Understanding and enhancing personal transfer of creative learning

Accepted Manuscript Title: Understanding and enhancing personal transfer of creative learning Author: Vivian M.Y. Cheng Dr PII: DOI: Reference:

S1871-1871(16)30095-5 http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.tsc.2016.09.001 TSC 370

To appear in:

Thinking Skills and Creativity

Received date: Revised date: Accepted date:

8-2-2015 20-6-2016 1-9-2016

Please cite this article as: & Cheng, Vivian M.Y., Understanding and enhancing personal transfer of creative learning.Thinking Skills and Creativity http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2016.09.001 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

Understanding and enhancing personal transfer of creative learning

Vivian M.Y. Cheng Education University of Hong Kong

Correspondence and request for reprints should be sent to Dr. Vivian Cheng, D3-1-48, 10 Lo Ping Road, Education University of Hong Kong, Tai Po, Hong Kong, China. Email: [email protected]

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Highlights 

Personal transfers of creative learning are spontaneous, far, diverse, multidirectional, highly individual and sometimes unexpected.

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Transfers of creativity-related attitudes, conceptions, thinking strategies and thinking habits are commonly reported.

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Significant parts of creative learning can be transferred in personal ways, if the curriculum is suitably designed to meet the needs of students in local context.

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Model of personal transfer of creative learning consists of core themes - content, context, impact and factor of transfer, and their multiple sub-themes.

Abstract: The 'actor-orientated transfer' approach was adopted to examine the personal transfer of creative learning in a thematic course on toys in a higher education of Hong Kong. The personal transfers of creative learning were found to be spontaneous, far, diverse, multidirectional, highly individual and, sometimes, quite unexpected. Creativity-related attitudes, conceptions, habits and thinking strategies were commonly transferred from the initial study over to daily life, new learning and teaching, all because the learning was impressive, useful, full of surprises and easy to remember. A number of curricular, contextual and student's personal factors were identified to be either facilitating or hindering these transfers. It is concluded that significant parts of creative learning can be transferred in personal ways, if the curriculum is suitably designed and implemented to meet the needs of students in local context. A model for personal transfer of creative learning, which consisted of four core themes (i.e. context, content, impact and factor of personal transfer) and their sub-themes, was depicted. The 'transfer in pieces' theory was applied to explain the nature of personal transfer. Ultimately, this study helps to establish a new conception of creativity education as a type of education that values and facilitates personal transfer. Keywords: personal transfer, creative learning, creativity, thematic curriculum, higher education 1. Introduction 1.1 Personal transfer of learning Transfer of learning is the ultimate aim of teaching (Macaulay, 2000). Immediate learning outcomes do not guarantee long-term transfer outcomes. Education should not only focus on examination results, but also assess whether course learning is transferred beyond the classroom (Barnett & Ceci, 2005). In contrast to the transfers predesigned in curricula, tests or experiments, in this study, personal transfer refers to transfers that 2

are self-initiated freely by students, including those outside the classroom, beyond the course period, unconstrained by the course theme, and for non-academic purposes. Personal transfer is not a formal part of the course and therefore is not commonly included in the present course evaluation. No hint or instruction is given for executing this type of transfer (Barnett & Ceci, 2002). Its process is rather spontaneous and autonomous, and its outcomes are highly individual and multidirectional, with individual trajectories of development over time (Yelon, Ford, & Golden, 2013). In many cases, personal transfer is not just a direct carryover or exporting of what is learned; it also encompasses the transformation or adaptation of what students have learned in the new context (Larsen-Freeman, 2013; Schwartz, Chase, & Bransford, 2012). Studies by Brown, McCracken and O’Kane (2011), Grohmann, Beller and Kauffeld (2014), Shreeve and Smith (2012) and Sibthorp (2011) further described the nature of personal transfer. 1.2 Domain specificity and transferability of creativity training In many places around the world, governments consider creativity as an important generic skill/ability for students to develop across school curricula (Hui & Lau, 2010) and in the realm of higher education (Ivan, 2011). In general education, education policymakers widely assumed that creativity learned in one domain (e.g., in arts or science) could be transferred to other domains and ultimately became a general attribute of students. However, studies of the transferability of creative learning are rarely found in the literature. There is an on-going debate over the domain specificity and transferability of creativity training. Based on the low predictability of general creativity tests and other empirical evidence, some studies (Baer, 2012; Kaufman & Baer, 2005) have claimed that creativity and creativity training are domain specific. Moga et al. (2000) found that even if creativity training could be transferred, evidence supported near but not far transfers. However, the domain-general view is also common in the field. Craft (2005) stated that ‘creativity is a transferable skill’ (p. 36). Plucker (2005) pointed out that ‘many components of creativity are arguably domain neutral or general…’ (p. 307). Plucker and Beghetto (2004) explained that creative skills must be general at some level; otherwise, they would not transfer for use in other creative tasks, even within a domain. The present study aligns with Sawyer’s (2012) suggestion: ‘To assess for creative learning, students should be tested not only on retention of specific facts, but also on the ability to transfer knowledge to new problems’ (p. 401). This study sets out to accomplish two things. First, it seeks to identify if there is evidence to support the view that creative learning is transferable. Second, it explores the characteristics and factors associated with such evidence. 3

1.3 Paradigm shift in transfer perspective From the traditional cognitive psychological perspective, learning transfer necessitates the formation of abstract representation in initial learning, where the abstraction is conceived as a process of de-contextualisation (Engle et al., 2012). Transfer is then characterised as the process in which knowledge acquired from one task or situation is applied to a different task or situation through recognising the connections between the initial and transferred situations. In contrast to this perspective, Lobato (2012) introduced the actor-oriented transfer (AOT) approach, in which ‘transfer is defined as the generalization of learning, which can be understood as the influence of a learner’s prior activities on her activity in novel situations’ (p. 233). This AOT perspective understands transfer from the actor’s point of view, emphasises the interpretative or phenomenological nature of knowing and focuses on the transfer of personal conceptualisations rather than objectively defined strategies, methods or actions. Instead of relying on laboratory experiments to evaluate the transfer of predesigned content in test-like contexts, AOT is grounded in the use of inductive qualitative methods (e.g., grounded theory construction) and is targeted at understanding the nature of novices’ generalisations of their learning activities in diverse content domains (Lobato, 2012; Noke-Malach & Mestre, 2013; Perkin & Salomon, 2012). In line with this AOT approach, studies (Brown, McCracken, & O’Kane, 2011; Patchen & Smithenry, 2013; Sibthorp, 2011; Shreeve & Smith, 2012; Yelon, Ford, & Golden, 2013) have adopted grounded theory or similar qualitative inductive methods to investigate personal transfer. They have explored several questions, including what sorts of transfers learners self-initiate and when, where and how learners transfer their learning. The present study adopts this AOT approach. 1.4 Basic categories for framing learning transfer The content and context of transfer have been widely discussed in studies of learning transfer (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; Devet, 2015; Patchen & Smithenry, 2013). Content of transfer refers to what learners transfer from the initial to new situations, and context of transfer refers to the environments/domains to which learners transfer the content. They are both key elements in studying learning transfer. In explaining learning transfer, studies have pointed out that learners’ motivations (Perkin & Salomon, 2012; Grohmann, Beller, & Kauffeld, 2014), student characteristics, educational designs, learning climates and workplace environments (Donovan & Darcy, 2011; Subedi, 2004) are key factors. Studies have also discovered the long-term impacts of learning transfer on teacher performance (Monico, 2010), nursing practice (Finn, Fensom, & Chesser-Smyth, 2010) and career success in the arts (Shreeve & Smith, 4

