Thinking Skills and Creativity 37 (2020) 100685

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Thinking Skills and Creativity

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tsc

Developing collaborative creativity through microblogging: A

T
material-dialogic approach
V. Cooka,*, L. Majora, P. Warwicka, M. Vrikkib
a
Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 8PQ, UK
b
Department of Education, University of Cyprus, P.O. Box 20537, 1678 Nicosia, Cyprus

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: A dialogic theory of collaborative creativity focuses on the emergence of new perspectives from
Collaborative creativity the interplay of ‘voices’. With much research on the interaction between digital technology,
Material-dialogic approach dialogue and collaborative creativity focusing on human voices, this paper explores how a mi­
Digital technology croblogging tool may contribute to co-creative processes as a ‘voice’ in a dialogue. We diffrac­
Diffractive analysis
tively read excerpts from one lesson, involving learners aged 11–12 years studying English in the
UK, through material-dialogic theory and Barad’s theory of agential realism. Through our en­
tanglement with both theory and data, we explore the tensions and relationships between: i).
ideas of creativity in the context of digital technology-supported classroom dialogue; and ii).
frameworks of understanding informed by agential realism. Bringing these two sets of ideas to­
gether addresses a gap in our current understanding of the multi-layered nature of students’
creative engagement with digital technologies in classrooms. These findings are thus significant
when considering a material-dialogic approach in the context of developing collaborative crea­
tivity through technology. Additionally, the paper makes a methodological contribution, illus­
trating the use of a diffractive approach in the context of technology-mediated dialogue and
creativity.

1. Introduction

This paper responds to recent calls to theorise classroom dialogue and practical activity together in a relational sense
(Hetherington & Wegerif, 2018; Hetherington, Hardman, Noakes, & Wegerif, 2018). Moving beyond the idea of materials (including
practical materials, technologies and artefacts, and the classroom environment) as simply passive entities with which students in­
teract, Hetherington and colleagues propose a material-dialogic theory to elucidate how ‘materials’ play in to students’ learning.
Arguing that ‘voices’ in any dialogue do not pre-exist but come into being through intra-actions (a term discussed in more detail
below), their perspective allows us to consider how knowledge emerges through dialogic interactions between different ‘voices’ in the
dialogue, including cultural voices and the voices of materials. Underpinned by this material-discursive theoretical frame, we explore
how a microblogging tool, Talkwall, contributes to creative educational practice as a ‘voice’ within dialogue. Building from recent
studies analysing classroom dialogue that includes technology (for a review of these see Major, Warwick, Rasmussen, Ludvigsen, &
Cook, 2018), we employ a diffractive analysis that both complements our theoretical frame and is relevant to the creative pedagogy
that we seek to research. In exploring the creative entanglement of theory and practice, we provide a unique insight into the
development of collaborative creativity in one English lesson and highlight the practical and ethical implications of diffraction as a

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: vac36@cam.ac.uk (V. Cook), lcm54@cam.ac.uk (L. Major), ptw21@cam.ac.uk (P. Warwick), mvrikk01@ucy.ac.cy (M. Vrikki).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2020.100685
Received 17 January 2020; Received in revised form 23 April 2020; Accepted 22 July 2020
Available online 26 July 2020
1871-1871/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
V. Cook, et al. Thinking Skills and Creativity 37 (2020) 100685

method for educational research. In so doing, the paper makes a methodological contribution, as it illustrates the use of a diffractive
approach in the context of technology-mediated dialogue and creativity.

1.1. Dialogic collaborative creativity

It is broadly recognised that education in the 21st-Century must include education for the kind of skills needed in a rapidly
changing world (Wagner, 2010). These ‘21st century’ or ‘future’ skills are primarily complex cognitive processes and higher-order
thinking skills and include creativity, collaborative problem-solving and ICT literacy (Greiff, Niepel, & Wüstenberg, 2015). Motivated
by the increasing attention to the role of these complex competencies in education, the last decade has seen renewed calls for schools
to better develop learners’ capacity to be creative, whilst an interest in learning environments that may support creativity has
accelerated (Richardson & Mishra, 2018). This includes the use of digital environments and tools in schools (Wegerif & Mansour,
2010).
Despite multiple definitions being put forward, ‘creativity’ remains a broad, complex, multi-faceted and fuzzy concept (Aguilar &
Pifarre Turmo, 2019). Nonetheless, research indicates that creativity can and should be taught, and that there is a distinction between
the “creative process, creativity skills, creative learning and creative teaching” (Education Scotland, 2013, p.3). It is also widely held
that creativity can be developed, rather than being a set trait possessed by a select few, and that environments which nurture
creativity can promote higher academic attainment (Davies et al., 2013). Key terms include Big C/high/extraordinary creativity, to
represent transformational solutions, products or performances; and little c/democratic/everyday/lifewide C creativity, related more to
everyday insights or those with limited relevance or generalisability (Craft, 2014; Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009; Kozbelt, Beghetto, &
Runco, 2010; National Advisory Committee on Creative & Cultural Education, 1999). Many of these elements are reflected in Mishra
and Henriksen’s (2013) ‘NEW’ definition of creativity: N (‘novel’ – or new, original, unique, influential), E (‘effectiveness’, or value,
usefulness, quality, importance), W (‘wholeness’, which involves the aesthetic dimensions of work, as situated within that work’s
specific context – i.e. interesting, meaningful, well crafted).
While creativity itself has been a focus of research for over 50 years (Runco & Albert, 2010), it is only relatively recently that its
social aspects have been studied, and not treated as external influences (Elisondo, 2016; Hennessey & Amabile, 2010). This accep­
tance of the social nature of creativity has led to an interest in identifying the characteristics of dialogue conducive to the promotion
of creativity that is ‘collaborative’ or ‘distributed’ (Sawyer & DeZutter, 2009). Drawing on extant research, the characteristics of co-
creative dialogues have been summarised by Pifarré (2019b) as featuring open-ended and situated dialogues, open-mindedness,
holding different perspectives and multiple voices, collaborative creative strategies and togetherness. This conceptualisation is
compatible with the view that research should take into account the relationships between people, communities and cultural artefacts
which are generated in, and which promote, creative processes (Elisondo, 2016; Glăveanu, 2010). It also acknowledges the role of
social and cultural influences, conversations, experiences and interactions that feed into creativity thinking, suggesting how the
creative process is not a necessarily solitary journey (Elisondo, 2016). According to Sawyer (2007, p.7), this is because “…when we
collaborate, creativity unfolds across people; the sparks fly faster, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.
Such work considers creative thinking as learnt in the context of a ‘dialogic space’ characterised by ‘the emergence of new
perspectives from the interplay of voices’ (Wegerif et al., 2010, p.613). Underlain by Bakhtinian dialogic theory, in this con­
ceptualisation creativity is viewed as the expansion of understanding that emanates from seeing an issue from a new perspective.
Through the generation of new perspectives, creative thinking can widen a dialogic space (Wegerif et al., 2010), facilitating creative
co-construction as participants explore and build on their own, and others’, ideas (Alexander, 2017; Wegerif, 2005). In this paper we
explore how a dialogic approach to collaborative creativity, conceptualised as the emergence of new perspectives from the interplay
of voices (Wegerif et al., 2010), is developed through material-dialogic intra-action. Specifically, we explore how a microblogging
tool, Talkwall, may be conceptualised as contributing to co-creative processes as a ‘voice’ in a dialogue.

