approaches to creativity in the music classroom - University of ...

eflects a person’s character) operated in pairs and Task 3 (creating a ring tone) wascompleted individually. From the students’ reflections it is clear that many foundworking in pairs was much more difficult than working in groups of four. Oneexplanation could be that the creative input available was reduced because of thesmaller size and this might also mean that the members had to work harder. Possiblythe greater volume of suggestions arising from the larger groups provided inspirationthat created a groundswell of ideas for the whole group to draw upon.Osborn (1993) describes this process as “brainstorming” and postulates a process ofdeveloping a large quantity of ideas, and then evaluating them, as the most expedientmethod to nurture creative ideas. In responding to one of the tasks, Ashley explained“it was much better getting ideas with four people because everyone thinks morecreatively. Groups of 4 are very good to work with”. Michael found that he had towork harder in a pair because, in a group of four, he was able to “relax a bit and [I]don’t really think that hard to make a melody”.Although this could be construed as the “free rider” effect (Slavin, 1995), where someof the members of the group are responsible for producing the required output whilethe rest do very little, my journal observations, as well as responses from the membersof all the groups, suggest that any problems that arose were more to do with the openendednature of some tasks and the difficulties encountered by international studentsin adapting to them, than an attempt to evade work. It could also be assumed that thelarger the group, the less effort members are likely to contribute proportionately whenthe “free rider” effect occurs. In this study, however, the perceived difficultiesreported by many of the students seemed to be related more to the performance oftheir work and the discomfort that they experienced during these performances,regardless of the size of their group.Vincent described his feelings: “in a group of 4 it is easier to work because we feltmore comfortable when perform”; but then went on to add “sometime I felt so badbecause I can’t play any music[al] instrument and I don’t want to be a burden of mygroup”. In even larger groups this feeling of discomfort was also apparent. Ren, whohad guitar skills, said; “I did play the guitar, but I played very bad, so in group Ialways asked other people what I should play, so sometime I feel very bad”. For31