2012; Antun & Salazar, 2005). The above literature reveal that a transfer process basically involves the initial learning content which is being transferred, and the new context that the learning is being transferred to. This transfer process is usually facilitated or hindered by some common factors, and, as a result of the learning transfer(s), some overall impacts might be produced on the learner. In light of this, the present study considered content, context, impacts and factors as four basic categories for framing learning transfer. 1.5 Curriculum design for transfer Studies (Cheng, 2010, 2011) have reported many of the constraints and obstacles confronting the fusion of creativity elements into formal curricula and have found that the transfer of classroom learning is weak. As Perkin and Salomon (2012) commented, in many daily life circumstances (e.g., humour), transfer usually proceeds easily, but formal learning is often transferred much less than educators expect. In their detectelect-connect model, teaching for transfer needs to prepare learners to not only ‘connect’ initial and new situations, but also ‘detect’ new opportunities and ‘elect’ the direction. In this circumstance, a course built around an interesting informal daily-life theme may open up a new space for teachers and students to detach from formal curricula and past practices, become more sensitive to creative opportunities in daily life and be more motivated to energize their creativity. Why toys? A toy is an everyday item. In the field of education, toys are believed to have significant effects on the development of children (Trawick, Russell, & Swaminathan, 2011), and they are widely used in teaching science (Guemez, Fiolhais, & Fiolhais, 2009). Apart from being a play tool, toys are typical cultural items and have an extremely long history in Chinese culture. Many of China's historical toys (e.g. kites and diabolo) are creative and classified as objects of ‘intangible cultural heritage’ by UNESCO (China Economic Net, 2012). Like many other everyday items, toys have undergone revolutionarily reform in recent decades, from the toys children make using natural resources, to the factory products mass-produced using advanced technologies (Jackson, 2001). The child's role has changed from that of self-actualising creator to passive consumer. In sum, toys constitute a culture-rich, creativity-rich and educationrich everyday theme. Even so, no study has explored the use of toys in creativity training in higher education. This study sought to address this research gap by infusing creativity training into a thematic toy course that included analysing, inventing and making toys, problem solving using toys, creative uses of toys and a study of the historical and sociocultural development of toys. Suggested pedagogical strategies in this area include embodied creativity practices (Byrge & Tang, 2015), realistic exercises (Scott, Leritz, & Mumford, 2004) and active, 5

constructivist, collaborative and improvisational learning (Sawyer, 2015) as ways to facilitate teaching for creativity. Furthermore, they have identified strategies for enhancing learning transfer, including deep prior learning, making associations and meta-cognitive reflection (Cree & Macaulay, 2000; Leberman, McDonald, & Doyle, 2006), keeping a reflective diary in everyday life (Brown, McCracken, & O’Kane, 2011) and framing the course content expansively and explicitly (Engle et al., 2012). These pedagogical elements were infused into this thematic toy course. The course aimed at enhancing respondents’ creativity through many embodied creativity practices, while also helping students to reflect on creativity from multiple perspectives. 2. Method 2.1 Course design Adopting a thematic curriculum approach, a tertiary course on toys was developed and implemented for three cohorts at Hong Kong Institute of Education in Hong Kong, China. The course was a general education course open to all undergraduate students. The course objectives were set to develop students’ creative minds and attributes and enhance their understanding of human creativity and science. Each lesson comprised a thematic study of one kind of toy. Students were asked to investigate the mechanisms behind the toys, analyse their designs, suggest new designs and alternative uses, make toys with everyday materials and compare the differences between traditional and modern toys. Creative thinking (CT) strategies (e.g., SCAMPER, creative problem solving [CPS], forced association) were taught and applied to these toy activities. The historical and sociocultural development of toys was discussed in-depth through several case studies. The final assignment of this course was an independent project based on a self-selected toy theme. Learning transfer was introduced to the students explicitly as the ultimate goal of the toy course. The toy content was framed expansively and explicitly (Engle et al., 2012) as shown in Figure 1. It was highlighted to students that other everyday items such as houses, clothes and food featured similar creative development and cultural changes as toys. Although personal learning transfer was encouraged, however, it was not directly taught or assessed formally in the course. INSERT FIGURE 1 HERE 2.2 Scope of study In this study, ‘creative learning’ generally referred to any learning that facilitated the creativity development of students (Cheng, 2015), with a special emphasis on littlec (i.e., everyday creativity) and mini-c (i.e., the individual creative processes involved in the construction of personal knowledge and understanding) ‘creativity’ (Kaufman & 6

Beghetto, 2009). ‘Personal learning transfers’ referred to any learning transfer selfinitiated freely by the students, not guided or requested by teachers. From an operational perspective, they were learning transfers that occurred outside of the course and were self-reported by students. The scope of this study included any changes in conception, attitudes, skills, abilities and behaviour outside the toy domain that students perceived as originating from the learning of the course. 2.3 Data collection and analysis This study adopted the actor-orientated approach (Lobato, 2012) to understand the transfer from the students’ point of view. Student case studies were conducted with semi-structural interviews. Respondents were interviewed during, immediately (i.e. within one month) after taking the course and one year after it. They were asked to recall and provide feedback on several key areas: (1) what they thought they had learned in the toy course, whether they were aware of any changes after taking the course and the overall extent of the impacts the course had on them; (2) what they thought they had transferred from the toy course and when and where the learning had transferred to; and (3) what facilitated or hindered their learning transfers, what they thought made their learning transfers possible and how the transfers took place. Students were requested to quote concrete examples of transfers that actually took place. The interview data were transcribed and checked and confirmed by each interviewee for accuracy. An inductive analysis of the interview data which did not strictly adhere to the original grounded theory framework (Heath & Cowley, 2004; Strauss & Corbin, 1994) was adopted. This method was similar to that adopted in other studies of learning transfer (Brown, McCracken, & O’Kane, 2011; Shreeve & Smith, 2012; Sibthorp, 2011) which permitted the emergence of themes and patterns from the data while still assuming some prior knowledge. Based on a literature review, the present study adopted four core themes – content, context, impacts and factors of learning transfer – which were enriched by iterative data collection and analyses. Two independent analysers with strong backgrounds in creativity education were recruited to conduct inductive data analyses. Although the four core themes were predetermined by the researcher, the subthemes inside them were open to emerging ideas. Follow-up discussions were conducted on doubtful cases to reach final consensus among the analysers. A summary of the core themes and their emerging subthemes is presented in Figure 2. 2.4 Sampling The students who took the course in three successive years were invited to participate in the case studies voluntarily. Of the 69 students across 3 cohorts, 40 7

