The Creative Process and Emotions of Pupils in a Training Context with a Design Project.

For many years, researchers have been investigating how the creative process occurs and what factors influence it. The scope of these studies is essential in the school context to enable pupils to develop their creativity and thus address the needs of the 21st century society. Although very rich, these studies are generally not situated in a real teaching and learning context. The output of the present research will make it possible to model, to better understand, and to identify the creative process in pupils as they design and produce utility objects in an educational and training context with ecological validity (real context of training). In the context of teaching Creative and Manual Activities in education, in the French part of Switzerland, we are focusing on observations of the creative process in line with psychology, didactics, and pedagogy. During their class, 22 pupils were invited to create a water fountain and, in parallel, to complete a Creative process Report Diary about the stages they do and the multivariate factors (cognitive, conative, emotional, and environmental factors) they mobilize at each lesson. Results presented the main frequent stages and factors at each lesson and we proposed a model describing the transitions between the stages and how the multivariate factors are involved in each stage. They illustrate what pupils actually do in a creative learning context.

Brainstorming variants to favor creative design.

The design process in preventive and prospective ergonomic contexts requires creativity. However, user-centered methods are not usually aimed at supporting creative design. We therefore devised two variants of the seminal brainstorming technique to favor ideation during design activities. One variant encouraged participants to focus on the evocation of ideas, like the seminal technique, whereas the other emphasized the evocation of constraints related to the design problem. To analyze the effects of these variants on creative design, we conducted three studies: one with future designers (Study 1), one with future generalist teachers (Study 2), and one with future teachers specializing in creative activities (Study 3). Depending on the study, participants were provided with idea evocation instructions, constraint evocation instructions, or no specific instructions. Results allowed us to identify the best conditions for promoting creativity in design, depending on the individual's specialty or the complexity of the design task.