Group Creativity Training for Children: Lessons Learned from Two Award‐Winning Teams

Abstract

The development of group creativity can be challenging for both young students and their teachers. This study examined the processes and learning outcomes of group creativity training from the perspectives of elementary school students and teachers while identifying critical factors that contributed to the success of the training. Data were collected from two Korean elementary school teams that won the gold (1st) and a special medal at the 2011 Destination Imagination global competition. Both individual and group interviews were carried out with 13 students and two teachers to investigate their perspectives of group creativity training. The analysis of the interview data revealed three major factors and subthemes: group dynamics (conflict and play), individual characteristics of the students (personality and motivation), and teachers' roles (training strategies, training style, and commitment). In addition, a semi-longitudinal survey conducted a year after the interviews examined nine skill or competency domains (self-management, creativity, leadership, interpersonal relationship, patience, cooperation, information processing, communication, and presentation) to evaluate effects of the group creativity training on student learning. Synthesizing the analyses, we addressed the following three topics that arose from the discussions: the Safe Nest Effect, teachers' training style, and multiple learning experiences derived from group creativity training.

Creative Collaboration in Young Children’s Playful Group Drawing

“…In the business world, team trust is deemed critical for the collaborative creativity that leads to the production of novel ideas and solutions (Barczak, Lassk, & Mulki, 2010). In an education context, factors such as group cohesion, group dynamics, and general social atmosphere influence group creativity (Shin & Jang, 2015). The literature on play suggests that children engage in more sustained play with friends than with acquaintances (Howes, Droege, & Matheson, 1994), likely because they are more trusting of friends with whom they have more shared experiences (Smith, 2005).…”

“…Drawing on the observations of Coates and Coates, as well as the definitions offered by Shin and Jang (2015) and Guyotte et al (2015), we define creative collaboration in early childhood as group situations where children communicate personal and cultural knowledge, negotiate shared meaning, and influence each other in the advancement of personal creative abilities, that may or may not lead to a collective end product. When young children draw freely together, they may not always focus on creating a shared product or innovation-as is commonly the focus of group projects in the workplace-but can nevertheless lead each other toward new and useful ideas using different approaches to communication and intersubjectivity (Coates & Coates, 2006;Frisch, 2006).…”

“…In their study of theatre performances, Sawyer and DeZutter (39) describe “situations where collaborating groups of individuals collectively generate a shared creative product” (p. 82) as distributed creativity , whereas others use collaborative creativity in higher education (Guyotte et al, 16) or group creativity in organizational research (Paulus & Njistad, 32). Shin and Jang (40) offer a broader understanding of group creativity in primary schools where “creative ideas are the consequences of thoughts, insights, and cooperation within a group” (p. 5), and can lead to either individual or collective products that are considered novel and useful within the social context. From an educational standpoint, collaborative creativity, in part, involves students bringing their knowledge and various lived experiences to the group context with the aim of attaining a shared learning goal.…”

Creativity in science and the link to cited references: Is the creative potential of papers reflected in their cited references?

“…Individuals' characteristics such as intelligence, competency, motivation, knowledge, style, personality, etc. have been the core elements of creativity studies in a variety of fields (Shin & Jang, 2017).…”

“…A stream of research has examined the effect of team collaboration on the creativity of research, emphasizing that creativity is the outcome of individuals' interactions within a team (Shin & Jang, 2017). Interactions, collaborative networking, and information exchange might result in serendipitous discoveries in basic science, applied research and technological development activities (Yaqub, 2018).…”