students joined the case studies at the beginning. To decrease potential biasing in the sampling, the order of student interviews was chosen at random. Data collection and analysis continued until the data seemed to be saturated (i.e., no more subthemes could be newly identified). In the present study, this kind of data saturation was found to occur after analysing interview data of 20 students. Therefore, only 20 case studies were included and reported in this paper. The 20 students came from different study disciplines, with majors including Chinese language, visual arts, General Studies, music, English language, physical sports, mathematics, psychology, China studies and sustainability studies (listed in descending order of number of students involved). Their ages were between 19 and 23. Of the 20 respondents, 16 were studying in B.Ed. programmes, whereas the other four were studying in non-education programmes. Of these 16 students, 13 had engaged in teaching practice(s) before the last delayed interview. (Therefore, some respondents described the transfer to teaching in their interviews.) The demographic details of the respondents in the 20 case studies are reported in Table 1. INSERT TABLE 1 HERE 2.5 Additional data collection To strengthen support for the findings, a questionnaire tapping into the students’ creativity-related attitudes, conceptions and behaviour was developed and administered to the last two cohorts of 45 students at the beginning of, immediately after and one year after the course. The questionnaire items are displayed in Table 2. For all of the items, a 5-point Likert scale was adopted, with ‘1’ representing ‘Strongly disagree’ and ‘5’ representing ‘Strongly agree’. T-tests and Cohen’s d effect sizes were computed based on these quantitative data. Since the curriculum content and the student combination were quite similar across the three cohorts, the quantitative results obtained from last two cohorts were used to compare with the qualitative results (the interview results) which were obtained across all three cohorts. 3. Results 3.1 Content of transfer This section reports on the content of the students’ transfers, i.e., what was being transferred. The following subthemes emerged in analysing the feedback that the students provided in their interviews. Coding of each subtheme was listed in Table 2. 3.1.1. Transfer of Creative thinking (CT) strategies In analysing the interview data, this study discovered that CT strategies were commonly transferred from toy study to students’ daily life, their new learning and 8

teaching. In some cases, the whole strategies were applied, whereas, in other cases, only parts of them were applied. Some CT strategies transferred were those taught in class (e.g. SCAMPER, CPS, forced association); others were self-constructed by the students (an example can be found in Section 3.4.4). Some CT strategies were transferred deliberately, while others were used unintentionally, and, sometimes, even unknowingly. Some of the respondents used the CT strategies to brainstorm new ideas; others applied them to analyse creative designs or to criticise the inventiveness of others. Individual students transferred different CT strategies in different ways, though some commonalities were found. For instance, in interviews, respondents described how they applied a method similar to CPS in doing the assignments of another course, solving teaching problems, repairing a fish tank, and etc. Many of the respondents commented that they had applied one or more sub-strategies in SCAMPER to develop alternative ideas in daily-life domains, including cooking, fashion design, and etc. A few respondents even tried to teach SCAMPER to their students. An example of their direct feedback: ‘…. I have once used SCAMPER to design new dishes, e.g., replaced the beef with pork, magnified the amount of tomato sauce to cook spaghetti or eliminated the meat but added more broccoli…’. One student commented about her mother in this way: ‘…I find that my mom was good at SCAMPER! She used to recreate products she had bought, e.g., she once added a high heel to a Croc-slipper. She always had the idea of re-creating the products even if they were newly purchased or even not yet purchased…’ In the interviews conducted one year after the course, CT strategies were less frequently mentioned by the respondents. Some of the respondents explained that they were less likely to recall the strategies automatically in their daily lives; some said that they had simply forgotten the specific strategies after one year. There were also respondents who believed that they might have internalised the strategies and made them into thinking habits. In short, the sustainability of CT strategies (especially the deliberate use of them) is uncertain. 3.1.2. Transfer of creativity conceptions This study found that creativity conception transfer (e.g. small-C conception) were strong and common from the toy study to daily-life. Students reported that, before the course, they used to relate creativity with something unusual, great, inborn and rather difficult to gain, but after the toy course they were aware that creativity could always be found in daily life (if one was sensitive enough) and that creative thinking could also be improved by learning. The respondents’ conceptions of creativity had obviously expanded from the only big-C creativity to one that had included the small-C creativity (Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009). 9

Apart from this small-C creativity, another conception of creativity was the selfconstructed and transferred by students. A few respondents reported that, before the course, they assumed creativity could only be found in modern things and not in old things. In the course, they were amazed to find that old toys were also creative, and the development of toys was creative too. The new conception was ‘creativity can be learnt through studying old things and their historical development’, as suggested by one respondent. Some diverse or even contracting transfer contents were also discovered in students’ feedback. For instance, some of the respondents claimed that after the course they felt that creative thinking needed not be rational: ‘To me, [now that I have taken the course, creativity] needs no reasoning. It is always surreal. ….’. Yet, other respondents observed that the course changed their conceptions of creativity in the opposite direction: ‘Now, to me, creativity is more systematic, something I can follow step- by- step….’. This evidence showed that individual students might gain different insights in the same course, which would bring about later transfers. Unlike the case of CT strategies, in the interviews conducted one year after the course, the respondents continued to report on many of these creativity conceptions. None of them went back to the ‘big-C only’ creativity conception. This revealed that the generalisation/ transfer of creativity conceptions were comparatively more sustainable among the respondents. 3.1.3. Transfer of creative attitudes This study discovered that creative attitudes (e.g. interest, confidence and values of creativity) were commonly transferred from toy study to new areas. Many of the respondents reported that they now had more confidence in their own creativity because of their success in toy designing and making. Others expressed a greater desire to pursue creativity outside toys because of the happiness and satisfaction they experienced in the “self-actualizing” activities. Others even generalised the value of creative learning from the toy course to their own teaching. Similar to the transfer of creativity conceptions, data collected in the delayed interviews showed that the transfers of the creative attitudes of most of the respondents sustained one year after the course. Most of the respondents said they were still interested in creativity. However, in the delayed interviews, many complained that they lacked the chance to actualise their creative aspirations in reality. This kind of complaint seemed to increase as time went on. More related results will be reported in Section 3.4.7, entitled ‘Contextual factors’. 3.1.4. Transfer of creative thinking styles/ habits Similarly, creative thinking styles/habits (e.g. thinking more flexibly, more 10

observant and sensitive to creativity) were also found commonly transferred from toy study to new areas. Many of the respondents commented that they now thought in wider perspectives, from different angles, more out-of-the box and thought longer (i.e. not so easily given up). Many others reported that after the toy course they became more observant and more sensitive to creativity in their daily lives and/or more eager and more capable in analysing creative commercial products in the shops and other places. Opposite transferred creative thinking styles/habits were also identified. One respondent said she became less critical about novel things. Her comment in the oneyear delayed interview: ‘Even now, I still remember what the professor said –when a novel idea or product appears, the first thing we should do is NOT to cast doubt on it, but to appreciate it and think how to improve it. This message has changed me a lot…before, I used to challenge them and criticise their drawbacks immediately when I saw them…’. In contrast, another respondent confessed that he criticised novel things more often than before: ‘Just like toys, manufacturers are adding more functions on the camera so as to attract buyers…the cameras are NOT really so new…the production teams are just using strategies like elimination and combination to produce so-called “new products” every season!’ In the delayed interviews, it was found that most of the transfer of creative thinking styles/habits sustained. For instance, most of the respondents cited more concrete examples of ‘seeing’ creative things in daily life than they did in the earlier interviews. There was evidence that some of the respondents’ sensitivity to creativity had grown (instead of diminished) in the one year after the course. 3.1.5. Transfer of creative abilities Unexpectedly, this study failed to find strong evidence on the transfer of creative abilities. Although many of the respondents claimed that they gained a lot, they rarely described themselves as having higher creative abilities (or simply creativity) in any other non-toy areas after the course. They attributed their improvements (if any) to the changes in thinking styles/habits or their uses of the CT strategies, but not really to their own abilities. For instance, one student obviously did better in a general creativity test after the course, but he did not agree that his ‘ability’ was now higher. Instead, he attributed the improvement in his test result to this teacher instruction: ‘in the lesson, the teacher always told us to brainstorm as many ideas as we could – it did not matter whether the ideas were good or bad! So I write more in the test…’ 3.1.6. Transfer of other unexpected contents Surprisingly, this study discovered many other unexpected transfer contents in both immediate and delayed interviews. They included the transfer of teaching methods, 11

