|  | Feature: Physical Education in Early Childhood | No.51 September 2007 |

Early Years Physical Education Expression of Children’s Creative Thinking through Physical Education Activities Evridiki Zachopoulou |
Abstract Creativity is something we can find in every child, not just the gifted or highly intelligent. Mayesky (1998) pointed out that one important goal for the early childhood teacher is to provide an adequate base of knowledge and skills for children, while at the same time providing an environment that encourages creative thinking in the use of this knowledge and these skills. According to Klein (1990), most learning takes place when young children are actively engaged in experimenting, experiencing,\ and raising their own questions and finding answers. Ennis (1987) stated that formulating hypotheses, alternative ways of viewing a problem, questions, possible solutions and plans for investigating something are creative acts that come under the definition of creative thinking. Movement could be a powerful tool to promote preschoolers’ creativity, taking into account that movement during preschool age is the primary and dominant way of action, expression, learning, communication and children’s overall development (Gruber, 1986). According to Mayesky (1998), in creative movement, children are free to express their own personalities in their own styles. They do not have an example to follow or an adult to imitate. Creative movement can occur in any situation where children feel free and want to move their bodies. It can be done to poetry, music, rhythm or even silence. This freedom to respond to various stimuli, which is basic to creative movement experiences, engages the children’s imaginations and allows them to be flexible, fluent and original. These children are engaged in their own uniqueness. The purpose of our research, called ‘Creative PEC’, was to design and implement a physical education curriculum intended to develop young children’s creative thinking (finding respectively many different motor solutions) and learning. The Creative PEC included 32 lessons and 365 preschoolers participated in its implementation. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected before and after the implementation phase. The results showed that children improved their creative fluency and imagination and useful information was provided for children’s behavior during their participation in the Creative PEC. What is creativity and creative thinking? Creativity can be defined in very literal terms. The basic idea is that any thinking or problem solving that involves the construction of new meaning is creative (Brown, 1989). That may sound contrary to theories of creativity, which emphasize originality and usefulness, but there is no incompatibility if you keep in mind that a personal construction will likely be original and useful to that one individual. The definition of creativity as a construction of personal meaning is also consistent with the notion that creativity is a kind of self-expression and self-actualisation (Vernon, 1989). Each of these concepts emphasises the individual, the self. Definitions of creativity, which have influenced thinking in the past, include that developed by Torrance (1969), whose thinking dominated psychometric approaches to creativity in the USA. Torrance saw creativity broadly as the process of sensing a problem, searching for possible solutions, drawing hypotheses, testing and evaluating, and communicating the results to others. He added that the process includes original ideas, a different point of view, breaking out of the mould, recombining ideas or seeing new relationships among ideas. Sternberg (2003) believed that the key-factors, which are important parts of creative thinking, are the divergent thinking skills. Divergent thinking is a kind of thinking that aims at producing many (not necessarily correct) ideas, at coming up with a variety of unusual, original (but, again, not necessarily workable) ideas, or even off-the-wall ideas, and to take an idea and spin out elaborate variants of the idea (Baer, 1997). The main dimensions of divergent thinking are: Fluency refers to the number of different ideas one can produce. Flexibility refers to the variety of ideas one produces. Originality refers to how unusual are the ideas one produces. Elaboration refers to richness of detail in the ideas one produces. Why creativity for young children? Young children are known to be inquisitive, spontaneous and full of energy (Doherty & Bailey, 2003). Curiosity is seen as a characteristic of possibility thinkers and it is this ‘ability to wonder about the world around them that leads to a possibility thinker to both find and solve problems’ (Craft, 2000, p. 6). Tegano et al. (1991) made the link between curiosity and creativity. Fromm (1959) emphatically expressed the view that it is the children’s capability to wonder and their capacity to be surprised and puzzled which makes their reaction a creative one. He believed that the capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation. Beetlestone (1998) also mentioned that children seemed to possess an innate drive, which helps them to channel their curiosity toward finding the most appropriate way of satisfying it. These are the developmental characteristics that enable children to be able to think ‘out of the box’ and come up with creative solutions. Children aged between four and eight years old are said to be at a developmental age in which they could travel easily between the worlds of fantasy or pretend and reality (Mirus et al., 1993). It is believed that in pretending to be a certain animal, for example a leopard, a child draws upon what is known (from his or her own personal experience) and makes up what is not. The resulting movement is