2001). Analogical discoveries: Identifying similarities to solve problems. Rome: Carocci. Antonietti, A., Cerana, P., & Scafidi, L. (1994). Mental visualization before and after problem presentation: A comparison. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 78, 179–189. Antonietti, A., & Colombo, B. (2013). Three creative operations. In A.-G. Tan (Ed.), Creativity, talent development, and excellence (pp. 13–26). New York: Springer. Antonietti, A., & Colombo, B. (2016). Creative cognition: How culture matters. In V. Glaveanu (Ed.), Handbook of creativity and culture (pp. 101–124). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Antonietti, A., Colombo, B., & Pizzingrilli, P. (2011). The WCR model of creativity. From concept to application. Open Education Journal, 4, 80–89. Antonietti, A., & Gioletta, M. A. (1995). Individual differences in analogical problem solving. Personality and Individual Differences, 18, 611–619. Campbell, D. T. (1960). Blind variation and selective retention in creative thought as in other knowledge processes. Psychological Review, 67, 380–400. De Bono, E. (1967). The use of lateral thinking. London: Cape. De Bono, E. (1972). PO: Beyond yes and not. London: Penguin. De Bono, E. (1973). CoRT I . London: Pergamon. De Bono, E. (1990). I am right-You are wrong. New York: McQuaig. Gruber, H. E. (1974). Darwin on man: A psychological study of scientific creativity. New York: Dutton. Gruber, H. E., & Davis, S. N. (1988). Inching our way up Mont Olympus: The evolving-systems approach to creative thinking. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity (pp. 243–270). New York: Cambridge University Press. Guilford, J. P. (1950). Creativity. American Psychologist, 5, 444–454.

14

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1998). The computer and the mind. London: Collins. Koestler, A. (1964). The act of creation. London: Hutchinson. Kogan, N. (1974). Categorizing and conceptualizing styles in younger and older adults. Human Development, 17, 218–230. Kosslyn, S. E. (1983). Ghosts in the mind machine. New York: Norton. Mednick, S. A. (1962). The associative basis of creativity. Psychological Review, 69, 220–232. Perkins, D. N. (1988). The possibility of invention. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity (pp. 362–385). New York: Cambridge University Press. Rothenberg, A. (1979). The emerging goddess: The creative process in art, science and other fields. Chicago: University Chicago Press. Schank, R. C. (1988). The creative attitude: Learning to ask and answer the right questions. New York: Macmillan. Shepard, R. N. (1978). Externalization of mental images and the act of creation. In B. S. Randhawa & W. E. Coffman (Eds.), Visual learning, thinking and communication (pp. 133–189). San Francisco: Academic Press. Simonton, D. K. (1999). Origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity. New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, S. M., Ward, T. B., & Finke, R. A. (Eds.). (1995). The creative cognition approach. Boston, MA: MIT Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1932). Voobrazenie i tvorcestvo v detskom vozraste. Moscow: Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. Wallach, M. A., & Kogan, N. (1965). Modes of thinking in young children: A study of the creativity-intelligence distinction. New York: Holt-Rinehart and Winston. Weisberg, R. W. (1993). Creativity: Beyond the myth of genius. New York: Freeman. Wertheimer, M. (1959). Productive thinking. New York: Harper.

CHAPTER 2

Short Stories for High Goals: The “Creativity in the Classroom” Programmes Chiara Valenti and Alessandro Antonietti

Abstract Two training programmes aimed at increasing the creative skills coherent with the WCR model are described. The first programme is addressed to kindergarten children and to children attending the first years of the primary school. It is based on a set of short stories whose protagonists are common objects which can be found at home. The second programme is addressed to children attending the last years of the primary school and consists of four tales. Each tale is framed in a different scenario (Ancient Egypt, Middle Age and so on). Each scenario is divided in episodes corresponding to work units. In both programmes activities (verbal, pictorial/graphic and practical) aimed at developing creative skills are included in some points of the narration.

C. Valenti (B) · A. Antonietti Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] A. Antonietti e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Antonietti et al. (eds.), Enhancing Creativity Through Story-Telling, Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63013-3_2

15

16

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

Keywords Creativity · Creative training · Creativity testing · Fluidity · Flexibility · Originality

2.1 The Training Programme “Creativity in Classroom 1” 2.1.1

Outline of the Training Programme

The training programme “Creativity in classroom 1” (Antonietti & Armellin, 1999) is a collection of small stories, so that each can be read within a single work session. This should allow an easy use of the tool in the context of a modular organisation of school activities where the teacher sometimes finds himself/herself having short times of interaction with the pupils. Although distinct, the stories revolve around the same environment (the domestic context) and have household objects as protagonists. The choice of this scenario and the characters, indeed a little unusual, responds to the idea of leading the child to discover that fantasy is not a world inhabited only by elves, fairies, magicians, and so on. Even at home, among everyday objects, it is possible to imagine stories no less extravagant than those that traditional fantasy sets in forests, castles or realms of a distant past. This seemed a first useful element to feed the child’s curiosity and ability to go beyond the opaque and prosaic aspects of reality, to guess other meanings and to find questions where apparently there are only artefacts to use. Furthermore, the narrative stories present a moral intent as well. In particular, in some of them a sort of “technological” ethics is presented, aimed at suggesting that principles and values (such as friendship, solidarity and respect for others), which can guarantee a good coexistence between people, are reflected also in the action of mechanical and electrical appliances. Finally, the stories present a “didactic” purpose; Actually, they are also aimed at explaining, in terms understandable for a child, the functioning of some household objects.

2

2.1.2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

17

The Creative Activities

In some points of the stories there are numbered references that recall the creative activities; They represent the operative parts of the training programme. These exercises are described in the pages that follow each story. Generally, they are descriptions provided in a summary form: The aim is to envisage ways of working rather than offering rigid “instructions for use”. In any case, the teacher can vary and enrich the activity or adapt it to the contingent school situation. Likewise, the teacher will be able to contextualise the exercise, linking it to other elements of the curriculum, accompanying it with premises, developments, and resumptions. Generally the activities offer the opportunity to insert clarifications and explanations, to be accompanied by other exercises (dramatising the episodes, drawing the environments and the characters, etc.) and to be completed by further elaborations (telling personal experiences, referring to daily cases, discussing the “moral” of the story, etc.). Each activity is accompanied by an abbreviation which refers to the type of creative process that is most involved in it. Four main aspects that distinguish creativity have been identified: free production of ideas [PRO], combination of elements [COM], search for similarities [SIM] and change of point of view [POW]. The teacher can freely decide what activities to present to children and whether to interrupt the story at the marked point or to propose the operative parts at the end of the story. These aspects easily recall the different operations of WCR Model (Antonietti, Colombo, & Pizzingrilli, 2011). The production of ideas [PRO] is similar to Widening operation, because it allows children to create a lot of different ideas in order to find new interesting intuitions. Combination of elements [COM] and search for similarities [SIM] correspond to Connecting operation because, respectively, allows pupils to find unusual links between different aspects of reality and to discover strange similarities between objects that do not seem to have anything in common. Change of point of view [POV] corresponds to a central point of Reorganising operation that allows people to see situations and reality from different perspectives and points of view. 2.1.3

The Training Programme as an Assessment Tool

The training programme can be used for the purpose of stimulating creativity, carrying out the activities mentioned above. It can be used as,

18

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

or even as, a tool to determine children’s creativity levels as well. In this case, teachers can use assessment sheets that are proposed at the end of each story, which contain detailed indications about the operations to be performed. Once the children’s answers have been collected in the appropriate forms, scores will be attributed according to the procedure illustrated in the cards themselves. For each form, three types of scores can be calculated: “fluidity”, “flexibility” and “originality”. The first score refers to the richness of the creative flow, that is, to the quantity of ideas produced, regardless of their quality. The second score refers to the diversity of the ideas: If they insist on the same line of thought, flexibility score is low; If they range in different areas, the child presents a high level of flexibility. Flexibility is operationally defined by the number of categories to which the provided answers belong to. For example, asked the question “List all the red things that come to your mind”, a child who replies “strawberry, cherry, raspberry” is more fluid than one who answers “mushroom, heart”. On the contrary, the former is less flexible than the latter because all his answers fall into the same category (fruits) while those of the second child refer to two different categories. The third score is about the frequency of production of a particular idea: An original one is provided by a single subject within the group. 2.1.4

The Training Programme and the Curriculum

The activities reported in the training programme (more than 120) can be well integrated with non-creative school activities. Indeed, they provide ideas for these moments, for example by suggesting interventions aimed at extending the lexicon, studying scientific phenomena, understanding technical mechanisms. In short, the training programme does not intend to propose creative activities in specific moments of the curriculum, but to give a creative direction to knowledges and skills developed by the education system. In consequence, it is important that students understand that the requests included in the training programme differ from the traditional tasks because there are different constraints (there is not only one right answer, etc.), requirements, criteria, objectives (originality is important, etc.), mental processes to be activated (to produce ideas freely, to combine, etc.), and attitude (to imagine new ideas and situations, to try, to take risks). All these aspects allow to complete other kinds of activities to develop a creative mind, so to move on the more pertinent approach according to situations and needs.

2

2.1.5

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

19

An Example of the Stories

This paragraph presents an example of a complete story with the related proposed activities. THE RED TELEPHONE Didì and Didà—the main characters of the training programme—are playing in their bedroom. At some point, however, as often happens between siblings, they start to quarrel because they want to play with the same object, but not together. “It’s up to me; I’m the older brother!” Didì says, trying to forcefully snatch it out from her sister’s hands. “I want it, I’m the youngest!” replies Didà, who also pulls with all her might. “Don’t fight, children!” Daddy intervenes, who has come to see why they are shouting. “Try to get along and play together: You will see that you will have more fun! Now I want to tell you a story to better understand how important it is to get along. Come on, stop it and come near!” Dad continues, starting to tell his story. Once upon a time there was a red telephone. It was a very good phone: It could talk to everyone, even far away and in all the languages of the world. It was very kind and helpful and it never tired in working, neither by day nor at night. With his argentine trill, it warned of incoming calls and seemed to say: “Drin drin come come, there is someone waiting. Drin drin come come, but quickly, faster”. One day, however, that red telephone began to fail. What had ever happened? It had happened that its numbers had begun to quarrel among themselves. The 1 wanted to go instead of the 9 because it felt unimportant. The 2 had become angry with the 3 and it wanted no longer to be near it. The 7 had felt neglected by his friend 8 and it wanted to change close: It thought that with the 4 it would get along better and be more considered [reference to activity 1]. In short, every number had gone out of place [reference to activity 2] and I don’t tell you that trouble had resulted from it! [reference to activity 3]. Mum wanted to phone Aunt Laura, but the firemen answered her. Dad phoned the office, but the automatic exact time was told. In short, it was a real mess! The red telephone was silent for a while, but then, as the numbers continued to quarrel among themselves, he scolded them very loud:

20

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

“Enough, enough, stop it! You can’t go on in this way. But you don’t understand that only together, each one in its place, you can be fine and I can still work? [reference to activity 4] If you don’t end your quarrels, I will be thrown away and you with me”. The numbers were immediately silent and they realised that the phone was right: There was not one number more important than another among them, but each was useful as it was and where it was. They immediately made up and each number quickly returned to its place [reference to activity 5]. The red telephone started working again as before and to this day its numbers always get along and they never dream of changing their order [reference to activity 6]. ACTIVITY 1 (a) The teacher draws some objects resulting from the combination of geometric shapes on the blackboard and asks the children to draw other objects resulting from a different combination of these shapes. An example is shown in Fig. 2.1 [Involved Operation: COM ].

Fig. 2.1 An example of combination of shapes

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

21

Fig. 2.2 Example of shapes to be employed in a picture combination task

(b) A slightly more difficult version of the previous exercise occurs with non-geometric shapes, such as those shown in Fig. 2.2 [Involved Operation: COM ]. (c) Finally, the composition of parts is suggested in situations where, unlike in the previous cases, there is only one possible answer. These tests stimulate creativity because they help subjects to overcome the tendency to make the most “natural” combinations in favour of combinations that contravene symmetry or involve an inversion of the setting of the problem [Involved operation: COM ]. Cut a square so as to divide it into parts as indicated in one of the two cases shown in Fig. 2.3. Mix the pieces and ask the child to combine them in order to reconstruct the square. In the first case, there will be difficulty in juxtaposing the two larger pieces as in the starting figure; children, like adults, will instead tend to form a right angle with these pieces, a combination that prevents the solution of the problem. In the second case, the prevailing tendency will be to bring the two semicircles together so as to form a circle, thus avoiding the “shifting” which, as the starting figure shows, is necessary to recompose the square.

22

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

Fig. 2.3 Materials of the task requiring to compose a square

ACTIVITY 2 The children are asked the following questions: “If you wanted to change the ‘place’ like the numbers in the story, who, what and where would you like to be?” Children make a drawing about it [Involved operation: PRO]. ACTIVITY 3 The teacher recalls the moment in the story when the quarrel of numbers creates a great deal of confusion. He/She asks the children to think of other situations where a change in order or position produces inconvenience [Involved operation: SIM ]. ACTIVITY 4 Insisting again on the importance of a certain order of elements, the teacher offers children simple anagrams, whose solutions are perhaps given by words drawn from history. It can also be interesting to propose anagrams with multiple solutions (for example, “malb”; solutions: balm, lamb) [Involved operation: COM ]. ACTIVITY 5 The teacher presents some cartoons and he/she says they are pages of a book that a mischievous wind has scattered. It is now necessary to reorder them. Each child can sequence the cartoons as he wishes and invent a story about it. An example of usable cartoons is given in Fig. 2.4 [Involved operation: COM ].