inquiry skills, environmental concerns and science knowledge, which individual students observed or gained in the course. For instance, in teaching, some of the respondents had transferred the toy observation skills, the creative activities, self-constructed CT strategies and the classroom culture to their own teaching, whereas some had used toys (as an aid) to teach or to motivate their own students in their teaching practices. Some of the respondents even deliberately adopted the DIY activities (i.e. self-making new things with daily-wastes) to promote the pro-environmental attitude and the creativity of their students. Although this course was not designed for learning pedagogies, many unexpected contents were learnt and transferred from the toy course to enrich respondents’ own teaching! Furthermore, some personal concepts/skills/attitudes/habits outside the course curriculum were generated by the students themselves in initial learning and later transferred. Here was an example: ‘I have learned that a balancing toy needs a fulcrum. … Afterwards, in an art course, I did pay attention to the fulcrum of the big art sculpture pieces…I believe that, just like the balancing toy, our life also needs a good fulcrum to make it wonderful!’ One of the most unexpected transfer contents found was the ‘Doctrine of the Mean (中 庸之道)’. This content was generated via classroom improvisation as follows: The teacher asked, ‘Why do children abandon certain toys after playing with them only for a short time? … What kind of toys would have a longer play life?’ Students had given this feedback, ‘What attracts children are the challenges in playing with toys…. if the toys are too difficult to play with, players may lose interest…”, and “(So,) good toys should not be too easy or too hard to play with. Only toys with a medium challenge level make children keep on playing….’ In the interviews, some of the respondents reported that they found this idea very impressive. Five of them reported transfers of this idea to their own teaching (for setting tasks to motivate students and for coping with student differences), whereas others transferred this “mean is good” idea to different daily-life contexts (e.g. in handling interpersonal relationships, analysing the behaviour of politicians, and deciding on the novelty level of innovations). Overall, there was great divergence in unexpected transfer contents. It seemed that everybody had his/her own self-constructed content. In fact, the iterative data collection and analysis of this study had ceased after a large number of unexpected contents (and contexts) was identified. That means this study had not and could not exhaust all of them. 3.1.7. Summary 12

Although toy was used as the only study context, the results revealed that the CT strategies, conceptions of creativity, creative attitudes, creative thinking styles/habits and some unexpected contents gained from the initial learning were commonly transferred over to daily lives, new learning and teaching. In contrast, evidence on transfers of creative abilities was weak. Although many commonalities in transfer were identified among respondents, diverse, unexpected and even opposite transfer contents were also discovered, which showed that personal transfers might be highly individual. INSERT TABLE 2 HERE 3.2 Context of transfer Context of transfer referred to when the transfer took place and where the transfer went. In data analysis, time, place, domain and function emerged as its subthemes. 3.2.1. Time On the whole, this study found that the time of students’ personal transfers, spread from the time of the course to just before the delayed interview, i.e., one year after the course. Most of the transfers reported by respondents occurred after the course and many did sustain for a long time (except the deliberate use of the CT strategies). 3.2.2. Place This study found that the place of personal transfers ranged from shops in the streets to students’ homes, university hostels, other courses, teaching classrooms and workplaces. Two respondents even mentioned overseas places in which they had their study exchange and tourist visit. All of the personal transfers reported in Section 3.1 took place outside the toy class and the course projects and assignments. 3.2.3. Domain The initial learning contents reported earlier were found to be transferred to a wide range of domains/tasks – including that in daily life, learning and teaching. Furthermore, most of the respondents reported some general gains (i.e., gains not limited to any special domains/tasks). They were summarised as follows: Daily-life domains/tasks: Cooking, fashion design, analysing commercial products, repairing furniture and fish tanks, making gifts, organising activities, making things with personal characteristics, and etc. Learning domains/tasks: writing assignments and doing projects in another courses, and etc. Teaching domains/tasks: designing instructional methods, motivating students, making teaching tools, and etc. 13

General domains: across domains, becoming basic attributes or characteristics of the person. 3.2.4. Function From the data analysis, many transfer functions were identified. They included helping respondents to brainstorm new ideas, find alternatives, solve problems, design something, repair something, improve something or simply ‘see’, appreciate, analyse or criticise something. In teaching context, the transfer functions were found to be either teaching creatively or teaching for creativity or both (Jeffrey and Craft, 2004). The most diversified functions were found in the transfer of the ‘Doctrine of the Mean’ (discussed in Section 3.1.6.), ranged from motivating students to analysing the behaviour of politicians. Here quoted one of the most unexpected transfer functions – stabilizing tissue paper rolls! “My family (used to) collect and reuse old tissue paper rolls…. To stabilize them on a table, I added a little heavy thing to the bottle of each roll… like making balancing toy in the course!’ 3.2.5. Summary This study found that the initial learning contents were transferred to a wide variety of contexts, including daily life, teaching and other learning domains, and in many different places, for diverse functions and extended to one year after the course. The transfer contexts chosen were related to the personal needs, interests and experiences of the individual respondents. As most of these personal transfers occurred outside of the original classroom, served non-academic functions, contextualized in non-toy domains, and sustained quite some time after the course, these personal transfers were considered as ‘far’ transfers (Barnett & Ceci, 2002). 3.3 Overall impacts of transfer Going beyond single transfers, this study had also investigated the overall impacts which all personal transfers had exerted on individual students. Three kinds of overall impacts were identified. 3.3.1. Change in life direction The first kind of overall impact was changing student’s life direction to life-long pursuit of creativity. Among the respondents, four had reported this significant kind of impact. The strongest case was a female student majored in Chinese and took the toy course in the last year of her B.Ed. studies. In the course, she had self-constructed her own ‘reverse thinking’ method from the toys (see Section 3.4.4). Because she wanted to be unique and special, she had continuously transferred this thinking method to her 14

