The challenge of supporting creativity in problem-solving projects in science: a study of teachers’ conversational practices with students

ABSTRACT

Background

Creativity is an important skill for the future society and developing students’ creativity is an important part of science education. Working on a creative science project may help developing students’ creative abilities, and the interaction between teacher and students during the work on defining a problem and solving the problem, is an ideal forum for supporting students’ creativity.

Purpose

The purpose of the study is to get insight into how teachers respond to students’ creative ideas during the works on a creative science project, and how the interaction between teacher and students may support or inhibit students’ creative abilities.

Design and methods

Data in this study consist of 49 video-recorded interactions between two teachers and student groups working on a science project with the aim of supporting students’ creative abilities. The interactions were analyzed with the use of Conversation Analysis (CA).

Results

Analysis shows that teachers play an important role in developing students’ creative ideas. The analysis shows how teachers, after being told the students’ creative ideas, evaluates the students’ ideas as either preferred or dis-preferred according to the teacher’s own preference. The teachers’ evaluative stance towards the students’ creative ideas determines how the conversations with the students unfold and make explicit which ideas the students should work further within the project.

Conclusion

Controlling the conversation based on the teacher’s own preference may lead to missed opportunities regarding converting students’ mini-c creative ideas into little-c creative ideas. Being able to create time and opportunity to explore and develop students’ ideas, there is a need for fewer students per teacher and more focus on the process aspect of creativity rather than the product aspect.

KEYWORDS:

• Creativity
• science education
• problem solving
• conversation analysis

Introduction

Creativity, as one of the 21st-century skills, is an important part of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes citizens need in the future society (UNESCO 2013). By developing students’ creativity, they may be able to offer new perspectives, generate novel and meaningful ideas, raise new questions, and come up with solutions to ill-defined problems (Sternberg and Lubart 1999).

Teachers play an important role in developing students’ creativity (Barbot, Besançon, and Lubart 2015). Research has shown that teachers may foster students’ creative abilities and creative thinking by providing creative learning opportunities in the classroom (Cole, Sugioka, and Yamagata-Lynch 1999), and by acting as role models and mentors for the students (Kampylis, Berki, and Saariluoma 2009). Some of this research has resulted in concrete advices about how teachers can encourage creativity in school by creating an open and supportive classroom environment that reward and support creativity, by motivating and helping the students to be confident and to trust in their own creative abilities, and by creating a physical and contextual environment that supports creativity (Beghetto and Kaufman 2014; Craft 2005; Cropley 1997; Fleith 2000; Gregory et al. 2013; James 2015; Rejskind 2000; Sternberg and Williams 1996). Research has also shown that teachers’ role in the creative process is to be a facilitator and fellow collaborator, by joining the students in the process of knowledge building and creation (Sawyer 2004; Scardamalia and Bereiter 2006). Teachers may encourage students’ creativity through classroom talk (Beghetto 2007a), and by encouraging students’ novel ideas and creative connections (Sternberg and Grigorenko 2004).

Nevertheless, there is a lack of research that examines how teachers make use of these pedagogical implications when they participate in dialogues with the students, and how they approach and respond to students’ creative ideas. Research has, on the other hand, shown that many teachers struggle in developing a creative environment and integrate creativity into classroom routines (Eckhoff 2011; Raths 2001). Many teachers, although they value creativity, seem to follow ‘inhibiting practices’, like putting emphasis on the correct response reinforcing the fear of failure, putting emphasis on reproduction of knowledge, holding low expectations to students’ creative potential, emphasizing obedience and passivity, and putting little emphasis on phantasy and imagination (Alencar 2002, in Kampylis, Berki, and Saariluoma 2009). Other studies indicate that teachers find it challenging to focus on creativity while meeting the demand of academic performance and time-constraint in the school context (Burnard and White 2008; Lee et al. 2006).

This study explores how teachers respond to students’ creative ideas and students’ creative process through interactions during the work on a creative open-ended science project, and how interacting with students during an idea phase of a creative process (identifying a problem, generate several solutions to the problem and deciding on the best possible solution) may facilitate students’ creativity. The research questions are:

1. How do teachers respond to students’ creative ideas during the phase of identifying problems and generating ideas in a creative science project?

2. How do teachers’ responses to students’ creative ideas impact the students’ creative process?

These questions are addressed by means of the framework of conversation analysis (CA) to identify interactional patterns of conversations between teacher and students within the context of an open-ended science project called ‘Mission Mars’. This includes identifying patterns of communications that inhibit or enhances students’ creativity. The project ‘Mission Mars’ aim to support and facilitate students’ creativity and is based on Amabile (1998) and her six KEYS for developing a learning environment for creativity; freedom, positive challenge, supervisory encouragement, work group support, sufficient resources and organized support, further adapted by James (2015) for classroom context, alongside other creativity supporting aspects identified during the literature review. Results from the study are discussed in light of theoretical perspectives on creativity and research on classroom conversation.

