TDC – Miell (Lecture 4) 1
Children’s Creative Collaborations: The Importance of Friendship when
Working Together on a Musical Composition
paper mainly focuses on 2 issues:
1. nature of the task → few studies examined children’s style of work on open-ended
creative tasks where collaboration is required and children’s discussions and their style
of joint work are very influential in determining how the session proceeds and what the
outcomes are
2. nature of the children’s interaction → this is a detailed examination of the social
processes affecting their interaction, and in particular of the ways in which the children’s
pre-existing relationships with each other affect the nature of their interaction
key features which has been shown to affect the nature of children’s collaboration is the
degree of engagement with each other’s ideas and perspectives which the children are able
to establish and maintain
Piaget proposed that cognitive conflict was the key to development for children working
together → key process in collaborative learning is cognitive conflict
social constructionist theorists claim that learning is fundamentally a social phenomenon in
which dialogue plays a central role → key process in collaborative learning is the creation of
a joint definition of the task arising from an engagement with each other’s view of the
situation
→ joint factor of Piaget and social constructionist theorists is the “transactive
communication” which seen in the amounts of explanations, justifications, clarifications,
resolved conflicts and elaborations of ideas produced by children working together, with a
greater incidence of each reflecting more mutual engagement → High levels of transactive
communication associated with a greater likelihood of successful collaborations, with
greater subsequent gains in learning
authors greater likelihood of such transactive communication in the interaction between
friends because of friends’ experience with taking each other’s perspective and engaging in
joint planning and since they have a history of shared experiences and (younger children)
engage in more play and pretence
differences in previous findings about benefits when working with friends which might be
due to differences in the performed task
◦ authors explore the extent to which friendship might affect collaborative work in
unstructured tasks, where there is not a problem as such to be solved, but instead where
the children need to work together to create something new
present study: collaborative musical composition
This study aimed to extend work on children’s collaboration in three ways:
a) by exploring in more depth the impact on the collaborative process of the relationship between
the children, both on the process of interaction and on the outcome of their collaboration
b) by looking at how children collaborate on creative tasks. To examine many of the variables that
have been examined in previous studies (e.g. nature of the children’s communication), but to see
how the nature of the task affects the pattern of interaction between the children
c) by widening the focus of analysis beyond the verbal content of the interaction— examining the
nature of the musical communication between the children by developing a scheme for coding the
communication that occurred musically in collaborative composition. Using this scheme, to attempt
to detect patterns in the way the children use and develop their music and to explore whether the
notion of transactive communication is as important in music as it appears to be in talk
Method
, TDC – Miell (Lecture 4) 2
Sample
middle school in England using children (11–12 years old)
children received questionnaire to find out if children take music lesson, to nominate 3
friend and how good they felt they were at composing
◦ based on that children were divided into pairs with one fellow having instrumental
lessons and the other with no instrumental lessons
◦ half of the pairs were made up of friends the other ones not
before any experimental sessions took place all the children in Year 7 attended a workshop
in which the key elements to consider when writing music were discussed and demonstrated
Data Collection
experiment took place in music practice room, where children could use all instruments
available
research assistant told children they would have 15 minutes to work together and write
music about the rain forest which they than have to present
stressed that there was no ‘right answer’ to the task, but that they should create what they
felt together to be best
the final version of the piece got audio and video taped
the 15 min interaction was transcribed from the video (speech, non verbal) which got than
assigned to codes
◦ distinction between transactive (i.e. extends, elaborates or otherwise works on ideas that
have already been raised in the interaction) and non-transactive (i.e. propose, agree or
disagree with (minimally), give or repeat information) communication
◦ transactive utterances were labeled as self-oriented (i.e. utterances were elaborations of
other statements that related to the child’s own previous ideas) or other-oriented (i.e.
