Assessing Creativity in Children's Museums:
The Case of an Exhibition about Colour
Alessandro Antonietti and Anna Roveda
Department of Psychology
Catholic University
Largo Gemelli 1- 20123 Milano
The study originated from the request of MUBA - an Italian association affiliated to
Hands On network - to assess whether did children attending the educational activities
included in the exhibition about colour devised by MUBA increase their creativity The
aim of the exhibition was to promote children's creativity by means of several activities,
each of them focused onto a feature of colour. Did these activities succeed in achieving
such an aim? The first reaction was: "It isn't possible to answer such a question for two
reasons".
The first reason was methodological. World wide creativity is perceived as a dimension
that education is demanded to encourage in children (Sternberg & Dess, 2001). But,
how can educators verify whether their efforts to promote creativity were successful?
Educators generally agree that creativity is an ability which is present, even though in
different degrees and manners, in all individuals. Consistently with this claim, a variety
of tests have been proposed to assess the level of creativity reached by a child. However,
such tests are often aimed at measuring "general creativity", without making reference to
the features of the domain where creativity should emerge. By contrast, in everyday life,
as well as in educational settings, children are always asked to be creative in specific
contexts. In the case of the exhibition organised by MUBA, creativity is meant as a set
of abilities involved in detecting hidden colours, in realising misleading effects induced
by colour, and so on. All these capacities concern attitudes and mental operations
focused onto a specific issue (colour). General measure of creativity didn't seem me to
be relevant to catch the hypothesised influence of the exhibition on creativity.
The second reason was pedagogical. Several programs have been proposed to develop
the creative potential in children. However, the overall picture that emerges from the
review of the studies carried out to verify the efficacy of these programs is
discouraging, since most of them failed to produce a notable and stable increase of the
creative potential of children (Antonietti, 1997). This lack of experimental support
induced us to be skeptical about the possibility that a short exposure to the educational
stimulation (such as that provided by the exhibition about colour) can modify children's
creativity.
However, despite these difficulties, we accepted the challenge on the basis of two
considerations. Firstly, it is possible to devise contextualised measure of creativity, as
recent studies showed (Diakidoy & Spanoudis, 2002). Thus, we thought that a creativity
test based on the specific topic "colour" could be designed. Secondly, we may
conjecture that an emotionally deep involvement into an educational experience, even
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though rather short in time, presumably can not affect the structural creativity potential
of an individual, but can induce specific changes in his/her dispositions toward a subject
(in the case, colour) and develop specific thinking skills thanks to the opportunity given
to children to apply unusual operations and strategies.
The first step was to devise a relevant theoretical model. We shared the assumption that
creativity, even in a narrow context such as provided by the topic of the exhibition, is a
multi-dimensional construct. How many dimensions do constitute creativity? We
reflected about the aspects of creativity which were involved in the educational
activities included in the exhibition and tried to reduce the long list of aspects we found
to a lower number by fitting similar aspects into a restricted range of categories. At the
end we identified three main sets of processes underlying the different aspects of
creativity activated by the exhibition.
The first process is Widening. It concerns the tendency to keep an open mind, to be
aware of the great quantity of elements which can be identified in a given situation, to
realise possible, not obvious meanings, to discover hidden aspects, to overcome
apparent constraints.
The second process is Connecting. It refers to the capacity to establish reciprocal
relationships among different aspects of a situation, to draw analogies between remote
things, to combine ideas in odd ways, to synthesise the multiplicity of disparate
elements into an overall structure.
The third process is Restructuring. It consists in changing the perspective, in assuming a
different point of view, in seeing things by inverting relationships between their
elements, in asking strange questions, in imagining what should happen if alternative
conditions occurred.
The second step was to devise a set of possible tasks relevant to measure the level of
expertise reached by children in each process. Some constraints had to be taken into
account:
-tasks should be suitable for children whose age corresponded to the target of the
exhibition, without being both too hard for the youngest ones and too simple for the
eldest ones;
-all tasks should be focused on colour;
-each task, even involving other aspects of creativity, should measure prevalently only
one of the three processes described by the theoretical model;
-tasks should be administered without preliminary experience and warm-up trials, with
no special training needed for testers, no special environmental features requested for
administration;
-instructions of the tasks should be easily understood;
-tasks had to be completed in a short time;
-tasks should be motivating.
Furthermore, tasks should be easily modifiable in order to devise a computerised version
for an online, self-administered employment.
The third step consisted in the administration of the chosen tasks to a pilot sample of
children to verify their adequacy.
The last step consisted in devising and running an experimental design where tasks were
administered to both control and treatment groups of children. Both groups were
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administered the creativity test described below twice, with an interval of about 10 days
between the first (phase "pre") and the second (phase "post") administration.
The independent variables were a between-subject factor (group: control vs treatment)
and a within-subject factor (phase: pre vs post). The independent variables were scores
obtained by children in the creativity test.
The sample was constituted by 343 children attending the fourth grade of Italian primary
school. They were recruited in schools situated in Milano or in the outskirts of Milano.
All schools had established previous contacts with MUBA.
Within each school classes which had planned to visit the exhibition about colour were
included in the treatment group (consisting of 193 children); classes which should have
not visited the exhibition were included in the control group (consisting of 150
children). In treatment and control classes no educational activities concerning colour
were carried out by teachers both during the weeks before the first administration of the
test and during the period between the first and the second administration of the test.
The creativity test consisted of three tasks, each aimed at measuring a creative process
included in the theoretical model devised. The tasks were reported into a booklet which
was given to each child. Pupils had to complete each task by following the instructions
and the time schedule given by the experimenter.
