Social processes and creative collaboration in children

Almost there is all extensive body of literature that investigates the proc ess and outcomes of children's collaboration on scientific reasoning tasks, very little work has focussed on the nature and quality of children's coll aboration on creative tasks. One study reported here used a questionnaire t o music teachers to ask about their typical design of musical tasks in the classroom and the factors that influence cn these decisions. A further stud y reported here investigated the effects of friendship, gender and previous musical experience upon the interactional processes and musical outcome of children's collaborative composition. The design included comparison betwe en friendship pairs and non-friendship pairs and also between males and fem ales, with 11-12 year old children at an English middle school. All pairs c onsisted of one child with previous musical experience and orle child witho ut. All compositional sessions were video taped and the musical and verbal elements were coded with reference to the proportion of transactive and non -transactive elements present. Results demonstrated that the communication (both verbal and musical) between the friendship pairs was qualitatively di fferent from the communication in the non-friendship pairs. Specifically, t he friendship pairs showed more transactive communication and, when a teach er rated the final compositions, the friendship pairs scored significantly higher. Multiple regression analysis highlighted that the amount of transac tive communication was a significant predicator of the quality of the child ren's composition. The results are discussed with reference to the nature o f communication, the impact of friendship assessment of creative work.