utterances were ones which related to the partner’s previous ideas)
◦ musical coding scheme based on the notions of transactive and non-transactive
communication → to consider the nature of the musical communication between the
children unit of analysis employed was each musical motif (i.e. any event that used
sound for musical purposes) produced by a child during the interaction
▪ Each motif was assigned to one of 7 mutually exclusive categories
▪ musically transactive statement defined as a spontaneously produced refinement,
extension or elaboration in music of previously presented musical or verbal ideas
▪ musical transactive responses, defined as direct musical responses, clarifications or
elaboration of verbal questions or inquiries
▪ Self-oriented transactive motifs were elaborations of motifs that related to the child’s
own previous music
▪ other-oriented transactive motif were motifs that related to the partner’s previous
music
▪ the non-transactive codes focused on motifs which did not extend any previous ideas
or music
Evaluating the Composition
experienced school teacher rated children’s performance blindly
Results
After the coding process was completed, each child’s total scores for their contributions in
each of the verbal and musical coding categories were calculated
Analysis of Talk
Children’s Creative Collaborations: The Importance of Friendship when
Working Together on a Musical Composition
paper mainly focuses on 2 issues:
1. nature of the task → few studies examined children’s style of work on open-ended
creative tasks where collaboration is required and children’s discussions and their style
of joint work are very influential in determining how the session proceeds and what the
outcomes are
2. nature of the children’s interaction → this is a detailed examination of the social
processes affecting their interaction, and in particular of the ways in which the children’s
pre-existing relationships with each other affect the nature of their interaction
key features which has been shown to affect the nature of children’s collaboration is the
degree of engagement with each other’s ideas and perspectives which the children are able
to establish and maintain
Piaget proposed that cognitive conflict was the key to development for children working
together → key process in collaborative learning is cognitive conflict
social constructionist theorists claim that learning is fundamentally a social phenomenon in
which dialogue plays a central role → key process in collaborative learning is the creation of
a joint definition of the task arising from an engagement with each other’s view of the
situation
→ joint factor of Piaget and social constructionist theorists is the “transactive
communication” which seen in the amounts of explanations, justifications, clarifications,
resolved conflicts and elaborations of ideas produced by children working together, with a
greater incidence of each reflecting more mutual engagement → High levels of transactive
communication associated with a greater likelihood of successful collaborations, with
greater subsequent gains in learning
authors greater likelihood of such transactive communication in the interaction between
friends because of friends’ experience with taking each other’s perspective and engaging in
joint planning and since they have a history of shared experiences and (younger children)
engage in more play and pretence
differences in previous findings about benefits when working with friends which might be
due to differences in the performed task
◦ authors explore the extent to which friendship might affect collaborative work in
unstructured tasks, where there is not a problem as such to be solved, but instead where
the children need to work together to create something new
present study: collaborative musical composition
This study aimed to extend work on children’s collaboration in three ways:
a) by exploring in more depth the impact on the collaborative process of the relationship between
the children, both on the process of interaction and on the outcome of their collaboration
b) by looking at how children collaborate on creative tasks. To examine many of the variables that
have been examined in previous studies (e.g. nature of the children’s communication), but to see
how the nature of the task affects the pattern of interaction between the children
c) by widening the focus of analysis beyond the verbal content of the interaction— examining the
nature of the musical communication between the children by developing a scheme for coding the
communication that occurred musically in collaborative composition. Using this scheme, to attempt
to detect patterns in the way the children use and develop their music and to explore whether the
notion of transactive communication is as important in music as it appears to be in talk
Method
, TDC – Miell (Lecture 4) 2
Sample
middle school in England using children (11–12 years old)
children received questionnaire to find out if children take music lesson, to nominate 3
friend and how good they felt they were at composing
◦ based on that children were divided into pairs with one fellow having instrumental
lessons and the other with no instrumental lessons
◦ half of the pairs were made up of friends the other ones not
before any experimental sessions took place all the children in Year 7 attended a workshop
in which the key elements to consider when writing music were discussed and demonstrated
Data Collection
experiment took place in music practice room, where children could use all instruments
available
research assistant told children they would have 15 minutes to work together and write
music about the rain forest which they than have to present
stressed that there was no ‘right answer’ to the task, but that they should create what they
felt together to be best
the final version of the piece got audio and video taped
the 15 min interaction was transcribed from the video (speech, non verbal) which got than
assigned to codes
◦ distinction between transactive (i.e. extends, elaborates or otherwise works on ideas that
have already been raised in the interaction) and non-transactive (i.e. propose, agree or
disagree with (minimally), give or repeat information) communication
◦ transactive utterances were labeled as self-oriented (i.e. utterances were elaborations of
other statements that related to the child’s own previous ideas) or other-oriented (i.e.
utterances were ones which related to the partner’s previous ideas)
◦ musical coding scheme based on the notions of transactive and non-transactive
communication → to consider the nature of the musical communication between the
children unit of analysis employed was each musical motif (i.e. any event that used
sound for musical purposes) produced by a child during the interaction
▪ Each motif was assigned to one of 7 mutually exclusive categories
▪ musically transactive statement defined as a spontaneously produced refinement,
extension or elaboration in music of previously presented musical or verbal ideas
▪ musical transactive responses, defined as direct musical responses, clarifications or
elaboration of verbal questions or inquiries
▪ Self-oriented transactive motifs were elaborations of motifs that related to the child’s
own previous music
▪ other-oriented transactive motif were motifs that related to the partner’s previous
music
▪ the non-transactive codes focused on motifs which did not extend any previous ideas
or music
Evaluating the Composition
experienced school teacher rated children’s performance blindly
Results
After the coding process was completed, each child’s total scores for their contributions in
each of the verbal and musical coding categories were calculated
Analysis of Talk
