E. PAUL TORRANCE

Achieving SocializationWithout Sacrificing Creativity*

Poets, artists, parents, teachers, CL1'ld child psychologistsfrequently have noted that many children begin sacrificingtheir creativity along with socialization training.

Generally, this decrement in curiosity and creative func­tioning has been perceived as a natural and quite desirableconsequence of socialization. Even those who have been dis­turbed by it and see it as the result of man-made changesrather than purely genetic ones have conceded that whenthe child enters school he must be drawn into group activitiesand be impelled by its rules and regulations, thus surrender­ing his creativity (Pulsifer, 1963).

During my first three years at the University of Georgia,I had the opportunity to evaluate creative development result­ing from the application of the Creative-Aesthetic approachto preprimary education. During the second and third yearsI had unprecedented opportunities to experiment with ma­terials and procedures to improve the quality of both thesocialization and creative skills within this program. From theresults obtained at the end of the first year, it was obviousthat five-year-old children participating in the Creative­Aesthetic preprimary program attained unusual heights in'originality of thinking. They showed enormous growth onpre- and post-tests of creativity, both verbal and nonverbal.They excelled their controls on every measure of originality

.. Paper prepared for the Eighth International Creativity Research Con­ference, Buffalo-Niagara Falls, New York, June 25-27, 1970.

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Achieving Socialization Without Sacrificing Creativity

we had devised and also on those developed by Starkweather(1965). Their mean originality score at the end of the schoolyear was 1.1 standard deviations above the mean of our fifth­grade norm group, actually a rather superior group by na­tional standards (Torrance, 1966). However, on the measureof elaboration, which requires considerable intellectual disci­pline, their performance placed them a full standard deviationbelow our fifth-grade norms. There were also some indicationthat their socialization skills did not equal those of childrenin the traditional kindergarten program. Furthermore, chil­dren in the Structured-Cognitive preprimary model achieveda higher degree of elaboration (Torrance, 1968).

During the next two years, I began experimenting withmaterials and procedures that I hoped would increase social­ization skills and ability to elaborate without causing a reduc­tion in originality. By the third year, many of these materialsand procedures had been tested experimentally and had beenincorporated into the curriculum of the two classes of five­year-oIds enrolled in the Creative-Aesthetic approach to pre­primary educational stimulation. At least a part of the suc­cess attained thereby is reflected in the data presented inTable 1 (Torrance, 1969a), which shows the mean T-scores(based on fifth-grade norms) on figural fluency, flexibility,

TABLE 1 Mean Standard Scores and Standard Deviations on FiguralForm of Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking of Five-Year­Olds after One Year of Creative-Aesthetic Educational Stimu­lation for Each of Three Years.

Variable 1966-67 1967-68 1968-69

(N =24) (N=44) (N=48)Means St. VeT). Means St. VeT). Means St. VeT).

Fluency 34.9 5.8 38.4 6.5 35.0 6.1Flexibility 37.9 5.8 37.6 8.1 38.4 6.5Originality 61.6 17.3 58.7 16.8 56.4 17.6

Elaboration 39.7 7.2 40.8 5.8 53.3 10.7

originality, and elaboration on the Torrance Tests of CreativeThinking Ability (1966). The originality scores at the end ofthe second and third years were at about the same highlevel as at the end of the first year. Fluency and flexibilityalso were at about the same level as in the first year. Elabora­tion, however, was about 1.36 standard deviations above that

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DYADICINTERACTION

The Journal of Creative BehavIor

attained at the end of the first year. Similarly, studies ofgroup functioning on creative tasks showed a higher level oforganizing and cooperating behavior than was found duringthe second year. (No objective studies of group functioningwere made during the first year.)

The major emphasis of my developmental work to refinecertain aspects of the Creative-Aesthetic model (Fortson,1969) has been focused on experimentation with factors in­fluencing interaction p~ocesses. The pervasive objective hasbeen to facilitate simultaneously the socialization and creativeprocesses. We have been able to test rather carefully throughexperimental studies some of our hypotheses and I shall limitthis paper to these studies. By this I do not mean to devaluesuch developments as the "Just Imagine Exercises" that setin motion creative currents that reverberate for days, the"Leadership Training Program," "Magic Net Creative Dramat­ics and Problem Solving," "Magic Story Teller Puppetry,"the use of puppets in developing question asking skills, andthe like. Through subjective and phenomenological ways I"know" that these procedures are effective in achieving thedual aim of encouraging both socialization and creativity, andthis evidence has been discussed elsewhere (Torrance, 1970a;Torrance and Myers, 1970).One series of studies has investigated the role of dyadicinteraction in facilitating creativity. In the first study (Tor­rance, 1970b) I examined simultaneously five-year-old chil­dren and college students, investigating the simple hypothesisthat dyadic interaction will facilitate the production of origi­nal ideas among individuals. Twenty college students (jun­iors) were administered four tasks from the Torrance Testsof Creative Thinking under standard conditions; twentyoth­ers randomly assigned to dyads from the same populationwere tested under the same conditions except that they wereencouraged to hitchhike on one another's ideas but forbiddento repeat an idea produced by the other. Similarly, twenty­four five-year olds were tested alone and twenty-two of theirrandomly selected classmates were tested in dyads. The re­sults of both experiments indicate that dyadic interactionfacilitated originality of thinking, but the differences arestronger for the college students than for the five-year-oldchildren.