Theoretical underpinnings

Creativity and levels of creative magnitude

This study builds its’ understanding of creativity on Hu and Adey (2002) definition of creativity as the creation of something original, which holds social or personal value, designed with a certain purpose in mind, using given information. According to James (2015, 1033), ‘children are natural creatives. (…) exhibit[ing] their creativity in free play, investigation and exploration.’ However, since their knowledge, understanding, and experience are naive compared to adults, children’s creativity is often not perceived as particularly novel, nor useful by the adults. Therefore, children’s creativity is sometimes disregarded, or devalued (James 2015).

This study positions creativity in young students as more personal and tied to their experience, and builds this on Beghetto’s (2007a) argument that if the students’ thoughts and solutions to a problem are meaningful and useful, they can be evaluated as creative. The difference of creative magnitude is further explained by the Four S-model of creativity (Beghetto and Kaufman 2007), which distinguishes between four levels of creative magnitude; big-c creativity of the extraordinarily gifted, pro-c creativity that occurs within a profession, little-c creativity of everyday life, and mini-c creativity experienced by learners interacting with new information and experiences. Students in primary school show mostly mini-c or little-c creativity (Beghetto 2007a). This study, therefore, builds on the premise that everyone has the potential to be creative, and that creativity can be developed and expressed in the learning processes through individuals’ interpretations of information and inclusion of already existing structures of knowledge, related to mini-c creativity. Young students are able to come up with surprising and unusual ideas, despite that their knowledge and utility may be lower compared to adults and experts.

Creativity research often focuses on one or more of the four P’s of creativity; person (the creative individual), process (the mental mechanisms that occur when a person is engaged in a creative act), product (the result of a creative act) and press (environmental factors) (Rhodes 1961). Based on this, nurturing creativity in the classroom is based on an interplay of both personal characteristics and the factors of the environment in which learning takes place (Cropley 2011). Bandura, Freeman, and Lightsey (1999) argue that beliefs, rather than truths, guide out goals, emotions, decisions, actions, and reactions, indicating that how teachers perceive creativity will impact their way of teaching. Research has shown that teachers’ beliefs about creativity are often in misalignment with the scientific theories of creativity (Andiliou and Murphy 2010). This means that teachers need to know what creativity is and how to foster creativity in their classroom (Newton 2012), and create time and space for creativity (Cremin, Burnard, and Craft 2006).

Creating a creative environment and converting mini-c creativity into little-c creativity

In developing students’ creativity, the teacher’s job is to assist the students in converting mini-c creative experiences into little-c creative experiences, as conceptualized in the framework by Beghetto (2007a) and (Beghetto and Kaufman 2007). The framework consists of three teacher support techniques; (1) listening to students’ ideas, (2) cueing students to the task constraints, and (3) giving students multiple opportunities to translate their ideas into products. Listening to students’ ideas means listening to all ideas, because this encourages students’ to take risks and express their thinking (Hathcock et al. 2015).

For an idea to be considered creative, it requires certain relevance (Plucker, Beghetto, and Dow 2004). Research argues, however, that too much emphasis on ideas’ immediate relevance might cause the teacher to miss out on many creative ideas, and students’ creative potential might go unnoticed (Runco 2004). Creating a safe environment for students to take risk requires that teachers accept unique ideas, even if they do not seem immediately relevant to the task (Beghetto 2007a). Teachers’ dismissal of ideas may result students who do not wish to take the intellectual risk or effort to present creative expressions, and the students may fall into the exercise of figuring out what the teacher expects to see or hear (Beghetto 2007b; Black and Wiliam 2010). Students need to be free to express their creative ideas, and teachers and peers need to listen and explore their ideas with an open mind. Characteristics of the classroom conversation are hence essential for promoting creativity.

Classroom conversation

Research on classroom interaction shows that classroom conversations are mostly characterized by conversations between teacher and students, where the teacher is the actor who, for the most times, controls the interaction. ‘The teacher is the one who mainly imparts knowledge to students, generally corrects students and controls turn-taking and sequence organization, and who has greater rights to initiate and close sequences’ (Gardner 2013, 593). This can result in situations where

[T]eachers do not have to explain their reason or justify their decisions to students. […] And students, too, are encouraged to accept the authority of the teacher, not just in matters of classroom organization and activity, but in matters of science as well. (Lemke and Green 1990, 45)

This creates an interactional asymmetry, where the teacher has the institutional right to ask questions and evaluate responses, as well as the right to choose activity and decide when to move from one activity to another (see e.g. Cazden 2001). The teacher may also provide speaking rights to students and legitimate speakers during teacher-led group activities (see e.g. Cazden 2001).

