3.5.5 Adaptation and Application of Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement in Hong Kong and Macao

The studies of Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM), Hong Kong version and Macao version were conducted in 2017 and 2018 for kindergarten children living in the regions. In response to various scholars’ (e.g. Puccio & Murdock, 1999; Rust, 1985) suggestion in adaptation, certain revisions on the original TCAM such as the standardization in distance between the start and the end in Activity 1, the paper cups and rubbish bin used in Activity 3 and 4, and the alignment of instructions and demonstrations were made. In addition, demographic data of the samples, i.e. whether the sample had siblings, his/her birth order, care takers’ information, whether he/she had special educational needs, studied in more than one kindergartens, had out-of-school education, and was from single family, were collected to establish the validity of both studies.

Results showed that the interscorer reliability was significantly more than .90 in both studies; the test-retest reliability was well above .70 for fluency and originality, and above .80 for imagination in both studies (Chiang, 2018a, 2018b). The Pearson product moment coefficients of correlation of the TCAM, Hong Kong version and the Activity 4 of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), Verbal, Macao version (Chiang, 2016) was more than .40 for both fluency and originality. The same test was administered between both Activity 4 and 5 of the TTCT, Verbal, Macao version and the TCAM, Macao version, and the results was above .70 for both fluency and originality. Moreover, both the Hong Kong and Macao versions did not affect by whether the sample had special educational needs, came from a single family, or studied in more than one kindergarten. For samples had enrolled into out-of-school provisions such as interest classes, their TCAM scores were significantly higher in both studies.

The effects of out-of-school provisions and the without effect of the double enrollment to regular kindergarten education indicated the ineffectiveness of the regular kindergarten education to enhance children’s creativity in both Hong Kong and Macao context. An exploratory research was done in three Hong Kong kindergartens to investigate whether a change in curriculum helped enhancing children’s creativity. The TCAM, Hong Kong version was administered before and after the teaching of a twelve 45-minute-session creative curriculum on forty K3 children across 2 months. Despite the mode of teaching, i.e. regular and pull-out curriculum, the results showed a growth on children’s overall creativity (r = .76, p < .01).

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