writing, job hunting, teaching and many other aspects. In the delayed interview (one year after the course), she was already a full-time teacher teaching in a local primary school. She reported that she was trying her best to be more creative in her own teaching and at the same time to infuse some creative thinking elements into her lessons. In her words, ‘This course has triggered my pursuit of creativity. I have made a decision to be a creative teacher, and bring creativity to my students too’. 3.3.2. Temporary or moderate changes in creative attributes The second kind of overall impact identified was temporary or moderate changes in creative attributes of students, which involved no changes in students’ life-long pursuits. For instant, immediately after the course, one male respondent mentioned that he had transferred some of the CT methods he learnt from toys to three real-life events, including in inventing a mathematics game, designing a new camp and developing new interpretations of Bible readings. However, he clarified that his way of living basically remained the same as before. What he learnt and transferred from the course did not bring too much change to him, except thinking wider, deeper and more flexibly. The interview conducted one year after the course revealed that he was still aware of having a change in thinking style, but he now could recall less real-life transfer events. 3.3.3. No obvious impact The third kind was no significant overall impact. In the interviews, a few of the respondents failed to report any significant transfers and could not come up to any obvious changes after the course. In analysing their explanations, it is found that they either had no impressive initial learning, or had no intention to transfer what learnt in the course, or did not know how to transfer what is learnt in real-life. Please read Section 3.4.8 for more elaboration on these weak cases. 3.4 Factors of transfer In interviews, the respondents were asked what had facilitated and/or hindered their learning transfers, and some follow-up questions. Their feedback was analysed, coded and classified. The following subthemes emerged. Coding of each subtheme was listed in Table 2. 3.4.1. Impressiveness, surprise, memory and perceived usefulness This study discovered that “impressiveness” of what is learnt was the most important mediating factor, supporting later transfer. When the respondents were asked why they could transfer certain learning content but failed to do so to another content, nearly all of the respondents attributed this to their ‘impressiveness’. This word was 15

most frequently mentioned in the interviews. When asked why impressiveness was so important, respondents said, “if not impressive, I would forget (or lose) what I had learnt!” Impressiveness made what is learnt stayed in students’ mind or memory. What were the most impressive learning elements? They were those that gave a surprise to the students. The many interesting designs of toys, the very useful and yet simple creative thinking strategies, the long and rich history of toys, and the amazing mechanisms behind the toys were reported as surprising and impressive. Respondents explained their surprises in this way: “although toys were around us, we had overlooked them…. never imagine that they can be so rich and creative!” The many concrete and hands-on activities were also found to be impressive to the students as well. Apart from impressiveness and surprises, memory and perceived usefulness of the initial learning were found to be the mediating factors. Some of the respondents reported that they applied the CT strategies after the course, because they were simple, easy to remember and surprisingly useful. The repeated practice of the strategies in class and in assignments also helped. In the delayed interviews, a few of the respondents reported obviously stronger impacts than that in their first interviews. They explained that the positive outcomes of their strategies applications strengthened their memories and perceived usefulness, which in turn enhanced more transfers, creating a ‘reinforcing loop’ in their development. Linking up the above findings, the impressiveness, surprises, memory and perceived usefulness of the initial learning were found to be mediating factors, mediating the influences of other factors (e.g. hand-on experiences, toy characteristics, and later successful experiences) onto the personal transfer (see Figure 2). 3.4.2. Toy characteristics perceived by students In this study, “toy” was found to be the most important single curriculum factor supporting the initial learning and later transfer. In interviews, when asked what single course element was most impressive, nearly all of the respondents mentioned the toy theme in their immediate reaction. They explained that toy activities had brought them great fun and happiness; around toys, there were many hands-on designing and DIY activities; no matter olden or modern toys, they were so creative, and etc. According to the traditional Chinese belief, ‘playing is a waste of time’ (Bai, 2005). This thematic learning was exceptionally impressive, because respondents were surprised that they could learn so much in a toy course. The following characteristics of the toys were identified by respondents to be the supporting factors: － Simple and everyday － Concrete, handy and support hands-on work － Funny, attractive, familiar from childhood 16

－ Creative and versatile, easy to design and redesign － Dream provoking, turning classroom into a wonderland － Knowledge-rich with understandable mechanisms － Culture-rich, i.e. having long histories and strong relationships with culture, being intangible cultural heritage － Yet, rarely studied in formal curriculum, creating novel/surprise feeling 3.4.3. Connection-making and expansive framing Two other curriculum factors: the connection making and expansive framing characteristics of the course were identified to have facilitated personal transfer. Respondents reported that they were impressed by the close connections of many seemingly related things in the toy theme (e.g. daily-life items, family, home, childhood, teaching, market, culture, history, arts, education, science, technology, creativity, CT strategies, inventing, DIY, environment protection, cultural sustainability, and other aspects). Some respondents could remember that the teacher had framed toys expansively and explicitly (as that in Figure 1). They commented that this figure was impressive and did remind them to expand their toy learning by connecting it with other daily-life aspects. A few respondents even said that the course had helped them to make connections across things they had never before connected, and that they had carried on this thinking habit after the course. Many examples of this kind are shown in earlier sections (e.g., students connected the initial toy learning with later cooking, fashion design, writing, teaching, and etc.) 3.4.4. Experiential, constructive and improvisational learning Experiential learning, constructive learning and improvisational learning were also identified to be factors that enhanced impressiveness of initial learning and their later transfer. Many of the respondents commented that the hands-on activities had enlivened the lessons, whereas others found their engagement in the thinking and inventing exercises impressive and valuable. In their words, “Not just listening, but doing and experiencing it themselves!” Previous sections had quoted quite many examples of student transfer of their selfconstructing learning contents (e.g. the ‘unexpected contents’ in Section 3.1.6). Many of the respondents had commented that, unlike other universities in local context, this course had given them a lot of open spaces and opportunities to construct their own ideas. For example, in Section 3.3.1, the strong transfer case elaborated her construction process in this way: ‘In one lesson, teachers let us play with some high-friction toys (e.g. pull-back car) together with some low-friction toys (e.g. hovercraft), and asked us….I discovered that 17

things can work with opposite strategies, both can be great!...This inspired me to construct a “reverse thinking method”, which I then applied to my writing and….”. Some other respondents commented that the final toy project and assignment of the course had given them good opportunities to investigate, invent and make the toys in their own ways. The ideas they constructed in this process are very impressive too. Improvisational teaching and learning was also found to enhance personal transfer. In lesson, sometimes, students were allowed to explore questions not predesigned and set out to construct meanings/products outside teachers’ original plan. In this study, three levels of improvisation (Sawyer, 2011) (class, group and individual levels) emerged. One typical example of class improvisation is detailed in Section 3.1.6: the ‘Doctrine of the Mean’. Group improvisations happened when some groups invented their own games or investigations with the toys given. Two students even reported individual improvisations: ‘…During lessons…I changed my role from student to teacher in class. I sat there and imagine – can I do the same thing [with my students]? I related it with the school subject and thought about how to ask questions…’ In all these cases, students improvised and constructed new meanings, which become their personal transfer contents. 3.4.5. Reflection on and sharing of personal transfers During the course, students were requested to reflect on and share (once verbally and once in written form) their personal transfers. In interview, some of the respondents related their reflections and sharing activities with their later transfers. They reported that the process made them realize that attending lessons was not enough and the reflection pushed them think about how to integrate what is learnt into daily life. However, a few of the respondents expressed their dislike of the reflection and considered it useless to their learning and transfer. 3.4.6. Course constraints Despite the many positive characteristics of the curriculum design, three course characteristics (i.e. its single-theme nature, its general-elective nature and the absence of direct teaching of transfer) were identified as negative factors, that is they hindered initial learning and later transfers. One of the respondents commented that the course content was too narrow and suggested the course should include other daily-life items too. Two of the respondents were puzzled by the “learning transfer” not being taught directly, if this was what they needed to know. One commented that since there was no assessment of personal transfer nor was there any external pressure, they lacked the motivation to do the transfer and to practise it. As the course was a ‘general elective’ 18