1.2. Digital technology and creative dialogue

It is acknowledged that contemporary education should seek to enable young people to engage creatively with digital technology,
given that this continues to revolutionise everyday life and work (Durham Commission on Creativity in Education, 2019). In part
motivated by the increasing availability of more sophisticated digital tools, the way in which teaching and learning of creativity can
be supported by technology has been a focus of recent research (Henriksen, Mishra, & Fisser, 2016). Evidence of the largely positive
influence of computer-supported collaborative learning – on factors such as knowledge gain and skill acquisition – continues to grow
(Chen, Wang, Kirschner, & Tsai, 2018). This includes demonstrating technology’s potential to support the development of creativity
in collaborative contexts; for example, via shared real-time interaction with, and manipulation of, digitally represented ideas enabled
through interactive whiteboards (Hilliges et al., 2007). Other related work includes exploring the role of creativity in: the co-
construction of oral and written texts (Rojas-Drummond, Albarrán, & Littleton, 2008); creative thinking in graphically mediated
synchronous dialogues (Wegerif et al., 2010); computer-assisted creativity (López-Ortega, 2013); and assessment in mathematics
contexts (Pásztor, Molnár, & Csapó, 2015).
Aligned with an appropriate pedagogy, dialogue and digital technology can interact to support, extend and transform learning in
various ways (Major, Warwick, Rasmussen, Ludvigsen, & Cook, 2018). The role of digital tools is therefore likely to remain a
prominent feature of research investigating collaboration and dialogue in the classroom (Song, Chen, Hao, Liu, & Lan, 2019), in­
cluding in relation to the development of learners’ creativity. Researchers suggest that by combining multimodal interaction and talk,
knowledge can be externalised as ‘digital artefacts’ (Hennessy, 2011). The role of these artefacts opens up opportunities for learners

2
V. Cook, et al. Thinking Skills and Creativity 37 (2020) 100685

to generate, modify and evaluate new ideas, through multimodal interaction aligned with talk. This can support rich new forms of
dialogue that highlight differences between perspectives, in addition to making ideas and reasoning processes more explicit
(Hennessy, 2011). In addition to representing visible, dynamic and constantly evolving resources constituting interim records of
activity (Warwick, Mercer, Kershner, & Kleine Staarman, 2010), digital artefacts can help to open and sustain ‘dialogic space’
(Wegerif et al., 2010). In so doing, they may act as supportive devices for learners’ emerging thinking, including promoting a dialogic
space for co-creation (Pifarré, 2019a, 2019b), in which co-construction of ‘new’ ideas can occur. However, to date, such work
exploring how students interact with technology to facilitate co-creative actions has focused solely on human voices.

2. A material-dialogic approach

Diffracting Barad’s (2007) theory of material-discursive Agential Realism with Bakhtinian dialogic theory (Bakhtin, 1986), He­
therington and colleagues have developed a material-dialogic theoretical framework for science education that seeks ‘to theorise
practical activity and classroom dialogue together in a relational sense’ (Hetherington et al., 2018, p.158). They do not seek to limit
the idea of voices in a dialogue to human bodies, thereby moving beyond the binary between reason and emotion established by
previous understanding of ‘dia-logos’. Rather, in foregrounding the material as part of the dialogue, they seek to develop the un­
tapped potential in Bakhtin’s work when he wrote: ‘I hear voices in everything, and dialogic relations among them’ (Bakhtin, 1986, p.
169).
Their material-dialogic framework is influenced by Barad’s post-humanist account of material-discursive practices, in which she
argues:
discursive practices are not human-based activities but rather specific material (re)configurings of the world through which local
determinations of boundaries, properties, and meanings are differentially enacted. And matter is not a fixed essence; rather,
matter is substance in its intra-active becoming—not a thing but a doing, a congealing of agency (Barad, 2003, p.828).
For Barad, ‘matter’ is thus ‘an active participant in the performance of phenomena as part of intra-acting, entangled material-
discursive practice’ (Hetherington et al., 2018, p.162). Barad coins the term ‘intra-action’ to capture the entanglement between
matter and meaning through which both continually co-emerge:
The notion of intra-action (in contrast to the usual “interaction,’’ which presumes the prior existence of independent entities or
relata) represents a profound conceptual shift. It is through specific agential intra-actions that the boundaries and properties of the
components of phenomena become determinate and that particular concepts (that is, particular material articulations of the
world) become meaningful (Barad, 2007, p.139).
Barad’s (2003) basic unit of reality is not ‘things’ but the ‘phenomena’, ‘dynamic topological reconfigurings/entanglements/
relationalities/(re)articulations’ (p.818). The production and performance of specific ‘entities’ within phenomena are produced
through intra-actions that enact ‘agential cuts’. Thus:
A specific intra-action (involving a specific material configuration of the “apparatus of observation”) enacts an agential cut (in
contrast to the Cartesian cut—an inherent distinction—between subject and object) effecting a separation between “subject” and
“object.” That is, the agential cut enacts a local resolution within the phenomenon of the inherent ontological indeterminacy. In
other words, relata do not preexist relations; rather, relata-within-phenomena emerge through specific intra-actions (Barad, 2003,
p.815 emphasis in original).
Hetherington et al. (2018) argue that phenomena, ‘voices’, ‘bodies’, matter and meaning all continually come into being through
relational intra-action in a ‘material-dialogic space’. This material-dialogic space is both material and discursive together, entangled
in a manner ‘in which there is potential meaning to be actualised – materialised, even – depending on the relations in that space’
(p.164). Their approach enables an appreciation of how material context contributes to learning and teaching. Discussing science
education, Hetherington and Wegerif (2018) explain how ‘the teacher, students and experiment all participate in learning by making
‘cuts’, by making some things possible and not others in the way they relate to and intra-act with each other. It is this that makes the
discursive aspect of Barad’s approach important (and in the science classroom, highlights the role of dialogue whilst maintaining a
focus on the material)’ (p.30, emphasis in original). They propose the concept of ‘diffractive switching’ (p.165) to draw in the voices
of the material, exploring how shifting boundaried intra-active assemblages relate to the dialogue as points of difference from which
new thinking can emerge. In this way ‘voices’ are not limited to human voices and may include the ‘voice’ of the practical materials,
whiteboard or physical modelling materials, thereby unsettling the non/human binary.
Barad’s work, which is underpinned by a diffractive methodology, has influenced other scholars working within feminist studies
who have sought to theoretically unsettle binary oppositions. As Barad (2014, 168) notes; ‘diffraction troubles the very notion of
dicho-tomy – cutting into two – as a singular act of absolute differentiation, fracturing this from that, now from then’. A central
concern of post-humanism and new feminist materialist philosophies is moving beyond Cartesian dualisms or destabilizing binary
oppositions (Braidotti, 2013). For example, Suchman (2007), in her work on the interface of humans and machines, states that
‘Agencies – and associated accountabilities – reside neither in us nor in our artifacts but in our intra-actions. The question, following
Barad, is how to configure assemblages in such a way that we can intra-act responsibly and generatively with and through them’
(p.285). This paper seeks to explore the pedagogical implications of destabilising these binary oppositions, but before doing so we
must address the gap between notions of creativity in the research traditions of digital technology-supported classroom dialogue, on
the one hand, and agential realism on the other.

