Artistic Skills as a Part of Creativity

4.4.3 Artistic Skills as a Part of Creativity

Musical and artistic skills may be seen as part of human creativity. Arja Puu-rula (2001) has formulated a theory of basic experiences of childhood con-nected with arts and culture that are the sources of growing creativity in later years. It was interesting to learn how gifted children describe their experi-ences in arts and music. According to Swanwick (1992, 113) music is not only a mirror of its time or place, it is also a world of windows that opens up to many possibilities and individual alternatives. It was interesting to discover how children described the meaning of music for themselves and their learn-ing processes in music. Primary school children are able to develop skills and their ability to think analytically and to conceptualise and use language as a research tool increases. According to J. Glover & S. Yong (1999, 209) indi-vidual children through the age of 7–11 can draw upon the musically diverse and differentiation as their own cultural experience, which enables children to investigate music in whatever sense. This greater ability to reflect and under-stand social contexts which are beyond the child’s own experience and moti-vation to study music offers more possibilities for other contacts which will be focused on music and other children’s interests.

Music has an important role both in Estonian and Finnish culture. Every fourth year Estonian people get together with an international audience for Dancing and Singing Festivals. I think that it is such a success because of the excellent music education in Estonian kindergartens and schools which pro-vides everyone the equal right to have a good music education. The develop-ment of artistic talent relies on learning basic skills in kindergartens and

schools and further specialised training by other arts teachers. It is important that arts educators in pre-schools and schools are skilled at teaching children with a wide variety of abilities and interests. Teachers can observe potentially gifted children and provide advanced instruction or performance experiences for them. Teachers should seek opportunities for more individual talent de-velopment programs for these children in the curriculum. We used also Lot-tis’ C-test (1988) to test the children’s musical ability (Vikat, Ruokonen, Noorma, Toro & Vennik 2001). The reliability concerning Lotti’s C-test (Spearman-correlation between the points given by two evaluators) was sig-nificant (0,9985***, p <0.001) in an earlier study (Ruokonen 1997). Teachers and parents who observed children daily filled out questionnaires and rating forms and through them evaluated and described their experiences of chil-dren’s behaviour and abilities. The nature of the evaluation process of artistic talent is complex and multidimensional. It is meaningful collecting informa-tion for evaluainforma-tion from different sources and by various means. The subject of reflection in arts itself is valuable to teachers and children alike. In my study children reported their pleasurable activities in learning, playing and the arts (Ruokonen 2001).

According to Jorgensen (1997, 89–90) there is a danger that musical understanding lends itself to product-oriented, outcomes-specified ap-proaches, including music achievement tests and other forms of evaluations so that delight in the process is forgotten. We have to work to find ways to promote accountability without prejudicing pleasure; this goal necessitates ensuring a wide array of assessment procedures. We combined a free singing performance (which meant that they could sing any song they wanted) with this musicality test, which is based on imitation of rhythm patterns, tunes, intervals and melodies. During children’s free singing, we observed artistic underpinnings, such as musical perceptual discrimination, aesthetic apprecia-tion and creative interpretaapprecia-tion. Every child was interviewed and during the interview he or she also presented artistic work such as drawings and songs.

In our results there was no connection between intelligence and musical ability when comparing the results of the Raven test and Lotti’s musicality test. Girls were better in musicality in both countries and according to Lia Toro (2001) there also was a high correlation found between a child’s musi-cality and his/her television viewing habits. It was interesting that those chil-dren whose mothers spent more time with them got better results in perform-ing a song (p <0.05). A child’s performance was also better if the child was evaluated as more sociable (p <0.05) or willing to be a leader in a group (p

<0.01) according to his/her parents. Early interaction with music seemed to be very good for the sense of rhythm because those gifted children who started their musical hobby before the age of three had better results in the rhythm test (p <0.01) compared to those who started after the age of three.

According to the interview material, those children who had started their mu-sical activity at an early age usually in music baby groups or music play schools played an instrument or planned to start a more intensive musical hobby by school age.

Therefore, the conclusion of my research is that the positive factors in developing both musical skills and a child’s interest in music and musical activities are first the encouragement of parents and shared, musically inter-active moments with important people such as parents and first teachers and playful music education even as early as age even before three. Also accord-ing to Heikki Ruismäki & Tarja Tereska (2004) the most important influence in encouraging a child to play a musical instrument proved to be the learning environment for example, the playing of family members or access to a num-ber of instruments. Their research results proved the importance of early childhood musical experiences through a significant correlation with the in-dividual’s musical progress and his or her self-concept in music and personal-ity even as an adult.

According to Sosniak (1985) the development of a special talent is a long process with different kinds of qualitative and developmental changes.

Sosniak stated that at first learning takes place during play and pleasurable moments with the instrument without any specific understanding of musical goals. The specific talents could not be seen in this first phase; it was most important that a gifted child was motivated to continue his/her musical stud-ies.

According to Airi Hirvonen (2003) talented musicians in her study group had begun their playing early, before starting school, but for a long time it had been one hobby among others. At the beginning of soloist studies the main motivation for continuing to develop their talent was the pleasure of playing, supportive teachers and parents, not any professional mission. Thus, motivational aspects in the learning environment seem to be the most impor-tant factor in developing talents.

Two years after the interviews I asked both Finnish and Estonian chil-dren to write me a letter and tell me about their current important interests. I received 16 letters and one e-mail from Finland and 15 letters from Estonia.

Children wrote the letters themselves; many of them were decorated and

il-lustrated with drawings, but the most important information that came from the letters was that children were interested in various kinds of hobbies from academic skills to arts. The letters show that the children value their activities at school, arts and other hobbies during free-time as well as time spent to-gether with their families.

A letter from a 9-year-old Estonian girl:

“I practice swimming, dancing, singing and bicycling. I also like to go to the movies. I like my hobbies because I can make new friends. I practice flamenco dance.

I like to swim during summer time; winter time not so much because my eyes get red from chlorine,

Riding my bicycle is my favourite thing and I like to sing because I want to be-come a singer. I also play the piano, but I have to work a lot to learn to play it. I like also drawing and reading. And of course plays and games are my favour-ites.”

A letter from a 9-year-old Finnish boy:

“Hello Inkeri! I´m no a 9-year-old boy. I am in the third class and my class is a music class. I am in this school because I sing in a Cantores Minores choir. I al-ready sing in A-choir. There are only two 9-year-old boys in the A-choir. I started to sing when I was six. Besides the choir my hobby is playing the cello at conservatory. I have played cello for three years. The most important people in my life are my family and friends. I like school a little and my hobbies and play-ing. Singing and playing the cello are important for me because they are music.

Although music is my favourite hobby I still have time to collect small animals, I already have a rhinoceros beetle (male), a scorpion (female), butterflies, a div-ing beetle (f), a pine hawk moth (f), a common grasshopper (f), and a giant wood wasp. I also like to travel and I have been to Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Germany, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, Spain and Egypt. And the most exciting ex-perience was being in Egypt.”

(During the interview this same boy had said that he wanted to study archae-ology.)

I am also interested in history especially Egyptology. How are you Inkeri? How long are you going to study?

Now we cannot see the developing talents, but we can definitely see that these gifted children have many hobbies and they get pleasure from different kind of interests. For us as researchers it could be an interesting challenge to

continue studying these children perhaps for another 10 years. We have planned to continue our study later.

4.4.4 Summary of Creative and Musical Aspects in the Learning