course (i.e. not a core course), some students felt that the course was unimportant, and they studied it just for fun and for credit points only. On the other hand, some of the respondents attributed their poor memories of what is learnt to the lack of continued studies after this single course. 3.4.7. Contextual factors Interestingly, this study discovered that the conservative culture in the local context was a double-edge sword, exerting dual opposite effects on personal transfer (i.e. it can at the same time facilitate and hinder learning transfer). Many of the respondents commented that, as creativity is generally ignored in local education, they had not have any creative learning experiences in their previous education, and, therefore, this course could bring them surprise, novelty and enlightening experience, triggering their desire and interest in pursuing creativity. In this sense, the ‘low creativity-concern’ in local context (as described in Cheng, in press) helped to bring about the success of the initial learning. However, in the delayed interviews, some students complaint that their teaching practice school did not allow them to design their own teaching methods or to induce creative learning into their teaching. Other respondents commented that their lives were so plain and routine that they had no special need to be creative. Some of the respondents concluded negatively in these ways: ‘Although amazing, this course was only an unusual space…creativity is not practical in real life’; ‘Creativity is only suitable in a curriculum specially designed for it, but not so in a normal school curriculum’. Furthermore, some of the respondents reported that they had tried to apply the CT strategies, but the results were negative. They said they dared not use them again. One commented, “It is so weird to combine two different unrelated things in a forceful way…the methods are not useful in my daily life’. In this regard, the ‘low creativityconcern’ in local context created obstacles to later personal transfer in real-life. 3.4.8. Student personal factors This study further discovered that several student personal attributes (i.e. memory capacity, prior learning motivation and habit, and transfer motivation and habit) were important factors, moderating the impacts of the course onto personal transfers (see Figure 2). In interviews, one of the respondents attributed her weak transfer to her very poor memory, saying that she totally forgot what she had learned in the course! Whereas, another respondent explained his weak transfer by criticizing that the course content was not creative enough for him and was not useful to him. One student confessed that she joined the course simply because its timetable was convenient to her, and she had 19

no intention to do anything related with it. A few respondents confessed that they were not used to making connections between what they had learned to the environment outside the classroom. They made the following claims: ‘I used to forget all of the things I had learned after submitting assignments, ‘I seldom relate my daily life to my life in the classroom. To me, they are always separate’. In contrast, some of the students expressed a stronger desire to learn creativity and already had the habit of connecting academic learning to their daily lives. For example, the strong case in Section 3.3.1clarified that though she had never studied creativity before, she had a desire to be a special person, even before taking the course. These prior learning motivation and habit were found to be critical to later course learning and later transfer. 3.5 Support of quantitative data To assess the students’ self-evaluations, a questionnaire was developed and delivered to the students at the beginning and end of the course. The questionnaire results revealed that the respondents experienced significant changes in their conception, interest, confidence, value and behaviour in relation to creativity in a general sense immediately after the course (see Table 3). These reported items had approximately medium effect sizes (Cohen, 1988), showing that the changes were nontrivial. The effect sizes of ‘hardworking can enhance personal creativity’ (item 1), ‘I always have a plentiful imagination’ (item 3), ‘I always have weird ideas’ (item 4) and ‘I can always suggest many ideas to solve problems’ (item 5) were the largest, ranging from .54 to .50. The effect sizes of ‘my creative thinking ability is better than others’ (item 11), ‘I can be a successful creative person’ (item 10) and ‘I can always combine… to create novel and useful products’ (item 9) were all lower at around .40. These effect size results were in line with the interview results – the respondents were less likely to confess that they had higher creative abilities, but more likely to believe that creativity could be learned and that creative thinking habits could be picked up. However, these quantitative findings were limited only to the learning outcomes immediately after the course. When the same questionnaire was delivered to the students one year after the course, the response rate was too low to give a reliable result. INSERT TABLE 3 HERE 4. Discussion 4.1 Summary of findings This study had found abundant evidence for far and spontaneous personal transfer of creative learning. It showed that significant parts of creative learning could be transferred in personal ways if the curriculum is appropriately designed and implemented to suit the needs of students in the local context. Some of these transfers 20

had sustained as long as one year after the course study, thus creating long-term significant impacts on some students. In the thematic toy course, creativity-related attitudes, conceptions, thinking strategies and thinking habits were commonly transferred from the initial study over to daily life, new learning and teaching. Quite a number of curricular, contextual and personal factors was identified to be either facilitating or hindering factor to the personal transfer. Though these factors differed substantially among individuals, they were mediated by nearly the same learning characteristics – the impressiveness, novelty and perceived usefulness of the initial learning. Furthermore, this study revealed that the actor-orientated approach was useful for studying personal transfers in creative learning. A number of subthemes was identified in each of the four core themes - context, content, impact and factor of personal transfer. Bases on these core themes and subthemes, a model for personal transfer of creative learning were displayed in Figure 2. The contents, contexts, impacts and factors of personal transfers were found to be diverse, multidimensional, highly individual and sometimes, unexpected, although they also had strong commonalities among individuals. INSERT FIGURE 2 HERE 4.2 Limitations In this study, many of the students had cited examples of learning transfers. However, the learning transfers that had taken place in reality might be much more than what the students reported. Describing the transfer process and suggesting its influencing factors required high meta-cognitive awareness and recall abilities, which not all of the students possessed. This personal factor places limitations on the method of this study. In fact, for the same reason, most of the respondents failed to report the detailed mechanisms or processes of their transfers. This retrospective self-reporting research method may not be suitable for students of younger age. Despite this limitation, the many results reported in this study illustrated that the follow-up interview method was still useful for studying learning transfer at the university level. Another limitation of the study could be derived from the adopted sampling method. Although randomly selected out of a pool of volunteers, the respondents with better course results were found to be slightly overrepresented in the sample. To avoid any biased conclusions, this study focused only on identifying the subthemes in the content, context, impact and factor of personal transfers instead of comparing their frequencies of occurrence. Furthermore, as nearly all of the students participated in the quantitative study, its results suffered much less sample biasing and provided important support to the generalisation of the findings. 21