From these two simple experiments, two additional hypoth­eses cried for investigation. In both experiments, there wereindications that the 'subjects enjoyed the experience more

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DYADS ANDWILLINGNESS TO

TRY THEDIFFICULT

GROUP SIZEAND

QUESTIONINGPERFORMANCE

Achieving Socialization Without Sacrificing Creativity

abundantly in the -dyads than in the single performances andthat they were willing to stick to the task longer.

One of my students, Robert D. Towell (1970), investigatedthe persistence hypothesis with five-year-old disadvantagedchildren, using my "What Can It Be" test (Torrance, 1970c).At the same time he replicated the initial study with veryclear cut results. The mean number of ideas produced by eachmember of the dyad was about twice the number producedby children working individually under standard testing con­ditions. The mean originality score in dyads was also abouttwice that attained under standard conditions. Persistence, asmeasured by length of time, was also significantly greater indyads than under standard conditions.

I have not investigated the degree of enjoyment variableamong five-year-olds, but I have verified it with college stu­dents. The evidence through subjective and phenomenologi­cal ways of knowing is so strong that I doubt that I shallbother to investigate it by more objective means.

Creative people have to be willing to attempt the difficult,and children too, in order to learn and to grow, must bewilling to tackle difficult tasks. To facilitate learning andgrowth, teachers should be able to create the social or peerconditions conducive to attempting tasks of appropriatedifficulty. For another experiment (Torrance, 1969b), wehypothesized that five-year-old children would be more will­ing to attempt difficult tasks when placed in pairs than whenalone or before their entire class. The task used in this studywas a target game in which the children attempted to throwbean bags into a basket from distances that make the taskeither easy or difficult, depending upon the choice of thechild. In Condition A, the children played the game in pairs;in Condition B, alone; and in Condition C, before the entireclass. There were twenty-two children each in Conditions Aand B and forty-four in Condition C. The results clearly sup­ported the hypothesis and further suggested that childrenare least willing to attempt the difficult when performingbefore the entire class.The ability to support curiosity by skill in asking questions isalso important both in socialization and creativity. JohnDewey (1953), for example, formulated the stages throughwhich curiosity develops or is lost. The initial stage of curi­osity is marked by an expression of an abundant organicenergy. A physiological uneasiness results in the child's "get­ting into everything." As socialization gets underway, a sec-

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THE ROLEOF TASK

AND GROUPSTRUCTURE

The Journal of Creative Behavior

ond stage of curiosity emerges. This stage is characterized bythe abundance of "why" questions. These questions are notdemands for scientific explanations but represent a simpleeagerness to know more about the mysterious world. Thethird stage emerges when curiosity rises above the organicand social level and becomes intellectual. According to Dew­ey, unless there is a transition to an intellectual plane,curiosity degenerates or evaporates and is lost forever. Onthe basis of these observations, several experiments havebeen concerned with facilitating this transformation process.

The purpose of the first of these studies (Torrance, 1970d)was to examine the effects of group size on the questionasking behavior of eight classes of five-year-old children en­gaged in programs of preprimary educational stimulation.

In the test task, groups were asked to produce as manyquestions as they could in a ten-minute period concerningMother Goose prints. It was required that the questions beabout things that could not be ascertained by looking at thepicture. Groups of twenty-four, twelve, six and four werestudied.

Group size had significant effects on number of differentquestions asked, number of discrepant event questions, andnumber of repeated questions. Production was significantlyhigher in the small groups, although in most respects four-childgroups seemed to have little or no advantage over six-childgroups.