Early studies on classroom interaction found that conversations between teacher and students often follow the patterns of Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) (see McHoul 1978; Mehan 1979). The teachers initiate the conversation, often with a question, the student answer the question, and the teacher follows up with a feedback or an evaluation (Gardner 2013). Research has shown that IRE-sequences are often used by the teacher to steer the direction of the sequence toward the teachers objective, and provide clues for more desired answers (Gardner 2013; Lee 2007). Gardner (2013) also highlights the opportunity for the teacher to expand the sequence with post-expansions if the student’s response is seen as inadequate. A ‘third-position turn can be a repair-initiation seeking a correction by the student in the fourth turn of sequence’ (Gardner 2013, 598). By withholding the sequence completion third-position evaluation, the students may recognize that the teacher would prefer another answer, and will further extend the sequence (see Lee 2007; Lerner 1995). If students fail to self-correct to the satisfaction of the teacher, the teacher may initiate further repairs until correction is achieved. Conducting such repairs shift the focus from hearing and understanding the students’ ideas to identifying errors in their telling (see Gardner 2013; McHoul 1990). To support students’ learning and creativity, teachers are, instead, encouraged to promote dialogic teaching (Alexander 2006) and exploratory talk (Mercer 2000), building on the students’ prior knowledge and providing feedback. Conducting dialogic teaching, the teacher treats students’ contributions and answers ‘as stages in an ongoing cognitive quest rather than as terminal points. And it nurtures the students’ engagement, confidence, independence and responsibility’ (Alexander 2006, 35). Alexander (2006) argues that teachers and students need to address learning tasks together, they need to listen to each other, share ideas and consider alternative viewpoints, students need to feel like they can articulate their ideas freely, without fear of embarrassment or ‘wrong’ answers, teachers and students need to build on each other’s ideas and chain them into coherent lines of thinking and inquiry, and teachers need to facilitate dialogic teaching with particular educational goal in view. ‘Exploratory talk’ overlaps with ‘dialogic teaching’ having many of the same feature. However, it also emphasizes the visibility of reasoning processes. ‘Exploratory talk is that in which partners engage critically but constructively with each other’s ideas (Mercer 2000, 98). Such talk needs to be open-ended and speculative, enabling students to alter their developing mental representation or envisionment (Applebee et al. 2003).

Method

Participants and context

Data were collected from two fifth grade classes and one sixth grade class (age 10–12) in a Norwegian primary school (a total of 96 students divided into 23 groups) working on the project ‘Mission Mars’ during two half schooldays and on whole school day per class. Two science teachers from the school volunteered to participate in and develop the project ‘Mission Mars’ in collaboration with the researcher and teach the three classes during the implementation. Both teachers are educated science teachers and work as science teachers for the three classes. They have also participated in an in-service teacher course about inquiry-based teaching at the local University.

’Mission Mars’ is an open-ended science project with the aim of nurturing students’ creativity. The task for the students was to come up with an idea to a product that would make it possible to live on Mars, and then build a model of the idea. Preceding the project, the students read articles and texts about Mars, and one of the teachers led a half an hour presentation about the conditions on Mars and talked about the possibilities of moving to Mars. After the presentation, the students were given the opportunity to share their thoughts about the subject. The students were then divided into groups of three to five students and asked to identify a problem and generate ideas for solving the problem. After deciding on one and developing one idea, the students built a model of the idea, before presenting the idea to the rest of the class.

Before developing the project, the teachers participated in a workshop about creativity, led by the researcher. The workshop focused on how to create a creative learning environment and which learning activities promote creativity. It also focused on how teachers can support creativity through dialogue. Building on their experience of inquiry-based teaching, the workshop focused on inquiry conversation and how to use this during the implementation. The teachers did not train explicitly in the use of conversational patterns, but participated in discussions about how to open up for students’ ideas and thoughts, and help them to develop their ideas further.

The teachers and the researcher then developed the project on the six KEYS (Amabile 1998; James 2015): (1) freedom – an open-ended project where students are given freedom to choose how they will attain the goal of the project, giving the students a sense of ownership and increasing their intrinsic motivation and engagement, (2) positive challenge – projects’ theme based on students engagement and interest, (3) supervisory encouragement – teachers prepared to facilitate the students’ creativity by developing a safe environment built on mutual respect by listening to students’ ideas, comments and arguments, and exploring the ideas together with the students by asking open-ended questions and cuing them within task constraints, (4) work group support – groups created based on the students’ knowledge and combination of students interests, (5) sufficient resources – access to several types of building materials and informational resources (internet and books), and (6) organized support – volunteering to the project and building knowledge together in front of the project resulted in a shared vision, and support from the schools’ administration provided the opportunity to implement the project three times.