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

23

Fig. 2.4 Examples of the cartoon recombination task

The original sequence of the first series of cartoons (B-C-D-A) describes an oral test with negative results. The original sequence of the second series (B-C-A-D) tells an oriental legend relating to the chrysanthemum, a flower which, unlike in some cultures, is a symbol of life. A little girl was very sad because her mom was seriously ill. One day she heard a voice telling her that mom would live as many days as the petals of a flower that was in a vase nearby. Then the girl began to divide the four large petals of that flower in hundreds of very thin petals. Mom healed and lived for many years. In both cases, children will be able to find different narratives by freely combining the various cartoons. ACTIVITY 6 Here is a problem centred on creating the right sequence of elements whose solution requires overcoming the constraints and automatisms triggered by the explanation of exercise. Children made a necklace by

24

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

Fig. 2.5a The necklace problem: the outcome to be achieved

Fig. 2.5b The necklace problem: the starting, incorrect situation

threading little macaroni into a string. They then tied the two ends of the string together and they coloured the little macaroni. Their idea was to paint one black and two white macaroni in sequence, in order to obtain a circle in which the following order was always respected: black-white-white-black-white-white-etc., as shown in Fig. 2.5a. Unfortunately, Pino got distracted and painted three macaroni in a row in white, so that the order is no longer respected, as is shown in Fig. 2.5b. How can you restore the colour order of the macaroni without reopening the necklace? Solution: The child can break one of the three little white macaroni of the wrong sequence [Involved operation: POW]. 2.1.6

Assessment Sheets

In this paragraph, some examples of assessment sheets are presented. Each of them refers to a specific creative operation.

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

25

ASSESSMENT FORM [SIM] INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE TEACHER (a) Administration The teacher takes up the episode of the training that talks about a spoon that was looking for the fork it loves. The fork is lost in the kitchen and the spoon has to find it. The teacher then invites children to identify as many situations or cases as possible in which someone or something is looking for someone or something else. In consideration of the children’s abilities and of the context of the activity, the teacher will either ask for the answers to be given orally (and then he/she will transcribe them on the form) or he/she will distribute the sheet directly to the children and ask them to write on this the answers. In both cases the responses will be written in the left column, one for each row. (b) Scoring For each form the teacher counts the number of answers provided. If they represent a marginal change in previous responses, they must be excluded from this count. The total number of answers constitutes the “fluidity” score and it is transcribed at the bottom of the page in the appropriate section. The teacher then tries to divide the answers into categories. In the first column on the right of the form, a code corresponding to the category of each answer can be indicated. The number of categories obtained by a child constitutes his/her “flexibility” score and must be transcribed at the bottom of the page in the appropriate section. Finally, the teacher jointly considers all the answers provided by the group of pupils and notes the solutions offered by a single pupil. In correspondence with them, the score 1 will be marked on the rightmost column of the sheet. For each form, the sum of these scores will be calculated. It constitutes the “originality” score and must be transcribed at the bottom of the page in the appropriate section.

26

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

PUPIL ........................................................ CLASS ............................................................. “THE SPOON LOOKS FOR THE FORK AS ... LOOKS FOR ... LIST THE HIGHES NUMBER OF CASES THAT COME TO MIND WHERE SOMEONE / SOMETHING LOOKS FOR SOMEONE / SOMETHING ELSE.” ANSWERS

SCORE OF FLUIDITY

CATEGORIES

ORIGINALITY

..........

SCORE OF FLEXIBILITY .......... SCORE OF ORIGINALITY ..........

ASSESSMENT FORM [POV] INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE TEACHER (a) Administration The teacher takes up the theme of the story (about a child who watched too much TV and he was transformed from a fairy into a television set to make him understand the importance of playing and spending

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

27

time with friends) and asks the question: “If I had a television as a teacher, what would happen? What would I learn and how would I learn?” The teacher then invites children to find as many answers as possible. In view of the students’ abilities and of the context of the activity, the teacher will either ask for the answers to be given orally (and then he/she will transcribe them on the card) or he/she will distribute the card directly to the children and ask them to write the answers on it. In both cases they will be written in the left column, one answer for each row. (b) Scoring The teacher counts the number of answers given for each card. In this count, those that represent a marginal variation of previous ones must be excluded. The total number of responses is the “fluidity” score and should be transcribed at the bottom of the page in the appropriate section. The teacher then tries to divide the answers on the cards into categories. In the first column on the right of the sheet the category corresponding to each answer can be indicated with an acronym. The number of categories obtained by a child constitutes his/her “flexibility” score and must be transcribed at the bottom of the page in the appropriate section. Finally, the teacher considers together all the answers given by the group of pupils and notes which responses are given by only one pupil. These words will then be searched for on the pupils’ sheets. The score 1 will be marked in correspondence with these words, in the rightmost column of the sheet. The sum of these scores will then be calculated for each sheet. This sum constitutes the “originality” score and must be transcribed at the bottom of the page in the appropriate section.

28

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

PUPIL ........................................................ CLASS .............................................................. “IF I HAD A TV AS A TEACHER…” ANSWERS

SCORE OF FLUIDITY

CATEGORIES

ORIGINALITY

..........

SCORE OF FLEXIBILITY .......... SCORE OF ORIGINALITY ..........

ASSESSMENT FORM [COM] INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE TEACHER (a) Administration This card is about the story of a hairdryer that was taken on holiday to the seaside. Unfortunately, it could not see the sea because the weather was always nice and warm and nobody needed it. At the end of the story, therefore, it hopes that the family will go to the mountains next year.

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

29

This assessment form takes up the activity in which the teacher invites children to associate to the sea or the mountains some objects he/she has placed on the desk (for example, tweezers, sunglasses, rope, handkerchief, notebook and magnifying glass). Pupils must explain the reason for the association. The teacher focuses pupils’ attention on the handkerchief and on the rope and he/she asks the children to list, describe, or draw as many things as they could build by putting together a handkerchief and a rope. He/she requests as many answers as possible. Taking into account children’s abilities and the context of the activity, the teacher will either ask for the answers to be given orally (and then he/she will transcribe them on the board) or he/she will distribute the board directly to the children and ask them to write the answers on it. In both cases the responses will be written in the left column, one answer for each row. (b) Scoring The teacher counts the number of answers given for each card. In this count, answers that represent a marginal variation of previous ones must be excluded. The total number of responses is the “fluidity” score and should be transcribed at the bottom of the page in the appropriate section. The teacher then tries to divide the answers on the cards into categories. In the first column on the right of the sheet the category corresponding to each answer can be indicated with an acronym. The number of categories constitutes the child’s “flexibility” score and must be transcribed at the bottom of the page in the appropriate section. Finally, the teacher considers together all the answers given by the group of pupils and notes which responses are given by only one pupil. These words will then be searched for on the pupils’ sheets. The score 1 will be marked in correspondence with these words, in the rightmost column of the sheet. The sum of these scores will then be calculated for each form. This sum constitutes the “originality” score and must be transcribed at the bottom of the page in the appropriate section.

30

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

PUPIL ........................................................ CLASS .............................................................. “WHAT CAN I BUILD BY PUTTING A HANDKERCHIEF AND A ROPE TOGETHER?” ANSWERS

SCORE OF FLUIDITY

CATEGORIES

ORIGINALITY

..........

SCORE OF FLEXIBILITY .......... SCORE OF ORIGINALITY ..........

ASSESSMENT FORM [PRO] INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE TEACHER (a) Administration The teacher proposes the game “Alphabet of the Party”. The children’s task is to find for each letter of the alphabet the name of a drink or a food with which they can prepare a party snack (for example: A =

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

31

apricot; B = biscuits; C = chinotto; etc.). The teacher invites children to proceed, in the execution of the test, following the alphabetical order, possibly skipping a letter in case the answer cannot be found. Children have 15 minutes to complete the task. Presumably within this time almost no pupils will have completed it, but this is essential to diversify the children’s scores. In view of the pupils’ abilities and of the context of the activity, the teacher will either ask for the answers to be given orally (and then he/she will transcribe them on the form) or he/she will distribute the sheet directly to the children and ask them to write the answers on it. In both cases the responses will be written in the left column, one answer for each row. (b) Scoring The teacher counts the number of answers given for each card. In this count, responses that represent a marginal variation of previous ones and those related to inappropriate drinks and food must be excluded. The total number of responses is the “fluidity” score and it must be transcribed at the bottom of the page in the appropriate section. The teacher then tries to divide the answers into categories (e.g. “types of pastries”, “types of cakes”, “types of snacks”, etc.). The category corresponding to each answer can be indicated with an acronym in the first column on the right of the sheet. The number of categories obtained by a child constitutes his/her “flexibility” score and must be transcribed at the bottom of the page in the appropriate section. Finally, the teacher considers together all the answers given by the group of pupils and notes which ones are presented by only one pupil. These words will then be searched for on the pupils’ sheets. In the rightmost column of the form, the score 1 will be marked in correspondence with these words. The sum of these scores will then be calculated for each sheet. This sum constitutes the “originality” score and must be transcribed at the bottom of the page in the appropriate section.

32

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

PUPIL ........................................................ CLASS .............................................................. THE ALPHABET OF THE PARTY ANSWERS

CATEGORIES

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z SCORE OF FLUIDITY

..........

SCORE OF FLEXIBILITY .......... SCORE OF ORIGINALITY..........

ORIGINALITY

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

33

2.2 The Training Programme “Creativity in Classroom 2” 2.2.1

Outline of the Training Programme

This training programme (Antonietti, 2000) is based on the assumption that creativity requires the activation of multiple cognitive processes. In consequence, it was considered that its development should take place through the distinct stimulation of each of its main components. To this end, an interactive story has been prepared for each of the four analysed components of creative thinking. In the first adventure, children have to produce as many different ideas in relation to some presented stimuli. This story is based on the cognitive component of creativity which concerns the ease of producing many different ideas in relation to a starting situation. It is the Widening operation of the WCR model: It is meant that more ideas are offered, the higher the chance that there are interesting and original intuitions among them. In the second adventure it is intended to encourage the ability to combine the given elements in different ways. This is a second component of creative thinking. In fact, it is possible to bring to light properties and phenomena that usually escape by making unusual combinations. In this way, interesting and little exploited aspects can be captured and original solutions can be reached. The third adventure invites children to consider as many aspects as possible in which different objects can be similar, through the use of comparisons and metaphors. This adventure is based on the creative component that allows comparisons and analogies to imagine uncommon but highly effective uses of objects. The second and third adventures refer to the Connecting Operation of the WCR model which considers the ability to establish relationships and combine different elements going beyond appearances and similarities or superficial differences. The last adventure stimulates students to identify hidden elements and overcoming the tendency to perceive stimuli in a usual and consolidated way. As a consequence, reality can show itself in completely different forms from the usual ones that can be more productive or lead to new meanings. This adventure refers to the Reorganising operation of the WCR model, which considers the ability to decontextualise the elements

34

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

of a situation in order to capture the useful properties for reconfigurations of new types and the ability to restructure and change the perspective. Each story requires the child to intervene personally, at certain moments, helping the protagonist of the story. To this end, some points are indicated in the text where the student can actively operate. A description about what needs to be done is provided. Some activities are indicated as “optional”. They consist of suggestions that the teacher can follow, if he/she considers them appropriate, to interrupt the narrative more frequently with practical activities. In each story, the stimuli presented for the exercises and the way the answers are formulated are of various kinds. In this way, it is possible to activate different sensory channels and mental codes to stimulate an integrated increase of the various forms of representations and cognitive processes. 2.2.2

The Training as an Assessment Tool

The training also presents tools for measuring creative potential. For this purpose, the operational cards of each adventure contain detailed indications for the assessment of the creative dimensions that are present in the children’s answers. These simple “tests” refer to scientific research that states that creativity must be examined in its distinct aspects. As already mentioned, in particular, different theoretical perspectives highlighted the presence of specific mental operations in creativity, that are diverse from those activated in daily or in logical thinking. Each of these operations seems to constitute an autonomous tile of which the complex mosaic of creative thought is composed. On the basis of these considerations, it was claimed that the tests of evaluation of creative potential should include separate indices for each of these aspects. The adventures focus on the fantastic stories of a character who has to face unusual situations. They are divided into episodes marked by increasing numbers. At a certain point, the story stops and activities are presented. At the end of the exercise, the narrative continues. If the training programme is used with the sole purpose of enhancing creativity, only the activities are offered. If it is proposed as, or even as, a tool to evaluate creativity, the answers must be collected in the form and the correction and scoring operations have to be performed. In the first

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

35

three adventures scores for fluidity, flexibility and originality are calculated. The first refers to the richness of the flow of ideas and therefore to the quantity of intuitions produced, regardless of their quality. The second score is related to the diversity of the ideas which are proposed. The third refers to the low frequency with which an idea is presented: It is original if it has been generated by only one person in the group. In the fourth adventure one score is calculated which indicates whether the subject can consider the situation from an unusual and uncommon perspective. 2.2.3

An Example of the Adventures

In this paragraph, an example of adventures included in the training programme is reported. The chosen example is taken from the fourth adventure, which is aimed at stimulating the detection of hidden elements and overcoming the tendency to perceive stimuli in the usual way. In the adventure, children are required to discover words and images hidden in verbal or graphic stimuli. The reason for this choice is due to the fact that it is an operation which is partially different from those described in the previous training programme. Moreover, nowadays it is important to train children to look at cognitive, but also social situations and problems, from different and innovative perspectives because they are growing up in a complex and constantly changing society. Specifically, there will be a summary of the contents of each episode (increasingly numbered) and details of all the cards proposed. EPISODE 1 Aristarchus is a hippo-donkey, that is, a cross between a horse and a donkey, in practice a mule, quite old. It is lazy and full of pains. It is also very fond of its master. He and Aristarchus have left the farm, but the hippo-donkey hasn’t heard the men’s voice for a few hours. It was dawn when they had left the farm of Tubabut. They had crossed the forest of Baoboab, left behind the waterfalls of Frishsirf and crossed the long prairie of Erbabré. At the crossroads of Crossorc, having observed the height of the sun on the horizon, the master could see that they were late, so he had decided to take the shortcut to the city. The teacher can ask the pupils to find out what is special about the names of the places mentioned so far. The teacher invites the children to