Widening abilities were assessed by showing children two pictures and by asking them
to identify all the nuances of a given colour that they could find in the pictures. Pictures
were printed onto a sheet; at the bottom of each picture a palette of different colours was
reported. The instructions of this task were: «Look at the picture below. Under the
picture you find a series of colours. Check the colours you can see in the picture». Ten
minutes were allowed to complete the task. The score of this task was determined by
assigning to each selected colour a value varying from 1 to 3 according to the originality
of the response, assessed on the basis of the frequency distribution of children's choices:
value 1 was attributed to colours chosen by several children, value 2 to colours chosen
by an average percentage of children, value 3 to colours chosen by few children. Total
scores of the task was computed by summing the values corresponding to the chosen
colours.
Connecting capacities were measured by presenting children the name of a colour
around which the names of eight objects were written. Pupils were asked to choose three
objects they associated to that colour. The instructions were: «Look at the colour written
in the centre of the circle below. What things do that colour induce you to remind?
Check three things you remind». The task included two trials, each concerning a
different colour. Scores were computed by summing the values of each object selected
by the child. Such values varied from to 1 to 3 as in the previous task.
Restructuring skills were assessed by describing a strange situation (for instance, «What
might it happen if men look at the world through yellow glasses?») and by asking pupils
to select three consequences within a set of eight alternatives (for example, «Cloudy
days should appear sunny days», «People should fail to distinguish ripe from unripe
fruits»). The instructions were: «Read the question reported below. Check the three
answers that you’d give». Two trials, concerning different situations, were included in
the task. Scores were determined according to the same procedure as in the first task.
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A total creativity score was computed by summing scores obtained by pupils in each
task.
The test was administered in the classrooms during school time by the experimenter. A
copy of the booklet containing the three tasks was given to each child, who was asked to
write his/her responses on the booklet. The experimenter monitored the administration
of the test so that the tasks were carried out individually by children in a silent way.
The distributions of the total creativity scores obtained by the overall sample in the
phase "pre" and "post" are reported in Figure 1 (pre) and Figure 2 (post).
Figure 1
Figure 2
Histograms show that the distributions of the total scores approximate the normal curve,
so inducing us to maintain that the test can discriminate children according to their
creativity levels.
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If we consider the distributions of the scores obtained by children in each task both in
the pre and post phase of the study, we observe that acceptable distributions emerged
both in the Widening task (Figure 3 - phase "pre" - and Figure 4 - phase "post") and in
the Restructuring task (Figure 7 - phase "pre" - and Figure 8 - phase "post"), but not in
the Connecting task in the phase "pre" (Figure 5 - phase "pre" - and Figure 6 - phase
"post").
Figure 3
5
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
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Figure 7
Figure 8
As far as the main aim of the study is concerned, the analysis of variance (ANOVA)
revealed, beside the main effects depending on group (F = 15.78, p < .001) and on phase
(F = 86.84, p < .001), a significant group X phase interaction effect (F = 9.73, p < .005)
on the total creativity scores (Table 1). Treatment children increased their creativity
scores by moving form the phase "pre" to the phase "post" in a larger extent than control
pupils.
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Table 1
Pre
Control
Treatment
Post
mean
sd
mean
sd
35.59
5.87
38.59
6.25
36.83
6.51
42.84
10.36
Separate analyses carried out considering scores in each task revealed that significant
effects emerged in the Widening (group: F = 11.26, p < .001; phase: F = 143.23, p <
.001; group X phase: F = 20.76, p < .001; see Table 2) scores but not in the Connecting
(group: F = 2.25; phase: F = 2.53; group X phase: F = 0.79; see Table 3) and
Restructuring (group: F = 1.35; phase: F = 0.01; group X phase: F = 0.004; see Table 4)
scores.
Table 2
Pre
Control
Treatment
Post
mean
sd
mean
Sd
15.43
5.08
18.07
6.01
15.78
5.90
21.66
7.47
Table 3
Pre
Control
Treatment
Post
mean
sd
mean
Sd
9.88
2.14
10.21
1.35
10.23
2.21
10.32
1.56
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Table 4
Pre
Control
Treatment
Post
mean
sd
mean
sd
10.35
1.62
10.36
1.26
10.69
1.78
10.67
6.70
Thus, we are induced to conclude that educational activities experienced by children
while visiting the exhibition about colour succeeded in enhancing their general
creativity, but above all their ability to detect hidden nuances of colours.
The empirical study carried out by means of the test construed for the exhibition about
colour showed that it is possible to assess the outcomes of a specific educational
initiative aimed at enhancing children's creativity, even though such an initiative is
developed in a setting which is not per se a research setting (and consequently is
affected by constraints and factors which reduce the possibility to carried out a
controlled experimental investigation).
This case can be generalised for many reasons. First, the theoretical model, on which the
test was grounded, includes the main aspects of creativity highlighted by scientific
literature, and so it can be considered a valid model. Second, the model allows trainers
to devise a variety of tasks, so to match the features of the particular kind of trainees
toward whom their efforts are addressed. Third, tasks can be adapted to different
domains, so to be applied to the specific topic in which trainers are interested or which
constitutes the main subject of the educational activities or initiatives to be monitored.
References
Antonietti A., Unlocking creativity, Educational Leadership, 54 (6), 1997, 73-75
Diakidoy I.-A. N. & Spanoudis G., Domain specificity in creativity testing, Journal of Creative Behavior,
36 (1), 2002, 41-61
Sternberg R. J. & Dess N. K. (eds.), Creativity of the new millenium (special section), American
Psychologists, 56 (4), 2001.
People interested in constituting a network of educators and researchers aimed at
exploring testing tools and procedures to assess creativity in children's museums can
contact
Sabina
Cantarelli
(muba@muba.it)
or
Alessandro
Antonietti
(alessandro.antonietti@unicatt.it)
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