The purpose of this study was to understand how children express creative thinking in early childhood care settings. The research took place in a diverse nursery school associated with a university in England. Approximately 85 children were enrolled at the nursery school, two thirds of which came from ethnic minority backgrounds, a quarter did not speak English as their first language, and a fifth had special education needs. Thirty students aged three to four years old participated in the study along with their “key persons,” which included teachers, a variety of therapists (speech, movement, etc.), parents, family workers, and other adults associated with the care of the students. The research design was a short-term longitudinal case study in which data were gathered over a five month period. The play activities of the children during their time at the school were video-recorded and coded. The data were considered from three specific perspectives: 1) responsibility for choice of activity (child-initiated, adult-directed or adult-led); 2) type of creative thinking behavior; and 3) type of activity.
Child-initiated activities were found to garner the highest level of children's involvement. When children played with one another they also had a higher level of involvement in an activity than when they played alone. Conversely, when adults were present, whether in an oversight capacity or directing the activity, the level of children's involvement decreased. Adults were found to have a positive impact on children's receptivity to and willingness to take action on new ideas. However, it was the child to child interactions that generated the greatest higher-level creative thinking. Different types of creative thinking behavior were shown to occur more frequently than others in this context. In particular, “trying out ideas,” “analyzing ideas,” and “involving others” were frequently observed and were also strongly associated with child-initiated activity. Behaviors such as “engaging in new activity” were more strongly associated with the involvement and direction of an adult, suggesting that adults have an important role in supporting children in their initial engagement with new activities. With regards to type of activity, children's exploratory play was found to provide a very strong context for their creative thinking, with outdoor play and sociodramatic play shown to be the most likely to lead to high levels of creativity. For example, gardening and construction activities were found to offer just as much fodder for creative thinking as activities that are typically conceived of as creative, such as music and arts.
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