ЭкспериментИскусство_2011

tant in the “future” (M=5,67, SD=1,4) and in the “present” (M=5,47, SD=1,4) than in the “past” (M=4,84, SD=1,6)(F(2,58)=21,31, p<.001), without significant differences for sex, age groups, and areas of teaching.

4.4. Semantic Differential: the Concept of Creativity

Data analyses have shown a good representation of the concept of Creativity (M=5,31, SD=,62), without differences for sex, age groups, and teaching areas. Linear regressions have indicated that, in general, the representation of Creativity has negatively influenced the agreement with the definition of creativity as “cognitive competence” (β= -.298; t= -2,21, p=.031). The representation of Creativity has negatively influenced creative performances produced by students (β= -.302; t= -2,41, p=.019) and, in particular, flexibility (β= -.464; t= -3,99, p<.001) and originality (β= -.345; t= -2,80, p=.007); in addition, the representation of Creativity has negatively influenced students’ creative personality evaluations (β= -.356; t= -2,91, p=.005) and, in particular, the factors of curiosity (β= -.455; t= -3,89, p<.001), imagination (β= -.323; t= -2,60, p=.012), and complexity (β= -.312; t= -2,50, p=.015).

4.4.1. Creativity: Openness to Change, Closure to change, and Stagnation

The factor analysis carried out on pairs of adjectives referred to the concept of Creativity permitted to draw three different factors (Table 1: KMO=,737; Bartlett’s test of sphericity: 722,872, df 276, p<.001; eingenvalue > 1; total percentage of variance: 52,6%): I factor has been defined as “openness to change” (eigenvalue=6,61; 27,5% of variance), II factor has been called “closure to change” (eigenvalue=4,26; 17,7% of variance), and III factor has been defined as “stagnation” (eigenvalue=1,75; 7,3% of variance).

The first factor included adjectives which evoke the idea of openness to change, novelty, and originality as, for example, tasty, active, strong, etc. The second factor included adjectives which recall the idea of closure to change and resistance to modifications, such as secure, resistant, consistent, stable, etc. Finally, the third factor grouped adjectives which identified the idea of stagnation and of absence of modification, such as calm, simple, etc.

Significant and negative correlations were found between the concept of creativity as “openness to change” expressed by all teachers, flexibility in creative performances of students (r= -.31,

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Table 1

FactorAnalysis of concept of Creativity

Extraction Method: Principal ComponentAnalysis. Rotation Method: Promax with Kaiser Normalization

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p=.016), traits of curiosity (r= -.38, p=.003), complexity (r= -.38, p=.003), and willingness to take risks (r= -.28, p=.027). This result has underlined that the more teachers considered the concept of creativity as openness to change, the less their students performed in capacity to shift from a mental set to a different one; in addition, the more teachers valued the concept of creativity as openness to change, the less their students valued themselves as curious, complex, and willing to take risks.

4.4.2. Correlations between Scale of Assessment and Creative Performance

The evaluation expressed by teachers in relation to their students’ creative thinking was correlated with performance produced by students in total creativity (r=.50, p<.001), and, specifically, in flexibility (r=.31, p=.016), originality (r=.40, p=.001), and elaboration (r=.39, p=.002). In addition, the evaluation expressed by teachers in relation to their students’ creative personality was correlated with total creative personality (r=.42, p=.001), and, specifically, with the traits of willingness to take risks (r=.29, p=.025), complexity (r=.48, p<.001), imagination (r=.34, p=.008), and curiosity (r=.31, p=.017).

Conclusions

This study provides an interesting contribution on the issue “what is creativity” according to the beliefs and the conceptions expressed by teachers. With reference to definition of creativity, teachers consider it as an “artistic quality” and attribute its origin to different aspects as “nature”, “family climate”, “classroom climate”, and “social climate”. They have expressed a positive agreement with the idea that, both in the “future” and in the “present”, a)their teaching subjects are very important for the improvement of students’levels of creativity and b)creativity is relevant for the learning of subjects. These results are in line with those of the studies carried out in different countries (Diakidoy & Phtiaka, 2001; Craft, 2003): there is a total agreement with the idea that “my role as a teacher involves the facilitation of students’ creativity” (Kampylis et al., 2009) among in-service and prospective teachers of Greek State Primary Schools.