3
V. Cook, et al. Thinking Skills and Creativity 37 (2020) 100685

2.1. Creativity and material-discursive practices

Notions of creativity in the research tradition of digital technology-supported classroom dialogue frequently coalesce around the
idea of creativity as a ‘thing’ to be developed and measured (Piffer, 2012), driven an ideology of ‘progress’ (Mishra & Henriksen,
2013). Notions of ‘progress’ are underpinned by a belief in the unilinear nature of time, but Barad questions the idea of unilinear
chronological time. Barad (2017) is driven by ‘the urgency to trouble time, to shake it to its core, and to produce collective ima­
ginaries that undo pervasive conceptions of temporality that take progress as inevitable and the past as something that has passed and
is no longer with us’ (p.57). As Barad notes,
…creativity is not about crafting the new through a radical break with the past. It’s a matter of dis/continuity, neither continuous
nor discontinuous in the usual sense. It seems to me that it’s important to have some kind of way of thinking about change that
doesn’t presume there’s either more of the same or a radical break. Dis/continuity is a cutting together-apart (one move) that
doesn’t deny creativity and innovation but understands its indebtedness and entanglements to the past and the future (Barad, cited
in Juelskjær & Schwennesen, 2012, p.16).
Here Barad refers to a process of cutting together-apart, ‘which means that things stay together at the same time as being
separated’ (Bozalek, Bayat, Motala, Mitchell, & Gachago, 2016, p.201). Thus the concept of dis/continuity means both continuous
and discontinuous at the same time. Moving beyond the strict determinism of Newtonian physics and progressivist notions of time,
Barad (2017) understands space and time as entangled with matter. According to this view, creativity is not located in space and time,
a ‘thing’ to be developed and measured. Rather, creativity is the ‘phenomena’ emerging through intra-actions. Such a view is more in
keeping with the idea of ‘creativity as encounter’ (Hill, 2018, p.72) prevalent among performance and creativity scholars, for example
Sawyer’s (2011) discussion of improvisation or Csikszentmihalyi’s (1996) discussion of flow. Furthermore, creativity may be un­
derstood as independent of the pedagogical or political implication, as Barad notes ‘matter’s experimental nature — its propensity to
test out every un/imaginable path, every im/possibility. Matter is promiscuous and inventive in its agential wanderings’ (Barad,
2015, p.387).
Underpinned by an agential realist ontology, this paper seeks to explore the pedagogical implications of thinking differently about
creativity in the classroom to consider how it emerges as a result of the collaboration between materials and individuals with/in
secondary (high) school classrooms.

3. Diffraction as methodology

In physics, diffraction refers to the bending or spreading of waves when they encounter an obstruction. Barad’s (2007, 2010,
2014, 2015, 2017) diffractive methodology, developed from Haraway (1997), attends to interferences and differences that are en­
acted through their material entanglements. Barad uses a diffractive methodology to build her philosophy of agential realism, dif­
fractively reading queer theory through Bohr’s quantum physics. Her work requires ‘moving away from the familiar habits and
seductions of representationalism (reflecting on the world from outside) to a way of understanding the world from within and as part
of it’ (Barad, 2007, p.88). Diffraction, a transdisciplinary approach that denotes a process of cutting together-apart, ‘does not take the
boundaries of any of the objects or subjects of these studies for granted but rather investigates the material-discursive boundary-
making practices that produce “objects’’ and “subjects’’ and other differences out of, and in terms of, a changing relationality’ (Barad,
2007 p.93).
We argue that a diffractive analysis has the potential to offer unique insights into the development of creativity through a
material-dialogic approach, for several reasons. Firstly, as Bozalek and Zembylas (2017, p.116) note, diffractive analyses within
educational research ‘can make visible new kinds of material-discursive realities that have important epistemological, ontological and
methodological consequences’. Furthermore, Chappell et al. (2019) suggest that a diffractive methodology, with its engagement with
difference, is better suited to researching dynamic, open-ended creative pedagogies, in contrast to methodologies that seek closure.
Indeed, difference has been described as ‘a tool of creativity’ (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017, p.115). A diffractive analysis can therefore
provide a way of considering the entanglement of ‘bodies, texts, relationships, data, language, and theory’ (Mazzei, 2014, p.745),
which, we argue, has the potential to generate further insights and questions that can critically inform the development of a material-
dialogic approach to pedagogy.
Within education, diffractive analyses have either tended to engage with data by reading it diffractively through multiple the­
oretical lenses (Chorney, 2014; Mazzei, 2014), or focusing on the intra-action between data and researcher (Lenz Taguchi, 2012; Lenz
Taguchi & Palmer, 2013). In this article we explore our entanglement with the data as we think with theory, ‘plugging in’ (Mazzei,
2014, p.743) theories into data to produce a diffractive reading that, much like the dispersal of waves, ‘spreads thought in un­
predictable patterns producing different knowledge’ (p.742). As Barad explains
unlike methods of reading one text or set of ideas against another where one set serves as a fixed frame of reference, diffraction
involves reading insights through one another in ways that help illuminate differences as they emerge: how different differences
get made, what gets excluded, and how these exclusions matter (Barad, 2007, p.30).
Adopting diffraction as a methodology disrupts the theory/practice binary, with the idea being ‘to read theory with practice
diffractively guided by, for example, key questions that move the experiment forward (Murris & Bozalek, 2019, p.1505). Diffractive
questions may be imagined ‘as analogous to “slits” which cause interference and result in distinct diffraction patterns’ (Chappell et al.,
2019, p.302). Such an analysis ‘takes a rhizomatic (rather than hierarchical and linear shape) form that leads in different directions

4
V. Cook, et al. Thinking Skills and Creativity 37 (2020) 100685

and keeps analysis and knowledge production on the move’ (Mazzei, 2014, p.743).

