Operationalising collaborative creativity

Collaborative creativity can be characterised as involving complementarity and integration, mutual emotional scaffolding, and collaborative emergence, as follows:

3.4.1.1 Complementarity and integration

Through interchange, partners sum or multiply their individual possibilities of action and expand their reach through the other. They jointly generate new ideas and are able to construct multiple perspectives. In science and beyond, the juxtaposition and exploration of alternative positions is a productive resource for partners to build an elaborated and

multifaceted understanding of a topic (John-Steiner, 2000). Division of labour based on working styles, disciplinary knowledge, and personal expertise enriches the opportunities of the partnership. Conceptual complementarity – the dynamic tension between

conflicting visions – deepens, widens, and transforms the partners' habitual modes of thought. In successful creative collaborations, divergences are balanced through the focus on a shared vision or common purpose, and a "unity-in-diversity" is achieved (p.39). The integration of differences is crucial to the construction of creative syntheses. In Vygotskian terms, through collaboration partners create mutual zones of proximal

development, and can transcend the limitations of their isolated skills and knowledge. "In partnerships, starting from the youngest age, we broaden, refine, change, and rediscover our individual possibilities" (p.189). Complementarity and integration, however, are not only to do with thought processes, but also with identity and motivation (Moran & John- Steiner, 2004), and with emotions and temperament, in that the kind of mutuality and interdependence that characterises long-term creative partnerships between siblings, family members, friends, lovers, teammates, and close colleagues is made of care and conflict, trust and challenge, reciprocal commitment and criticism, cooperation and

competition. Emotional dynamics play an essential role in supporting or hindering creative collaborations.

3.4.1.2 Mutual emotional scaffolding and emotional dynamics

Expanding the notion of ZPD to the affective sphere, John-Steiner (2000) suggests that the 'emotional scaffolding' between partners creates a safe zone of mutual care-taking, trust, belief in each other, and constructive criticism which heightens their willingness to take risks in the face of the uncertainties or failures of creative undertakings. The creative self-in-relation is more resilient because it is stretched and strengthened by the

supportive presence of the other. Thus, by constructing "we-ness" (p.204) partners build a shared identity which is bigger than both individuals. They function as cognitive and emotional resources for each other. Not only do they create together new ideas and products, but also their very identity is transformed through the collaborative creative process (Moran & John-Steiner, 2004). Reciprocal support between partners, however, does not mean that collaboration is immune to tensions. There can be a marked

discrepancy between the promise and the reality of creative collaborations. It has been seen that an emotional atmosphere charged in a negative sense and unequal power relations can significantly impair the effectiveness of a collaborative effort (Eteläpelto & Lahti, 2008), resulting in disputational talk, dominance of one of the partners, and lack of a true dialogical process.

Nevertheless, tensions are vital in terms of discussion and negotiation of opposing views, as the goal is not to reach a superficial consensus, but to work out and evaluate creative solutions through critical argumentation. Taking as a precondition the fundamental value of tolerance of diversity, "collaboration is not absence of tension, but fruitful cultivation of tension" (Moran & John-Steiner, 2004, p.12). In education, recent research on

collaborative creativity stresses the central role of emotions in joint creative ideation (Vass, Littleton, Jones, & Miell, 2014). It points out as necessary to shift the emphasis from explicit argumentation and accountable reasoning in collaborative discourse (exploratory talk: Mercer, Wegerif, & Dawes, 1999; co-constructive talk: Rojas- Drummond, Mazón, Fernández, & Wegerif, 2006) towards affectively constituted interthinking and emotional connectivity, especially in creative contexts. Going beyond the analysis of children's dialogues in collaborative scientific problem solving and hypothesis-testing, studies on primary school children's collaborative creative writing (Vass, 2004, 2007; Vass, Littleton, Miell, & Jones, 2008) identified a variety of emotion- based discursive features which inspired content generation, such as musing, acting out, humour, and singing. Moreover, it became evident that such playful, affect-laden

behaviours – though perhaps not conforming to typical expectations regarding group work in the classroom – are present throughout the phases of the creative process. Thus, emotions do not just 'influence' creativity, but are an essential component part of it.

3.4.1.3 Collaborative emergence

Emergence is a property of complex dynamical systems by which novel, unpredictable characteristics and behaviours appear out of the interaction among the component units (Capra, 1996; Sawyer, 1999, 2003b). Emergent phenomena have been observed in biological, neuronal, societal, economical, or evolutionary systems (Johnson, 2001). Sawyer (2003a) traces the roots of the theoretical concept of emergence to late

nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century organicist and evolutionary thinking both in philosophy and biology. These ideas strongly influenced the beginnings of psychology as well as creativity theories. In his view, both creativity and development can be

considered as emergent processes. The anti-reductionist assumptions at the basis of complex thinking are that a system is more than the sum of its component parts, and that the structural arrangement and the interactive processes among a number of basic entities produce over time some higher-level properties which are irreducible to the lower level components. Sawyer distinguishes the emergent processes studied by biologists or complexity theorists from what he defines "collaborative emergence" (Sawyer, 1999, 2003a, 2003b, 2006b, 2007; Sawyer & DeZutter, 2009). He identifies models of

collaborative emergence in the improvisational performances of jazz groups and improvisational theatre groups, as well as in preschool children's pretend play.

Features of collaborative emergent processes are:

 limited number of complex agents: unlike computational models in complexity theory, where a great number of homogeneous agents interact based on simple rules, in collaborative emergent processes a few complex agents interact based on complex communication rules;

 unpredictability: individual members have agency and creative potential (i.e. they cannot be reduced to simple rules). No one agent, nor an external observer, can fully anticipate what is going to happen next in the group interaction;

 no centralised guidance of the process: there is no group leader and no guiding script, rather the leadership is distributed. It is in the collaborative interaction that the entire group determines the direction of the collective action;

 high degree in contingency and openness: at each point each decision closes off many alternative pathways, and at the same time it opens up and constrains further potential choices. Further, the meaning of each decision may not be clear at the moment in which it is made, as it often becomes clear only in the

subsequent interpretation and use made by the other group members;

 processual intersubjectivity: intersubjectivity is constructed through a continuous process of mutual coordination within the joint activity. Rules are not just given at the beginning of the process, but also emerge, implicitly or explicitly, through the process itself.

In this study 'collaborative emergence' represents an interpretative metaphor to

understand the creative processes occurring in children's collaborative creative learning. An open issue is that of the adaptability of this concept in the context of the study. Though borrowing the conceptual frame and the terminology may be helpful in terms of overall vision and analysis, it will be necessary to clearly identify what similarities can be established and what differences must be made in applying it to young children's group creative music making.