As far as the representation of the concept of Creativity is concerned, through Semantic Differential evaluation, it has been pos-

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sible to highlight three aspects of this psychological dimension: creativity as openness to change, creativity as closure to change, and creativity as stagnation. From the comparison between the representation of creativity (explained through the three mentioned aspects) expressed by teachers and the creative performances of their students (measured through Williams’ tests), we have found that the more teachers considered the concept of creativity as “openness to change”, the less their students performed in flexibility, that is, the capacity to shift from ideational category to a different one, and the less their students valued themselves as curious, complex, and willing to take risks.

Therefore, the evidence of this study has indicated a positive connection regarding the assessment expressed by teachers on creative thinking and personality and their students’performances (specifically, in the factors of flexibility, originality, elaboration, and all traits of creative personality).

The main issue of this research is that the gap is clear between teachers’ beliefs and conceptions of “what is creativity” and daily classroom practices carried out in school contexts concerning the development of creative abilities; for this reason, we believe that it could be important to deepen the multiple meanings of “what is creativity” for teachers and to verify the correspondence between these meanings and the factors of creativity assessed by psychological tests.

It is possible to think that the gap above mentioned could be created by a series of myths concerning the ideas about creativity, as proposed by Plucker, Beghetto, and Dow (2004); these myths consist of the conviction that “people were born creative or noncreative” and “the implication for such a point of view must lie in a doubt whether working on developing creativity makes sense at all (…) Such point of view, based on predestination, is both untrue and socially harmful” (Plucker et al., 2004, 58). Moreover, this myth has an opposite meaning to a body of research devoted to the efficiency of creativity training which confirms the possibility for developing creativity potential (see, for example, Scott, Leritz, & Mumford, 2004).

The second myth appears to be connected to the idea that children’s and youth’s creativity is related to negative behaviours and characteristics (Karwowski et al., 2007).And, finally, the third widespread myth regards the conviction that creativity is a non-scientific

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concept, appeared under the influence of popular beliefs that distort the meaning of what creativity really is (see Plucker et al., 2004).

These last indications and the results of our investigation suggest the need to research on the relationship between teachers’ representation of creativity and everyday classroom practices to improve students’ creative abilities. The analysis of this issue could be helpful to plan specific training programs for teachers to develop students’ creativity.

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Maria Elvira de Caroli,

Orazio Licciardello,

Elisabetta Sagone

Divergent thinking and shape collections in developmental age

Aim of investigation: verify if creative performances, studied by means of evaluation of factors of creativity, were influenced by the production of “shape collections” (Piaget, 1936). Participants: 48 Italian pupils from 6 to 8 years of age. Materials: Test of Divergent Thinking (Williams, 1994) and Logical Operations (task no.13)(Vianello & Marin, 1998). Results: Creative performances were influenced by ability to produce shape collections, overall for older pupils. Originality, elaboration, and production of titles were affected by this cognitive competence developed in older pupils. Future research could deepen the role of cognitive development – in terms of quality of thinking – in relation to the divergent thinking.

Introduction

In recent literature focused on the cognitive aspects of creativity, a reduced attention has been given to relationship between divergent thinking and specific cognitive operations of classification, the “shape collections”, produced in developmental age and analyzed by Piaget and Inhelder (1961).

The shape collections were considered “creations of a figure whose parts are connected to each other not only for the presence of one or more common characteristics, but also for simple relations of spatial proximity” (see Petter, 1961, 241). Children realize a shape collection with empirical meaning, creating, for example, a house consisted of a triangular roof, two square windows and a rectangular door, from to 4 geometric shapes (one triangle, two squares, and one rectangle). These performances were analyzed by Piaget in terms of capacity of classification, but it is possible to think them as products of the ability to reorganize the stimuli using the factor of originality studied as one of the most important factors of creativity (Guilford, 1959; Torrance, 1962).