This study was conducted in a modern Chinese city, Hong Kong. The results revealed that the special Chinese culture helped to create a novel feeling and a strong impression of initial learning while also creating obstacles for students’ later transfers in real life. Local culture and context are inevitable and key factors influencing personal transfer. Other cross-cultural studies are necessary to improve understanding of the issue and to generalise the present findings further. In this study, although many of the respondents reported successful transfers of CT strategies, thinking style and creative attitudes, they rarely described themselves as having higher creativity or creative abilities. The reason for this result is uncertain. Creativity is widely conceptualised as big-C ‘Creativity’ (Niu & Kaufman, 2013), and Chinese individuals tend to have a rather modest and submissive character (Rudowicz & Yue, 2000). Any non-humble self-claim (such as possessing creativity) might have been avoided for this reason. Another possible reason may be that the learning associated with this single course was not strong enough to increase the students’ creative abilities, especially for creative production in real life. Further studies are required before any conclusion about this result can be drawn. The inductive analysis method adopted in this study did not strictly adhere to the original grounded theory framework (Heath & Cowley, 2004; Strauss & Corbin, 1994). As the scope of the research was limited to the four core themes identified (i.e. the content, context, impact and factor of transfer), data classified as falling outside the four core themes were not included in this study. These four pre-set categories were considered as prior knowledge, which might carry researcher’s bias. In this regard, the preliminary model suggested in Figure 2 might be incomplete and need further development. 4.3 Significance and implications The findings of this study had a number of educational and research implications, which would be discussed in Section 4.3.1 and Section 4.3.2, respectively. 4.3.1. Curriculum design for personal transfer of creative learning This study informs the field that the impacts of creative learning can go very far in personal transfer. A simple thematic course can exert long-lasting effects on some students, triggering them to engage in a lifelong pursuit of creativity. Educators cannot underestimate the potential influence of personal transfer of creative learning. In the past, creativity training and evaluation mainly focused on immediate creative performance, and neglected the creative potential of students (Runco, 2003). The results of this study suggest that creativity-enhancing curricula should focus more on transferrable and sustainable elements, e.g., creative attitudes, thinking habits and 22

conceptions of creativity. Educational assessment should go beyond the testing of immediate learning outcomes and put more efforts to evaluate students’ delayed personal transfers. Compared with education of fixed knowledge, creativity education is expected to be more diverse and have more significant personal transfer. Unlike knowledge education, creativity education should not strictly adhere to the traditional outcomebased education model (McKernan, 1993) that enforces a strong linear rationalistic relationship among planning, teaching and assessments. Instead, creativity education needs to leave spaces for students to have personal learning and transfer. Teachers need to “expect the unexpected” in teaching (Beghetto, 2013) and find ways to assess the unexpected outcomes of learning (Cheng 2015). In this study, a new conception of creativity education, as a type of education, which values and facilitates personal transfer, emerges. The results of this study inspire ways to realize this kind of creativity education. To this end, curriculum designers may need to find ways to impress and surprise every student, to have connection-making and expansive framing, to facilitate experiential, constructive and improvisational learning, despite all of the existing classroom constraints. In the meantime, teachers need to encourage students to reflect on and share their personal transfers. Furthermore, educators need to be aware that, if the local context is of ‘low creativity-concern’ (Cheng, in press), then it may help to bring in the novel feeling to the creative learning, but, at the same time, this may hinder students’ later transfer in real-life. (Opposite effects may appear if the local context is of ‘high creativity-concern’.) Before the course, teachers would better also try to cultivate higher students’ learning motivation and transfer habit so as to facilitate the later transfer of the creative learning. How should this kind of curriculum be designed? Thematic interdisciplinary approach of this kind is one possibility. Compared with surface learning in wide domains, in-depth understanding and exploration in a single interesting domain may be more effective for cultivating stronger impression, values and memory of the creative learning. The selection of the course theme may be culture-dependent. The special characteristics of toys reported in this study may be confined to the perceptions of the local culture. Future studies may explore other everyday themes such as folk songs, cooking, games, joke telling or even the up-cycling of daily waste. The chosen theme may possess similar characteristics as that of toys - attractive, daily-life, concrete, hands-on, creative, versatile, culture-rich and knowledge-rich, and yet also understandable and rarely studied in the local context. In this sense, the success of a creativity curriculum that enhances personal transfer lies mainly on the creativity of the educators. 23

The course in this study had not directly taught transfer knowledge, nor had it taught explicit transfer strategies. The significance of this study lies in the reality that personal transfers can appear spontaneously without external force and without learning transfer strategies or knowledge. Yet, theoretically, a complete transfer-enhancing curriculum should include two parts: (1) teaching for transfer, i.e., implementing measures that implicitly facilitate personal transfer (i.e., the measures adopted in this study), and (2) teaching of transfer, i.e., explicitly teaching the knowledge and strategies of transfer. Future studies are called for to seek understanding of both of these aspects in creative learning. 4.3.2. Understanding personal transfer of creative learning A preliminary model for personal transfer of creative learning (Figure 2) was depicted in this study. This model would provide a useful framework for researchers and educators to understand or analyse personal transfers in creative learning. Future studies are called for to verify and to enrich the model. From a phenomenological perspective, the students in this study did transfer what they learned in a personal way to a few new tasks or domains according to their own perceived goals and needs. In the past, researchers and educators predefined the contents and contexts of transfers of creative learning and assessed them in predesigned tests (Baer, 1996; Moga et al., 2000). However, Lobato (2012) suggested that novices rarely make the same connections as experts, and students always transfer their learning in ways unexpected by teachers or researchers. The present study revealed that the actor-orientated approach is suitable for studying personal transfers in creative learning. Sawyer (2015) defined domain-general creativity education as learning that helped students to master creativity-relevant skills that were generally applicable to all subject areas. Meanwhile, in the domain-specific approach, the uses of knowledge and skills acquired in content area are confined to that specific area. For years, the effectiveness of domain-general creativity training has been queried both empirically and theoretically by many studies (Baer, 1996, 2012, 2015; Sawyer, 2015; Scott, Leritz, & Mumford, 2004). Yet, if creativity education is completely domain specific (e.g., creativity training in the arts can benefit only the arts), then many of the current efforts in our formal curricula are seemingly useless in this age of general education (which is not targeted at producing artists or scientists). This study offers a possible way out of this controversial debate. In between these two dichromatic approaches/perspectives, there is a third possibility. Though the impacts of creative learning in this study reach very far, it does not imply that the toy course can help students to master certain creativity-relevant skills that would be generally applicable to all domain areas. In fact, the results of this study 24

align with Kaufman and Baer’s (2005) proposal. Only the transfer of the ‘initial requirements’ of creativity (e.g., motivation, thinking styles) and transfers within the same ‘general thematic area’ (i.e., solving everyday personal problems) were more evident in this study. In this way, creative learning in this study could be considered as neither completely domain specific nor completely domain general, but somewhere in between the two extremes. One may puzzle how could this kind of partial transfer take place? Since the course in this study was grounded in one specific domain, it might not be able to help students to attain a full abstraction or generic conception of creativity. However, through this course learning, students might have gained a conceptual understanding of creativity in small increments, which could be gradually extended to other situations (especially around simple everyday items/events). This study supports the ‘transfer in pieces’ perspective (Lobato, 2012; Noke-Malach & Mestre, 2013; Wagner, 2006, 2010), which proposes that learning transfer emerges from the gradual accumulation of smaller elements of knowledge, rooted in particular contexts and gradually refined to extend to a widening circle of situations. Unlike the high degree of abstraction across all domains in the traditional transfer perspective, this incremental refinement of learning is highly individual and is sensitive to their contextual variations. In light of this, transferrable creativity education needs not be general, broad and context-independent, but it can be context-specific and context-sensitive. If this perspective is correct, then many existing domain-specific creativity trainings may also contribute to this ‘transfer in pieces’, which in the long run may result in gradual and diverse changes in individual learners. Of course, more research is necessary to verify this general claim. In sum, creativity education can be neither domain-specific nor domain-general, but have small incremental and context-sensitive personal transfers which take the form of ‘transfer in pieces’. 4.3.5. Final remark Personal transfer has a significant and irreplaceable role in creativity education. Throughout this study, commonalities and diversities, expectedness and unexpectedness, and domain-general and domain-specific characteristics co-existed. This nature of personal transfer accurately reflects the messiness of human behaviour in real life or uncontrolled environment. The ‘transfer in pieces’ theory (discussed in last section) brings in new understanding of personal transfer, and suggests an alternative to the current dichromatic domain-related perspectives. This study ultimately helps to establish a new conception of creativity education as a type of education that values and facilitates personal transfer.