3.1. Data creation

The data for this paper is drawn from a larger design-based international research project (April 2016 - August 2020) involving
collaboration between researchers, teachers and technology developers in the UK and Norway. Working in collaboration with seven
schools across both countries, the overarching context for this work is the development of ‘21st century’ educational practices and
competencies. A total of 450 students took part in the initial phase of the project, exploring how a microblogging tool ‘Talkwall1 ’
(Rasmussen & Hagen, 2015) may support or modify classroom dialogue. Specifically designed for use within the context of a dialogic
pedagogy, Talkwallis a free web-based microblogging tool that enables students to easily share, and build upon, each other’s ideas.
Developed by the University of Oslo in collaboration with teachers from Norway and the UK, Talkwall can be run on a smart phone,
tablet or computer. Following collaborative group discussion of a question set by a teacher, students can post contributions (a
maximum of 140 characters) to a shared ‘feed’. As all contributions are visible on this shared feed, students may easily draw other
groups’ ideas into their discussions. Contributions may be selected from the feed and interactively arranged on a group’s ‘wall’ in
different ways (Fig. 1). Ideas are also provisional, and thus contributions may be edited and their selection and/or positioning on a
wall may be changed.
The paper focuses on one Year 7 English lesson in a UK secondary school in the East of England. After rigorous analysis of the
whole data set, this lesson stood out, for us, as the data ‘hot spot’ which glowed (Maclure, 2013, p.661). The lesson, part of a sequence
of lessons in which students had been developing their creative writing through the topic of ‘animals’, focused on developing stu­
dents’ use of specific language devices when writing imaginative fables. The class, of 25 boys and girls, was divided into groups by
their teacher, each group was instructed to use one iPad to access Talkwall . The teacher had planned and integrated Talkwall activity
into the usual curriculum, having previously attended four University-based workshops on developing dialogic practice in the
classroom. The 100-minute lesson was filmed using two cameras, one fixed on the interactive whiteboard and a second tracking
camera moving between a mixed-ability ‘research group’ of students (Lyla, Malcolm and Tom) and the teacher. The research group
was composed of three students and was selected by the teacher. The video data were accompanied by field notes collected by a
member of the research team and Talkwall meta-data containing logs of interaction. The data for this paper is drawn from video data
and audio transcripts.
Approaches to consent, privacy and data storage were underpinned by University ethical approval and safeguarding procedures,
BERA guidelines (BERA, 2018) and funder requirements.2

3.2. Becoming entangled with the data

With a diffractive approach ‘the object and agencies of observation are entangled and agentic – data is not something passive or
dead, but a performative agent, transforming us and influencing our own becoming as researchers’ (Bozalek & McMillan, 2016, p.51).
Researchers therefore become entangled in diffraction patterns. As part of a diffraction pattern – cutting together-apart – we as
researchers do not exist ‘outside of the diffraction pattern, observing it, telling its story’ (Barad, 2014, p.181). On the contrary, in a
relational ontology, we are ‘neither inside nor outside’, and without fixed bodily boundaries, our ‘story in its ongoing (re)patterning is
(re)(con)figuring’ us. We are, as a consequence, ‘of the diffraction pattern’ (Barad, 2014, p.181). Previous material feminist studies
have explored the consequences of researchers’ entanglements in diffraction patterns (Banerjee & Blaise, 2013; Lenz Taguchi, 2012,
2013; Lenz Taguchi & Palmer, 2013; Maclure, 2013; Mazzei, 2013; Palmer, 2011). Such analysis is performative, as exemplified by
Frigerio, Benozzo, Holmes, and Runswick-Cole (2018, p.391) who perform the idea of cutting together-apart to explore ‘What is
produced, what is created, what is separated but, yet connected, within an assemblage where matter and meaning are intertwined’ in
their exploration of the co-construction of ‘the autistic child’.
The agential cut for this article is the boundaries of our chosen topic - creativity, dialogue and digital technology from a material-
dialogic perspective; these are considered together with our intra-actions with Talkwall and the pedagogical ideas surroundings its
development, the video recordings and audio transcripts from the case lesson, core theoretical texts from the literature on material-
dialogic theory and agential realism, the authors’ ongoing work on classroom dialogue and reviewers’ comments on our first draft.
Reading these texts ‘through, with and in relation to each other’ is an attempt to produce richer, more diffuse readings (Mazzei, 2014,
p.744) that generate further questions. Such diffractive questions make methodological cuts, interrupting, bending and diverging ‘the
object of study in co- productive ways creating the object/s, data and methods together’ (Chappell et al., 2019, p.300). To ensure
rigour, the agentic intra-actions between researcher, theory and data have been continually documented in the sections that follow.
The diffractive analysis, which was implemented by the lead author, was informed by preceding work on the data by various sub-
groups in the project. This work introduced different ideas, approaches and ways of seeing the data that inevitably influenced the
analytical perspective presented here. We acknowledge that another researcher may have intra-acted with data and theory differ­
ently, whilst other theorists or concepts could have been mobilized in the analysis. Thinking with different theoretical concepts would
have opened up different questions and knowledge. For this reason, we welcome interaction and comment from academics and
researchers with respect to the approach taken and the resultant findings, since a diffractive analysis does not seek closure. As Lenz

1
https://talkwall.uio.no/#/.
2
All names used in this paper are therefore pseudonyms and faces have been pixilated.

5
V. Cook, et al. Thinking Skills and Creativity 37 (2020) 100685

Fig. 1. T Talkwall ‘in action’: Learners selecting from the ‘feed’ (top-left). Teacher demonstrating one group’s ‘wall’ to the class (top-right). Students
editing another group’s ‘contributions’ (bottom-left). Students arranging contributions selected from the feed (bottom-right).

Taguchi (2012) summarises, ‘This is not about uncovering the essence or truth of the data. This is an uncovering of a reality that
already exists among the multiple realities being enacted in an event, but which has not been previously “disclosed”’ (p.274–275). As
Davies (2014b, p.734) notes, a diffractive approach ‘does not try to fix the analytic process so that it can be turned into a methodic set
of steps to be followed. Rather, it opens the possibility of seeing how something different comes to matter, not only in the world that
we observe but also in our research practice’. This paper therefore documents one possible entangled analysis of students’ interactions
with Talkwall ; such a creative, emergent and unpredictable analysis (Davies, 2014b) is an attempt to think differently, keeping
knowledge production moving (Mazzei, 2014).