often a mixture of reality and fantasy when the child tries to be both imitative and imaginative. Tegano et al. (1991) believed that children who engage in fantasy learn more about themselves and their environment as well as acquire knowledge and develop creative skills. They also believed that when children engage in fantasy they are free from the influences of evaluation and are more likely to think of unconventional ideas. Craft (2000) suggested that children who are highly predisposed toward fantasy in their play are more likely to be imaginative in their task situation. This predisposition toward fantasy may then contribute to a child’s creative abilities. Teaching for creativity Early educators have recognised the importance of creativity within recent education policy and embraced the opportunity to provide for it, accepting the fact that they are surrounded by creative, imaginative and inventive people - children and adults. The report of All Our Futures (NACCCE, 1999) endorses the importance of creativity in both teaching and learning, and the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage (QCA, 2000) recognises Creative Development as a valid and important theme. One of its basic principals is that children must be provided with chances to use their knowledge, practice their abilities and continuously learn by promoting searching, reasoning, critical thinking, decision-making and problem solving, as well as chances to develop and express ideas and emotions in many different ways. Knowing that each child is born with creative potential and the ages between 3 and 5 are thought to be the critical years for the development of creativity (Schirrmacher, 1993; Fauth, 1990), early childhood professionals have a tremendous opportunity to encourage creativity and foster those personality traits that demonstrate creative potential. As Tegano et al. (1991) mentioned, creativity is fostered according to how the curriculum is presented to the child. The four key-elements, which Mayesky (1998) drew attention to, and are structured and modified to provide opportunities for creative thinking, are the followings: The content/concept of the curriculum is developmentally appropriate for preschool children. The learning allows the children to be both physically and mentally active, to be engaged in active, rather than passive activities. The children are truly interested in the content. The content is relevant, engaging and meaningful to the children themselves. The curriculum provides opportunities for divergent thinking, which is a part of creative thinking. There is adequate time planned for exploration and play. Children have many chances to interact and communicate with other children and the teacher. There is a positive atmosphere of acceptance by other children and the teacher. Judgment and evaluation differed so that ideas had plenty of time to be stretched, combined and embellished. Craft (2000), Edwards and Springate (1995), Mellou (1996), Tegano et al. (1991) and Runco (1990) highlight the role of the teacher in providing the optimum balance between structure and freedom of expression for young children. It is argued that teachers and other early childhood workers can encourage creativity by behaviors such as asking open-ended questions, tolerating ambiguity, modeling creative thinking and behavior, encouraging experimentation and persistence and praising children who provide unexpected answers. It’s certainly obvious that creative teachers and creative teaching are key components in fostering creativity in young children. Researchers in physical education have begun to study students’ movement responses to specific teachers’ actions in order to provide insight about designing and implementing instructional strategies that facilitate students’ learning (Chen, 2000; Chen, W. & Cone, T. 2003; McBride & Cleland, 1998, Rovegno, 2000). Concerning physical education, many scholars believe that the ability of teachers to structure the learning activities and experiences, to create optimum learning enivronments and to interact with children, plays an important role in developing and promoting childrens’ use of creative and critical thinking skills (Buschner, 1990; McBride, 1991; McBride & Cleland, 1998; Schwager & Labate, 1993). Torrance (2001) stated a decalogue to train teachers to foster the creativity in childhood, that is: to provide children with materials that incite/stimulate the imagination; to facilitate resources that enhance fantasy; to allow time to think and day dream. Not to oppress children with conformist activities; to encourage children to express their ideas, when they have something to say; to recognise new ideas to stimulate creative thinking; to accept their tendencies to adopt different viewpoints; to appreciate children’s individuality while working, instead of demoting it; to correct, value and give importance to novelty products; to stimulate children to engage in creative games; to appreciate the creativity of pupils and for them to perceive such support. Physical education and creativity As Torrance (1981) referred to, the kinesthetic modality is the most appropriate modality for eliciting the creativity of most preschool children, since skills in these modalities are most practiced at the preschool age. The importance of movement at this developmental stage was also supported by Capel (1986), whose opinion was that movement activities provide children the ability to exercise and develop their inventiveness, creativity and their spirit of adventure. Creative development and motor development of preschool children are two interrelated procedures of their growth. One procedure’s development affects the other and also one procedure can be developed through the other (Vygotsky, 1981). A representative result of