36

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

consider carefully the words “Tubabut”, “Baoboab”, “Frishsirf”, “Erbabrè”, and “Crossorc”: What secret are they hiding? Is there any rule that explains the arrangement of the letters? These words are the same whether they are read from left to right or read from right to left. The second part of these words is in fact given by the first part read backwards. (In technical terms, these words are palindromes). It was a path through the Zungugnuz swamp, about which gruesome tales were handed down. At one point, Aristarchus had found itself surrounded by fogs and with its hooves in the mud. It had not heard the master’s voice since then. It had walked a few more miles thinking that he had fallen asleep on its back, but now it was seriously worried. The master had probably fallen. It was necessary to look for him. EPISODE 2 Aristarchus suddenly sees a great mountain covered with thick vegetation. This mountain is actually the leg of an enormous sleeping giant. The dense vegetation is the giant’s hair. Aristarchus begins to climb the mountain because it hopes that it will be able to have a panoramic view of the swamp from above and thus it can find its master. At a certain point of the ascent, it hears loud whispering voices: “Among the hairs we’ve gone and they’ve stuck us”. Aristarchus turns but sees no one. The voices, which seem to belong to three different people, now mumble: “If the master you want to find, our face you have to look for. You can find us in the branches if you look well”. CARD 1 INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE TEACHER (a) Administration The teacher asks the pupils: “Do you want to help Aristarchus to find the faces of the three characters hidden in the woods? Now I will give you the picture of how the forest appears to Aristarchus and you will have to mark on the sheet where the three faces are”. The teacher distributes a copy of Fig. 2.6a to each child. The teacher gives two minutes. Then he/she withdraws the sheets.

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

37

Fig. 2.6a The hidden faces task: the staring picture

If children have not succeeded on their own, he/she concludes the exercise by revealing the position of the hidden faces, as shown in Fig. 2.6b. (b) Scoring The teacher counts the number of faces correctly identified by each pupil. This number constitutes the “restructuring” score, the only one found in this test. It must be recorded in the scoring sheet to be used also to transcribe the scores of the following exercises.

38

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

Fig. 2.6b The hidden faces task: the solution

ADVENTURE 4 – SCORING SHEET PUPIL ........................................................ CLASS .............................................................. “RESTRUCTURING SCORE” Card 1 Card 2 Card 3a Card 3b Card 3c Card 4 Card 5 Card 6

EPISODE 3 Aristarchus couldn’t really make out the three characters in the branches. Then, they attack another little song that sounds like this to help the hippo-donkey: “Plum great yogurt is urban no serious so young donkey not getaway tin cheeks kangaroo led”. What does this phrase mean? There are some hidden words that refer to something useful to be able to continue the path.

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

39

CARD 2 INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE TEACHER (a) Administration The teacher asks students: “Do you want to help Aristarchus to find the words hidden in the sentence sung by the three characters? To discover these words, you have to take pieces of each word and read them one after the other. You have to guess how to find these pieces”. The teacher gives each child a copy of the sentence. The pupils write their answers on the paper. The teacher gives five minutes and concludes the exercise by revealing the solution. It is a question of taking the initial parts of each word of the sung sentence and forming a new sentence: “Plum great yogurt is urban no serious so young donkey not getaway tin cheeks kangaroo led”, i.e. “Plug your nose so you do not get tickled”). (b) Scoring The teacher counts the number of words in the new sentence correctly identified by each student. This number is the “restructuring” score, the only one computed in this test, to be recorded in the scoring form already used for the previous exercise. EPISODE 4 This time Aristarchus understands the message, it stops its nose and its crosses the bush. Suddenly it finds itself in front of a curious door and it understands that it has to pass it. But how? It tries to open it headers, but it doesn’t work. The gate screams that it must find the combination to the lock to open it. On top of the keyhole there are numbers and letters on swivel castors. Only by putting each wheel, one after the other, on the exact number or letter can the door open. Aristarchus stops and tries to find the combination: no way!

40

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

Then some fleas help it indicating where to look for the numbers and letters. CARD 3 INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE TEACHER (a) Administration The teacher asks students: “Do you want to help Aristarchus to find the numbers and letters of the combination? Now I will give you some pictures and you will have to find out where numbers and letters can be hidden. When you have seen a number (or a letter), you will highlight it with a marker”. Two minutes are given for each drawing. The teacher concludes each task by revealing the position of hidden numbers and letters. (b) Scoring In relation to the first figure, the teacher notes whether the student has found the present number: He/she gives the score of “restructuring” 1 if the answer is yes, 0 if the student has not found the number. In the second figure, the teacher counts how many Arabic numerals have been identified. This number is the “restructuring” score for this task. For the third figure too, he/she counts how many letters of the Latin alphabet in block letters were found. This number constitutes the “restructuring” score to be recorded, together with the previous ones, in the scoring sheet. EPISODE 5 The fleas had to give the combination to Aristarchus. Thus, the hippodonkey is enabled to continue to climb into the giant’s body. Among several vicissitudes, it arrives at the epiglottis that, nervously, says: “To pass, you have to find the magic words that are written, a little hidden, along the trachea. Only if you say those words will I let you pass”. For the love of its master, Aristarchus decides to undergo this test too.

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

41

The trachea is covered by some “decorations” in which magic words are hidden. CARD 4 INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE TEACHER (a) Administration The teacher asks students: “Do you want to help Aristarchus to find the magic words in the trachea? Now I will give you the picture of the piece of trachea in which the first word is hidden then I will give you the figure of the piece in which the second word is hidden. If you find the word, write it on the corresponding sheet of paper”. A time of two minutes is given for each picture. The teacher concludes the exercise by revealing the two magic words if the children have not succeeded on their own. (b) Scoring The teacher detects the number of words identified by each student. This number (which will be 0, 1, or 2) is the “restructuring” score to be recorded in the scoring form. EPISODE 6 Aristarchus finds the magic phrase: “Open up epiglottis”. The hippo-donkey concludes its crossing into the giant’s body and finally it comes out as soon as the giant opens his mouth. Outside a strange rainbow shines in the sky. In fact, it is composed of ten colours. They are different from the traditional ones. The teacher can ask students to draw a ten-colour rainbow with colours different from the usual ones. But what colours are they? Aristarchus would like to know their names. A heron suggests to it that the names of these colours are hidden in each sentence written on each half circle of the rainbow. CARD 5 INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE TEACHER (a) Administration

42

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

The teacher asks students: “Would you like to help Aristarchus to find the names of the colours of the rainbow? Now I will give you a list of the sentences that are written on each band of the rainbow. In each sentence there is hidden the name of a colour. Let me give you an example. If you look closely at this phrase Children shake the sheet to help ink dry, you will find that between two words there is the word pink. Did you find it? If you take the last letter of the word help and add the next word ink, you get pink. In the same way the names of the colours are hidden in the sentences that I will show you”. The teacher gives each child a copy of a list of 10 sentences, asking them to write the name of the identified colour next to each one. Alternatively, he/she can draw a rainbow in ten sectors and write one of the ten sentences on each sector. The students’ task will be to identify the name of the colour hidden in the sentence and to paint the corresponding sector of that colour. If the first procedure is followed, ten minutes are allowed. The second procedure takes twenty minutes. The teacher concludes the exercise by revealing the names hidden in the sentences if the children have not succeeded on their own. (b) Scoring The teacher records the number of names of colours that each child has identified. This number (between 0 and 10) is the “restructuring” score to be recorded in the scoring form. EPISODE 7 After discovering the colours of the strange rainbow, Aristarchus finds itself at the end of the terrible swamp. In front of it, there is the path towards the city. The hippo-donkey was able to cross the swamp, thanks to its creativity. But its master? It hears a whining voice. It looks around, but it sees no one. It’s its master who tells it he’s hiding to avoid the risks of the swamp. The teacher invites the pupils to speculate about where the master may have hidden himself. The story ends by inviting the children to look for the master. A photograph taken when he came out of the Zungugnuz swamp is left. It is suggested that the man has a huge cocoon on his forehead caused by a

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

43

collision with a giant’s incisor during his hasty escape from the giant’s mouth. CARD 6 INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE TEACHER (a) Administration The teacher asks students: “Do you want to help Aristarchus to find the master? Now I’ll give you the picture that was taken. Look for the master in it”. The teacher distributes the photograph (Fig. 2.7a) taken to the master, asking children to look for his silhouette and to circle it. The teacher gives a minute, then he/she concludes the exercise by revealing the master’s position, as shown in Fig. 2.7b, if children have not succeeded on their own. (b) Scoring The teacher notes whether or not the pupils have identified the master’s silhouette within the allowed time limit. If so, the “restructuring” score, to be reported on the scoring card, will be 1, otherwise 0.

Fig. 2.7a The hidden master task: the starting picture

44

C. VALENTI AND A. ANTONIETTI

Fig. 2.7b The hidden master task: the solution

2.3

Conclusions

The two training programmes presented in this paragraph are aimed at empowering and assessing creative thinking in kindergarten (“Creativity in Classroom 1”) and primary school (“Creativity in Classroom 2”), so with children aged 4–10 years. These two training programmes, although different in terms of contents and structure, have some common elements: • the presence of the narrative that allows a greater identification and a higher emotional involvement of the participants; • the presence of activities that work on the different operations involved in creative thinking. These exercises also provide concrete examples that can be applied to different contexts in order to facilitate the transfer of the skills learned to other settings; • the presence of assessment sheets that allow the training materials to be used also for the evaluation of the participants’ levels of creativity. In the contexts where these training programmes have been implemented, children have shown satisfaction in experimenting the process of creativity and in getting involved with the unusual activities proposed.

2

SHORT STORIES FOR HIGH GOALS …

45

Professionals, working in various capacities in the school setting, can use the contents of the training programmes described in this chapter as a starting point to design innovative activities, particularly suitable for the students they work with and for the context in which they operate. In conclusion, it is important to stress that the aim of these trainings is to provide some ideas for new activities in the classroom so that the child can activate his/her mental processes in innovative directions. Basically, it is not a question of making creativity an “island” or a “parenthesis” in the curriculum, but rather a thread that runs through it.

References Antonietti, A. (2000). Creatività in classe 2. Brescia: La Scuola. Antonietti, A., & Armellin, M. N. (1999). Creatività in classe 1. Brescia: La Scuola. Antonietti, A., Colombo, B., & Pizzingrilli, P. (2011). The WCR model of creativity: From concept to application. Open Education Journal, 4, 80–89.

CHAPTER 3

In Search of the Volcano’s Secret: The “Programme to Develop Children’s Creativity” Alessandro Antonietti and Luciano Cerioli

Abstract The training programme—addressed to children aged 4–8 years—consists of an interactive story in which it must be discovered why a volcano is extinct. Some tutors accompany children in search of the secret of the volcano. During such a search children meet characters who personify psychological features which obstacle creativity. Children have to overwhelm the non-creative aspects of the situations they encounter and to adopt a productive and innovative perspective. The programme was designed to induce children to learn a set of creative strategies and to stimulate metacognitive skills. It also tries to encourage autonomy in the management of thinking strategies. Furthermore, the critical situations where children are trained have obvious counterparts in common

A. Antonietti Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] L. Cerioli (B) Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Antonietti et al. (eds.), Enhancing Creativity Through Story-Telling, Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63013-3_3

47

48

A. ANTONIETTI AND L. CERIOLI

life. Finally, the application of a given thinking strategy is linked to the development of the corresponding attitude. The programme has been tested in two studies involving, respectively, 300 4- to 6-year olds and 900 4- to 8-year olds. There was evidence that classes engaged in the programme resulted in a significant higher test-retest increase of the creativity scores as compared to control classes. Besides these quantitative results, teachers who applied the programme reported modifications of children’s behaviour and attitudes in other school tasks. Keywords Creativity · Creative training · Metacognition · Affect

3.1 Assumptions Underlying the Training Programme The WCR model was conceived as the framework to devise a training programme—entitled the Child Creativity Development Programme (CCDP) (Cerioli & Antonietti, 2001)—designed to enhance creativity in children from 4 to 10 years of age. This training programme tries not only to integrate different theoretical perspectives, each focusing on a dimension of creativity (Widening, Connecting, Reorganising ). It also tries to overcome some of the limitations that can be identified in other creativity training programmes. Traditional proposals for the development of creativity, in fact, share some common assumptions that we have tried to change. Firstly, they typically consider only one or a few aspects of the creative dynamics, favouring a single mental mechanism. For example, brainstorming stresses only the possibilities opened up by cognitive fluidity, while associationist procedures try to promote operations aimed at connecting ideas. However, abundant and original ideas are not necessarily innovative in themselves. Additional cognitive processes seem to be required, but existing proposals rarely suggest an organic development of multiple components of creativity. Secondly, traditional training programmes in creative thinking mainly consist of an evident lack of relevance to daily activities. Hence, the effectiveness of such programmes has been proven only in situations similar to those originally presented in the training. The empowerment therefore seems to have helped to assimilate creative processes, but these are activated only in contexts similar to those where they have been learned.

