Meaningful clicks, significant bricks : perceptions of creative agency in physical and virtual play

Abstract

Conversations about children and interactive virtual technology (IVT) use vary significantly across disciplines. Discussions about computers, videogames, the Internet and, more recently, mobile applications, range from those confident digitally-rendered experiences enhance creativity and promote IT proficiency, to those more circumspectabout moving too far from the physical world, and the implications of such moves for how children play, develop, and learn. One red thread appearing throughout much of the literature on children and IVT use is a call for young people to be creators and not just consumers of computer culture, producers and not just participants in the virtual worlds they inhabit: it is really a call for technology interactions that support children’s creative agency. A second dominant thread is the call for empirical studies to address the benefits of moving activity from physical to virtual spaces. Both threads are woven together in this experimental study.The research presented here may be groundbreaking on several levels. First, it compares similar physical and virtual activity to determine the effects of mode on creativity and agency perceptions. No other known study has made such a comparison. Second, it brings children’s self-perceptions to the study of virtual play activity so that we might better understand the implications of transferring different types of activities from physical to virtual spaces on concepts of self, considered important to overall cognitive development and academic success. Third, it addresses surprising gender differences found for both creativity and agency perceptions. Finally, it introduces the Creative Agency Model (CAM), a cross-disciplinary framework and formula for how we might approach the study and enrich the design of interactive virtual technology going forward.

Conversations about children and interactive virtual technology (IVT) use vary significantly across disciplines. Discussions about computers, videogames, the Internet and, more recently, mobile applications, range from those confident digitally-rendered experiences enhance creativity and promote IT proficiency, to those more circumspectabout moving too far from the physical world, and the implications of such moves for how children play, develop, and learn. One red thread appearing throughout much of the literature on children and IVT use is a call for young people to be creators and not just consumers of computer culture, producers and not just participants in the virtual worlds they inhabit: it is really a call for technology interactions that support children’s creative agency. A second dominant thread is the call for empirical studies to address the benefits of moving activity from physical to virtual spaces. Both threads are woven together in this experimental study.The research presented here may be groundbreaking on several levels. First, it compares similar physical and virtual activity to determine the effects of mode on creativity and agency perceptions. No other known study has made such a comparison. Second, it brings children’s self-perceptions to the study of virtual play activity so that we might better understand the implications of transferring different types of activities from physical to virtual spaces on concepts of self, considered important to overall cognitive development and academic success. Third, it addresses surprising gender differences found for both creativity and agency perceptions. Finally, it introduces the Creative Agency Model (CAM), a cross-disciplinary framework and formula for how we might approach the study and enrich the design of interactive virtual technology going forward.