these two developmental areas is motor creativity, which is children’s effort to produce movements that represent answers to motor stimuli or solutions to motor problems. Results of many research studies have already proven that motor creativity is directly connected with creative thinking (Cleland & Gallahue, 1993) and critical thinking (McBride, 1991). According to Gardner (1993), kinaesthetic intelligence entails the potential use of one’s whole body or parts of the body (such as the hand or the mouth) to solve problems or fashion products and to work skillfully with objects. Call (2003), in her discussion of a bodily kinaesthetic child, talked about some of the characteristics. These are body awareness, development of good motor skills, a good sense of timing, the ability to create and repeat sequences of movement and taking pleasure in repeating and improving a movement. The connection between moving and thinking is a topic in recent bibliographies (Athey, 1990; Carter, 1998). Movement gives young children kinaesthetic feedback. This means that children link movement and learning through their senses. Zaichkowsky, Zaichkowsky and Martinek (1980) expresssed their thoughts that children learn more than just motor skills through movement and play, such as skills to: a) learn to employ cognitive strategies, b) understand themselves in psychological terms and c) learn how to interact with other children. Young children’s experimentation through movement exploration, guided discovery and creative problem solving, which are the most popular and used teaching methods in early childhood, are commonly accepted by scholars, researchers and preschool teachers (Davies, 2003; Mayesky, 1998; Pica, 2000; Sanders, 2002). Furthermore, through those teaching methods, critical thinking skills are empowered whilst children make choices and decisions (Buschner, 1990; Kirchner, Cunningham, & Warrel, 1970). To help teachers, Stork and Sanders (1999) compare effective and less effective approaches in the preschool movement education environment. The first step in their outlined guidance is the construction of physical knowledge through experimentation and the effective approach for this step is to present the activities with questions that extend children’s creative thinking and with emphasis on skill practice and investigation. An educational curriculum, and more specifically a physical education program, that requires teacher’s imitation from children, is not going to promote creative or critical thinking. However a program that uses movement exploration, discovery, self-expression and problem solving can provide children’s creative thinking skills (Zachopoulou et al., 2006). Movement could be a powerful tool to promote preschoolers’ creativity taking into account that movement during preschool age is the primary and dominant way of action, expression, learning, communication and children’s overall development (Gruber, 1986). According to Cleland (1994), children have the inherent ability not only to learn fundamental movement patterns but also to control their movements and to express them creatively through the performance of different fundamental movement patterns. When children solve fundamental or divergent movement tasks in as many different ways as possible, they must not only generate alternative ideas (i.e., creative fluency) but also act on those ideas (i.e. creative flexibility) using specific criteria to modify and change each movement pattern. Weikart and Carlton (1995) included creativity in their ‘Education Through Movement’ Program. Promoting creativity in the learner is intrinsic to this program. Teachers are the facilitators as children explore, plan, make choices, initiate ideas, lead their peers, work cooperatively and solve problems. If creative movement is a regular part of the young child’s curriculum, a number of objectives may be reached (Mayesky, 1998): Relaxation and freedom in the use of the body Experience in expressing space, time and weight Increased awareness of the world Experience in creatively expressing feelings and ideas Improvement of coordinator and rhythmic interpretation The research on teaching creativity through physical education activities – The Creative Physical Education Curriculum (PEC) The purpose of our research was to design and implement a physical education curriculum intended to develop young children’s creative thinking (finding respectively many different motor solutions) and learning. The proposed creative physical education curriculum (Creative PEC) provided children with opportunities to develop their creative thinking through the use of movement elements, motor skills and movement exploration. Our research was based on the following phases: design and formulate physical education lessons (Creative PEC), train early educators to be able to implement the Creative PEC, the initial evaluation of preschoolers, d) the implementation of the Creative PEC, and the final evaluation of preschoolers. 