4. Mapping interferences

Studying diffractions, or the process of how differences are made, instead of reflection, opens for interferences in ‘thinking-as-
usual’ (Davies, 2014a, p.2). Moxnes and Oxgood (2018), in their diffractive analysis of early childhood teacher education, venture
‘behind and beneath’ (p.305) the appearance of bullet points on a PowerPoint. Their work reminds us that the production of dif­
ference in diffractive processes is not necessarily when a contribution is submitted to the feed, but when we venture behind and
beneath the submission. In what follows, we venture behind and beneath the submission of the group’s first Talkwall contribution.
The English lesson focused on MASTS (metaphor, alliteration, simile, triple, senses). At the start of the lesson the students listened
to a fable, read by their teacher, and they discussed the fable’s message and the MASTS contained within the story. This led into a
Talkwall activity in which the students, working in groups of three, had to improve a sentence written by the teacher (they could
choose either ‘the goat jumped down and drank the water’ or ‘the fox jumped on his back and made off’) by adding MASTS. Through
this task, students were encouraged to collaboratively develop their creative writing skills by first discussing their ideas as a group
before adding their contribution to Talkwall . Turning first to the layout of the group as they work with Talkwall (Fig. 2), the table
and chairs enact a space of collaboration, with the group separated from others in the room. An event of sitting is enacted, where
talking becomes more formalized in relation to established ground rules for group talk. The tables are arranged so that the group sit
on either side of two tables, with Malcolm sitting opposite his peers. The tables actively separate and distance Malcolm from the rest
of his group; this is significant due to the positioning of the iPad on which Talkwall is loaded. The teacher instructed each group to
use only one iPad, which is held by Lyla. What effect does this layout have on the material-dialogic space of collaboration? Or, using
the language of a material-dialogic approach, what is the effect on the shifting ‘intra-active assemblages’ (Hetherington et al., 2018,
p.166) that dissolve and reform with/in this material-dialogic space?
In the extract below, we join the group towards the end of this activity as Lyla is posting their group’s contribution to the class

6
V. Cook, et al. Thinking Skills and Creativity 37 (2020) 100685

Fig. 2. The layout of the group working with Talkwall .

feed (Table 1).

Until this point only Lyla has interacted with Talkwall. We get some sense of the possible discord that exists in the group when
Lyla says that the group’s work ‘was all me’ (line 92), which is then disputed by Malcolm (lines 93–98) before Tom interjects to ask if
their contribution could be improved (line 99). Malcolm suggests improving their description of the well, however Lyla does not
engage with this idea (lines 101–106). The potential for the group’s idea to be changed, aided by the affordance of provisionality that
enables contributions to be continually edited, is not actioned by Lyla who is in control of the iPad. What affective consequences
might this materiality have regarding identification with and belonging to the group? And how does this intra-act with and affect
collaborative creativity?
Our diffractive analysis also encourages further interferences in our thinking. According to Barad’s (2007) ethico-onto-episte­
mological perspective, ethics, ontology and epistemology are inseparable. Social justice is an important aspect of such ethical con­
siderations in new feminist material accounts by theorists such as Barad, Braidotti and Haraway (see Bozalek, 2018 for a review).
Social justice, as Barad (2007), p. x) describes it, has at its heart the ongoing practice of 'being open and alive to each intra-action' and
asking 'How then shall we understand our role in helping constitute who and what come to matter?’. Concerns with social justice are
particularly pertinent in relation to the use of technology, where issues of in/equality may come to the fore. Furthermore, given that
Barad’s relational ontology ‘runs counter to a metaphysics of presence’ (Barad, 2017, p.73), a diffractive analysis also encourages us
to consider absences, leading us to consider children who are digitally excluded. Their absence is also part of the phenomena.

Table 1
Extract from group dialogue around the first Talkwall activity. Interactions with Talkwall are noted in bold.
90 Lyla Bam. There you go, ready. Want to hear the sentence? 'The ghostly goat jumped down and fell to the bottom as a rock. The sensation of rotten
sewage water came to him as he drank the ill, infected water, but gasping, desperate and dehydrated he drank it. #goat. ((Lyla reading the
group’s contribution))
91 Malcolm Did we put? Yeah, we did everything there. We put in triple, alliteration, a metaphor, simile.
92 Lyla That's it, it's all me.
93 Malcolm Hey, I came up with 'ghostly goat.'
94 Lyla I was saying about a ghost though.
95 Malcolm You said 'ghost white'.
96 Lyla No, I was going to do 'the goat, who was as white as a ghost'.
97 Malcolm Yeah.
98 Lyla But I (inaudible), and then you just like adapted it.
99 Tom Well, is there anything we can improve?
100 Lyla No.
101 Malcolm Well we have put in some senses, a triple, alliteration, simile and metaphor. And to be fair, is there a description of the well? What does the
well look like?
102 Lyla We've described how it smelled.
103 Malcolm Is it a big well? Is it a small well? I can't imagine it, I can just imagine a goat drinking water from a hole. Lyla put in a (inaudible)
104 Lyla No.
105 Malcolm 'The well which he drank from was made out of mossy cobble stone and smelled as worse as …'
106 Lyla I keep yawning.

7
V. Cook, et al. Thinking Skills and Creativity 37 (2020) 100685

Table 2
Extract from group dialogue around the second Talkwall activity. Interactions with Talkwall are noted in bold.
24 Lyla Can we do the SAR one for the goat? It's really long, I don't really understand it though. ((Lyla silently reading SAR’s contributions))
25 Tom No look, if you put it all together. I'm just doing this so I can put it all together. 'The goat that was as plump as a cloud, carelessly came crashing
down into the prison like well. All of a sudden his dark, gloomy, depressing fate dawned on him. His palms began to sweat as he started to
breathe more heavily when his knees became raw from him desperately trying to scramble out.' Do goats have palms? ((Tom positioning and
reading SAR’s contributions aloud to the group))
26 Malcolm Yeah that's what I was saying.
27 Tom Goats don't have palms, they have hooves. It is - maybe not that one though.
28 Malcolm And also …
29 Lyla No, I like it, I like it. Can we use that one? I didn't realise it had a second part. ((Lyla positioning and silently reading SAR’s contributions))
30 Tom It's got three parts.
31 Malcolm I don't quite understand the plump part because this goat is dehydrated, so when you think of a goat who's like dehydrated and needs water …
um
32 Lyla Yeah.
33 Tom Let's see if there's someone else. ((Tom browsing the feed))
34 Malcolm He'd probably be like scrawny, kind of that sort of thing.