Data collection and analysis

Data consisted of video recordings of all 23 groups of students working on the project. Data from the three classes are collected by means of 11 head-mounted action cameras and 12 video cameras on tripods facing the groups’ table.

Data reduction was done according to the study’s focus in two steps: (1) all teacher-student conversations that dealt with the topic of the project were transcribed, and (2) interactions where the audio was missing or unclear in part of the interaction were excluded from the study. It resulted in a total of 49 interactions. The interactions were all conducted during the first day of the project during the idea phase. The rest of the time was spent building the model and presenting it to the class. During the first implementation, the idea phase lasted the entire first day, but the time spent on this phase became less and less for each implementation, resulting in a decreasing number of interactions. Presented with preliminary analysis, the teachers both argued that this occurred because they became more secure about their own role in the project for each implementation and were able to guide the students faster in creating good and buildable ideas.

The conversations were analyzed with the use of conversation analysis (CA), a methodological approach to the study of interaction and social action. CA research aims to identify patterns of talk, and by doing so discover and make explicit the practices through which participants produce and understand conduct in conversations (Drew 2004). It builds on the premise that all talk is a kind of action situated within a specific context and designed with an specific attention to that context (Schegloff 1984).

Analysis was based on a detailed transcript according to Jefferson’s (2004) manual for transcribing vocal conduct in talk-in-interaction, including detailed descriptions of turns and sequences, onset of simultaneous speech, and emphasis of talk. Descriptions of body orientation, gaze, and gestures are included in the transcriptions.

First, I conducted a macro analysis to identify phases and main activities that compose the overall structure appearing in the 49 interactions. Then, I conducted a microanalysis of the activities identified during the macro analysis, identifying conversational components within the overall structures that display how teachers respond to students’ ideas, and how teachers’ action may impact the students’ creative abilities.

Results

The macro analysis revealed how teachers respond to students’ ideas in two different ways, by showing (1) display of preference, and (2) display of dis-preference. Further, a micro analysis revealed how teachers displayed notions of preference.

The teachers display preference by (1a) encouraging the students to write down or draw their idea (25 of the 49 interactions), or by (1b) showing positive encouragement through verbal or non-verbal utterances (2 of the 49 interactions). Characterizing for both 1a and 1b is that when the teachers have acknowledged the idea as preferred, they do not open up for further dialogue, but turn away from the conversation. The teachers display dis-preference by (2a) ignoring the idea or undermining the idea with the use of irony or humor (6 of the 49 interactions), or by (2b) interrupting the students’ discussion after detecting a problem with the idea and following up with questions and arguments to make the students realize the problematic aspect of the idea (16 of the 49 interactions). If the students succeed in providing an answer or a new/improved solution that is preferred by the teacher, the rest of the conversation follows the pattern of a preferred idea (1). If the students do not succeed in doing so, the rest of the conversation follows the pattern described in 2a.

The following presents the microanalysis of three extracts from the dataset which best represent the entire dataset and illustrate the different ways teachers respond to students’ ideas. They also show how teachers’ use of conversational practices to display preference or dis-preference determines how the interactions unfold and impact students’ creative process.

That’s a good idea – write it down

Extract 1 illustrates (1) display of preference. It illustrates how the teacher hears an idea, evaluates it as preferred and immediately encourages the students to write it down, before turning away from the conversation. T denotes the teacher and S1, S2 and S3 denote the students. Transcript conventions is presented in appendix A.

Extract 1. Display of preference.

1	T	((Stands beside the students’ table. She folds her hands slightly and look
2		at S1 with her eyes wide open and eyebrows lifted))
3	S1–3	((Looks up on the teacher))
4	S1	Okay, we have found out that it is going to be like this- like this that can
5		transform carbon dioxide to oxygen. °That [squirts <very>-]°
6	S2	((Reaches out his hand and looks at the teacher))
7	S2	[That] thins out the new oxygen-
8	T	((Looks at S2, still with her hands slightly folded and nods ones while S2 is
9		talking))
10	T	((Smiles and leans over the table and moves the papers on the table around
11		with one hand while S2 is talking))
12	T	=But write it here’ Very good?
13	T	((Points at the paper with one finger))
		(0.5)
14	T	Yes? Write down the idea here.
15	T	((Leaves the group))

The teacher initiates the interaction by addressing S1 to make an account of the groups’ idea by gazing directly at him, while presenting a curious facial expression (line 1–2). The teacher’s gaze functions as a sequence-initiating action which elicit a response from the student (see Stivers and Rossano 2010 for research about how gaze is used as a sequence-initiation action). S1 sees the gaze and recognizes the nomination, and takes the next turn with an acknowledging ‘Okay,’ in line 4. The other students recognize that S1 has been selected, and do not initiate a response.