365 children, aged 4 to 5 years, participated in the 12-week Creative PEC. The Creative PEC included 32 lessons, which were written by physical education experts specifically for this study. These 32 lessons were based on four goals: use and modification of movement elements, development of creative thinking during movement activities through exploration, use of movement for experienced learning of concepts of different teaching thematic areas, such as mathematics, and development of critical thinking during movement activities. The first goal, which referred to lessons 1 to 8, dealt with the modification of a given movement to become more appropriate for a given condition, through the understanding of: a) capabilities of body parts, and b) movement elements (body awareness, space awareness and quality of movement). This means that children should learn how to modify their movements using changes of movement elements. Children were asked to move from one spot to another answering teacher’s questions, like “Can you walk with as many steps as you can or with as few steps as you can?”, or “Can you walk as fast or as slow as you can?” Another activity used a die that had different locomotion movements on each side, or children were given the opportunity to pass through a high or a short tunnel, above a narrow or a wide stream. There were also activities that encouraged children to throw or roll a ball in various ways, depending on the distance, size of the balls, size of the targets, etc. The second goal, which referred to lessons 9 to 16, accentuated the: a) use of body parts and of different objects in various ways, b) production of many different movements as responses to a stimuli or as solutions to a given problem, and c) production of innovative movements. Children should learn how to take risks through the wording of their own phrases and through the invention of their own games. Educators gave various stimuli to children, such as to move through a hoop, to cross over a river, to throw a ball, to move one, two or more specific parts of their bodies. Other activities took children through a fantasy story and asked them to express it with movements. The stories were related to the circle of the water (water, water vapor, clouds, rain, and snow) or to the sea conditions (calm sea, high or small waves). Lessons 17 to 24 referred to the third goal. During these lessons children should have learned to comprehend the new possibilities in movement execution and be provided with chances based on the trust in their opinion and in their abilities. In addition, children were asked to recognise the relations among different concepts, using movement to experience the themes of the different teaching areas. These lessons involved having the children form straight or curved lines, shapes (circles, quadrangle, etc.) and letters with their bodies. The fourth goal, which referred to lessons 25 to 32, encourage children to discriminate and determine a problem, to set questions, to combine, synthesise and organise their ideas in order to produce a new movement, and to make a decision for the selection of the most appropriate motor response to a given situation. In these lessons, children are encouraged to explore and identify similarities and differences, to compare quantitative concepts, such as big-small, wide-narrow, long-short, and to interpret and express an assigned role with movements. The results of Creative PEC research Quantitative and qualitative data were collected and estimated before and after the implementation of the Creative PEC. The results showed that children improved their creative fluency and imagination and useful information was provided for children’s behavior during their participation in the Creative PEC. Children who participated in our research were involved actively in the physical education activities, finding and showing their ideas and solutions to early educators’ questions. The kinds of questions, such as ‘Can you show me different ways to throw” or “Can you run putting your hands in different positions?’, placed children in a state of inquiry, so the processes involved with seeking solutions were stimulated and divergent thinking was activated. From an early age children encounter problems that compel them to generate novel solutions. Creative problem solutions may profit the capacity to separate the momentary attitude and intimate affiliations to be able to generate more novel ideas (Suddendorf & Fletcher-Flinn, 1999). It has been suggested that the major tenets of creativity are: the ability to see things in fresh ways, learning from past experience and relating this to new situations, thinking along unorthodox lines and breaking barriers, using non-traditional approaches to solving problems, going further than the information given and creating something unique and original (Duffy, 1998). This procedure is parallel with the expression of children’s imagination. The results of our research indicated a significant increase not only for fluency, but also for imagination (the ability to create mental pictures or ideas, a qualitative feature of creativity). Many activities of the Creative PEC were designed to sample children’s’ ability to imagine, fantasise and assume unaccustomed roles, asking children to express stories with movements. This research also revealed that the Creative PEC lead children to a kind of independence, helping them to feel more free and be open in the process of movement exploration and experimentation. The main core of the activities of the Creative PEC was the search for new ideas and movements. As Jones (1972) supported, children have the need for freedom in the selection and execution of different movements. In the same way, it is obvious that children have to acquire a feeling of self-control. Through creative movement, children have the ability to express their feelings and their thoughts and to act and communicate using their body. This expressiveness, through the body, manifests itself more prevalently than speech. In this way, many children are able to explore, through movement, experiences that were not approachable to them through words. According to Cleland (1994), indirect teaching styles, creative thinking skills and critical thinking strategies are also useful and they could significantly improve children’s ability to generate different movement patterns. These strategies included asking questions, comparing and contrasting solutions, evaluating solutions based on criteria provided by teacher and analysing the quality of their movement responses. If teachers want children to be able to