CREATIVITY, CHAOS AND OBJECTS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND CARE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF DIALOGICAL EDUCATION
Keywords:
creativity, creative thinking abilities, early childhood education and care, social orientations, dialogical educationAbstract
Children’s creative potential can be considered a prerequisite for their possibilities to participate in the building of the shared cultural content. The learning environment of the early childhood education and care has an effect both to the children’s possibilities to grow to their creative potential and to their possibilities to participate. The purpose of this article is to study how children’s measured creative thinking skills, i.e. creative potential relate to the learning environment evaluated by personnel. Children’s creative thinking skills are measured using The Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement test (TCAM) and learning environment are measured using the Progressive Feedback Learning Environment Evaluation tool evaluated by staff. The research is part of the Progressive Feedback Research and Development Project (Reunamo 2024). The study involved 280 children in 23 kindergarten or preschool groups. The connections between the TCAM test and the Learning Environment Evaluation were studied with partial correlations. Four sum variables were formed from the variables in the learning environment according to Reunamo’s Orientation theory, the sum variables being Harmony, Possibility, Object and Chaos. There was a negative connection between children’s creative potential and Object and a positive connection between creative potential and Chaos. According to the results, in early childhood education and care it is necessary to have a discussion about values, whether the goals of early childhood education make it possible to consider and respond to children’s initiatives or whether the goals are goals in themselves.