In the dataset, there are various examples of similar sequence-initiating actions by the teacher. For example, the teacher enters the conversation with a simple utterance (Now’ Look at this’) a question (Yes?), or a wh-question (What have you decided for? or What is this?) followed by a rising intonation. However, the action is always followed up with the use of gaze to allocate the second turn in the sequence.

Students seem to have a shared expectation of which action is required once the teacher enters the group, since all students being nominated to take the second turn present the same type of response. As in extract 1, the student immediately responds to the teacher’s request with an account of the groups’ idea (line 4–5).

In line 5, there is a possible completion of the current turn unit (after ‘ … to oxygen.’), making a transition to a new speaker relevant, a transition relevance place (TRP) (see Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974). However, S1 continues to speak without any apparent gap, which if present could indicate that the turn-constructional unit (TCU) was completed (see e.g. Goodwin and Heritage 1990; Wooffitt 2005), or without rushing to the next TCU to maintain his turn (see e.g. Sidnell 2010). This indicates that the teacher expects the student to produce an account of the groups’ idea in the form of a story. The fact that no other student or the teacher intervenes with the telling after the TCU, also indicates that the story is recognizable as a story to the recipients (Sacks 1995). Telling a story often requires more than one TCU (Mandelbaum 2013), and, therefore provides the student with an opportunity to describe the idea in full.

When telling the story further (line 5), S1 talks with lower volume, indicating that he is insecure about what to say next. S2 notices S1’s struggling and by taking the next turn by overlapping talk, he seeks the opportunity to initiate a repair of S1 account, by changing ‘That squirts very-‘ to ‘That thins out the oxygen-‘ (line 7). This repair also displays that S1’s original account is in fact the groups’ account, making it possible for S2 to intervene in the story. We may, therefore, see it as a way to display mutual orientation to an agreed version of an idea (see Edwards and Mercer 2013). Before S2 intervene in S1’s telling, he reaches out his hand and looks at the teacher (line 6). Even though the teacher does not recognize this gesture, it indicates that the student sees the teacher as the one who decides who get to speak next. The students consider the teacher as the official addressee, as they look at the teacher while speaking and address the teacher when taking their turn to speak.

During S2’s utterance, the teacher nods her head, which indicates an affiliation with the story. A nod is described as a continuer to the ongoing storytelling (see e.g. Goodwin 1986), and can serve as a preliminary indication of affiliation with the story (Mandelbaum 2013). In this case, however, the teacher interrupts the telling with an encouragement to write down the idea (line 12), emphasizing the encouragement by pointing at the place to write (line 13). She then follows up with an affiliative token, ‘Very good’, which provides an evaluative stance towards the idea. With this type of utterance, the teacher provides the students with insight into her stance toward their idea (Stivers 2008, 2013). When the students do not immediately write down the idea, the teacher initiates a repair of the previous utterance after a (0.5) gap (line 12–13). She reformulates the encouragement (line 14: ‘Yes? Write down the idea here.’), to make sure that the students understand what to do. She then turns away from the conversation and leaves the group, granting no room for the students to reply to the previous turn or continue the conversation with the teacher. After the teacher turns away from the conversation, the students write down the idea and move on to the next idea.

In similar examples in the dataset, the students’ further actions are determined by where in the idea process they are, whether they are expected to come up with more ideas or deciding on one idea. If the students are expected to come up with more ideas, the students write down the idea and move on to the next, without further developing the idea. If the students are expected to decide on one idea, the students write down the idea as the one ‘preferred’ idea without further developing the concepts of the idea. Further developing often occurs during the building of the model, but often in the form of looks and technical solutions.

But what if you run out on batteries?

Extract 2 illustrates (2) a display of dis-preference. The teacher hears an idea, evaluates it as dis-preferred and immediately tries to make the students themselves realize why the idea is flawed. When the students fail in providing the teacher with a preferred answer, the teacher uses humor to indicate that the idea is dis-preferred (2a).

Extract 2. Display of dis-preference.

