Understanding the Practices and the Products of Creativity: Making and Tinkering Family Program at Informal Learning Environments

This study investigates how families' sociomaterial experiences influence the creative practices of novel idea generation and feasible solution generation and the products during family workshops using littleBits as prototyping tools. We conceptualize creativity as a distributed and materially-grounded activity. Methods are interaction analysis on video-based accounts of 31 families' activities and creativity assessment metrics to analyze the novelty scores of families' products. We take an exploratory approach to understand families' sociomaterial interactions in high and low novelty score groups. Findings illustrate that collaborative idea exchange and ongoing generative tinkering with materials support the emergence of novel ideas and feasible solutions.

[1]  Aditya Johri,et al.  The Socio-Materiality of Learning Practices and Implications for the Field of Learning Technology. , 2011 .

[2]  Austin Henderson,et al.  Interaction Analysis: Foundations and Practice , 1995 .

[3]  Heather Toomey Zimmerman,et al.  Collaborative Argumentation During a Making and Tinkering Afterschool Program With Squishy Circuits , 2017, CSCL.

[4]  Donald A. Schön.  Designing as reflective conversation with the materials of a design situation , 1992, Knowl. Based Syst..

[5]  Paula Hooper,et al.  Tinkering , Learning & Equity in the After-School Setting , 2013 .

[6]  Ricarose Roque.  Family Creative Learning , 2016 .

[7]  Philip Bell,et al.  Parents, Science, and Interest , 2010 .

[8]  C. Cunningham,et al.  Epistemic Practices of Engineering for Education. , 2017 .

[9]  V. Glăveanu,et al.  What Can Be Done with an Egg? Creativity, Material Objects, and the Theory of Affordances. , 2012 .

[10]  Angela Calabrese Barton,et al.  The Makerspace Movement: Sites of Possibilities for Equitable Opportunities to Engage Underrepresented Youth in STEM , 2017, Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education.

[11]  Francis K. H. Quek,et al.  Studying medium effects on children's creative processes , 2011, C&C '11.

[12]  Tim Ingold,et al.  The textility of making , 2010 .

[13]  G. Hein.  Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits , 2009 .

[14]  K. Sawyer.  Extending Sociocultural Theory to Group Creativity , 2012 .

[15]  Joshua P. Gutwill,et al.  Research to Practice: Observing Learning in Tinkering Activities , 2015 .

[16]  Sue Allen,et al.  Looking for Learning in Visitor Talk: A Methodological Exploration , 2003 .

[17]  Marcelo Worsley,et al.  Children Are Not Hackers: Building a Culture of Powerful Ideas, Deep Learning, and Equity in the Maker Movement. , 2016 .

[18]  M. Resnick,et al.  Designing for Tinkerability , 2013 .

[19]  Brian P. Bailey,et al.  Share Once or Share Often?: Exploring How Designers Approach Iteration in a Large Online Community , 2017, Creativity & Cognition.

[20]  K. Crowley,et al.  Learning to Make in the Museum : The Role of Maker Educators , 2016 .

[21]  Heather Toomey Zimmerman,et al.  Towards a Stronger Conceptualization of the Maker Mindset: A Case Study of an After school Program with Squishy Circuits , 2017, FabLearn.

[22]  Steven M. Smith,et al.  Metrics for measuring ideation effectiveness , 2003 .

[23]  Francis K. H. Quek,et al.  The effects of physicality on the child's imagination , 2013, Creativity & Cognition.

[24]  Dale Dougherty,et al.  The Maker Mindset , 2013 .

[25]  Francis K. H. Quek,et al.  Exploring Performative Authoring as a Story Creation Approach for Children , 2014, ICIDS.

[26]  Scarlett R. Miller,et al.  Does Designing for Additive Manufacturing Help Us Be More Creative? An Exploration in Engineering Design Education , 2017 .

[27]  Breanne K. Litts.  Resources, facilitation, and partnerships: three design considerations for youth makerspaces , 2015, IDC.

[28]  Erin A. Jant,et al.  Conversation and Object Manipulation Influence Children's Learning in a Museum Hands-on Learning and Transfer , 2022 .

[29]  Dilafruz R. Williams.  Book Review of, Design, Make, Play: Growing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators , 2015 .

[30]  W. Orlikowski.  Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work , 2007 .

[31]  Philip Bell,et al.  Understanding the Cultural Foundations of Children's Biological Knowledge: Insights from Everyday Cognition Research , 2006, ICLS.

[32]  Francis K. H. Quek,et al.  Things to imagine with: designing for the child's creativity , 2013, IDC.

[33]  Lisa Brahms,et al.  Making as a Learning Process: Identifying and Supporting Family Learning in Informal Settings , 2014 .

[34]  Aditya Johri,et al.  Situated Engineering Learning: Bridging Engineering Education Research and the Learning Sciences , 2011 .

[35]  Krzysztof Z. Gajos,et al.  Semantically Far Inspirations Considered Harmful?: Accounting for Cognitive States in Collaborative Ideation , 2017, Creativity & Cognition.

[36]  Lee Martin,et al.  Making as a Pathway to Engineering and Design , 2016 .

[37]  R. Benjamin Shapiro,et al.  The Discourse of Creative Problem Solving in Childhood Engineering Education , 2014, ICLS.

[38]  Erica Halverson,et al.  The Maker Movement in Education , 2014, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education.

[39]  Doris B. Ash.  Dialogic inquiry in life science conversations of family groups in a museum , 2003 .

[40]  Sue Allen,et al.  Creating a Program to Deepen Family Inquiry at Interactive Science Exhibits , 2009 .

[41]  Mike Petrich,et al.  Learning Through STEM-Rich Tinkering: Findings From a Jointly Negotiated Research Project Taken Up in Practice , 2015 .

[42]  R. Sawyer,et al.  Distributed creativity: How collective creations emerge from collaboration. , 2009, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

[43]  Gregoris Mentzas,et al.  A Playful Affinity Space for Creative Research , 2015, Creativity & Cognition.

[44]  K. Squire,et al.  Design-Based Research: Putting a Stake in the Ground , 2004 .

[45]  Elizabeth M. Starkey,et al.  Abandoning creativity: The evolution of creative ideas in engineering design course projects , 2016 .

[46]  Philip Bell,et al.  Family sense‐making practices in science center conversations , 2010 .