Bodily expression and creative thinking: an experience in a second primary class

Authors

  • Paola Gnata Università degli Studi di Padova / Dipartimento di Filosofia, Sociologia, Pedagogia e Psicologia Applicata
  • Emilia Restiglian Università degli Studi di Padova / Dipartimento di Filosofia, Sociologia, Pedagogia e Psicologia Applicata https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1837-6909
  • Andrea Dal Bianco Università degli Studi di Padova / Dipartimento Territorio e Sistemi Agro‐Forestali
  • Silvia Azzolin Università degli Studi di Padova / Dipartimento di Filosofia, Sociologia, Pedagogia e Psicologia Applicata

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7346/sird-022024-p270

Keywords:

bodily expression, creative thinking, primary school, creative movement, dance

Abstract

Numerous European documents (European Commission, 2018; EACEA P9 Eurydice, 2009; OECD, 2019) emphasise the importance of guiding children to engage in expressive, motor and artistic fields and reiterate the need to promote education for artistic-motor expression in the school context as an element through which to stimulate divergent thinking and creativity in a general sense.

An exploratory intervention research in a second primary school class aimed to propose experiences of creative movement, bodily expression, and improvisation through which to guide the child to the freedom of expression of the creative self in order to understand the possible relationship between movement (as dance) and creativity (Bournelli & Mountakis, 2008; Pürgstaller & Neuber, 2019). In particular, we will discuss the correlation between creative acting and creative thinking and foster the enhancement of some of the eight creativity factors to improve school well-being and trust in peers.

Apparent increases in divergent thinking (+18.39%) and creativity (+8.59%) emerged in boys and girls, especially in flexibility, elaboration, and titles, as well as an improvement in scholastic well-being and trust toward peers.

Author Biography

Emilia Restiglian, Università degli Studi di Padova / Dipartimento di Filosofia, Sociologia, Pedagogia e Psicologia Applicata

Associate Professor in Education (M-PED/04) since 2017.
My current research interests relate Quality of ECEC and school, School effectiveness and improvement, and Integrated system 0-6 years old.
I teach Quality organization and Evaluation (Italian), Models and Tools for School Assessment (Italian), and ECEC and school evaluation for quality education (English).
I’m trying to deepen the facets of the school system, keeping together the topic of assessment and evaluation with the methodologies, the preservice and in-service teachers’ training, the quality models, and the homeschooling phenomena.
In the last five years, I have investigated ECEC and the ongoing building of an integrated system for children from 0 to 6 years old. I visited nurseries and kindergartens abroad (Berlin, Aachen, Vilnius) and am participating in two work groups about “pedagogical territorial coordination” in Padova and Rovigo. I am part of the Nursery and Childhood National Group Committee (GNNI), and I have the opportunity to meet many nursery educators and kindergarten teachers all over the country and colleagues from other Universities.
I am a member of the Ph.D. Program in Pedagogical and Education Sciences (SPEF) and Responsible for International Mobility at the Primary Education Degree. I am a referee for some national and international Academic Journals. Already an Academic visitor in Germany, Spain, England, and Romania, she is a member of some scientific societies: Italian Pedagogical Society (SIPED), Italian Educational Research Society (SIRD), European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI).
Teacher Education representative for Unipd in the project (2020-21) Measuring and Comparing Achievements of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education in Europe – Phase 2 (CALOHE2), TUNING Academy – Univ. Groeningen, NL.
I collaborated on the research project “Evaluating the Impact of the Infant Toddler Centers and Preschools on Children: The Reggio Approach” (James J. Heckman, University of Chicago) for the city of Padova (September-November 2016, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6052802/) and was a member of the Padova Unit of “GenderTime (Transferring, Implementing, Monitoring, Equality) funded by FP7 Science in Society (2013-2016).
I was formerly focused on digital narrative documentation and design and assessment in nurseries (2010-2018).
2010-2017: Researcher in Education (M-PED/04).
2000-2010: music teacher in the lower secondary school with workshop experiences in kindergarten and primary schools. I focused for a short period on music history education and the relationship between cinema and music education. Now I sing in some choirs as alt.
Master’s Degree in Education Sciences (2001), and PhD in Pedagogical and Education Sciences (2007) at the University of Padova with the thesis: I laboratori nei corsi di laurea finalizzati alle professioni educative e formative. Qualification degree in special needs education, secondary school (University of Venice, 2008). Degree in Piano (1994) and Music Education (1996).

Downloads

Published

2024-12-20

How to Cite

Gnata, P., Restiglian, E., Dal Bianco, A., & Azzolin, S. (2024). Bodily expression and creative thinking: an experience in a second primary class. ITALIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, (33), 270–284. https://doi.org/10.7346/sird-022024-p270

Issue

No. 33

Section

Experience

Categories

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Paola Gnata, Emilia Restiglian, Andrea Dal Bianco, Silvia Azzolin

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The authors who publish in this magazine accept the following conditions:

  1. The authors retain the rights to their work and give the magazine the right to first publish the work, simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons License - Attribution which allows others to share the work indicating the intellectual authorship and the first publication in this magazine.
  2. Authors may adhere to other non-exclusive license agreements for the distribution of the version of the published work (eg deposit it in an institutional archive or publish it in a monograph), provided that the first publication took place in this magazine.
  3. Authors can disseminate their work online (eg in institutional repositories or on their website) before and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges and increase citations of the published work.