3

IN SEARCH OF THE VOLCANO’S SECRET …

49

Basically, educational scenarios that are far from everyday life hinder the transfer of acquired skills to different domains. Thirdly, the usual training procedures to enhance creativity are focused mainly on the direct exercise of special operations and pay scant attention to the ability to control such operations. In other words, these programmes teach how to make the relevant operations but not to discriminate among situations in which they should or should not be done, what are the steps most appropriate to accomplish them, and what are the most effective ways of doing them. The limitations mentioned above can be overcome, as happens in CCDP, if: • various aspects of creativity are involved and various mechanisms activated; • links between the programme and aspects of real everyday life are encouraged and fostered; • metacognitive activities are included in the training. For an organic development of creativity, however, a further step seems to be needed. Individuals should not only be trained to make unusual cognitive and metacognitive operations, but they should develop attitudes that allow them to accept, or even to seek for those situations—new complex, unexpected—in which these skills can be activated.

3.2

Outline of the Training Programme

CCDP is based on a story of two children (Sarò and Sarà), approximately five to seven years of age, who are gradually included in a fantastic adventure consisting of a journey in search of the secret of Pensone, a mysteriously extinguished volcano of bubbles. During the journey the children are accompanied and supported by three tutor-characters, each representing an essential aspect of creative thought: the expansion of the mental outlook (Widening : Fluò, the cat), the ability to make comparisons and analogies (Connecting : ComeComè, the rabbit), the ability to change the point of view (Reorganising : Piedaria, the butterfly). The journey requires Sarò and Sarà (and, indirectly, the group of children following the story) to face various emotional and cognitive challenges,

50

A. ANTONIETTI AND L. CERIOLI

the passing of which allows access to the next screen and, finally, to the secret of Mount Pensone. The narration includes—on different levels of reality and fantasy— different characters and situations. There are symbolic characters that correspond to attitudes and cognitive styles generally opposed to creativity and attitudes that foster them. These characters inhabit Mount Pensone and constitute obstacles to the discovery of the secret of the volcano. Overcoming these obstacles is generally allowed by insights that lead Sarò and Sarà and their tutors/friends to supplement the “bad parts” of symbolic characters, returning to them vitality and creativity. Mount Pensone is the mysterious destination of the journey, which ultimately seems to dissolve in a symbolic way within the psychological resources of children themselves, so that the search for the secret of Pensone takes on the meaning of a search for the secret and individual potentialities. The most striking feature of the programme is the set of activities that are proposed to invite the children: • to keep in mind all attempts to solve the problems that are activated by the characters of the story; • to reproduce personally the mental dynamics illustrated and exemplified in the narration. The second level of pupils’ involvement passes through more direct forms of emotional identification with the characters of narration, which have the implicit purpose of “bringing” the children into the story, so that they can live and emotionally elaborate by themselves the situations described in the narration. In other words, children are invited from time to time to foster their cognitive potential while practising their emotional skills, through a not explicit game based on fictions, projections, identifications, situations of “as if”. The story has been built with some requirements: • Effectiveness: while favouring an essential narrative, the story is aimed to promote and increase the creative potential of children, encouraging them to think and imagine without any mental automatism. • Pervasiveness: the story involves a variety of languages and skills (verbal, graphic and pictorial, gestural-mimetic, musical), which children are encouraged to use autonomously.

3

IN SEARCH OF THE VOLCANO’S SECRET …

51

• Compatibility: the narration is meant to be activated in a normal educational setting and is meant to be useful (from a cognitive and affective point of view) for children between 5 and 10 years. • Generalisability: a complex narrative offers the possibility of a cognitive or an emotional-relational use. While in the first case teachers can implement the programme with their students individually, in the second case an initial training session and small group supervision is essential. • Interactivity: the structure of the narration requires continuous interactions among children and the characters of the story, activating a dynamic system where children sometimes reproduce, and some others anticipate, characters’ initiatives. • Modular structure: although the story is characterised as a global narration, it also has partially autonomous units, in order to be sufficiently flexible for school implementation. • Openness to the group and to each person. The planned interactions are actually aimed at activating the group of children as well as each individual child. • Motivating, since it is aimed at promoting curiosity, it is based on symbolic play and on the discovery of individuals’ inner world. • Graduality, since it progressively and alternately stimulates various aspects of creativity and autonomy, focusing both on individuals and group. • Empowering, as it promotes the assumption and integration of distinctive ways of perceiving and thinking about reality.

3.3

Examples of the Story

To provide readers with a more precise idea of how the training programme is devised and can be implemented, a shortened version of the first episodes of the story, together with the description of some associated activities, is reported below. 1. Sarà and Sarò were two children—sister and brother—who had been going to school for some time. Sometimes they enjoyed themselves, but they often got bored, because every day they looked the same. One evening, after dinner, as there was a bad storm, the light went out often. So mom and dad said to their two children: “Come on, kids, tonight you can’t see anything on TV. Let’s all go to bed”.

52

A. ANTONIETTI AND L. CERIOLI

Sarà and Sarò could not sleep. They were a little afraid, with all those thunder and lightning. Then they started talking to each other to take some courage. Sarò was still finishing talking when the sky suddenly brightened and terrible thunder made the two children frightened. The window swung open and Sarà and Sarò screamed in terror. Dad ran at once with a flashlight and said: “Nothing happened, children; It was only a little wind that made the window open. Lightning must have fallen near here. Come over there with your mom, until the light does not come back”. The light came after more than an hour. Returning to the room, Sarà and Sarò found a great disorder. The wind and rain had thrown games, drawings and books around the room. “Look, that sucks!” Sarà exclaimed. Sarà and Sarò began to somehow clean the room. As they rearranged the bedroom, the two children noticed a slightly torn sheet. It looked like a drawing that has just begun and not yet finished. A strange design, the meaning of which was not well understood. A drawing that the children immediately decided to call the Mysterious Drawing. Sarà and Sarò observed this drawing for a long time in silence: What did it mean? And why had it gone so far in their bedroom? “Maybe it’s just a doodle” Sarò suggested shyly, without conviction. “Yes, maybe it’s a mess” said Sarà uncertainly “Yet I seem to see something…”. “Wait, wait. It seems to me that I see a kind of lake with big stones” Sarò interrupted. “Stones?” said Sara “To me they look like bushes, grown in a strange place”. “But now I see in the drawing a kind of big boat, with big sails” Sarò continued. And for a while, the two children kept telling each other everything they saw from time to time on that sheet of paper carried by the wind. The Mysterious Drawing had so interested Sarà and Sarò that the two children decided to complete it with bright colours, trying to add those elements that they had glimpsed in the drawing and making several different copies. Satisfied, they hung them on the walls of the room and went to sleep. Instructions: The teacher calmly distributes to each child the previously photocopied copy of Fig. 3.1. The copy must be a little wrinkled and partially ruined. The teacher turns to the children and invites them to record everything they see in the drawing. In the case of initial perplexity of the

3

IN SEARCH OF THE VOLCANO’S SECRET …

53

Fig. 3.1 The drawing as it appears at the beginning

children, the teacher can give some examples, in order to initiate them for verbalisation. The teacher therefore invites the children to complete the Mystery Drawing in their own way, warning them that it is appropriate to work silently following their own thoughts and imagination, trying to draw what they have previously seen in the delivered picture. 2. Sarò and Sarà slept little that night: The furious storm of the previous evening, the blizzard and the continuous interruption of the electric light had scared them a little. But even the discovery of that drawn sheet had intrigued them. What could that design have been? Early in the morning, Sarà and Sarò would stay awake, holed up under the covers. At one point Sarò decided to go and look at the Mysterious Drawing and the copies they had made and completed before going to bed. Sarò got up slowly, slowly approached the window and slightly opened the shutters to get some light. In the middle of the children’s drawings was that mysterious sheet carried by the wind. Sarò detached the sheet from the wall and took it to bed to look at it again. “Sarà, Sarà! Look what I found!” he said agitated, jumping out of bed with that sheet under incredulous eyes.

54

A. ANTONIETTI AND L. CERIOLI

Fig. 3.2 The drawing after the first change

There was a moment of silence, then Sarà’s soft, trembling voice came out from the covers: “Yes, I know. I have already seen”. That drawing was really strange: During the night it had changed! In fact, from those three objects that looked like bushes or stones a tail, a long ear and a patch of colour sprouted. At that moment mom entered the room and said: “Get dressed and get ready, children! It’s almost breakfast time”. And so saying she went out of the children’s room. Sarà and Sarò, while having breakfast, kept thinking about the meaning of that tail, that ear, that patch of colour. What could be hidden behind those stones or bushes? Instructions: The teacher shows the children Fig. 3.2, previously photocopied enlarged and hanging on the wall, and let the children observe it. The teacher invites each child to formulate more hypotheses about the identity of the hidden figures. At the end, after having pinned down the ideas expressed by the children, the teacher will reformulate what the group has been able to develop, pointing out the number and variety of the answers produced.

3

IN SEARCH OF THE VOLCANO’S SECRET …

55

3. Sarò and Sarà were already at school for an hour, but they kept thinking about the strange fact that it had happened. During the night the Mysterious Drawing had changed and some unmistakable figures had appeared: a tail, an ear and a patch of colour. How had this been possible? The time for a snack came. Sarà opened her folder to take the slice of cake that her mother had prepared for her. Before taking the dessert, however, she wanted to take another look at the Mysterious Drawing she had wanted to bring to school. She looked for the Mysterious Design in the folder and was amazed. Sarà rushed to Sarò and excitedly said to him: “Do you know what has happened yet? How was it possible. I don’t understand anything anymore”. “Calm down, Sarà” said Sarò “Explain to me what happened, but calmly, otherwise I also don’t understand anything”. “Come and see” Sarà continued and, taking Sarò by the hand, quickly dragged him to his briefcase, from which she pulled out the Mysterious Drawing which she showed to her brother. Even Sarò was amazed. The Mysterious Design was no longer a confused figure, but a clear design, in which some characters could be seen precisely. The Mysterious Drawing had turned once again! Sarà, seeing the teacher approaching, immediately hid the Mysterious Drawing in the folder and with a glance made Sarò understand that they would talk about it later. The two children exchanged a nod of understanding: “After lunch, in the music room” whispered Sarò in Sarà’s ear and went back to his companions so as not to suspect the teachers. After lunch, while all the children gathered in the living room to listen to a fairy tale, Sarò and Sarà secretly left the group and entered, without being seen by anyone, in the music room, where no one ever went in the afternoon. Here Sara took the Mysterious Drawing out of the folder again. “Look here! A cat, a rabbit, a butterfly. But how do these things appear?” Sarà kept repeating. Sarò did not know whether to be happy with that discovery or to be afraid of it. What was going on? And why did that design keep changing? They spent more than half an hour questioning and speculating, looking at that sheet. 4. “It is useless, I tell you, it is useless to continue insisting! They do not hear us! They are like everyone else. These children have other things on their minds” said a voice coming from the paper that Sarà was holding.

56

A. ANTONIETTI AND L. CERIOLI

“It’s not always what it seems”: It was another voice. “Every child is different from the others and his thoughts are many, they are hidden, they are at the bottom and above the head of each child”. “Yeah, just like pebbles in the sea, like clouds in the sky, like snowflakes on mountains, like water in rivers”. Sarà and Sarò stood motionless and silent, as if what was happening were of no interest. “Hey, kids! Look at us carefully and be careful. I am a cat with bright eyes and I like to say everything I think. My rabbit friend seems a little distracted and has the habit of continuing to give examples and comparisons. It does compare everything. It always finds one thing that looks like another. Try to say one thing and it immediately brings out at least 5 or 10 examples. Then there is the butterfly. It is also a bit strange. Come on! Keep flying here and there, above and below, and for her now the above is like the below, the right like the left”. “The inside as the outside, the distant as the neighbour” interrupted the rabbit “the small as the great, the empty as the full, the earth as the sky, the heavy as the light, the short as the long”. Sarà and Sarò, however, seemed deaf and blind. “Okay, I understand” continued the cat’s voice “You are afraid of making friends with us. Everyone in this place is afraid of making friends with new and different things”. “Eh, yes” added the butterfly “Your eyes aren’t always enough to see, your ears aren’t always enough to hear, it’s not always enough to grow tall to be big”. “They are too scared, these children” sighed the cat. “They are scared like a mouse in front of the cat, like a cat in front of a dog, like a dog in front of a lion”. It was the rabbit, of course. “Or like a lion in front of a dog, a dog in front of a cat, a cat in front of a mouse” smiled the butterfly. “Who knows how funny it would be” added the cat “to see a cat frightened by a mouse. Then the cats would hide and the mice would be on the sofas and chairs at home”. Instructions: The teacher urges the children of the group to imagine similar situations (situations in which couples and cause-and-effect associations are reversed) and to report their consequences, according to the example: “Who knows what would happen if the fish caught the fisherman?” Or: “Who sends the children to school? The parents. And if the children sent the parents to school, what would happen?”. And so analogously, trying to have the associations produced by the group children themselves. Finally,

3

IN SEARCH OF THE VOLCANO’S SECRET …

57

the teacher asks the children to reflect on the possible names of the talking characters. The cat then said to the children: “I am Fluò, the cat who thinks and says many things and has bright eyes. We call the rabbit ComeComè and I imagine you have already understood why. The butterfly has a list of numbers by name that we do not remember never by heart. For us she is only Piedaria and it is happy to be called that. These are our names, but now you have to be careful what I have to say to you”. 5. That evening, Sara and Sarò, with the excuse that they had to make drawings for school, asked the parents if they could go to their room immediately after dinner. “Go on, go on, children”, said mom. Once the children had gone up to the room, mom turned to dad, asking in a low voice, “But don’t those two seem a little changed to you?” Dad nodded as if to say “Come on, don’t mind it. It’s a kid’s thing”. Sarà and Sarò had washed and prepared themselves, almost without speaking. They were a little confused. Confused and curious, terribly curious to witness again some strange fact, such as those that happened the previous evening and during the day at school. The two children slipped under the covers without saying goodnight. Meanwhile, the Mysterious Drawing was leaning on the table together with other drawings. After a few minutes they seemed already asleep. The room was half-dark. Dad and mom had gone to bed. The silence was now almost complete. But the children began to hear a voice, which said: “Some things are seen only by closing your eyes, certain things are heard by closing your ears”. Where did this little voice come from? It was the cat Fluò who, seeing that the children did not understand, decided to take the sheet leaning on the table and light it with his huge eyes to show Sarò and Sarà the Mysterious Drawing. And Sara and Sarò clearly saw that the design had changed again: The cat, the rabbit, and the butterfly were gone and that sort of lake or boat had instead become a great mountain. Now, in fact, you could see a mountain with few trees and no grass, isolated. Sarà and Sarò saw it well and that sad mountain had made them even more curious. But they seemed to be asleep and could not ask any questions. “This is Mount Pensone” resumed the cat Fluò, while ComeComè and Piedaria also approached the drawing.