1	T	((Approaches the group, puts both hands on the table and leans over slightly))
2	T	((Looks at S1))
3	T	Yes?
4	S1	Here’s one that transport food = Here’s a car that runs on (.) solar panel’
5		Here’s a car that’s charged by e:: e:: batteries’ And here’s a thing that e:
6		[heats water-
7	S1	((Points on the drawing))
8	T	((Bends down and sits down by the table)) ((Frowns her forehead))
9	T	[But ho-] How do you think you can get access to batteries?
10	T	((looks at S2))
11	S2	Yes’
12	S3	Yes?
13	S4	Solar panel? You just e::-.
14	S1	No. solar cells then’
15	T	((Looks at S1)) ((Nods))
16	S1	It takes up energy from e: sun’ And: and that energy is being transported to
17		the batteries then’
18	T	But what if you run completely out of batteries? If this is going down to
19		collect it, = How long do you think it will take for that to collect it? = If it’s
20		going all the way to the Earth and [pick up batteries?
21	S4	((stretches out his arms with palms facing up))
22	S4	[We does not run] out of batteries.
23	T	((Smiles and laughs while gazing at S4)) ((stands up and tries to walk away
24		from the group))

Extract 2 follows the same pattern as extract 1 in the beginning, with the teacher nominating S1 to give an account of the groups’ ideas in form of a story (line 1–7). However, in this extract the teacher detects a problem with one of the ideas, the car charged by batteries. The teacher interrupts the story by pointing out the problem (‘How do you think you can get access to batteries?’) (line 9). The utterance presents a competing action to the storytelling, and demonstrates dis-preference. The frown on the teachers’ forehead (line 8) is a further indication of insecurity or dis-preference.

The teacher nominates S2 to answer the question by gazing directly at her (line 10). S2 takes the turn but does not have a good response to the question and answer ‘Yes” with a rising intonation at the end, without continuing the turn (line 11). We then see the group working together to provide a good answer to the teacher in line 12–14. S3 notices how S2 is struggling and nominates herself to the next turn, and answers “Yes?” with a sharp rising intonation at the end. This can seem like a question or a token of insecurity, indicating a struggle to provide an answer. S4 nominates himself to take the next turn and suggest “solar panels” as a solution. S1 repeats the answer with a final rising intonation in the end, suggesting that this is the groups’ final answer to the teacher’s question.

The teacher gazes at S1 and gives an affirmative nod (line 15), which combined serves as a preliminary affiliation to the answer, and serves as a continuer for S1 to continue her answer (see Mandelbaum 2013). S1 takes the turn and develops her answer further by explaining how the solar panel works and provides energy to the batteries. This indicates that the students have not understood the problematic aspect of the idea, and the teacher initiates a repair of her question from line 9 with a reformulation in line 18, (‘But what if you run completely out of batteries?’). She then points out what she thinks is the problematic aspect of the idea by focusing on the distance between the Earth and Mars. She does not open up for the students to provide an answer, but presents the preferred answer herself.

This could have ended the sequence, but S4 breaks out of the expected pattern of the teacher being the provider of speaking rights, and presents an argument that this is not a problem because they will not run out of batteries (line 21–22). The teacher responds to the utterance with laughter and smiles at S4 (line 23), before moving away from the conversation. The teacher does not succeed in cuing the students to come up with a preferred answer, but uses laughter and humor to display dis-preference in a way that appears less problematic and harmless.

Other examples from the dataset show that when the teacher uses irony or humor to display dis-preference, the students either reject the idea without questions or they continue the discussion using the same arguments presented to the teacher, without being able to reach a conclusion or a common agreement. The discussion can last a long time, often because one of the students is determined to convince the rest of the group why this is a good idea, but the idea is always rejected in the end.

Turning a dis-preferred idea into a preferred idea

Extract 3 is a continuation of extract 2 and illustrates what happens if the students succeed in providing a preferred new or improved idea after the original idea was evaluated as dis-preferred (see 2b).

Extract 3. Moving from a dis-preferred idea to a preferred idea.

25	S2	It- it- it- it cha:rges while it drives.
26	T	((Returns to the group)) ((Looks at S2 with eyebrows lifted and eyes wide
27		open))
28	S2	((Looks at the teacher))
29	T	[Smart’]
30	S4	[Not like that.] We are having rechargeable batteries.
31	T	How exciting?
32	S4	Then there’s just – that there is stored a lot like this, stored here as [(xxx)]
33	T	[Actually-]
34		Actually a possible problem that you are solving now? That is access to power
35		or electricity.
36	T	=Just write access to power or electricity. = That you see as
37		a problem.
38	T	((Points at the paper with one finger))
		(0.5)
39	T	Mm.
40	T	((Leaves the group))

After making a display of dis-preference and after trying to turn away from the conversation, S2 initiates a new turn by presenting a new answer (line 25). Receiving tokens of disaffirmation is seen as a dis-preferred action for the students, and the student calling back the teacher with a new idea can be a way to repair the dis-preferred idea. The teacher returns to the group and presents a curious facial expression with her eyebrow lifted and eyes wide open (line 26–27). She immediately follows up with an affiliative token in line 29 (‘smart”), with rising intonation at the end, indicating that the new idea is preferred.