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Acknowledgment This study project was supported by the Teaching Development Grant of Hong Kong Institute of Education. The author is thankful for the funding support, and thankful to Miss Ko Hui Kwan, Miss Chao Chih-Nuo Grace and Miss Chan Mui-Yuen Mabel for their assistance in the study process. Thanks are also extended to all of the interviewees who participated in the many interviews.

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Figure 1. Framing the context of toys expansively Figure 2. A preliminary model for personal transfer of creative learning (subthemes emerged in the evaluation of a thematic course)

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Figure 1. toys houses, foods & clothes everyday problems/ items all creative domains

Figure 2. Factors of transfer

Contents of transfer (what being transferred)

Course design Characteristics of toy theme: Daily-life; hands-on; funny and attractive; creative and versatile; easy to design/re-design; knowledge rich & understandable culture-rich with long history dream-provoking; rarely studied, i.e. novel

Mediating factors: Impressiveness; Novelty/surprise; Perceived usefulness; Easy to remember of initial learning

Teaching & learning elements: Connection-making & expansive framing; Experiential, constructive & improvisational learning; Reflection/sharing on transfer Course constraints: Single-theme; general elective; no direct teaching of transfer

Student personal factors: initial learning motivation and habit, transfer motivation and habit, memory capacity

Creativity-related contents: Creative thinking strategies; Creative attitudes; Creative thinking habits; Conception of creativity Unexpected contents: Teaching methods/skills; Science knowledge/skills; Environmental concerns Specific insights emerged in class

Contexts of transfer (when and where transferred to)

Impacts of transfer

Time – from during the course to one year after the course Place – from daily-life places student teaching classrooms or workplaces Domains Daily-life: e.g. cooking, fashion design, analyzing commercial products, repairing, making gifts, organizing activities Learning: e.g. writing assignments, doing projects of other courses Teaching: e.g. designing instructional methods, motivating students, and making teaching tools General: across domains, becoming basic attributes or characteristics of the person

Functions - helping respondents to brainstorm new ideas, find alternatives, solve problems, design/ repair/ improve something or simply ‘see’, appreciate, analyse or criticise something, and others

Contextual factors: ‘Low creativity-concern’ in local context: The lack of creative learning in prior education brought novelty and surprise to the present learning, however, there existed of a lot of constraints in actualizing creativity in real-life (e.g. in teaching practices)

Overall impacts: - Change in life direction; - Temporary or moderate changes in creative attributes; - No obvious influence

Table 1. Demographic backgrounds of participants Demographic backgrounds

No. of respondents

Female

14

Male

6

Studying in B.Ed. education prog.

16

Studying in B.A. non-education prog.

4

Studying in 1st year

2

nd

Studying in 2 year

6

Studying in 3rd year

9

th

Studying in 4 year

3

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Table 2. Coding of subthemes Subthemes

Coding of subthemes

Content of transfer

SCAMPER – substitute/replace, combining, adapt/adjust, magnify, put to other use, eliminate

-

CT strategies

and reverse, CPS and forced associations and others

-

Conception of

simple, complicated, small change/thing, everyday, everybody, inborn, can be learned, big,

creativity

grant and genius and others

creative attitudes

happy, like it, love it, enjoy it, meaningful, not trivial, useful, I can, confident and feel

-

wonderful and others -

creative thinking

think wide, think crazy, imaginative, diverse perspectives, more observant, more sensitive,

styles/ habits

more critical and more appreciation and others

-

creative abilities

greater creativity, higher creative abilities and more creative

-

other unexpected

teaching skills/methods, inquiry skills, environmental concerns, pro-environmental behaviour,

contents

science knowledge, balancing, not too easy and not too hard, mean/medium and others.

Factors of transfer:

impressive, very special, amazing, interesting, surprise, strong in my memory, it touches me, it

-

Impressiveness

opens my eyes, it’s so amazing, stunned me, created turmoil inside, and did not expect it

-

Connection-making

I relate, I recall, I integrate, I connect this to, similar and comes to my mind , and others.

-

Experiential learning

I do it, play it, make it, experience it, practise it, touch it, operate it, toy with it, real object, concrete object and hands-on among others.

-

Constructive learning

I discover, I construct, I re-understand, new knowledge and new meaning, and others

-

Improvisational

explore other ideas, asking unrelated questions, develop our own ways, doing things not

learning

asked, I myself/we ourselves doing something and teacher followed us to, and others.

Note. Other coding used were the terms directly reported as the result sections.

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Table 3. T-test and effect size results of creativity-related conception, interest, confidence, values and behaviors (N=42) Item

Pre Mean SD 2.98 1.02

Post Mean SD 3.50 89

t-test 3.34**

Effect size .54

1.

Hardworking can enhance personal creativity.

2.

Putting effort on preparation and thinking cannot necessarily enhance personal creativity. I always have plentiful imagination.

3.36

.99

2.86

.97

-2.15*

-.51

3.31

.96

3.77

.73

3.05**

.54

I always have weird, eccentric ideas which are different from others I always can suggest many ideas or solutions to solve problems and challenges. Weird or impossible ideas are somehow useful.

3.08

1.08

3.61

.92

2.86**

.53

3.17

.88

3.58

.77

2.32*

.50

3.50

.75

3.88

.79

2.64*

.49

3.00

.82

3.38

.89

2.22*

.44

2.79

1.12

2.38

.85

-1.90 c

-.41

2.78

.80

3.11

.85

1.97 c

.40

10.

When I am developing ideas, I think very carefully and accurately, and concern about every small parts. Creativity is innate which cannot be enhanced by learning. I can always combine knowledge, technique, imagination, and logical analysis to create useful and novel products. If I wish, I believe I can be a successful creative person.

3.50

.92

3.83

.70

2.26*

.40

11.

I believe my creative thinking ability is better than others.

2.95

.93

3.29

.77

2.83**

.40

12.

Creative people and things can be found everywhere in daily life. Many aspects of my daily life are full of creativity.

4.10

.58

3.81

.94

-2.14*

-.37

3.11

.99

3.43

.80

1.92 c

.35

3.69

.84

3.95

.88

2.05*

.30

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

13. 14.

If I could choose, I would like to take up job that can express my creativity. ***p<.001; **p<.01; *p<.05; c p<.07

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