58

A. ANTONIETTI AND L. CERIOLI

Fluò began to tell the story of the mountain: “It was a beautiful mountain, all colourful, covered with flowers and fragrant plants, and many animals took refuge in its caves because nobody could harm them there. The children stopped in its valleys to tell their stories, their fantasies, and their problems. But there were also some people who were not ashamed of their feelings, their uncertainties, and their desires”. Fluò stopped for a moment, almost to make sure that Sarà and Sarò understood what was telling, then he went on: “Every evening Mount Pensone was like a large square, where many things were played and told, some beautiful, some sad”. “And then… Boom! Boom! Pensone threw out the bubbles, like fireworks, like the foam of the sparkling wine just opened” interrupted the rabbit, who, saying so, made great jumps across the room. Meanwhile, Fluò continued to tell: “Mount Pensone was a very special mountain. Scientists had said that Mount Pensone was a rare example of a ‘bubble volcano’: a volcano, that is, that instead of throwing out lava and incandescent stones, threw in the air-as the rabbit was saying before-large coloured bubbles, inside which you could see many things. The children went to Pensone, talked to it about their thoughts and when the thoughts were many, Pensone sent them out enclosed in many coloured bubbles”. Instructions: The teacher distributes to each child a bubble-shaped paper template (if possible, using sheets of different colours) and asks to write, or graphically represent, inside the bubble the thought that at that moment they feel to express. The teacher collects the bubbles and places them on the enlarged reproduction of Fig. 3.3 previously hung on the wall. “But suddenly Mount Pensone stopped producing its coloured bubbles” Fluò concluded the story. 6. Mom was really worried that morning. He had called Sarò and Sarò several times but the two children had not yet got up and did not want to go to school. The dad said to the mom: “It’s been yesterday since the kids are a little weird. Maybe they’re going to have the flu”. Mum went up to the children’s room and felt a fever for them. Then she went down after a few minutes with the thermometer in her hand and called the father who was already going out for work: “You were right. They both have a fever. Poor little ones, that’s why they were so quiet and peaceful!” “Call the doctor now” replied the father “and then let me know”. And so saying he rushed out so as not to arrive late for work.

3

IN SEARCH OF THE VOLCANO’S SECRET …

59

Fig. 3.3 The pets-tutors

The doctor arrived mid-morning. He visited the children and said in a reassuring voice: “A nice sore throat, my dear. Take this strawberry syrup for a week and you will see that everything will pass. And also no school for a few days. Absolute rest”. 7. It was already two in the afternoon and Sarà and Sarò had absolutely no desire to get out of bed. The fever had gone down only a little and they had eaten only a plate of white pasta and drank an orange juice. The whole body felt aching, just as if they had climbed Mount Pensone. Yes, Mount Pensone. The children kept thinking about it: Why is it so sad now? Why is it no longer making bubbles? Sarò and Sara did not have the courage to talk about what they had heard and seen and both thought they had dreamed. At one point, Sarò got up a little from the bed to take a better look at the Mysterious Drawing and was struck above all by two central faceless silhouettes. What were those two empty figures doing to us? Who were they, above all?

60

A. ANTONIETTI AND L. CERIOLI

He wanted to ask for Sarà’s opinion, but he saw that her eyes were already closed. Then he turned away and felt that his thoughts gradually went further and further. Instructions: The teacher distributes to each child a copy of Table 3.4 and asks to complete—drawing, colouring, or through the collage technique—the empty shapes in the centre of the picture. Before moving on to the execution of the task, the teacher invites the children to reflect on the possible identity of the two figures. “These children are afraid of what they hear, but I think they will make it. The story of Pensone is long and complicated” said Fluò. “As long as a train, as complicated as a thousand-piece puzzle” replied Comecomè. The three animals went around the children’s beds as if they were looking for something. “Maybe the time has come to tell you something new” sighed the cat and began to tell. He reported that after a few years of great interest and enthusiasm, many people began to consider Mount Pensone a normal thing. Someone went to the mayor to complain because Mount Pensone was blowing bubbles at increasingly strange times. There were even groups of supporters in favour or against Pensone in the country. And often these groups quarrelled among themselves. “It’s indecency!” argued against “You can’t always live with these lights and these noises”. “It’s our wealth” said the people in favour “People who come to see Pensone buy many things in our stores and we get richer and richer”. In short, even the people who seemed to love Pensone actually thought only of themselves and their interests and spent time arguing what was right and what was wrong. “Little by little people stopped going to Pensone, who was left alone in the company of some animals” continued Fluò sadly “until it no longer wanted nor the ability to make bubbles. And so it went out and began to grow old” the cat concluded “Now we need someone to help us wake Pensone”. What had to be done to make Pensone happy again and make him want to make coloured bubbles again? Fluò and its friends had already tried almost all of them, they had tried to ask for help from both adults and children but so far nothing had seemed to work. Instructions: The teacher asks the children to try to imagine what could be done to reactivate Mount Pensone. He/she invites each child to present his/her hypotheses and then summarises them.

3

IN SEARCH OF THE VOLCANO’S SECRET …

61

Sarò and Sarà had a great desire to say: “We will come! We will help Mount Pensone!” But how do you do it? We had to go far, to an unknown place: How would they find the way? “Almost anything is possible” continued Piedaria “Just listen to yourself a little, just don’t be afraid of your feelings”. Sarò reached out from the blanket and met that of his sister who had made the same gesture. The hands of Sarà and Sarò tightened. It was a moment. And only the smell of strawberry syrup remained in the room. 8. It was night. The landscape was frightening, dark and full of abandoned objects (such as headlights, waste papers, and broken glasses). Two children in pyjamas and three animals walked slowly along the mountain path: a cat with very bright eyes, a rabbit that sniffed everything it found on the ground, and a butterfly who did not stand still for a moment. After walking for a long time, the small group reached the end of the path. In front of them, in fact, a kind of dark cave appeared, at the bottom of which a large closed door was visible. Sarò and Sarà looked at the great door. It was a very old dark wooden door with a rusty handle and a large lock. The children stood motionless and amazed at the door. “Here we are!” ComeComè said “We have reached the only door from which you can enter Mount Pensone. We must enter before dawn comes, which extinguishes dreams like water extinguishes the fire”. “Well!” said Sarò. “Let’s open the door immediately”. Sarà went to the door and tried to lower the handle, but the door did not open. She tried again with more force but this time the door did not move an inch. “And now how do we do it?” Sarò wondered. Piedaria suggested: “Not all doors open by pushing…”. She then said: “Let’s try to do the opposite: Let’s pull it!” Sarò worked hard to pull the door towards him, but this once again did not move. “Maybe the door won’t open because it’s locked” Sarò exclaimed after giving up on pulling it. “Yeah, but the key isn’t there” said Sara “Where could it be? Even if it were hidden nearby we would certainly not be able to find it in this dark”. At this point ComeComè said: “Opening a door is like beating a five, you could try”. The children tried to follow ComeComè’s advice but failed.

62

A. ANTONIETTI AND L. CERIOLI

“Opening a door is like opening a package” ComeComè continued “Try to use scissors”. But Sarò and Sarà did not have them. “So, opening a door is like…”. The children, following the example of the rabbit, tried to find other comparisons. For example, they thought opening a door was like making a hole in the paper. But all the comparisons they found suggested no useful ideas for opening Pensone’s door. Instructions: The teacher invites the children to help Sarò and Sarà in finding examples and comparisons, initially asking the group with some suggestions. After gathering all the examples that the group has managed to produce, he/she continues reading. Sarò and Sarà were sad and discouraged in front of the door they could not open. Then the cat flowed and tried to console and help the children: “Come on, don’t be discouraged. There are many ways to open a door. For example, you can try to throw them at stones. Or you can try to say magic words. Or… But keep on thinking about all the ways you can try to open a door. Say all your ideas, without fear of making mistakes, even strange and impossible ideas. Sometimes among all the ideas that come to us there is the right one in mind that helps us solve our problems.” Sarò and Sarà then began to freely say all the things that went through their mind. For example, Sarò said that you could light a match and, thanks to its light, look for the key to the door. It will be proposed to use a stick to insert in the lock to break it. Or—added Sarò—you could dig a passage under the door. Instructions: The teacher invites the children to draw possible ideas to open the door, stressing that it is important that the children represent any idea that comes to their mind. He/she collects the children’s drawings and then continues reading. Unfortunately, all the ideas that came to mind in Sarò and Sara proved useless. Meanwhile, the sun was about to rise and therefore it was necessary to find a way soon to enter Mount Pensone. At this point the butterfly intervened: “Look at things in reverse. For example, you are now trying to open the door from outside, right? So, what is the opposite of outside?” “Inside! Then maybe the door doesn’t open from outside but from inside” said Sara, who was beginning to understand something.

3

IN SEARCH OF THE VOLCANO’S SECRET …

63

“It’s true! What an idea!” Sarò exclaimed “Let’s try to shout. Maybe there is a guardian with the keys behind the door. If we ask him, he will open the door for us”. Together, Sarò and Sarà tried to call aloud: “Please, you who are behind the door, open us. We want to enter inside Monte Pensone”. But from behind the door no voice answered. “Look at it in reverse!” Piedaria repeated again. Sarò and Sarà stopped for a moment to think about what could be the opposite of what they had tried to do until then. Instructions: The teacher invites the children to physically represent possible opposite actions to open the door. He/she can help children by showing the actions hitherto attempted by Sarò and Sarà. Suddenly Sarò and Sara understood how to open the door: They didn’t have to use the handle, but to push lightly on the other side! So they did and the door opened. The sun was rising behind the mountains around. “Hurry, hurry! Inside!” Fluò, ComeComè and Piedaria ordered in one voice. The children jumped through the door. Entering Mount Pensone, they no longer found anything under their feet. Thus, they began to fall down into a kind of dark well. “Help, mom, dad, help us!” the children exclaimed in terror. “Don’t be afraid” said Piedaria to them “Nobody is alone”. In fact, Sarò and Sara tried to take each other’s hands at least to get some courage, but they did not succeed. Everyone fell quickly turning now over, now under. The butterfly, the rabbit and the cat seemed to have disappeared.

3.4

Testing the Efficacy of CCDP

The CCDP was applied in two large experiments that were designed to test its effectiveness in promoting creativity in children attending kindergarten and primary school. The objective of the first study (Cerioli & Antonietti, 1992, 1993) was to assess: • whether CCDP can increase the creative performance of children compared to control children not receiving the training; • whether there were differences between the possible improvement in children with teachers who were previously trained about the relational dynamics related to creativity (“CCDP with training”) and

64

A. ANTONIETTI AND L. CERIOLI

those children with not-trained teachers (“CCDP without training”). Statistical analysis showed higher differences in performance, between the pre- and post-assessment, among pupils in the “CCDP with training” condition. The potential of CCDP emerges to a greater extent if it is proposed by teachers previously trained to assimilate issues related to creativity. Teachers only instructed about the methodological procedures required by CCDP were still able to contribute to the enhancement of children’s creative resources through the use of this programme, although the improvement, in this case, was lower. In some cases, significant interactions between treatment and age emerged. In general, it is noted that differences in performance between children aged four and five tend to emerge in relation to the CCDP without training. More specifically, concerning children aged four, the effects of “CCDP without training”—which did not produce significant increases in the levels of creativity compared to the control condition—were significantly lower than those of “CCDP with training”; in five-year-old children, on the contrary, even without the specific teacher formation, the CCDP led students to deviate significantly from the levels of creativity in the control group and the effects of “CCDP without training” did not differ much from those of “CCDP with training”. In conclusion, four-year-old children—probably because they are more sensitive to contextual aspects linked to interaction and communication— benefited from CCDP especially if it was implemented by a teacher who has been trained to consider also the relational aspects related to creativity. Five-year olds, instead, were, because of higher cognitive skills, more sensitive to the quality of stimulation provided by the CCDP, regardless of the fact that educators were or nor trained previously. A second investigation was conducted also involving children attending the first two years of primary school (Antonietti & Cerioli, 1996). In this study, in addition to the effects of CCPD with trained and untrained teachers on issues of creativity, researchers intended to study the effects of a new instrument (called the Child Creativity Development Activities: CCDA), consisting of simple cards that proposed creative exercises. Results showed that younger children benefited especially from CCDA, whereas the older ones did not receive many benefits from this instrument, but benefited more from the CCDP, regardless of the specific training arranged for the teachers. The second study also tried to answer

3

IN SEARCH OF THE VOLCANO’S SECRET …

65

the question of whether the effectiveness of CCDP depends on the initial level of creativity of the child. In other words, researchers tried to discover whether children took advantage, in terms of increased creative performance, regardless of the baseline level of creativity. Statistical analyses showed that only CCDP implemented by trained teachers increased creativity scores of children starting with high creativity levels. Pupils with a low and medium baseline level of creativity improved to a similar extent in the CCDP and CCDA conditions. In these two studies researchers also questioned whether a teachers’ educational style affects the development of creativity. It is possible to speculate that the same stimulation produces different effects depending on interaction modalities used by the teacher. Using a specific questionnaire, teachers’ educational styles were identified. A “close” educational style produced lower values of creativity scores and the “open” mode of interaction caused the highest increases in creativity. Situations where children had teachers with differing educational styles were associated with improvements in originality scores. In summary, the effectiveness of the programme to foster children’s creativity is limited by the “close” educational style. However, it is to be noted that, contrary to what has been observed regarding the baseline creativity, there was no systematic influence of the educational style on the increase of the creative performance produced by CCDP. The educational style appears to have a significant effect only in some subtests. Overall, the trend of increasing creative performance did not follow a constant direction. The overall picture suggests that the effectiveness of the training is not always favoured by an accepting relational style. At certain times, during the implementation of the programme, teaching activities may require some directivity, so that children working with teachers who tend to share the “close” style are more advantaged. At other times, on the contrary, it is the open interaction that favours the improvements stimulated by the CCDP (Antonietti & Cerioli, 1991).

