Developing creativity from school and home experiences: how parents and educators influence students' creative literacy practices

This dissertation looks at the nature of creativity and what it takes to create a creative environment between the home environment and the elementary classrooms. Children make meaning best through play, creativity and problem-solving; this theory is built on Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (1978) alongside schema theory and Sternberg and Lubart’s Investment Theory (1991). Vygotsky’s theories have also been mediated with Kress (1997) and with Csikszentmihalyi (1996). This ten-month-long qualitative case study of administrators, teachers, parents, and students utilized interviews, artifacts, and focus groups. It studied the phenomenon of creativity (Patton 2002) while taking an ethnographic approach (Green & Bloome 1997). The observational work took place in families’ homes and at a school in a suburban school district in an upper-middle class community. Part of the interview work took place in the participants’ homes and at school. Focus groups and interviews with teachers and administrators were conducted about how they define, identify, and apply creativity in their planning, teaching, learning, and assessing. Coding was established using the research questions and interview protocol to organize data. Coding schema meant that as codes were created, the goal was to capture the perceptions and beliefs of the participants. Grounded theory combined with discourse theory was used to track terms, concepts, and ideologies that recurred in the data. They were drawn them together into an integrated framework that was offered in the final chapter. My data reveal the findings of the teachers and administrators, coded into five major categories, with corresponding subcategories: the classroom environment, the role of the teacher, the home connection, and difficulties. The major categories that emerged from the family participants were how the children and their families make creative use of space, time, and materials in their quest to observe, question, learn, and explore the world around them. This dissertation contributes to the growing research bridging creativity and critical thinking, implications for standardized testing, and creative literacy practices.Ed. D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Sharyn Fishe