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The aim of the current study has been focused on the relation between the creativity according to the Williams’ model and ability to elaborate “shape collections” as studied by Piaget. In reference to the first aspect, the factorial model of Williams analyzed five factors identified as representative of cognitive aspects of creativity:

a)“fluency”, i.e. the capacity to produce a large number of ideas and to generate meaningful responses; this capacity was investigated in previous studies by Guilford (1959) and Torrance (1962) by means of the following tasks: “use a brick”, “name all of the things of square or circle form”, “how a ‘potato’ and ‘carrot’ are alike”;

b)“flexibility”, i.e. the ability to change ideas passing from one

category to another; the researchers analyzed this ability using the tasks of “brick uses” and “product improvement” (Guilford, 1959; Torrance, 1974; Runco, 1991; in Italy, Antonietti, & Cerioli, 1992);

c)“originality”, i.e. the capacity to produce rare, infrequent, and unfamiliar ideas; Wallach & Kogan (1965), Guilford (1959), and Torrance (1974) explored this ability with the following tasks, “word building and symbol production”, “mosaic construction”, “inkblot”, “production of rhymes”, “gestalt completion”, and “unusual uses”;

d)“elaboration”, i.e. the ability to develop, embellish and en-

rich ideas with details; this ability was analyzed by the researchers using “block constructions”, “imaginary situations”, “incomplete figures and shape test”, “invention of stories”, and “analogies” (Torrance, 1962; in Italy, Antonietti & Cerioli, 1992);

e) and, finally, “production of titles”, i.e. the verbal ability to generate new and original ideas.

The Williams model has been widely used in Italian context with subject in developmental age and in relation to other psychological processes (psychological androgyny: De Caroli, Licciardello & Sagone, 2008; personality traits: De Caroli & Sagone, 2009; flexibility on gender stereotypes: De Caroli & Sagone, 2009; disability: De Caroli & Sagone, 2010) and so on. In reference to disabled pupils, the authors analyzed the relationship between creative performances and learning disability, in particular, with the aim to compare children with learning disability and children with typical development, balanced for the same cognitive level (pre-operational, intermediate, and concrete operational levels). The Italian version of Test of Divergent Thinking (Williams, 1994) and Logical Operations Tasks (Vianello & Marin, 1998) were used to measure the cognitive levels of children in areas of seriation, numeration, and classification.

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Results partially supported the hypotheses: at the pre-operational and concrete operational cognitive level, learning disabled children scored lower on flexibility, originality, elaboration, and production of titles than children with typical development.

From this last investigation, we were interested in deepening of the role of “shape collections”, realized in cognitive tasks of classification, in creative performance produced by Sicilian pupils and this represented the aim of current research.

2. Research objectives

We analyzed if creative performances, studied by means of evaluation of factors of creativity, were influenced by the production of “shape collections” realized by pupils (cfr., Piaget, 1936). Differences for sex and age groups were analyzed.

3. Methodology

3.1. Participants

The sample consisted of 48 Italian pupils from 6 to 8 years of age (divided in two age groups: 6 yr., 0 mo. to 6 yr., 11 mo.; 7 yr., 0 mo. to 8 yr., 0 mo.). Participants were randomly chosen from all students attending the classes in public elementary schools in Catania (26 boys and 22 girls). Parental consent was obtained prior to each child’s participation in this study.

3.2. Materials

The materials were individually administered to pupils and constituted by the Italian version of the Test of Divergent Thinking (Williams, 1994) and Piagetian tasks proposed in Logical Operations tasks (Vianello & Marin, 1998).

3.2.1. Test of Divergent Thinking

The Test of Divergent Thinking (Williams, 1994) was made up of a paper-pencil protocol with 12 frames containing incomplete graphic stimuli from which pupils were invited to draw a picture for 25 minutes. Five scores were identified as indicators of creative thinking: fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, and production of titles.

According to the Manual, the fluency score is the number of meaningful pictures produced by participants (range 1–12 points). The flexibility score is the number of changes of pictures from one

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