In spite of the limitations of the study imposed by thesampling and design, the results support arguments for ex­ploring the possible advantages of small-group instructionover individual instruction in developing certain intellectualskills such as question asking.Many early-childhood educators argue that any imposedstructure discourages creativity, while others argue for itsnecessity. In one of our experiments an attempt was made toimprove the small-group behavior of five-year-old children byincreasing the task structure. The children were asked firstto draw dream castles, then to decide which group mem­ber's castle they wanted to construct, and finally to build acastle. In the second experiment, an attempt was made toimprove this type of behavior among five-year-olds throughincreasing the group structure by designating one member asleader. In the first experiment, there were twelve six-persongroups in each condition; in the second experiment, therewere six six-person groups in each condition. In the first exper-

187

MANIPULATION OFOBJECTS AND

QUESTIONASKING

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

Achieving Socialization Without Sacrificing Creativity

iment, the task structure achieved by the experimentalmanipulation resulted in an increase in planning and cooper­ating behavior and a decrease in verbal and physical aggres­siveness. The second experimental manipulation tended toincrease the planning behavior but decreased the verbalaggressiveness and physical aggression.As the socialization process moves along, children find thatincreasingly they are forbidden to touch and to manipulateobjects. In some of my earlier studies (Torrance, 1963), I hadfound that degree of manipulation of the toys used in theproduct improvement test was highly related to the numberof ideas produced and to the originality of those ideas. Thissuggested the hypothesis that the provision of opportunitiesto manipulate stimulus objects would facilitate question ask­ing among five-year-old children. The forty-eight subjectswere randomly assigned within classrooms to eight six-persongroups. The manipulation and non-manipulation conditionswere presented in an alternate form design in the two class­rooms. The stimulus objects were a plastic bee which made abuzzing sound when twirled and a toy musical instrumentwhich made a variety of sounds when manipulated. In oneclass the bee was used in the manipulation condition and inthe other the musical instrument was manipulated. The ma­nipulation condition compared with the non-manipulationcondition produced a larger number of questions and a largernumber of hypothesis-stating questions and questions aboutpuzzling phenomena. The results suggest that previous find­ings concerning the facilitating effects of manipulation in theproduction of inventive ideas can be generalized to questionasking skills.I offer these experiments only as examples of possible waysthrough which we can explore the issues involved in facili­tating simultaneously both socialization and creativity, testand refine hypotheses for achieving these dual purposes, andfeed the results into the development and refinement of theCreative-Aesthetic model of educational stimulation. Muchmore experimentation of this nature is needed.

ANDREWS, E. G. "The Development of Imagination in the PreschoolChild." University of Iowa Studies in Character, 1930, 3, 4.

DEWEY, J. How We Think. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1933.

FORTSON, L. R. A Creative-Aesthetic Approach to Readiness andBeginning Reading and Mathematics in the Kindergarten. Doctoraldissertation, University of Georgia, 1969.

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MONTGOMERY, M. Stones from the Rubble. Memphis, Tenn.: ArgusBooks, 1965, 4.

PULSIFER, S. N. Children Are Poets. Cambridge, Mass.: Dresser, Chap­man & Grimes, 1963.

STARKWEATHER, E. K. "An Originality Test for Preschool Children."Stillwater, Okla.: Oklahoma State University, 1965. (Mimeographed)

TORRANCE, E. P. Guiding Creative Talent. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.:Prentice-Hall, 1962.

TORRANCE, E. P. Education and the Creative Potential. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1963.

TORRANCE, E. P. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking: NOTms­Technical Manual (Research Edition). Princeton, N. J.: PersonnelPress, 1966.

TORRANCE, E. P. "Must Pre-Primary Educational Stimulation Be In­compatible with Creative Development?" In F. E. Williams (Ed.),Creativity at Home and in School. St. Paul, Minn.: MacaIester Crea­tivity Project, Macalester College, 1968, 55-73.

TORRANCE, E. P. A Three-Year Study of the Influence of a Creative­Aesthetic Approach to School Readiness and Beginning Reading andArithmetic on Creative Development. Athens, Ga.: Research andDevelopment Center in Educational Stimulation, University ofGeorgia, 1969a.

TORRANCE, E. P. "Peer Influences on Preschool Children's Willingnessto Try Difficult Tasks." 7. of Psychol., 1969b, 72, 189-194.

TORRANCE, E. P. Encouraging Creativity in the Classroom. Dubuque,Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1970a.

TORRANCE, E. P. "Influence of Dyadic Interaction on Creative Func­tioning." Psychol. Rep., 1970b, 26, 391-394.

TORRANCE, E. P. "Administration and Scoring Guide for 'What CanIt Be?' Test." Athens, Ga.: Georgia Studies of Creative Behavior,1970c. (Mimeographed)

TORRANCE, E. P. "Group Size and Question Performance of Pre-PrimaryChildren."]. of Psychol., 1~70d, 74, 71-75.

TORRANCE, E. P., and R. E. MYERS. Creative Learning and Teaching.New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1970.

TOWELL, R. D. Influence of Dyadic Interaction on Creative Task Per­formance. Unpublished research paper, University of Georgia, 1970.

E. Paul Torrance, Professor, Department of Educational Psychology.Address: The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30601.

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