Creative Collaboration and Collaborative Creativity: A Systematic Literature Review

Empathy to Creativity: The Associations Between Empathy and Everyday Creativity

OBJECTIVE

Everyday creativity is fundamental to human existence and improved well-being. Beyond recent attention regarding how contextual, lifestyle, personality, and neurobiological differences might foster everyday creativity, empathy may also constitute an intriguing connection. However, this potential relationship has not yet been systematically assessed.

METHODS

Study 1 used multiple psychometric instruments to examine the levels of emotional and cognitive empathies and everyday creativity among different samples (n = 809). Study 2 used a cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) to examine longitudinal behavioral data (n = 653 at T1, n = 413 at T2) to determine how cognitive empathy might predict everyday creativity.

RESULTS

Study 1 found that cognitive but not affective empathy exhibited a significant positive correlation with everyday creativity and domain-specific creative behaviors. Study 2 also reported a positive correlation between cognitive empathy, overall creative achievement, and certain domain-specific creative achievements. Cognitive empathy was linked to greater involvement in everyday creativity.

CONCLUSION

To our knowledge, these studies are the first to demonstrate a robust relationship between cognitive empathy and everyday creativity across different samples, measures, and longitudinal data, providing evidence of a nuanced relationship between cognitive empathy and creative achievement. Future studies should explore how creativity or empathy may foster empathic/creative development.

The Influence of Multiple Factors on Musicology Doctoral Students' Academic Performance: An Empirical Study Based in China

As doctoral education evolves globally, the focus intensifies on doctoral candidates' academic performance and psychological well-being. Previous research has studied the effects of individual, societal, and environmental factors on students' academic achievements. However, there is still a lack of investigation into how these factors interact, especially in the domains of arts. This study surveyed 213 Chinese musicology doctoral students and adopted Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to evaluate how various factors affect academic and mental health outcomes. The analysis shows that factors including teacher support, student engagement, and well-being positively influence academic performance, while academic anxiety negatively impacts academic performance. Moreover, variables help diminish academic anxiety, encompassing self-efficacy, parental support, time management skills, and student engagement. Meanwhile, enhanced doctoral students' well-being is related to robust teacher support, facilitating conditions, and active student engagement. Notably, students who experience academic anxiety about their studies generally have lower well-being. These findings indicate that alleviating academic anxiety, refining academic resources, and reinforcing mental health supports can foster academic and psychological outcomes for doctoral students. Our study contributes vital empirical data to developing higher education policies, benefiting doctoral students' mental health and academic success.

Chinese Doctoral Students Involved in Interdisciplinary Learning Score Higher on Scientific Creativity: The Roles of Teamwork Skills and Collaborative Behaviors

Despite the growing recognition of the value of interdisciplinary learning in doctoral education, there is still a gap in the literature supporting the relationship between it and doctoral students' scientific creativity in China. Based on a questionnaire survey of 457 doctoral students from the humanities and social sciences on the Chinese Mainland, this study adopted structural equation modeling to examine the relationships among interdisciplinary learning, teamwork skills, collaborative behaviors, and scientific creativity. The results indicated that there was a weak positive correlation between interdisciplinary learning and the scientific creativity of doctoral students. Teamwork skills mediated the relationship between interdisciplinary learning and creativity, while the mediating effect of collaborative behaviors did not hold. Moreover, the relationship between interdisciplinary learning and creativity can also be mediated by the sequential mediation of teamwork skills and collaborative behaviors.

How does problem-solving pedagogy affect creativity? A meta-analysis of empirical studies

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of problem-solving pedagogy on individual students' creativity in different teaching contexts and conditions, and to examine the role of moderating variables that may affect the overall effect size. The study screened 19 relevant studies from the Web of Science for inclusion in the meta-analysis, and extracted 77 effect sizes from these studies that could be used in the meta-analysis. The study first explored the relationship between problem-solving pedagogy and the development of learner creativity, and further analysis focused on moderating variables to investigate the effects of instructional method, grouping method, grade level, problem-solving scaffolding, source of problems, the application of thinking tools, and the application of technology. The results showed that problem-solving pedagogy enhances students' creativity, while at the same time, among the sources of problems, student-discovered problems are most conducive to creativity stimulation, while teacher-determined problems and problems that lead to student discovery are less effective in terms of promoting creativity. Among the grouping methods, heterogeneous grouping can better utilize the creativity cultivation effect of the problem-solving pedagogy than random grouping and homogeneous grouping. Among the different levels of grades, learners in elementary school are better able to gain creativity under the influence of problem-solving pedagogy than learners in middle school, high school, college, and those in on-the-job learning. However, this study did not reveal any significant benefits for creativity enhancement under the four conditions of instructional method, problem-solving scaffolding, thinking tools-assisted, or technology. The results of this study clarify the importance of problem-solving pedagogy for creativity development, and also reveal the actual effects of the various ways of applying problem-solving pedagogy on creativity development as well as the problems that exist, which provides inspiration for how to better utilize problem-solving pedagogy in the future.

Evaluating the individual, situational, and technological drivers for creative ideas generation in virtual communities: A systematic literature review

The setting in which people generate ideas and work collaboratively to solve problems is gradually shifting from traditional face-to-face communities to virtual communities. Virtual communities are, therefore, becoming a new source of creative ideas. Nevertheless, online creativity is not without challenges. The main obstacle seems to be a lack of active engagement from participants within these virtual communities, resulting in a low quality and quantity of creative content when compared to traditional methods of creation. Research suggests that successfully generating creative ideas online involves sustained, active engagement among collaborators. A number of studies have investigated various factors related to the generation of creative ideas within virtual communities. However, a comprehensive understanding of contributing factors remains elusive. This study examines past research on the factors that drive creative ideas generation in online creative communities through a systematic literature review. The study seeks to analyze research findings over the past decade and provide an overview of the main driving factors, research areas, research trends, and implications for future research. Web of Science and Scopus were used to identify relevant articles, while Google Scholar was used to minimize the risk of missing any valuable data related to the aim of this study. The results provide an overview of the studies examining creative ideas generation within virtual communities. By approaching the subject matter from three primary perspectives (individual, situational, and technological), this paper identifies influencing factors associated with the successful generation of creative ideas online. The results of the paper also provide an overview of the research methods and guiding theories adopted by current researchers. The paper concludes with research trends and recommendations for future research.

Implementation of a Remote Instrumental Music Course Focused on Creativity, Interaction, and Bodily Movement. Preliminary Insights and Thematic Analysis

In a newly designed collaborative online music course, four musical novices unknown to each other learned to play the clarinet starting from zero. Over the course of 12 lessons, a special emphasis was placed on creativity, mutual interaction, and bodily movement. Although addressing these dimensions might be particularly challenging in distance learning contexts, a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with the learners revealed how the teaching approach proposed has generally facilitated learning. Qualitative findings highlight the importance of establishing meaningful relationships with the musical instrument as well as with other students to build musicality, and of the interplay between creativity and control in individual and collective music-making activities. We suggest that remote music tuition with a small group can be a valuable resource to start learning music and that a creative, collaborative, and movement-based approach can contribute to musical growth.