To make or not to make? Effect of implementation on idea selection

To make or not to
make?
The effect of expected
implementation on
idea selection
Kim van Broekhoven 1 , Barbara Belfi 1 & Lex Borghans 2
1
Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA),
Maastricht University, the Netherlands
2
Department of Economics, Maastricht University, The
Netherlands
16 September 2020
MIC Conference 2020
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Motivation
• Primary schools spend more attention to the development of creative and innovative
thinking skills.
• Routine tasks may be automated by robots and AI-supported agents, while nonroutine
tasks require higher-order skills, such as creativity and innovation.
(E.g. OECD, 2019; WEF, 2016; 2018)
• Constructivist pedagogies and strategies have spread across primary schools (e.g.
Montessori education, design thinking, project-problem or research-based learning).
(E.g. McLoughlin & Lee, 2008; Piagèt, 1964; Vygotsky, 1980)
• Children are asked to work on transforming their ideas into a tangible and physical
product (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2010; Cardarello, 2014; Davies et al., 2013).
• Little is known how the (expected) transformation of ideas into tangible products
affects idea selection among primary school children.
Aim
• To investigate the impact of expected implementation of ideas on the selection of
novel and feasible ideas.
• To investigate whether children’s personality moderates this relationship.
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Effect of expected implementation on idea selection
• Children may experiment with different types of ideas and materials, and take risks.
VS
• Children may be afraid “it will be too difficult” or “other children may laugh at me”.
• Yuan and Zhou (2008) investigated expected evaluation on idea selection.
- Students who expected evaluation modified their ideas more to make them appropriate to implement.
• Extrinsic constraints have a facilitating effect on the performance of algorithmic tasks
(Amabile & Pratt, 2016; McGraw, 1978).
• Novelty and usefulness trade-off (E.g. Manske & Davis, 1968; Mueller et al., 2012; Rietzschel et al., 2010).
Hypotheses
1) Children who expect implementation, compared to children who do not, are more
likely to select feasible ideas, but less likely to select original ideas.
2) Children who expect implementation, compared to children who do not, feasibility
will increase more than originality will decrease.
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The moderating role of personality
• Personality traits have been strongly linked to creativity (E.g. Batey & Furnham, 2006; Feist, 1998).
• Openness to experience, conscientiousness and agreeabless have been linked to idea
selection (Toh & Miller, 2016).
Hypotheses
• Children open to experience are more flexible in embracing novel ideas, even though
these novel ideas may be untested or fanciful (Goldberg, 1990; Choi, 2004; George & Zhou, 2001).
- The effect of expected implementation on idea selection (i.e. higher feasibility, lower originality) will
become smaller among children who are more open to experience (H3a).
• Children high on conscientiousness tend to focus on “doing things right” (Shiner & Caspi, 2003).
- The effect of expected implementation on idea selection (i.e. higher feasibility, lower originality) will
become smaller among children who are more conscientiousness (H3b).
• Children high on agreeableness tend to care about others’ feelings and avoid being in
conflict with other children. Novel ideas challenge status quo and can cause conflict
with other children (Choi, 2007; Lim & Choi, 2009).
- The effect of expected implementation on idea selection (i.e. higher feasibility, lower originality) will
become bigger among children who are more agreeable (H3c).
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Method: sample
• 403 grade-8 children from thirteen primary schools in the South of the
Netherlands between February and June 2019.
- 49.9% girls, 50.1% boys
- 11.6 years of age (SD = 0.48)
• From the 403 children, of 353 children personality traits were measured.
• The Ethics Review Committee from Maastricht University approved the
study.
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Method: experimental design
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Method: manipulation
Expected implementation (N=202)
“A toy factory needs your help! The toy
factory makes toy animals, such as
elephants, dogs, rabbits and so on. They
would like to receive innovative ideas to
change a toy elephant. They will first test
these ideas on a toy elephant made of paper.
You will craft these ideas.”
Non-expected implementation (N=201)
“A toy factory needs your help! The toy
factory makes toy animals, such as
elephants, dogs, rabbits and so on. They
would like to receive innovative ideas to
change a toy elephant. They will first test
these ideas on a toy elephant made of paper.
You will NOT craft these ideas, because you
will be crafting ideas for monkey toys.”
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Method: experimental design
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Method: measures
Idea selection task
Prior to study, we conducted a pilot study:
36 grade-8 pupils generated ideas to improve a stuffed toy elephant
Product improvement of TTCT, Torrance, 1974
‣ 438 ideas → 63 ideas (excluding non-play uses, similar ideas)
• These 63 ideas were rated by seven experts
(i.e., 4 primary school teachers and 3 creativity researchers):
- Feasibility
- Originality
• To reduce the list of 63 ideas, a set of twenty ideas was selected:
- The interrater reliability was high (ICC, two-way random, consistency analysis):
- Overall intraclass correlation coefficient was .90
‣ Feasibility ICC = .94
‣ Originality ICC = .86
• By averaging the scores of the seven experts, each idea received a feasibility and
originality score.
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Method: measures
Idea evaluation: Feasibility rating (Charles & Runco, 2001)
• Children were asked to select one of five faces that best
showed what they thought of the idea
1. Frown = very difficult to craft this idea;
2. Slight frown = difficult to craft this idea;
3. No expression = neither difficult nor easy to craft this idea;
4. Slight smile = easy to craft this idea;
5. Smile = very easy to craft this idea.
Idea evaluation: Originality rating (Charles & Runco, 2001)
• Popularity rating (1-10):
- Children were asked to guess how many children, out of 10, they thought would give a particular response
• Originality rating (1-5):
- Reversed values of (popularity rating / 2)
Personality traits: International Personality Item Pool (Goldberg et al., 2006)
• Openness to experience α = .75
• Conscientiousness α = .80
• Extraversion α = .71
• Agreeableness α = .74
• Neuroticism α = .82
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Results: children’ own-rating
t(401) = -10.31, p = .000,
partial η2 = .210
t(401) = 3.78, p = .000,
partial η2 = .034
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Results: experts’ rating
t(401) = -7.71, p = .000,
partial η2 = .129
t(401) = 2.90, p = .004,
partial η2 = .021
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Results: the moderating role of conscientiousness
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Discussion
Conclusion
• Children who expected idea implementation select more feasible ideas, at the cost of
originality
• Children become better able to juggle between the novelty and feasibility aspects of
ideas when they expect idea implementation.
• Children with high levels of conscientiousness were less affected by the expectation
of implementation than children demonstrating low levels of conscientiousness.
Implications for practice
1) Instructions towards children should not mention the implementation of the ideas
(at first instance).
2) Teachers should support children when they face highly novel, but seemingly
unrealistic ideas.
3) Tailor the instruction in assignments to the individual needs of children
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Questions?
Kim.vanbroekhoven@docentenacademie.ru.nl
@KimvanBroekhov
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