At the same time as the teacher presents the affirmative token, S4 detects a problem with S2’s idea, and by an overlapping talk she initiates a repair of the idea. The repair indicates that S2’s idea does not represent the groups’ idea, and this is further evident when S4 returns to their previous idea of batteries. However, she uses S2’s idea of recharging and includes it to the previous idea, by introducing rechargeable batteries. The teacher follows up with a new affiliative token ‘How exciting’, with a sharp rising intonation at the end (line 31), giving further indication of preference.

The affiliative token in line 31 is detected as a continuer by S4, and she continues her turn by telling the teacher more about the idea. The teacher, however, interrupts S4’s account with overlapping talk, indicating that the teacher saw the affiliative token in line 31 as her final evaluative stance. The teacher attempts to lift the idea to a higher level according to the task, by pointing towards the problem this idea could help to solve (line 33–35). She quickly extends her turn after a possibly complete TCU has been produced in line 35, by encouraging the students to write down the idea, using both verbal utterance and gesture (line 36–38). This leaves no room for the students to take turns in the conversation, giving further indication that the teacher has given her final evaluative stance. The teacher, then, turns away from the conversation.

Discussion

The teachers’ evaluative stance toward the idea determined how they controlled the conversation with the students. Entering the conversation, and throughout the conversation, the teachers positioned themselves as holding ‘the speaking right power’ (see Cazden 2001; Gardner 2013), by deciding who got to speak with the use of gaze and bodily orientation, and the students trying to provide a united account of their idea, hoping for a positive feedback. The interactions reflected a typical communication pattern in traditional teacher-controlled and teacher-fronted lessons (see e.g. Gardner 2013) following the pattern of an IRE-sequence, where the teacher initiated a first-position turn in the form of a request to the student, followed by a response from the student, before the teacher evaluated the respond (see McHoul 1978; Mehan 1979). Instead of really listening to, and exploring the students’ ideas by considering alternative viewpoints and developing then further with ‘dialogic and exploratory talk’ (Alexander 2006; Mercer 2000), the teachers closed the conversation by indirectly or directly evaluated the ideas.

The analysis also showed that the students accepted the teacher as taking the evaluative stance. For example, when the idea was preferred by a teacher, the students accepted the idea as good and followed the teachers’ further instructions. The teacher did not fully function as fellow collaborators and facilitators in exploring and developing ideas (Sawyer 2004; Scardamalia and Bereiter 2006). Taking an evaluative stance, the teacher also reflected the idea that there is one right answer, identified as an ‘inhibiting practice’ for creativity (Alencar 2002, in Kampylis, Berki, and Saariluoma 2009) and dialogue (Alexander 2006).

If the idea was preferred by a teacher, as seen in extract 1 and extract 3, the teacher gave preliminary indications of affiliation with the idea (nods, and tokens of affiliation), before encouraging the students to write down or draw the idea, using both verbal utterances and gestures. The display of preference was presented without delay and with tokens of affiliation, for example ‘very good’ pronounced with intensified form, which reflected previous research on the display of affiliative and preference action (Goodwin and Heritage 1990; Pomerantz and Heritage 2013). Doing so, the teacher controlled the conversation with the students towards his/her own agenda of what a good idea was.

If the idea was dis-preferred by a teacher, as seen in extract 2, the teacher interrupted the student’s account of the idea, by pointing out the problem. The teacher’s interruptions demonstrated the teacher’s power of being the provider of speakers right. The interruption in the form of a question provided the students with an opportunity to repair their idea according to the teacher’s preference (see Goodwin and Heritage 1990; Pomerantz and Heritage 2013; Sidnell 2010). If the students failed in providing the teacher with a preferred answer, the teacher initiated a repair of the question, providing further opportunities for the students to come up with an affirmative answer. Asking questions and changing the question slightly to make the students realize why their idea was problematic, made the teacher’s agenda more visible. This gave the students an easier task to come up with a preferred answer and reduced the teacher’s risk of having to provide negative feedback. If the students were not able to come up with a preferred answer during the repair sequence, the teacher provided the dis-affirmative feedback masked in humor and irony. This defused the negative feedback, making it less harmful to give for the teacher and less harmful to receive for the students, which in turn was a way of minimizing conflict (Goodwin and Heritage 1990; Pomerantz 1984; Pomerantz and Heritage 2013).

