What if it Switched on the Sun? Exploring Creativity in a Brainstorming Session with Children Through a Vygotskyan Perspective

Abstract

Abstract. We contribute in this study a first step in theory-based understanding on how creativity in collaborative design sessions relates to the elements that are present in a creative act. These elements include group composition, objects present, practices used, and previous knowledge of the participants. The context of this study was our search for lightweight methods for technology design with children, which can be used in a school context with large groups, will require as little amount of training as possible, and can be set up quickly. We formed a mixed group, consisting of young children, an older child and an adult, with the aim of involving children in creative collaborative brainstorming during the very early phases of design, so as to come up with fruitful ideas for technology development. We report our process and examine the implications of our results in relation to different elements that trigger and affect creativity in the collaborative design process. Use of Vygotsky's cycle of creativity as our theoretical lens together with timeline analysis method presented in the paper were essential for seeing beneath the surface of what happened in this complex, collaborative creative process. Our results can be used for further methodological development of creative collaborative sessions, both with children and adults.2

Capture and evaluation of innovative ideas in early stages of product development

“…The proposed procedure extracts the core benefits of several such tools and offers a set of five targeted questions that can be used in brainstorming as idea triggers. This method aims to be compatible with past and present best practice in the brainstorming process (Girotra and Netessine, 2013; Kinnula et al , 2017; Sozo and Ogliari, 2019).…”

Let’s Hear Children’s Voice. An Implementation of a Design Process Model to Understand Children’s Views on Tangible Interaction

“…Hence, we had 5 th graders as session leaders (facilitators) while 3 rd graders, in partnership with university students (adults), acted as informants. A more profound analysis on the motivation and results for this session can be found from our previous research (Kinnula et al, 2017). The workshop was structured as a general introduction on tangible interaction technologies and two ideation sessions of 25 minutes each with a small break of 10 minutes in-between.…”

Interaction Order and Historical Body Shaping Children’s Making Projects—A Literature Review

“…Our literature review reports also that autonomous work and collaboration among children might not be easy to accomplish for them. In addition to that, even if the literature so far has not addressed these challenges, we wish to point out the challenges related to motivating children as well as to nurturing their creativity [81,82]. Indeed, as motivation is essential for learning, it has been argued that in a "constructivist-informed classroom" student motivation needs to be explicitly planned and integrated in the learning process by, for example, challenging the students on such level that they can experience success, using teaching techniques that both deliver new knowledge but also motivate the students, and planning for supportive classroom climate [83].…”