3.5

Conclusions

The studies summarised above have shown that in kindergarten and primary school it is possible to train creativity skills taking as a reference the WCR model. Results showed that training programmes such as CCDP can stimulate mental dynamics in children that favour the emergence of streams of thought which are rich, varied and original. Data,

66

A. ANTONIETTI AND L. CERIOLI

however, did not merely confirm the possibility of enhancing children’s creativity, but also provided more precise suggestions about the manner in which this can be done. Investigations have shown that the CCDP increases the creative performance of children both if it is implemented by teachers previously trained to use it and by teachers without any specific training on related issues. In this sense, the CCDP is an easy-to-use tool. However, the figure of the teacher can influence the effectiveness of CCDP when the programme is used with younger children. In this situation it is more useful when the teacher was previously involved in an educational process on issues concerning children’s creativity. Most likely, the younger children are more sensitive to the mode of interaction through which the teacher leads the activities proposed in the CCDP. Consequently, teachers encouraged, through a specific training programme, to pay attention to their attitudes, can focus more on their communication style, using confirming and non-directive procedures so that pupils take part in the educational activities covered by CCDP with the relevant attitude. Unlike what happens with the “basic” creativity, the “open” style of interaction is not always the best option to promote the development of cognitive components of creativity in structured activities specifically aimed at this goal. In some cases it is a “close” style that is associated with more significant increases between pre- and post-training assessment. Therefore, improvements in creative thinking resulting from programmes such as CCDP appear to require teachers to be able to build educational relationships in which elements of “openness” and “closing” are co-present. In order for them to be successful, the structured nature of such programmes probably requires part of the activities to be run in a “steering” way. Hence, a conduction marked by excessive freedom and acceptance—such as those implemented by the “open” teachers—would be to not allow the educational occasions potentially provided by the training to be fully exploited. The data also argues in favour of generalisation. CCDP can be proposed to children by teachers with different relational attitudes without fearing that the particular educational style of the teacher can affect the effectiveness of the programme. Results showed that the greatest benefits derived from CCDP are in children who start with a low aptitude for creativity. The smaller improvements recorded by participants with a high creativity baseline could be due to a sort of “ceiling effect”: These pupils could not have improved

3

IN SEARCH OF THE VOLCANO’S SECRET …

67

more. Alternatively, we could conclude that the CCDP has triggered an opportunity for growth especially for those children who receive little attention from their environment, whereas children who already have other cognitive stimulations considered this training as just one more element placed alongside many others.

References Antonietti, A., & Cerioli, L. (1991). Sviluppo del pensiero creativo e interazione educativa. In G. Gilli & A. Marchetti (Eds.), Prospettive sociogenetiche e sviluppo cognitivo (pp. 131–148). Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore. Antonietti, A., & Cerioli, L. (Eds.). (1996). Creativi a scuola. Oltre l’apprendimento inerte. Milano: Franco Angeli Editore. Cerioli, L., & Antonietti, A. (Eds.). (1992). Sviluppare la creatività infantile a scuola. Un contributo sperimentale. Potenza: IRRSAE Basilicata. Cerioli, L., & Antonietti, A. (1993). Lo sviluppo del pensiero creativo: training dei bambini e formazione degli insegnanti. Età Evolutiva, 45, 22–34. Cerioli, L., & Antonietti, A. (2001). Diventare ciò che si è. Un laboratorio per sperimentare la creatività e l’autonomia a scuola. Milano: Franco Angeli Editore. (Modified and enlarged edition of Cerioli, L., & Antonietti, A. (1992). Programma di sviluppo della creatività infantile. Strumenti didattici per bambini dai 5 ai 10 anni. Teramo: Giunti e Lisciani).

CHAPTER 4

A Special School Year: The Programme “Developing Flexible Thinking” Alessandro Antonietti, Luciano Cerioli, Paola Pizzingrilli, and Chiara Valenti

Abstract The training programme is designed to be implemented in primary and secondary schools (a distinct version is available for each school level). Each version includes two different kinds of training: the metacognitive approach and the symbolic-imaginative approach. Both approaches have the same narrative plot, but they present two different styles: more structured in the metacognitive approach and more provocative in the symbolic-imaginative one. The episodes of the programme are

A. Antonietti · P. Pizzingrilli (B) · C. Valenti Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] A. Antonietti e-mail: [email protected] C. Valenti e-mail: [email protected] L. Cerioli Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Antonietti et al. (eds.), Enhancing Creativity Through Story-Telling, Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63013-3_4

69

70

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

about some students who have to deal with situations of both scholastic and personal life. The main characters present some stereotypical features that help students to identify themselves with them. Furthermore, each character shows resources and limits. The focus is on positive and negative aspects that every person/situation has. Each training activity included in the programme is not separated from didactics, but actually it refers to some scholastic-related contents that can be dealt by the teacher in the class. With reference to the first approach, the aim is to develop a reflexive attitude in students, so to increase self-awareness. Self-awareness is hinted in three different moments: before an action, during it, or at the end of it. Self-awareness concerns strategies, resources, difficulties, processes and individual/personal experience. The three creative operations of the WCR model are empowered with activities put on three different levels: modelling (a model is presented; it can motivate, invite to personal assimilation, and suggest how to be applied), research (a problem-solving request is proposed that stimulates individuals to find unconventional answers), and interrogation (the generation and the discovery of questions is hinted). Each episode of the training programme presents, in some points, different activities focused on a creative operation. After each activity, metacognitive stimuli are presented: They invite students to reflect on previous activities, on observed difficulties, and on the possibility to improve the process. The symbolic-imaginative approach is less structured than the metacognitive one. In this case, there are not activities to be carried out, but the narration is interrupted by “evocative stimuli” in some points, which provide indications about how to use creative tools that prompts imaginative, identification and transformative skills. They consist of suggestions about the use of creative mental operations in order to favour a functional emotive approach to situations. The symbolic process has a circular structure and it involves two principal lines: symbolisation of reality (the internal self generates the external reality) and exposition to symbolisation (the external reality evocates the internal self). The training programme has been tested in a large-scale study which involved about 400 students in Sicily and in other small-scale studies carried in different regions of Italy. The results of these investigations are reported and commented. Keywords Creativity · Creative training · Metacognition · Imagination · Affect

4

4.1

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

71

Supporting Creativity Using Metacognition and Symbolic-Imaginative Thinking

To develop the creative potential of individuals it is possible to encourage the activation of various processes by inviting people to apply them to a variety of situations and in different disciplinary areas. However, studies on metacognition tell us that, when we want to increase a certain skill in students, it is not enough to make them do a series of exercises. It is also appropriate for students to reflect on their own mental processes that they activate in order to do those exercises and learn to control them independently, for example, by identifying appropriate strategies for the task, assessing how good they are at putting them into practice, anticipating the effort that will be required and considering how motivated and enjoyable they are in doing the task. Therefore, it may also be useful to adopt a metacognitive attitude to develop creativity. Bransford, Sherwood and Sturdevant (1987) have pointed out that the most common difficulty addressing a problem is not so much having the cognitive tools to solve it, but not knowing where to look for them. For this reason, it is possible to argue that metacognition plays an important role in tasks where creativity is required. After all, many great artists have stated that they produced better creations when they were engaged in metacognitive processes that required special attention to the strategies for performing the task, namely, self-instruction, self-monitoring and self-assessment (Antonietti, Colombo, Cancer, & Iannello, in press). Creativity is fostered not only through a metacognitive attitude, but also through a way of reflecting and thinking open to the most latent and primary dimensions of the human mind. It is thanks to an ego capable of interacting with such latent areas of the mind if it becomes possible for the individual to develop a more flexible, creative, broad and personalised form of consciousness. From these perspectives, creativity does not consist mainly in practising more innovative and original ways of thinking and in the ability to connect different areas and domains of knowledge, but also in a participative and welcoming mental disposition, in reflective postures able to control the immediate conceptualisation in favour of a migrant, nomadic thought, consciously freed from the realism and unidirectionality of logic, that is, a thought more compelling than convincing, with a high rate of imaginativeness and symbolism.

72

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

4.2

Outline of the Training Programme

Pizzingrilli, Valenti, Cerioli and Antonietti (2015) devised a training programme aimed at stimulating flexible thinking in school students. 4.2.1

The Approach

Two different versions of training programme are proposed: a metacognitive version and a symbolic-imaginative one. Both versions have the same narrative plot, but they present two different styles: It is more composed in the metacognitive version and more provocative in the symbolic-imaginative approach. Furthermore, each training has got two distinct age-level versions: for primary school (adaptable to kindergarten School) and for Secondary School. 4.2.2

The Episodes

The narrative plot of both versions of the training programme is divided into twelve episodes that have as protagonists some students, who are faced with different situations of their school and social life. Each character embodies a stereotype (Table 4.1); This allows the students to identify with the protagonists. Even if in an extreme way, the characters remember, in fact, students who usually meet in every class. The focus is also on the aspects, both positive and negative, that each person/situation inevitably possesses. Every individual we meet and every circumstance we face presents, in fact, resources and limits that we need to know in order to enrich ourselves. The narration proceeds from episode to episode and, little by little, the cards are revealed. The characters presented become, little by little, less stereotypical: Even the model-student has some weak points and some fears; The “bully” reveals his sensibilities; The indifferent shows flashes of genius; In the creative one some elements of rigidity emerge. Grey emerges beneath black and white; The well-defined and clearly separated aspects begin to blur. Shades emerge, more complex, less reassuring, but able to complete the picture in a more realistic way. In the narration there are then minor characters. Each with its own characteristics and connotations, they contribute to thicken the plot of

4

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

73

Table 4.1 The main characters of the training programme Main characters

Description

LOLLO

He has all the characteristics of a leader. For girls he has a special charm, while boys aspire to be a bit like him: rebellious, disregarding the rules, respected, strong. At school he is really difficult to manage: Perpetually on the move, noisy, disorderly, provocative, always looking for conflict He does not like to show off. He never seems to have a flicker, more than living “survives” and nothing really excites him. He has a learning disability. By now Jack has learned to live with his disorder. He has also found some positive sides, like those tools that help him at school. And yet that label is somewhat heavy, sometimes a lot. It makes him feel inevitably different, because he is different. But sometimes it is hard to make others understand the richness of that diversity. And so he prefers to make people think he is disinterested, apathetic, with his head elsewhere. Better listless than stupid She often has her head in the clouds. In the classroom Mary is often inattentive, looking elsewhere, and looking thoughtful. It is difficult for teachers to bring her back “with her feet on the ground”. The world in which she lives is made of art (drawing, dancing, music of all kinds) and fascinates everyone, so much so that they would like to try to be part of it, at least for a few minutes. Just as they are fascinated when they draw. She can create wonderful worlds and communicate so many emotions with her drawings She is the classic model student. Brown hair, skinny, slightly thick glasses that hide almost black eyes and really smart. Cate is always attentive, precise, serious and very finicky: For this reason she is often mocked and isolated from her classmates

JACK

MARY

CATE

relationships and events. Each one is the bearer of his/her own peculiarities, own merits and his/her own defects. Each one is an actor in a daily context, where we study, we are together, but, above all, we confront each other, sometimes we clash, we certainly grow. The narrative, precisely for these reasons, has a circular structure: It ends in the same place where it began. However, the events that happened will have changed, at least in part, each protagonist. Both variants, metacognitive and imaginative-symbolic, present the same narrative plot; What varies is, instead, the style: more systematic the first, more provocative the second. As far as the metacognitive training is concerned, the narration is interrupted, in specific points, by some activities. Moreover, each practical

74

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

stimulus is not separated from the curriculum, but refers, on the contrary, to the contents of the school subjects that can be faced by teachers in the classroom, using methods appropriate to the specific context to which they are addressed. Each episode therefore refers to a particular field (linguistic, mathematical, scientific, motor, spatial and artistic). The imaginative-symbolic version, on the other hand, does not present students with activities to be carried out. As mentioned, the narration is interrupted, in some specific points, by “evocative stimuli”. They are a set of indications, presented as stimulus-questions, aimed at suggesting an approach with a high emotional and symbolic resonance that favours the activation of imaginative, identifying and transformative abilities. One clarification concerns the need to adapt the narrative to the characteristics of the students with whom the teacher is working. The narrative pretext is the same for the first and second cycle of the primary school. As is well known, the cognitive and emotional characteristics of children vary a lot in these years. Consequently, it is the teacher’s task to adapt the narrative to the abilities of his/her pupils. With younger children, an expressive reading by the teacher can be very useful, simplifying the vocabulary and some passages. With older children, the text can be read without variation; Alternatively, the teacher can try to have each student read it individually or ask small groups of students to experiment with reading parts of the text in several voices or try dramatising some passages. A final note concerns the disciplinary content referred to in the narratives. Obviously these can be varied if the curriculum of the class in which the teacher is working proposes other themes and situations. It should not be difficult to transpose the structure of the story and activities, as well as the evocative stimuli, to different contents.