Children may be digitally excluded for a variety of reasons, with digital inequalities in younger generations arising as a result of
limited access to technology, poor support networks or individual circumstances (Eynon & Geniets, 2016). What about the children in
the UK who are homeless and not in school, or children in other countries that do not have access to digital tools or the internet? To
what extent are digital in/equalities pertinent in the interactions with Talkwall discussed above? What affective consequences might
such in/equalities have? In interrupting our thinking-as-usual, this diffractive analysis has drawn our attention to an assumption in
the above analysis: that all members of the group necessarily possess the same digital skills. In considering the extent to which the
materiality noted above may be influenced by digital in/equalities, we become aware of how our own social-material historical
situatedness is influencing the negotiation and performance of the cuts that we make (Lenz Taguchi & Palmer, 2013).

4.1. The performance of creativity

Having submitted their contributions, the teacher brings the class back together and briefly asks students to identify the different
MASTS devices used in some of the contributions. In the extract that follows, the teacher has asked the groups to choose their
‘favourite’ contribution from the feed and pin this to their group wall. The groups are given three minutes to discuss the contributions
before making their decision. We re-join the group towards the end of their discussion as they discuss one of the contributions from a
group called ‘SAR’ (Table 2). In this extract Tom is now also using his iPad to access Talkwall.
According to material-dialogic theory proposed by Hetherington et al. (2018), ‘voices’ in the dialogue are created intra-actively.
We can therefore consider the ‘voice’ of student-student-Talkwall or teacher-Talkwall assemblages to enable us to explore how
creativity is performed as a result of the relations between individuals and materials. If we consider the ‘teacher-Talkwall’ assem­
blage, for example, we can begin to explore how students are in an educational relationship with both the teacher and Talkwall at the
same time through the task that the teacher has devised for the students. The teacher is not currently directly interacting with them,
but in setting up the Talkwall, the teacher and Talkwall together interact with the students with/in material-dialogic space,
prompting them to explore and build upon other group’s contributions. In this way, the teacher’s ‘vicarious presence’ is evident
(Warwick, Mercer, Kershner, & Kleine Staarman, 2010).
We can also consider how the shifting boundaried intra-acting assemblages perform diff ;ractive switch manoeuvers from which
new phenomena can emerge. Here we might consider the ‘phenomena’ to the be creativity of the students in the classroom, much like
Hetherington et al. (2018) consider ‘meaning-making’. This approach moves beyond the idea of Talkwall as a context for dialogue,
bringing it directly into the dialogue. From the extract we see that Lyla-Talkwall selects a contribution, which Tom-Talkwall reads
aloud, but Malcolm-Talkwall disagrees with the idea that the dehydrated goat would be plump. A diffractive switch then occurs,
drawing the voice of the material into the dialogic space, as differences are intra-acted through one another to material-discursively
perform new phenomena (creativity) with the students engaged in the dialogue. Creativity thus emerges from the intra-action of
teacher and students with Talkwall, with each other, and with the materials of the classrooms (computer, iPads and verbal utter­
ances). To exemplify how this entanglement leads to the phenomena of creativity, consider Malcolm’s interaction with the con­
tribution about the plump goat. In Barad’s terms, the contribution itself contributes to the enacting agency; there is an agential cut as
the contribution makes some understandings of another group’s ideas possible whilst restricting others. The ‘apparatus’, or the means
by which the agential cut is enacted, should not however be seen as the Talkwall alone. It is the students who recognise and name
MASTS devices, and judge ‘scrawny’ to be more appropriate than ‘plump’ for example. Such judgements and labels lie within the
social sphere. The apparatus therefore includes Malcolm’s understanding of MASTS devices, but also some sense that imagery is
important in English. This apparatus contributes to the enacting agency; there is an agential cut as the apparatus makes some
understandings possible whilst restricting others. According to this perspective, creativity is the phenomena born of the entangled
agency of Talkwall and the apparatus through which it is viewed, including the students’ social and linguistic understanding.

8
V. Cook, et al. Thinking Skills and Creativity 37 (2020) 100685

4.2. Moving beyond binaries

Barad’s notion of intra-action conceives subjectivities as emergent and entangled, moving beyond familiar Cartesian dualisms.
Following Barad, separations between teacher/learner are intra-actively enacted, the effects of particular engagements with the
world. This raises the question, how do the shifting boundaried intra-acting assemblages destabilise the binary oppositions of tea­
cher/learner? In the example above we saw how Lyla, Tom and Malcolm were able to interact with another group’s idea, dissolving
the boundary between their groups established by the material layout of the classroom. By encouraging students to interact with
other group’s ideas, the teacher activated students as resources for their own learning, encouraging them to think together (Mercer,
Wegerif, & Dawes, 1999). This destabilises the binary oppositions of teacher/learner to view students as teachers as well as learners.
Furthermore, the material-dialogic approach that explicitly draws in the ‘voice’ of Talkwall involved in the intra-actions unsettles the
non/human binary. As we discuss in the final section, the destabilising of these binaries has important pedagogical implications.

5. Discussion

Responding to recent calls to theorise practical activity and classroom dialogue together in a relational sense, (Hetherington &
Wegerif, 2018; Hetherington et al., 2018), our analysis indicates how a material-dialogic approach brings Talkwall directly into the
dialogue and opens up possibilities for thinking differently about collaborative creativity in the classroom. Temporarily boundaried
intra-acting assemblages (of students-iPads-Talkwall-teacher-computer) become points of departure to understanding how the
phenomena of creativity is materially-discursively performed. Adopting a material-dialogic perspective, creativity is the phenomena
born of the entangled agency of Talkwall and the apparatus through which it is viewed, including the students’ social and linguistic
understanding. The notion of diffractive switching also highlights how the intra-acting materials have a ‘voice’ in this creative
process. According to this perspective, Talkwall is not a tool to facilitate collaborative creativity, but rather it is brought directly into
the creative dialogue. It therefore has the potential to become not just an active participant (Hetherington & Wegerif, 2018;
Hetherington et al., 2018), but an active collaborator with/in material-dialogic space. By enabling students to interact with emerging
ideas, Talkwall could be seen as part of an agentic intra-action: it pushes its way forward into the creative dialogue. Through students’
entanglement with different ideas, a creative process of co-construction may emerge as students query and build on each other’s
ideas, enabling the generation of new perspectives as difference is creatively resolved. Interacting with voices from the wider
community of learners develops a dynamic process of creative thinking that extends beyond the physical confines of the group,
widening the material-dialogic space of collaboration.
Furthermore, our analysis illustrates the value of a diffractive approach in the context of technology-mediated dialogue and
creativity. Such an approach challenges human-centered and normative thinking, viewing creativity as independent of the peda­
gogical and political implication. A diffractive methodology has encouraged us to trace the phenomena, moving beyond binaries and
venturing behind and beneath a Talkwall contribution submitted to the feed. In so doing, we have considered how absences are also
part of the phenomena. This creative analysis raises practical and ethical questions for teachers to consider when planning and
implementing a material-dialogic pedagogy. For example, in seeking to draw in the ‘voice’ of the materials involved in the intra-
action and move beyond the teacher/learner binary, students need to be given sufficient time to engage with all the contributions on
the feed, enabling them to discuss, categorise or edit contributions. Conceptualising creativity in this way also necessitates an
awareness of, and openess to, the un/predictability of the encounter, underlining a need for adaptability and flexibility. Our own
entanglement as researchers in diffraction patterns has also challenged our assumptions about in/equalities in students’ digital skills.
To facilitate responsible intra-actions with and through assemblages (Suchman, 2007), digital in/equalities must never be assumed.

