Children as Earth Authors: A Story of Creativity, Metacognition and Motivation among Indian School Children

Abstract

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is inherently creative. But little is known about children's process of creativity during a PBL experience or how PBL supports the creative process. This qualitative study explores 14 Indian schoolchildren's creative journey during a book-authoring PBL program. Transcripts for the structured interviews, assignments, driving questions, and journals were analyzed for patterns inductively and codified for themes. Results show that PBL provided the framework for children's creative behavior. Children's creative process was a cycle between ideating, shaping a story, reviewing, and rework with elements of “jugaad.” Emotion played a key role in the creative process. Metacognition played a dual role in both helping to shape the storybooks and children's self-beliefs and added to their motivation. Children's self-concept as authors and self-efficacious beliefs in the powerful impact of their storybooks motivated them through an extremely challenging project. The significance of the research is threefold. First, it explores Indian children's creative process, which is extremely under-researched. Second, it explores the role of creative metacognition in the creative process. Most importantly, it highlights PBL as a way for creating learning conditions to foster creativity.