About this poster

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Panel information
Panel 3. Schooling and Education

Abstract

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Creativity is a defining feature of the human experience that allows humans to imagine futures and alter their present realities (Vygotsky, 2004). Developing creative abilities benefits children’s cognition (Runco, 2017), improves learning (Beghetto et al., 2014), supports social-emotional well-being (Rufo, 2017), leads to personal fulfillment (Eckhoff & Urbach, 2008), and contributes to societal innovation (Cropley, 2015). Unfortunately, not every child gets to be creative—and thus, fully human—in the current education system (Leonardo, 2018).

Equity issues in research and practice pose barriers to optimal creative development in early childhood. The construct of creativity has been defined and normed based on Eurocentric epistemologies and ontologies, marginalizing communities of color (Beghetto et al., 2014). The creative development of Black and Brown children unfolds within a highly standardized rigid culture of compliance that is not conducive to self-expression and agency afforded to their White peers (Adair and Sanchez-Suzuki Colegrove, 2022). This marginalization also occurs at a contextual level: Despite cities being rich centers of creative cultural activities (e.g., museums, public art, concerts), urban schools that primarily serve Black and Brown children are regularly underfunded, especially in the areas of art education programming and creative development opportunities (Tamer, 2009).

Given these considerations, the questions of who is represented in creativity research and the context in which it is studied become critical for our ability to draw implications relevant to culturally sustaining creativity development in the United States, particularly in urban contexts. In response to the #SRCDSummit call for presentations on how principles of anti-racism, equity, and social justice might inform research with implications for practice, we analyze the assumptions embedded in methods of researching child creativity (Hill, Immordino-Yang, and Cooper, 2022). Specifically, we critically examined published articles from the past twenty years on the topic of early childhood creativity, focusing on whose creativity is researched and how the cultural backgrounds of participating children are either foregrounded or marginalized.

We researched relevant peer-reviewed articles on children in early childhood (Birth-Age 8) within Google Scholar, ERIC, PsycInfo and Academic Search Complete databases using the search terms “creativ*” and “development,” as well as terms focused on early childhood education (“early childhood” OR elementary OR preschool OR children). We only included articles written in English, the shared language of the researchers, to allow for ease of shared analysis but also limiting representation of the global scientific knowledge base. Articles in our dataset came from journals in early childhood education, developmental and educational psychology, creativity studies, and gifted education.

We used critical content analysis (Utt & Short, 2018) to conduct a close textual analysis of participant descriptions within and across articles, allowing us to think with focal theories (notably, the theory of culturally sustaining pedagogy) that highlight implicit assumptions about who is represented in the study (and how), who is missing (Crenshaw, 1989; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Paris & Alim, 2017), and how creativity is researched in respect to its socio-cultural nature (Glavenue, 2015; Strekalova-Hughes & Ismail, 2019). Preliminary findings revealed that published research: 1) overrepresented dominant identities (explicitly or implicitly), leading readers to assume “default” identities of abled white European-descent American monolingual children from middle class; 2) described children by numbers only or by arbitrary pieces of demographic data (e.g., gender only or age only); 3) used census-like categories of differences (e.g., Caucasian, Hispanic) that conflate race, ethnicity, and culture; 4) withheld critical information about participant backgrounds (e.g., race, culture, heritage languages) meaningful to creative development of diverse learners; and 5) implicitly preferred children from dominant identities (e.g., “non-White”, “normal”). We will conclude this presentation with recommendations for foregrounding culture and increasing diversity within early childhood creativity research, contributing to an understanding of culturally sustaining creative education.

Author information

Author	Role
Carolyn, Barber	Presenting author
Ekaterina Strekalova-Hughes, University of Missouri-Kansas City, United States	Non-presenting author
Lydia Minahan, University of Missouri-Kansas City, United States	Non-presenting author
Mariana Colado, University of Missouri-Kansas City, United States	Non-presenting author

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