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway [FINNUT/Project No: 254761].

CRediT authorship contribution statement

V. Cook: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft. L. Major: Funding acquisition, Writing - original draft. P.
Warwick: Funding acquisition, Project administration, Writing - review & editing. M. Vrikki: Writing - review & editing.

Declarations of Competing Interest

None.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Peter Miles, Audio Visual technician at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, who filmed the
research lessons in schools.

9
V. Cook, et al. Thinking Skills and Creativity 37 (2020) 100685

References

Aguilar, D. A., & Pifarre Turmo, M. (2019). Promoting social creativity in science education with digital technology to overcome inequalities: A scoping review.
Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1474.
Alexander, R. (2017). Developing dialogue: Process, trial, outcomes. 17th Biennal EARLI Conference Retrieved from: https://www.robinalexander.org.uk/wp-content/
uploads/2017/08/EARLI-2017-paper-170825.pdf. [Accessed on 20th December 2019].
Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (V. W. McGee, Trans.)Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Banerjee, B., & Blaise, M. (2013). There’s something in the air: Becoming-with research practices. Cultural Studies = Critical Methodologies online publishing May 19.
Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3),
801–831.
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Barad, K. (2010). Quantum entanglements and hauntological relations of inheritance: Dis/continuities, spacetime enfoldings, and justice-to-come. Derrida Today, 3(2),
240–268.
Barad, K. (2014). Diff ;racting diff ;raction: Cutting together-apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168–187.
Barad, K. (2015). TransMaterialities: Trans*/matter/realities and queer political imaginings. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 21(2–3), 387–422.
Barad, K. (2017). Troubling time/s and ecologies of nothingness: Re-turning, re-membering, and facing the incalculable. Posthuman Temporalities, 92, 56–86.
BERA (2018). Ethical guidelines for educational research. Available athttps://www.bera.ac.uk/researchers-resources/publications/ethical-guidelines-for-
educationalresearch-2018.
Bozalek, V. (2018). Socially just pedagogies. In R. Braidotti, & M. Hlavajova (Eds.). Posthuman glossary (pp. 396–397). Bloomsbury, London.
Bozalek, V., & McMillan, W. (2016). Diffracting learning/teaching entanglements A South African vice-chancellor’s perspective. In B. Leibowitz, V. Bozalek, & P. Kahn
(Eds.). Theorising learning to teach in higher education (pp. 43–58). Research into Higher Education Web.
Bozalek, V., Bayat, A., Motala, S., Mitchell, V., & Gachago, D. (2016). Diffracting socially just pedagogies through stained glass. South African Journal of Higher
Education, 30(3), 201–218.
Bozalek, V., & Zembylas, M. (2017). Diffraction or reflection? Sketching the contours of two methodologies in educational research. International Journal of Qualitative
Studies in Education, 30(2), 111–127.
Braidotti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Chappell, K., Hetherington, L., Ruck Keene, H., Wren, H., Alexopoulos, A., Ben-Horin, O., Nikolopoulos, K., Robberstad, J., Sotiriou, S., & Bogner, F. X. (2019).
Dialogue and materiality/embodiment in science|arts creative pedagogy: Their role and manifestation. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 31, 296–322.
Chen, J., Wang, M., Kirschner, P. A., & Tsai, C. C. (2018). The role of collaboration, computer use, learning environments, and supporting strategies in CSCL: A meta-
analysis. Review of Educational Research, 88(6), 799–843.
Chorney, S. (2014). From agency to narrative: Tools in mathematical learning (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from http://summit.sfu.ca/ (14517).
Craft, A. (2014). Possibility thinking: From what is to what might be. In S. Robson, & S. Flannery Quinn (Eds.). The routledge International handbook of young children’s
thinking and understanding (pp. 416–432). Abingdon: Routledge.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention (1st ed.). New York: HarperCollins.
Davies, B. (2014a). Reading anger in early childhood intra-actions: A diffractive analysis. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 734–741.
Davies, B. (2014b). Listening to children: Being and becoming. London & New York: Routledge.
Davies, D., Jindal-Snape, D., Collier, C., Digby, R., Hay, P., & Howe, A. (2013). Creative learning environments in education—A systematic literature review. Thinking
skills and creativity, 8, 80–91.
Durham Commission on Creativity in Education (2019). Durham commission on creativity in education. Arts Council England & Durham Universityhttps://www.
artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Durham_Commission_on_Creativity_04112019_0.pdf.
Education Scotland (2013). Creativity across learning3–18. https://education.gov.scot/improvement/Documents/cre39-impact-report.pdf.
Elisondo, R. (2016). Creativity is always a social process. Creativity. Theories–Research-Applications, 3(2), 194–210.
Eynon, R., & Geniets, A. (2016). The digital skills paradox: How do digitally excluded youth develop skills to use the internet? Learning, Media and Technology, 41(3),
463–479.
Frigerio, A., Benozzo, A., Holmes, R., & Runswick-Cole, K. (2018). The doing and undoing of the “Autistic child”: Cutting together and apart interview-based empirical
materials. Qualitative Inquiry, 24(6), 390–402.
Glăveanu, V. P. (2010). Paradigms in the study of creativity: Introducing the perspective of cultural psychology. New Ideas in psychology, 28(1), 79–93.
Greiff, S., Niepel, C., & Wüstenberg, S. (2015). 21st century skills: International advancements and recent developments. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 18, 1–3.
Haraway, D. J. (1997). Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and technoscience. London: Routledge.
Hennessey, B. A., & Amabile, T. (2010). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 569–598.
Hennessy, S. (2011). The role of digital artefacts on the interactive whiteboard in supporting classroom dialogue: Dialogue and IWB artefacts. Journal of Computer
Assisted Learning, 27(6), 463–489.
Henriksen, D., Mishra, P., & Fisser, P. (2016). Infusing creativity and technology in 21st century education: A systemic view for change. Educational Technology &
Society, 19(3), 27–37.
Hetherington, L., & Wegerif, R. (2018). Developing a material-dialogic approach to pedagogy to guide science teacher education. Journal of Education for Teaching,
44(1), 27–43.
Hetherington, L., Hardman, M., Noakes, J., & Wegerif, R. (2018). Making the case for a material-dialogic approach to science education. Studies in Science Education,
54(2), 141–176.
Hill, A. (2018). Creative agency/creative ecologies. In K. Snepvangers, P. Thomson, & A. Harris (Eds.). Creativity policy, partnerships and practice in education (pp. 65–
87). Creativity, Education and the Arts Web.
Hilliges, O., Terrenghi, L., Boring, S., Kim, D., Richter, H., & Butz, A. (2007). Designing for collaborative creative problem solving. June Proceedings of the 6th ACM
SIGCHI conference on creativity & cognition, 137–146.
Juelskjær, M., & Schwennesen, N. (2012). Intra-active entanglements: An interview with Karen Barad. Kvinder, Køn og Forskning, 1(2), 10–24.
Kaufman, J. C., & Beghetto, R. A. (2009). Beyond big and little: The four c model of creativity. Review of General Psychology, 13(1), 1–12.
Kozbelt, A., Beghetto, R. A., & Runco, M. A. (2010). Theories of creativity. In J. C. Kaufman, & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.). The Cambridge handbook of creativity (pp. 20–47).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lenz Taguchi, H. (2012). A diffractive and Deleuzian approach to analysing interview data. Feminist Theory, 13(3), 265–281.
Lenz Taguchi, H. (2013). ‘Becoming molecular girl’: Transforming subjectivities in collaborative doctoral research studies as micro-politics in the academy.
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(9), 1101–1116.
Lenz Taguchi, H., & Palmer, A. (2013). A more ‘livable’ school? A diffractive analysis of the performative enactments of girls’ ill-/well-being with(in) school en­
vironments. Gender and Education, 25(6) 671-68.
López-Ortega, O. (2013). Computer-assisted creativity: Emulation of cognitive processes on a multi-agent system. Expert Systems with Applications, 40(9), 3459–3470.
Maclure, M. (2013). Classification or wonder? Coding as an analytic practice in qualitative research. In R. Coleman, & J. Ringrose (Eds.). Deleuze and research
methodologies (pp. 164–184). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Mazzei, L. A. (2013). A voice without organs: Interviewing in posthumanist research, International. Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26, 732–740.
Major, L., Warwick, P., Rasmussen, I., Ludvigsen, S., & Cook, V. (2018). Classroom dialogue and digital technologies: A scoping review. Education and Information
Technologies, 23(5), 1995–2028.
Mazzei, L. (2014). Beyond an easy sense: A diffractive analysis. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 742–746.
Mercer, N., Wegerif, R., & Dawes, L. (1999). Children’s talk and the development of reasoning in the classroom. British Educational Research Journal, 1, 95–111.

