The relationship of types of exploration activities with originality of visual arts designs

Abstract

This study examinesspecificexploration activities in students’ visual arts portfolios from secondary edu-cation. Creating original visual arts products requires exploration according to Getzels and Csiksentmihalyi(The creative vision. A longitudinal study of problem finding in Art. New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc.,1976). Obtaining insight about the contribution ofspecificexploration activities to the originality of artsproducts is important for designing and supporting learning in arts education. The aim of this study is toexamine the contribution of activities within three types of exploration:association,combination, andab-stractionto originality of visual arts designs. Data consist of 196 portfolio events showing exploration activi-ties and art designs, from 11 Grade 11 visual arts students. Portfolio events were coded for three differenttypes of exploration:association,combination, andabstraction, on a dimension of ascendingabstractness.Wecoded activities within each of these types, on a scale ofremoteness, to determine the metaphorical distance.Visual originality of each portfolio event was assessed using the comparative judgment method. Multilevelregression analyses showed all three types of exploration significantly contributed to originality of visualdesigns. In total, 31% of the variance in originality at portfolio events level was explained by these types ofexploration. In general, the moreremoteexploration activities were, the moreoriginalthe visual design.These findings are discussed related to the literature on creative processes.