儿童创造力评估,关注过程还是结果?——基于球罐任务的实证研究

Should Children's Creativity Assessment Focus on Process or Product?——An Empirical Study Based on the Ball-Jar Task

随着国家创新驱动发展战略的持续推进,创造性人才的培养逐渐成为国内研究者关注的焦点。儿童阶段是个体创造力发展的关键期之一,探讨对儿童创造力更为敏感的测量任务和评估指标是研究者们必须面对的问题。本研究以60名5-6岁儿童为对象,在探讨球罐任务之于国内儿童群体适用性的同时,分析和比较关注过程和关注结果两类评估指标以及球罐任务和多用途任务两类测量任务对儿童创造力的敏感性。结果表明,探索行为中的功能性操作和操作链能够显著正向预测儿童在球罐任务上的成功次数;球罐任务中的功能性操作和发散性行为的独特性与多用途任务的流畅性和独特性之间均存在显著正相关;操作链与多用途任务的流畅性之间存在显著正相关。因此,关注过程的评估指标比关注结果的评估指标对儿童的创造力更为敏感。儿童创造力测量方面应更多采用类似球罐任务这样关注过程的测量任务。

With the continuous development of innovation-driven strategy in China, the cultivation of creative talents has gradually become the focus of Chinese researchers. Since childhood is one of the critical periods of individual creativity development, it is necessary for researchers to explore more sensitive assessment tasks and indicators of children's creativity. In this study, 60 children aged between 5-6 years were involved in the exploration of the applicability of the Ball-Jar task among Chinese children, while comparing the sensitivity of two types of indicators(i.e. the process-focused indicator and the product-focused indicator) and two kinds of tasks(i.e. the Alternative Use Task and the Ball-Jar task), in assessing children's creativity. The results showed that the functional operation and operation chains could significantly and positively predict the number of successes on the Ball-Jar task. There was both a significant positive correlation between the functional operation and the fluency and uniqueness of the Alternative Use Task, as well as the uniqueness of divergent behavior in the Ball-Jar task and the fluency and uniqueness of the Alternative Use Task. There was also a significant positive correlation between the operation chains and the fluency the Alternative Use Task. Thus, compared to the product-focused indicator, the process-focused indicator was more sensitive in assessing children's creativity. In measuring children's creativity, more attention should be paid to the process-focused task, such as the Ball-Jar task.