10
V. Cook, et al. Thinking Skills and Creativity 37 (2020) 100685

Mishra, P., & Henriksen, D. (2013). A new approach to defining and measuring creativity: Rethinking technology& creativity in the 21st Century. TechTrends,
57(5), 10.
Moxnes, A. R., & Oxgood, J. (2018). Sticky stories from the classroom: From reflection to diffraction in Early Childhood Teacher Education. Contemporary Issues in Early
Childhood, 19(3), 297–309.
Murris, K., & Bozalek, V. (2019). Diffracting diffractive readings of texts as methodology: Some propositions. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 51(14), 1504–1517.
National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (1999). All our futures: Creativity, culture and education. https://www.creativitycultureeducation.org/
publication/all-our-futures-creativity-culture-and-education/.
Palmer, A. (2011). “How many sums can I do”? Performative strategies and diffractive thinking as methodological tools for rethinking mathematical subjectivity.
Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 1(1), 3–18.
Pásztor, A., Molnár, G., & Csapó, B. (2015). Technology-based assessment of creativity in educational context: The case of divergent thinking and its relation to
mathematical achievement. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 18, 32–42.
Pifarré, M. (2019a). Using interactive technologies to promote a dialogic space for creating collaboratively: A study in secondary education. Thinking Skills and
Creativity, 32, 1–16.
Pifarré, M. (2019b). Designing a dialogic technology-enhanced pedagogy to support collaborative creativity. In N. Mercer, R. Wegerif, & L. Major (Eds.). The Routledge
international handbook of research on dialogic education (pp. 425–438). London: Routledge.
Piffer, D. (2012). Can creativity be measured? An attempt to clarify the notion of creativity and general directions for future research. Thinking Skills and Creativity,
7(3), 258–264.
Rasmussen, I., & Hagen, A. (2015). Facilitating students’ indivdual and collective knowledge construction through microblogs. International Journal of Educational
Research, 72, 149–161.
Richardson, C., & Mishra, P. (2018). Learning environments that support student creativity: Developing the SCALE. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 27, 45–54.
Rojas-Drummond, S. M., Albarrán, C. D., & Littleton, K. S. (2008). Collaboration, creativity and the co-construction of oral and written texts. Thinking Skills and
Creativity, 3(3), 177–191.
Runco, M. A., & Albert, R. S. (2010). Creativity research: A historical view. In J. C. Kaufman, J. Caaa, & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.). The Cambridge handbook of creativity (pp.
3–19). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sawyer, R. K. (2007). Group genius: The creative power of collaboration. New York: Basic Books.
Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.). (2011). Structure and improvisation in creative teaching. London: Cambridge University Press.
Sawyer, R. K., & DeZutter, S. (2009). Distributed creativity: How collective creations emerge from collaboration. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and The Arts,
3(2), 81.
Song, Y., Chen, X., Hao, T., Liu, Z., & Lan, Z. (2019). Exploring two decades of research on classroom dialogue by using bibliometric analysis. Computers & Education,
137, 12–31.
Suchman, L. (2007). Human-machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wagner, T. (2010). The global achievement gap: Why even our best schools don’t teach the new survival skills our children need–And what we can do about it. New York: Basic
Books.
Warwick, P., Mercer, N., Kershner, R., & Kleine Staarman, J. (2010). In the mind and in the technology: The vicarious presence of the teacher in the pupil’s learning of
science in collaborative group activity at the interactive whiteboard. Computers and Education, 55, 350–362.
Wegerif, R. (2005). Reason and creativity in classroom dialogues. Language and Education, 19(3), 223–237.
Wegerif, R., & Mansour, N. (2010). A dialogic approach to technology-enhanced education for the global knowledge society. In M. S. Khine, & I. M. Saleh (Eds.). New
science of learning (pp. 325–339). New York: Springer.
Wegerif, R., McLaren, B. M., Chamrada, M., Scheuer, O., Mansour, N., Mikšátko, J., et al. (2010). Exploring creative thinking in graphically mediated synchronous
dialogues. Computers & Education, 54(3), 613–621.

11