4.3

Two Approaches to Foster Creativity

The metacognitive and the symbolic-imaginative approach have some peculiarities. It is important to keep them in mind to distinguish them and their potentialities. The metacognitive approach is aimed at a comprehension/understanding, at the amplification of the implicit thinking and at the development and control of mental strategies. The symbolic approach instead focuses on contemplation, identification and resonance. It wants to develop internal evocative images and to create different ways “to be” in the world, through a self-experience.

4

4.3.1

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

75

The Metacognitive Approach

With reference to the metacognitive approach, three different aspects have to be considered: • the mental processes underlying the training; • the creative operations; • the creative activities. 4.3.1.1 The Mental Processes Underlying the Training The aim of this approach is to develop a metacognitive-reflexive attitude in students, in other words, to help them to generate self-awareness acts and remarks about different aspects of their mental functioning. In particular self-awareness acts are aimed at: • producing some adequate beliefs (metacognitive knowledge) about the own, the other and the general mental functioning; • allowing people to control their own mental processes (monitoring and self-regulation) to orient them towards a productive functioning; • fostering a general disposition to introspective thinking and evaluation before acting. This is useful to inhibit dysfunctional impulsive tendencies. Furthermore, self-awareness acts can be produced in three different temporal moments: before an action (at a behavioural or at a thinking level), during it or at the end of it. These acts are about different aspects: strategies, resources, difficulties, processes and individual/personal experience. Table 4.2 shows some typical questions about self-awareness acts, in the three temporal moments. 4.3.1.2 The Creative Operations The training is based on the WCR model of creativity (Antonietti, Colombo, & Pizzingrilli, 2011) that states that three operations are involved in it:

76

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

Table 4.2 Schematic representation of self-awareness acts before in three temporal moments STRATEGIES BEFORE AN ACTION

DURING AN ACTION

How can I do it? Is it a strategy that I know? Is it a preferential strategy? Is it a strategy that I can learn? Will it be an effective strategy? RESOURCES BEFORE AN ACTION

How am I doing it? Is it a strategy that I know? Is it a preferential strategy? Is it a strategy that I can learn? Is the strategy working?

What skills have I to activate? To what extent can the ability be modified? Have I to develop a (new) skill? Who/what can help me? Where does it facilitate me? When does it facilitate me? How much time have I got?

What skills am I activating? To what extent can the ability be modified? Have I to develop a (new) skill? Who/what is helping me? Is the context facilitating me? Is the moment facilitating me? How much time have I?

DIFFICULTIES BEFORE AN ACTION Is it easy/difficult? What limits have I got? What obstacles will I meet? What will distract me? What will demotivate me? What mistakes will I do?

THE PROCESS BEFORE AN ACTION

DURING AN ACTION

DURING AN ACTION Is it easy/difficult? What limits have I got? What obstacles am I meeting? What is distracting me? What is demotivating me? What mistakes am I doing?

DURING AN ACTION

AT THE END OF AN ACTION How did I do it? Is it a strategy that I knew? Is it a preferential strategy? Did I learn a strategy? Was the strategy effective? AT THE END OF AN ACTION What skills have I activated? To what extent can the ability be modified? Did I learn/empower a skill? Who/what did help me? Did the context facilitate me? Did the moment facilitate me? How much time did I have? AT THE END OF AN ACTION Is it easy/difficult? What personal limits have I identified? What obstacles did I meet? What distracted me? What demotivated me? What mistakes did I do? AT THE END OF AN ACTION

(continued)

4

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

77

Table 4.2 (continued) What speedy have I to keep? What trend will I have? What will be the crucial point? What will I do well?

Am I keeping the right speedy? What trend am I having? What is the crucial point? What am I doing well?

THE SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE BEFORE AN ACTION DURING AN ACTION Is it familiar? What effort will I do? Will I tire? This intrigue me? Will I like it? Will I be satisfied? Will I be at ease? Will I be able to do it? Will I reach my goal? What will I learn?

Is it familiar? What effort am I doing? Am I tiring? This is intriguing me? Am I liking it? Is it satisfying me? Am I being at ease? Am I able to do it? Am I reaching my goal? What am I learning?

Did I keep the right speedy? What trend did I have? What was the crucial point? What did I do well? AT THE END OF AN ACTION Did it appear to me familiar? What effort did I do? Did I tire me? Did this intrigue me? Did I like it? Am I satisfied? Was I at ease? Am I able to do it? Did I reach my goal? What did I learn?

• to widen the mental field; • to connect different mental fields; • to reorganise the mental field. 4.3.1.3 The Creative Activities The three creative operations can be empowered with activities put on three different levels: • Modelling: A model is presented; It can motivate, invite to the personal assimilation, suggest transformation prompts; • Search: A problem-solving request is proposed that stimulates individuals to find unconventional answers; • Interrogation: The generation and the discovery of questions (problem finding) is stimulated. In particular, each episode of the training programme presents, in some points, different activities that work on a creative operation and on one of the three levels stated before. Furthermore, after each activity, some metacognitive stimuli are presented: They invite to reflect on previous

78

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

activities, on observed difficulties, on the possibility to improve the process and on learning. Some examples of activities working on the operations and plans are described below. In Episode 2 (artistic field), students find themselves having a break together and Mary tells her friends that she has gone to a museum and, describing this experience, she shows the entrance ticket, on which a picture by a famous painter is depicted. The peculiarities of this painting stimulate curiosity and questions. OPERATION: WIDENING LEVEL: SEARCH Try to think of other titles suitable for this work and explain them. METACOGNITIVE QUESTIONS Can it be a good strategy, to find other titles, think about other pictures and wonder if their title would be good for this picture? Why?

Students are invited to look for answers not taken for granted (Search), to provide new ideas (widening) about Cezanne’s “Card Players” picture. In Episode 3 (linguistic field) Lollo and Cate are the protagonists of a bad quarrel in the classroom and the teacher decides to turn the happening into a writing assignment. OPERATION: CONNECTING LEVEL: MODELLING Divide into small groups and try your hand at the task proposed by teacher Monica. Create a few pages that tell of a quarrel very similar to the one just described, inventing new characters and a different situation. METACOGNITIVE QUESTIONS Are you pleased with your group’s story? Why?

In this case students are invited to create a different story from the task that serves as a model (Modelling), discovering points of contact (connecting). In Episode 9 (mathematical field), teacher Gianna proposes a logic exercise that puts the class in difficulty and the solution comes unexpectedly from Lollo.

4

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

79

OPERATION: REORGANISING LEVEL: INTERROGATION Compare your explanation with the one Lollo found. Do you find any difference? METACOGNITIVE QUESTIONS Do you think Lollo was right? Why?

With this activity the generation of questions and the discovery of issues (Questioning) are induced. At the same time, students are led to see the protagonists and themselves from different points of view and perspectives, trying to reorganise their mental field, looking for new configurations (reorganise). 4.3.2

The Symbolic Approach

The symbolic-imaginative training is less structured than the metacognitive one. In this case, there are not some activities to be performed, but the narration is interrupted by “evocative stimuli” in some points (Table 4.3). They are some indications about how to use the creativity empowerment tools that activate imaginative, identification and transformative skills. They consist of suggestions about the use of creative mental operations in order to favour a symbolic and emotive approach to the story telling. Such approach may activate in individuals’ mind imaginative, transformation and identification abilities. The symbolic process has a circular structure and it involves two principal lines: • The symbolisation of reality: The internal self generates the external reality; • The exposition to symbolisation: The external reality evocates the internal self.

80

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

Table 4.3 Evocative stimuli included in Episode 3 • Why did teacher Monica not act immediately to prevent the conflict between Jack, Lollo and Cate? • Did you happen to “lose control” at some point? What did you hear? What happened? How do you assess what you did then? • Why do you think some people can control themselves and others can’t? Are there any advantages and disadvantages to either case? • What do you usually feel and what do you do when you fight with someone? • Try to imagine a fight where you feel successful and satisfied: what would happen? • When you feel defeated and humiliated, what do you usually do? How do you feel about overcoming what happened? • According to Teacher Monica, quarrels and conflicts seem to be unavoidable and, on the contrary, they can be useful. Why is that? • It would seem that the quarrels and conflicts are not only between people, but also in people: what do you think? • Teacher Monica said that anger and quarrels should not come out of the Field of Mars: what does this mean in concrete terms? Do you remember any personal experience? • What do you think could be the “winning weapon” to come out positively from a conflict? Try to hypothesise more solutions and imagine the consequences for people in the long term

4.4

An Example of the Episodes

“Oh, no, it’s already 10, 45 minutes and 58 seconds!” Cate huffs to herself looking at her watch, inseparable friend. “Here we are at last! I really need to stretch out my legs” Lollo broods impatiently, swinging in the chair. “Four… four more minutes” Jack is thinking as he contemplates his watch, almost as if he wanted to convince them to speed up a little bit. It’s only 240 seconds, but to our friend they seem endless. And they’re even longer if the teacher handles them. There he is, sitting on the desk, while scrolling through the log looking for someone to interrogate… “So, let’s see who’s going to have the pleasure of repeating the boards right afterwards the interval…”. A name thicks. Who is he or she? It doesn’t matter, as long as it wasn’t Jack’s. A long sigh of relief, but how much energy he spent in few minutes! During the long-awaited interval, Mary interrupts the brief silence “Hey! Guess where I was yesterday afternoon?” “On Mars?” Lollo’s ironic answer.

4

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

81

“Hahahahah … You are funny as usual!” she responds “No my dear, but I’ll give you a hint: I went out with my cousin Antonella and…”. “Ah, well, then cousin Bianconiglia took you to Wonderland! Hey, Jack, but I’ll give you a hint… Did you ever meet Mary’s cousin Lella? She’s nice, but when she begins a conversation there is no chance to react!” “Well, you’re not wrong, Lollo!” Mary replies “In fact it is kind of like being back from Wonderland. So I want to give you a another cue…” and then she takes a note out of her pocket and she shows it to them. “Have you made flyers? Good for you!” murmurs Jack, when he’s still thinking of teacher’s school register. “Jack, my dear you are still sleeping!” says Cate “Don’t you see that it’s a ticket to an exhibition?” “Ah, sorry, but I thought it was a bar advertising” Jack replies trying to justify his answer. “In fact, Sleeping Beauty-Jack is right” Lollo says pointing with his finger at the picture on the card “There are two guys drinking and playing…at cards. Is it not a bar? It’s a game room” “You don’t know anything about art, Lawyer Lollo? All people, included rocks, know the famous Cezanne’s picture named The Card Players !” replies Cate, by blocking Jack’s attempt to approve the words of his defender. “Dear Cate, you are absolutely right” Mary intervenes “However I must specify this is not that painting but one of the 5 paintings realized by Cezanne about playing cards.” “Sorry, Mary, but they were all the same paintings? I don’t think so!” says Cate, who doesn’t like others’ observation about topics who she well knows. “Look for yourself, here are the other 4” continues Mary, showing the back of the card “Same title, same composition, some other characters, some little differences…”. ACTIVITY OPERATION: WIDENING AND REORGANISING LEVEL: INTERROGATION What questions come to your mind when you think of a painter has depicted 5 times the same scene? METACOGNITIVE QUESTIONS

82

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

Who can help you to think intelligent questions? Why? Do you think intelligent questions right away or do you need more time?

“Wow, he was obsessed by play or alcohol or… What?” interrupts Lollo “Look, it’s unusual to paint 5 pictures that look practically the same!” “I don’t know that Cézanne was ill” says Mary. “Then he lived in front of a bar” adds Jack hoping to solve the mystery. “I don’t know, Jack. He probably saw scenes like this frequently” Mary answers. “The Card Players … Pretty obvious title! Look at their faces these two guys. They’re not having fun, they’re so serious, so still, so…” says Lollo. “They’re focused, I’d say” Cate replies. ACTIVITY OPERATION: WIDENING LEVEL: SEARCH Try to think of other titles suitable for this work and explain them. METACOGNITIVE QUESTIONS Can it be a good strategy, to find other titles, think about other pictures and wonder if their title would be good for this picture? Why? Or it’s better to think of fairy-tale titles and try to find one that works for the painting? Why?

“Perhaps the cards have a special meaning for this painter” Mary adds “In fact the title of the exhibition is When Art Meets the Artist. Excerpts of an era, excerpts of a life”. “After all, a match is a challenge between two people who want to prevail on each other”. Jack’s observation, mysteriously coming out of his perennial state of torpor, leaves the little group of friends pleasantly amazed. ACTIVITY OPERATION: WIDENING LEVEL: SEARCH

4

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

83

The theme of cards has also inspired other artists. Try to look for other works on this theme and find connections. How similar are the works you found? How are they different? METACOGNITIVE QUESTIONS In your opinion making connections takes effort? Why? Do you feel a certain satisfaction in finding connections? Why?