employ creative thinking and critical thinking skills, then they must teach them how to do this. The challenges and the chances for motor skills and ideas discovery are a powerful motive for voluntary participation of children and for cognitive activation, as long as it is of immediate relevance to them. The experience of personal discovery is a catalytic factor for deep and effective learning and enhances child’s self-confidence. Perhaps the most important opportunity for a preschooler who participated in the Creative PEC was being able to validate and develop their creative ability. Preschoolers have a powerful curiosity and active imaginations. Teachers can encourage and stretch these valuable tools by giving them chances, through movement, to imagine, explore and discover. Although the results of our research cannot be generalised to other early childhood classrooms, it does demonstrate that the use of physical education to teach creativity as a lens through which to view early childhood classrooms can shed light on the role of the early childhood teacher in creating a learning environment focused on children’s physical, cognitive and social development. This is also the belief of many researchers (e.g., Runco et al., 1998; Saracho, 1986) who affirm that creativity is a complex or syndrome, which emerges from cognitive, affective, social and physical realms. The findings of the current research could have implications in three areas: to deepen our understanding of creativity as an integral part of early childhood curriculum; to expand the use of movement during early years education; and to design in-service professional development and teacher training programs in order to improve creative program implementation. Creative PEC: Examples of activities Objective: Children learn to explore movement elements, like body awareness. Activity 1. Some children of the class form bridges and the rest move in the space representing specific animals: fishes, monkeys, giraffes, elephants, snakes, etc. While the animals move around the space, they have to pass under the bridges. The bridges change their height according to the space of the animals. Objective: Children were able to identify different body parts and make interesting connections Activity 2. Children make pairs and create ways of connection. The teacher gives a signal (percussion, voice, clapping, music for example) and each pair changes its way of connection. Objective: Children activate their divergent thinking by producing new movements Activity 3. Children form small groups and one child of each group holds a hoop. They place the hoop vertically on the floor. The leader of each group shows one way to pass through the hoop and the rest group copy its way. Every child should be a leader. Activity 4. Children sit on the floor and shape circles in small groups. One child throws the ball to another child of the circle with a different way each time. Activity 5. Children form pairs and each pair has one ball. Teacher asks each pair to create various ways to roll the ball from one to the other. Activity 6. Water – Water vapor – Rain – Snow Children represent a quiet stream in a forest. Each child is a blob of water. Because of the hot weather, the blobs become water vapors and they form various shapes of clouds. Then, the clouds feel that the land wants for water, it thirsts, and the clouds turn to blobs of water falling on the land. The rain forms streams. And the whole water-circle starts its journey from the beginning. Children work in pairs to share their ideas and develop movement patterns. Teachers help children to create new movement by asking questions or describe pictures or images, such as: ‘Show me how the streams move, slowly or heavily. Show me more ways. Could you show me more ways without looking to the floor?’ ‘Show me different ways the water vapors rising. What would happen if it whiffs or if it storms?’ ‘Show me how you can create a huge cloud all together. How do clouds travel around the sky? Objective: Children are able to create more varied and interesting group shapes. Activity 7. Children join to make groups of 5. One group represents the sun while going down and the rest of the groups represent the night flowers. Each group finds a way to form a night flower (they can use hoops, ribbons, etc.). The teacher gives the signal hitting the tambourine. As the teacher develops a decrescendo (a gradually decreased intensity) the sun goes down slowly and following this, a crescendo (a gradually increased intensity) gives the signal to the night flowers to bloom. During the daybreak, the sun comes up during the crescendo, while the night flowers close down. Teacher asks the children questions to help them creating more movements and to come up with new ways of movement as a group: ‘Show me another way to represent the night flower’, ‘Can you use a hoop to represent the sun? Could you hold the hoop any other way?’. Activity 8: Walk like….. Teacher describes images, with or without details, giving the signals for the production of new ways of walking. ‘Could you walk to this wall and turn back while carrying a heavy box… a light box…. a big box… a small box…a round thing?’ ‘Could you walk to this wall and turn back in a hurry… angry… joyfully…. with big steps…. like heroes…. like knights…. like robots?’ References Athey, C. (1990). 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Contact Evridiki Zachopoulou, Ph.D., Associate Professor Alexandrio Technological Educational Institution of Thessaloniki Department of Early Childhood Care and Education Thessaloniki, Greece Email: ezachopo@bc.teithe.gr http://www.icsspe.org/portal/index.php?w=1&z=5 Early Years Physical Education Expression of children’s creative thinking through physical education activities Evridiki Zachopoulou