Theoretical bases for influence of creativity on writing task-based language teaching

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Piaget’s learning theories.

Piaget’s theories primarily treat learning as a process of psychological development in individuals, viewing this as a process of developing internal schema for understanding about the world. As Piaget (1953, p. 46) noted “the principal motive power of intellectual activity thus becoming the need to incorporate things into the subjects schemata” which is achieved primarily by doing (Boyle, 1969). In this way, action is the driver of schema development as the subject assimilates and accommodates to the environment. Assimilate refers to the most basic or simple reflex to environmental factors, whereas accommodation is the improvement or development of this reflex through experience.
Piaget (1953) noted that development of knowledge and understanding consists of initial assimilation, followed by various progressive levels of accommodation as higher level mental structures are formed. At higher levels, differing schema within the minds of individuals form new combinations, and experimentation of novel schema lead to more complex understanding of phenomena. Throughout development is only achieved through action and support from the surrounding environment. In this sense, experience and an individual’s interaction with experience are the fundamental drivers of learning.

Dewey’s learning theories.

Dewey’s beliefs on the value of learning through experience and the democratization of learning have had a strong influence on shaping modern education. Dewey (1959b) stated that the individual should be placed at the center and starting point for all educational pursuits. Rather than passively receiving a large body of knowledge, Dewey argued that the development of knowledge should instead begin with the individual as an active learner. Dewey’s philosophies on education derived much from Darwin’s theory of conflict. In this way, learning derives from the struggle that individuals face with existence, and as such, knowledge comes through the continual process of encountering and solving problems as individuals move through life. Because of this, education begins within the individual and is self-directed based on the impulse of that individual. Motivation for learning derives from self-directedness and learning comes about as the individual encounters contradictions or conflicts through carrying out problem-solving activities (Baker, 1965).
Furthermore, learning is an inherently social process that occurs when new ideas are experienced through social activities. Dewey (1959a) argued that knowledge arises as a subjective interpretation of the experience at hand rather than facts learnt separately from experience or real life. Based on this, knowledge evolves from action, and ideas evolve with the primary purpose of controlling such action. Behavioral notions of passive learning then are unnatural, Rather interest and need lies at the center of the individuals’ capacity to learn and educational activities need to be above all meaningful to the participants.

Experiential learning.

Combining elements from Piaget, Dewey and other theorists, Kolb’s experiential learning theory (Kolb, 1984; Kolb, Boyatzis, & Mainemelis, 2001) also asserts the importance of grounding learning in practice. In this way, Kolb moved away from cognitive and behavioral explanations for learning by integrating the areas of behavior, perception and cognition with experience. In this way, the theory rejects viewing learning as the consumption and memorization of discrete units of knowledge, and instead presents learning as a process that requires concrete experience, reflective observation, conceptualization and active experimentation by learners. Concrete experience allows individuals to openly and freely encounter new phenomena as they arise. Their reflective observational skills then allow them to contemplate the exact nature of such phenomena. Oncecomplete, conceptualization skills assist in forming theories surrounding the phenomena and these theories can be trialed and tested in subsequent experiences through active experimentation. As with Dewey and Piaget, Kolb’s account of experiential learning views learning as a process as individuals adapt and accommodate their understanding to the environment in which they find themselves.

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Negotiation and learning.

In language teaching, emphasis has been placed on the process of negotiating with students in order to achieve the democratization of classrooms through changes in the teacher-student power structure. As Breen and Littlejohn (2000) outlined, negotiation is the struggle for meaning through either written or spoken form that students undertake during the learning process, and this occurs at the personal, interactive or procedural level. From a personal perspective, negotiation occurs within an individual as they struggle to adapt new conceptualizations into their current knowledge structures. In this sense, personal negotiation is a struggle to interpret this new meaning through the prism of prior knowledge and experiences previously absorbed. Interactive negotiation results from social interaction with other students or teachers. It is an overt activity where individuals adapt and modify their language in order to be understood by others. Procedural negotiation also involves interaction between individuals. However, the intention is not limited to understanding but reaching some kind of agreement or conclusion. As Breen and Littlejohn noted, although separated for conceptual purposes, the three forms rarely occur in isolation and effective learning requires an interplay among all three.

Chapter 1: Introduction .
1.1. Personal motivation for study .
1.2. Theoretical background .
1.3. Outline of thesis .
2. Literature review
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Defining Creativity
2.3. Factors mediating creativity .
2.4. Creativity and language teaching and learning
2.5. Task-based language teaching
2.6. Theoretical bases for influence of creativity on writing task-based language teaching
2.7. Empirical evidence for the influence of creativity on language learning and task performance
2.8. Investigating creativity and task-based language performance
2.9. Creativity training
Chapter 3: Method.
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Pilot study .
3.3. Research questions
3.4. Operationalizations .
3.5. Participants and Instructional setting
3.6. Research Design
3.7. Instruments
3.8. Procedures
3.9. Analysis
3.10. Statistical significance and effect size interpretation
3.11. Summary
Chapter 4: The relationship between person-based creativity and complexity, accuracy and fluency
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Measures of creativity, written language proficiency language performance and task evaluation
4.4. Discussion
4.5. Conclusion
Chapter 5: The relationships among person-based creativity, product-based creativity and complexity, accuracy and fluency
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Measures of creativity, language performance and task evaluation .
5.3. RQ2 Results
5.4. RQ3 Results
5.5. Discussion
5.6. Conclusion
Chapter 6: The influence of group convergent discussion tasks on product-based creativity and written performance
Chapter 7: The influence of creativity training on product-based creativity and complexity, accuracy
and fluency in L2 writing.
Chapter 8: Conclusion
References