“The break’s been over for about 4 minutes and you can resume this debate later!” concludes the teacher. ACTIVITY OPERATION: REORGANISING LEVEL: MODELLING According to art’s experts, card game symbolised painting and two players were Cézanne himself and his father. Would this piece of information explain the way the author painted the two players? METACOGNITIVE QUESTIONS Knowing more things helps you understand better. Have you had any personal experience that confirms it? Is it useful, in your opinion, to think about what an artist wants to tell us with his works? Why?

TEACHER’S CORNER • Remember that you can also use another painting to help the students in the critical analysis of works of art. • Many works make it possible to activate reorganising processes also from the point of view of the choice of colours and materials used (for example, if a colour painting had been made in black and white, if it had been a watercolour instead of oil on canvas, what would have changed and why?). • You may decide to focus only on some of the questions proposed, both for the metacognitive part and for the WCR model . • You can include other questions in each of the previous sections. You can then share your ideas with other colleagues.

84

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

• You can present some episodes from Cézanne’s life to the students (or the author of the painting he has decided to use as an alternative) to exemplify some mental dynamics associated with creativity.

4.5

Testing the Training Programme

To test the efficacy of metacognitive and symbolic-imaginative training programmes, 984 students were involved. They attended different school grades in a region of South Italy (Sicily). Students aged between 5 and 17 years, representative of the different school grades, were involved. For secondary school students the training programme was put into a form adapted to the age of the students, which had the same structure described before but differed in the way the episodes were told and managed by teachers. 4.5.1

The Objectives of the Project

The three main objectives of the project were the following ones: (a) to assess the creative potential of all school levels’ students; in particular: • • • •

the the the the

last grade of kindergarten school; first and fourth grade of primary school; second grade of low secondary school; second and fourth grade of high secondary school;

(b) to verify the developmental possibility of students’ creative potential thanks two different kinds of training programmes; They were implemented in class by teachers during a school year; (c) to verify the potentialities of two different stimulating strategies of creativity, using a metacognitive and a symbolic-reflexive setting.

4

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

85

Table 4.4 Number of students and age according to school levels and experimental conditions School level

Participants

Mean age

SD

Kindergarten School

123

5.10

0.39

1st Grade Primary School

295

6.25

0.34

4th Grade Primary School

593

9.32

0.37

2nd Grade Low Secondary School

117

12.29

0.50

2nd and 4th Grade High Secondary School

155

16.55

1.11

4.5.2

Experimental conditions • Metacognitive training • Imaginative-symbolic training • No training (control) • Metacognitive training • Imaginative-symbolic training • No training (control) • Metacognitive training • Imaginative-symbolic training • No training (control) • Metacognitive training • Imaginative-symbolic training • No training (control) • Metacognitive training • Imaginative-symbolic training • No training (control)

Methods

4.5.2.1 Participants Table 4.4 shows the number of involved students for each school grade and their mean age. 4.5.2.2 Measures To test the efficacy of the two different training to foster creativity, a pre-post study was conducted. In the assessment phases, the WCR test (Antonietti et al., 2011; Antonietti, Pizzingrilli, & Valenti, 2012) was administrated. In the first subtest (Widening) the respondent is asked to choose one answer among alternatives. In the second subtest (Connecting) the respondent is asked to choose, given a list of words or images, the elements that the child would associate with the given situation and to justify the choice. In the third subtest (Reorganising), faced with a hypothetical situation, the respondent is asked to choose one

86

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

answer among alternatives that vary gradually from obvious to unusual consequences (Table 4.5). The respondent must choose the scenario that, in his/her opinion, completes the initial scene and, on the basis of such choice, to invent a little story. Each version of the test consists of nine items, distributed as follows: • three items for the subtest W (Widening); • three items for the subtest C (Connecting); • three items for the subtest R (Reorganising). From the distribution of the percentages of responses to the various options of each scale of the test—Widening, Connecting, Reorganising— directions were obtained to assign a creativity score to the various choices: The score varied from one (not creative) to four (very creative). More specifically, a procedure of gradual deviation from the higher response Table 4.5 The basis of the WCR test Mental operation

What

How

Example (items selected from the WCR test)

Widening

Mental perspective

List all possible uses of a BOOK

Connecting

Disparate elements

Reorganising

Mental field

• Producing a lot of different ideas and widening your point of view • Establishing relationships and combining different elements, going beyond superficial similarities and differences • Decontextualising the elements of a situation to catch useful properties with the aim to get new reconfigurations • Restructuring and changing point of view

Quote all things that you think are related to MOBILE

What would happen if colours did not exist anymore?

4

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

87

rate—under the principle that responses which are not frequent tend to be more creative—was followed. In our case, answers that have gained frequency values less than or equal to 10% gained the highest score for creativity (equal to four). Similarly, responses that had the highest frequency rate earned the lowest score of creativity (equal to one). Intermediate values—a score of two or three—were assigned taking into account both the percentile ranks and the content of the response. The conversion of raw scores in standardised tests scores allows testers to evaluate individual student profiles. In this way we can understand not only the general level of creativity of each student but also if their creative potential is shown primarily in one type of mental operation (as might be the case of a student who is very creative in the Connecting subtest and uncreative or mildly creative in other subtests). 4.5.2.3 Procedure Three different groups of students were created (two experimental groups and a control one): Experimental group A was involved in the metacognitive training; Experimental group B did the symbolic training; The Control group followed the traditional school program. Before and at the end of the training or of the traditional school program, students were involved in two assessment phases (pre-test and post-test). The test was administered online using Google Drive. A small group of local psychologists was trained about administration procedures. An individual administration was provided for the kindergarten school and for the first grade of primary school students and a group administration for the other ones. The test session took place in a computer lab under the supervision of psychologists. No limitations of time were given and responses were anonymous. 4.5.3

Results

A repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted considering the whole sample, taking the two levels (pre-test and post-test) as a factor and the school level and the experimental condition as between variables. The comparison between the two phases (pre-training and posttraining) showed an improvement in creativity in the groups who took

88

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

part to the training programme, while scores in the WCR test remained almost unchanged in the control group (Fig. 4.1). Post hoc analysis showed significant differences between age levels, except between the fourth grade of primary school and low secondary school (Fig. 4.2). Other repeated-measure ANOVAs were conducted considering the Widening, Connecting and Reorganising subtests as dependent variables and the school level and the experimental condition as between variables. By analysing the individual mental operations investigated by the WCR test, it can be observed that:

Fig. 4.1 Total WCR mean scores before and after the training considering the typology of training as between-subject variable

4

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

89

Fig. 4.2 Total WCR mean scores before and after the training considering the school level as between-subject variable

• The training programme stimulated the ability to expand one’s mental field (Fig. 4.3), especially in older students (Fig. 4.4); • As far as the ability to connect different elements is concerned, this skill was enhanced by the training programme (Fig. 4.5), especially in the students of the 4th class of the primary school (Fig. 4.6); • The activities contained in the training favoured the mechanism of reorganisation at all school levels (Figs. 4.7 and 4.8).

90

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

Fig. 4.3 Widening subtest mean scores before and after the training considering the typology of training as between-subject variable

4.6

Conclusions

Overall, both versions of the training programme increased students’ creative skills, but to different degrees depending on the type of mental operation considered and the school level. Basically, there was no precise developmental trend, showing that the development of some transversal skills (such as creative skills) does not go along with the age of the students or their level of schooling. At the end of the experimentation phase, meetings between experts and teachers took place in order to collect qualitative data about the training experience and students’ reactions. It emerged that better feedback was obtained in the primary school classes: Students appeared to be significantly involved in listening to the plot and motivated to carry out the proposed activities. There was also a general appreciation from students and teachers for both the versions of the training

4

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

91

Fig. 4.4 Widening subtest mean scores before and after the training considering the school level as between-subject variable

programme. On the one hand, metacognitive training proved to be a useful alternative way to propose some didactic activities. On the other hand, the imaginative-symbolic training allowed some teachers to put their empathic skills into play and students to reflect on their own experiences through the analysis of the emotionality of the characters and the ideas proposed in each episode. It follows that the versatility of the training does not only consist in soliciting a flexible attitude through different skills and modalities, but also in active way involving the different sensibilities of students and teachers.

92

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

Fig. 4.5 Connecting subtest mean scores before and after the training considering the typology of training as between-subject variable

4.7

General Overview

The book addressed a topic—the enhancement of creativity—which rises continuously interest both in researchers and professionals. A problem which is often stressed in that field is that only few attempts to foster creativity thinking have been validated. Thus, the goal of the book was to show how interventions to promote creativity skills can be designed and implemented on a scientific basis, an issue which is rather neglected in the existing publications. If we consider the outcomes of the validation studies reported in the chapters as a whole, we are induced to stress the relevance of dissemination. Developing creativity emerged as an educational goal in educational environments (Sternberg, 2001). Requirements to optimise the attempts to achieve such a goal have been identified. The reliability and validity of

4

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

93

Fig. 4.6 Connecting subtest mean scores before and after the training considering the school level as between-subject variable

the materials to evaluate the creative potential of children and adolescents and to promote more creative thinking has been examined and proved. The enhancement of creativity—through the integration that takes place between divergent and convergent aspects, spontaneity and control, emotion and intelligence, imagination and rationality—is characterised as a stimulus to overcome two opposing dysfunctional trends: stereotypes and rigidity on the one hand, and, on the other one, destruction and unreality of thought. This goal has a significant expression in these images proposed by Lévi-Strauss (1952): “Man is not like a person climbing a ladder, who with his every move adds a new step to all those already won”, but as a player of dice who “as often as throws them, sees them spread on the carpet, resulting in different combinations” or “as the knight in the chess game, who always has at its disposal a variety of progressions, but never in the same direction”. The question is then to

94

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

Fig. 4.7 Reorganising subtest mean scores before and after the training considering the typology of training as between-subject variable

give the individual—in a much more important game than chess, that is, life—the ability to perform, in addition to the fast and straight moves of the rook or of the bishop (namely, the linear logical thinking), the most imaginative and unpredictable moves of the knight. Thanks to the description of the training programmes reported in this book, which have been designed and implemented by keeping in mind the mentioned goals, we hope to provide readers with insights and suggestions about the ways they can conduct activities aimed at increasing the creative potential and how these activities can be proposed, managed and tested.

4

A SPECIAL SCHOOL YEAR …

95

Fig. 4.8 Reorganising subtest mean scores before and after the training considering the school level as between-subject variable

References Antonietti, A., Colombo, B., Cancer, A., & Iannello, P. (in press). Metacognitive awareness across the creative process. In P. Metallidou & D. Moraitou (Eds.), Trends and prospects in metacognition research across the life span—A tribute to Anastasia Efklides. New York: Springer. Antonietti, A., Colombo, B., & Pizzingrilli, P. (2011). The WCR model of creativity: From concept to application. Open Education Journal, 4, 80–89. Antonietti, A., Pizzingrilli, P., & Valenti, C. (2012). Il test ACR [The WCR test]. Milano: Servizio di Psicologia dell’Apprendimento e dell’Educazione in Età Evolutiva, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Bransford, J. D., Sherwood, R. D., & Sturdevant, T. (1987). Teaching thinking and problem solving. In J. B. Baron & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Teaching thinking skills: Theory and practice (pp. 162–181). San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman/Times Books/ Henry Holt & Co. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1952). Race and history. Paris: UNESCO.

96

A. ANTONIETTI ET AL.

Pizzingrilli, P., Valenti, C., Cerioli, L., & Antonietti, A. (2015). Sviluppare il pensiero flessibile. Percorsi interdisciplinari nella scuola primaria. Trento: Edizioni Centro Studi Erickson. Sternberg, R. J. (2001). Creativity for the new millennium. American Psychologist, 56, 332.

Index

A analogy, 8 assessment, 18, 34 self-, 71 Associationism, 2, 48 Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), vi Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), vi

D dyslexia, vi

B bisociation, 3 brainstorming, vii, 48

F Factorialism, 2 field-dependence/independence, 8 flexibility, v, 2, 18, 35 flexible thinking, 70–71 attitude, 91 fluidity/fluency, 2, 18, 35 free production of ideas (PRO), 17

C categorisation, 6 change of point of view, 17, 86 circular structure of process, 73, 79 combination of elements (COM), 17 connecting (C), xi, 5, 7, 8, 17, 33, 49, 78, 84–87 constructivism, ix

E emotive approach, 71, 79 empowerment, 44, 79 evolution, 2

G Geneplore, 3 Gestalt, 3

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Antonietti et al. (eds.), Enhancing Creativity Through Story-Telling, Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63013-3

97

98

INDEX

I imagery, 12 imaginative-symbolic training, 84–87, 91 insight, 3, 94 interrogation, 71, 77–79, 81

P primary school, 16, 44, 63, 72–74, 84–90 productive functioning, 75 productive thinking , 3

J Janusian thinking , 3

R reorganising (R), xi, 5, 9, 11, 12, 17, 33, 49, 79, 83–95 restructuring, 3, 86

K kindergarten, 16, 44, 63, 72, 84–87 L lateral thinking , 10 learning-through-discovery, vii M metacognition, viii, ix, xi, 49, 71 metacognitive approach, 71, 73–75 attitude, 71 questions, 78, 81–84 stimuli, 71, 77 training, 73, 85–87 version, 72–74 modelling, 71, 75–78, 83 N narrative plot, 71–73 narrative stories, 16 O originality, 2, 18, 35

S search, 77–78, 82 secondary school, 71–72, 84 high, 84–87 low, 84–88 self-awareness, 75 similarities (SIM), 17, 86 style, 6, 65, 71–73 symbolic process, 71, 79

T training programme, x–xiii, 16, 17, 19, 33, 35, 44, 48

W WCR model, xii, 16–17, 33, 48–49, 71, 75, 83 well-being, vi widening (W), xi, 5, 17, 33, 49, 78, 85, 88