Taking an evaluative stance towards students’ ideas at this phase in the process seems to conflict with the general aim of the project and the teachers’ goal of supporting the students’ creativity. Controlling the conversation based on a teacher’s evaluation of the students’ idea could be seen as problematic related to the Four C-model of creativity (Beghetto and Kaufman 2007). Taking an evaluative stance seems to minimize the opportunity for the teacher to listen and explore the students’ ideas, which was a premise for being able to help students in converting their mini-c ideas into little-c ideas (Beghetto 2007a; Beghetto and Kaufman 2007). This could have affected the students’ creative process in a way that they did not see the point of taking the necessary risk related to expressing their creative thinking (Hathcock et al. 2015). The teachers also evaluated the ideas from their level of creative magnitude, that could risk the students’ ideas as being devalued (James 2015). It also resulted in the teacher spending more time on the dis-preferred ideas than preferred ideas, missing out the opportunity for the students to further develop ‘good’ ideas together with a more competent teacher. Providing opportunity for students to make a repair of dis-preferred ideas could, however, also be seen as cuing the students within task constraints (see Beghetto 2007a). This seemed to work, because students often were able to provide an improved version of the idea. However, the idea was improved according to the teacher’s preference, making it seem as students were trying to guess what the teacher wanted to hear (Black and Wiliam 2010).

The teachers’ evaluative stance so early in the process could be a result of the need to complete the project in time. Completing and encouraging students to follow the ‘right’ idea and cuing them to write down or draw the idea, encouraged them to move on to the next phase of the project. By doing so, the students could provide a visible result of the process, and the teachers saw the phase as complete. The teachers seemed to have a product-oriented focus throughout the project, as they put more emphasis and time on the building and finishing of the model, rather than developing ideas, thought, and arguments on a higher creative level. This indicates that the teachers focused more on the product aspect of creativity, than the process aspect of creativity (Rhodes 1961). The teachers’ response when presented with the fact that they spent less and less time on the idea phase for each implementation (because of increasing self-confidence about what to do to make students create good ideas) also points to a product-oriented focus.

Conclusion and implications

Teachers display of preference towards students’ ideas affects the interaction and limits further development. The idea phase ends with the display of preference where students are allowed to move on to the building phase of the project, or the idea is rejected after a display of dis-preference. If the teachers make more time to listen and understand the students’ ideas, the quality of the feedback could be enhanced and students are supported in converting their mini-c creative ideas into little-c creative ideas. Ideas on a higher creative and scientific level.

Despite the aim of the project and the preparation preceding the project, this study has shown that the teachers struggle to function as fellow collaborators and facilitators through dialogues. This indicates that teachers need more training, and more explicit practice, in ways to promote students’ creativity. It also shows that it is difficult to make time to support students’ creativity within such project, where there are many students per teacher in the classroom. In a classroom context, it is important to see all students and follow up all groups, and this may have conflicted with the aim of focusing thoroughly on all ideas.

Through their actions and through conversation with the researcher, the teachers presented a product-oriented focus. Rushing the students towards the building phase reflects an underlying fear of not being able to complete the project in time. Together with the underlying time-constraint, the fear of not being able to present a finished product may be hard to swallow for teachers as well as students, putting further emphasis on the product aspect of the project.

The teachers did, however, volunteer and manage to make room in their busy schedule for a three-day project, plus time before the project started, which made it clear that they saw creativity as an important skill to integrate into science. The result from this study indicate, showever, that if we are to achieve the goals of the 21^st century skills of developing students’ creativity, we need to make change to the underlying school culture in the way we value and assess finished products and make more time to focus on the creative process and how students engage in the creative act. Teachers may need more explicit training in how to support students’ creativity through dialogue, but to be able to implement it in their classrooms, there is a need for fewer students per teacher.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Appendix A.

Transcription conventions

(0.5)	=	Time gap, one-tenth of a second
(.)	=	Pause in talk, less than two-tenth of a second
[]	=	Marks overlapping talk
=	=	‘Latching’ between utterances
‘	=	Slight rising intonation
?	=	Rising intonation, not necessarily a question.
	=	Falling or final intonation, not necessary the end of a sentence,
	=	‘Continuing’ intonation, not necessarily a close boundary::
	=	Stretching of the immediately preceding sound.
Word	=	Stress or emphasis of underlined item
°word°	=	Softer or quieter tone than otherwise
<word>	=	Slower speech rate than otherwise
>word<	=	Faster speech rate than otherwise
-	=	Cut-off or self-interruption in the prior word or sound
(xxx)	=	Inaudible talk
(())	=	Transcriber’s comments and description of non-verbal activities