Structures: such as algorithms, routines, procedures, scripts, checklists, and protocols for conducting instruction
Foreword by David C. Berliner (p.xiv-xvi) 

• The power of routines, scripts, and all kinds of established procedures to guide action in environments that are stable and predictable is not be questioned. But as events become less certain, and the outcomes desired less standardized, adherence to those same routines can be ineffectual, if not dangerous.  
  
• Too much of classroom life has become too routinized: 1) due partly to powerful accountability policies that demand that certain student outcomes be achieved; 2) another reason for this increase in demand for uniformity and routines in schools arises from the increasing dominance of business models models applied to education. (works in business settings but not in teaching)

Sawyer, R. K., & DeZutter, S. (2009). Distributed creativity: How collective creations emerge from collaboration. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 3(2), 81-92.

[Abstract] Creativity is often considered to be a mental process that occurs within a person's head. In this article, we analyze a group creative process: One that generates a creative product, but one in which no single participant's contribution determines result. We analyze a series of 5 theater performances that were improvisationally developed in rehearsal by a theater group; over the course of these 5 performances, a collaborative creation emerged from the improvised dialogues of the group. W e argue that in cases of creativity such as this one, it is inaccurate to describe creativity as a purely mental process; rather, this case represents a nonindividualistic creative process that we refer to as distributed creativity. We chose this term by analogy with studies of distributed cognition, which are well established in cognitive science, but have not yet had a substantial impact on creativity research. Our study demonstrates a methodology that can be used to study distributed creative process, provides a theoretical framework to explain these processes, and contributes to our understanding of how collaboration contributes to creativity.

[Notes]
The first wave of research on creativity after Guilford's American Psychological Association Presidential address (Guilfrod, 1950); by the 1980s scholars had begun to realize that a narrow focus on the solitary individual could provide only a partial explanation of creativity, so several researchers began to explore the social and cultural dimensions of creativity (Amabile, 1983; Csikszentmihalyi, 1988), which gained inspiration from a similar shift in cognitive science from focusing on internal mental states and processes, to an analysis of how cognition is distributed across people, tools, and environments (Hutchins, 1995; Salomon, 1993). 

Through the 1900s, a second wave of creativity research pursued the idea that creativity is found in collaboration and group dynamics. In the last few years, this research has resulted in several books that explore collaborative creativity (Farrell, 2001; John-Steiner, 2000; Paulus & Nijstad, 2003; Sawyer, 2003, 2006).
The 2nd wave of research has provided a new perspective that creativity is embedded in social groups, and how creative products emerge from collaborative networks. 

Even studies of individual creators, when researchers focus on the social and cultural origins of their ideas, have revealed a high degree of collaboration behind their ideas (Cskiszentmihalyi, 1996; Farrell, 2001; John-Steiner, 2000).

One potential path forward is for creativity researchers to borrow methodologies and frameworks from cognitive scientists who have contributed to our understanding of distributed cognition. When cognitive processes are distributed across groups, they become visible,  and scientists can observe them by analyzing the verbal and gestural interactions among the participants. Studies of distributed cognition typically use qualitative and observational methods that enable researchers to capture the real-time processes of distributed cognition. Perhaps the dominant methodology is interaction analysis--Videotaping collaborations over time, and documenting the step-by-step emergence of cognition from the contribution of each group member (Jordan & Henderson, 1995).


Goal:

• contribute to our understanding of the interactional mechanisms that occur when creativity is distributed throughout a group;
• to demonstrate the potential power of interaction analysis as a tool that could contribute to our standing of group creativity.

We use the term distributed creativity to refer to situations where collaborating groups of individuals collectively generate a shared creative product. 
We are specifically interested in collaborating groups that are relatively unconstrained, such that unexpected creativity could result. We use the term collaborative emergence to refer to these group processes (Sawyer, 2003). 
Collaborative emergence is more likely to be found as a group becomes more aligned with the following characteristics:

• the activity has an unpredictable outcome, rather than a scripted, known endpoint;
• there is moment-to-moment contingency: each person's action depends on the one just before;
• the interactional effect of any given action can be changed by the subsequent actions of other participants; and
• the process is collaborative, with each participant contributing equally.

Because collaborative emergence results from interactions among participants, it must be analyzed as a discursive, distributed process. The distributed creativity perspective locates creativity in the symbolic social interactions among members of a group.

Improvised narratives are good example of collaborative emergence because they are so obviously created by the collaborative efforts of the entire group. No single speaker creates the narrative; it emerges from the give and take of conversation. 

When groups of individuals work together to generate a collective creative product, the interactions among group members often become a more substantial source of creativity than the inner mental processes of any one participating individual. 

Distributed creativity can occur in single encounters and across multiple encounters. In this paper, we extended the scope of the methodology by applying interaction analysis to repeated rehearsals of an improvised performance. To reveal the mechanisms by which groups are collaboratively creative, group creativity research could incorporate the methods of interaction analysis to closely analyze the processual, turn-by-turn dynamics of collaborative dialogue.

Interaction analysis:
The goal of interaction analysis is to identify recurring patterns in collective behavior, and processes that result in the emergence of these recurring patterns. It roots in ethnography, sociolinguistics, developmental psychology, and conversation analysis. The central focus of an interaction analysis is the collective behaviors of a group of interesting individuals. 

Interaction analysis is particularly valuable when each individual's behaviors display a moment-to-moment dependency on the behaviors of other individuals--a characteristic that we referred to above as ''contingency." In situations of contingency, one person's action at a given moment is highly influenced by the actions of their partners immediately before--such that prediction of a person's action cannot be made successfully independent of the sequence of preceding actions of others. 
In collaborating creative groups, creativity is an ongoing social process, and a full explanation of processes of distributed creativity requires an empirical study of the moment-to-moment processes whereby individual creative actions result in the emergence of a collective creative product.

Standard interaction analysis procedures generally involve six steps

1. Videotape naturally occurring encounters as part of a broader ethnographic study, using participant observation when the researcher is an active participant in the interaction;
2. Once videotapes are made, the first analytic step is to watch through the videos and prepare a content log--each identifiably distinct episode is given a heading and a rough summary of events;
3. Perhaps the most critical stage is the identification of general patterns--sequences of interaction that occur repeatedly and that provide insight into the nature of distributed creativity; (index video data so that instances of similar events can be observed together: 1) key narrative elements of the performance emerged from the collective improvisations of the ensemble, foundational elements of narrative as character, relationship, and plot;  2) within the emergent narrative structure, short segments of dialogue and action emerged collectively and were retained through subsequent performances-bits)
4. Depending on the researcher's interest, some portion of the video dataset is selected for transcription.
5. For many research questions, it can be valuable to quantify video data by coding the data (1) delimit the stream of data into distinct episodes; 2) develop categories, or codes, within which the episodes can be grouped; 3) use two or more researchers to assign codes to each episode, and then calculate intercoder reliability of the coding scheme. Iterative process, once a reliable coding scheme is developed, and the many episodes found in the video data have been coded, quantitative methods can be used to identify generalizable patterns. If we eventually choose to analyze the emergence over time of a single scene, coding was not appropriate. If we eventually choose to conduct similar analyses over a larger number of scenes, then application of a coding scheme would allow for quantitative analyses of similarities and differences in processes of collaborative emergence across scenes, actors, or even ensembles. )
6. Many interaction analysts ask the original participants to watch the videotapes with the research team, with the goal of eliciting the participants' perspectives on what was happening.

This sorts of analysis has the potential to expand our understandings of the step-by-step processes whereby creativity emerges from groups, and of the relationship between the distributed creativity of the group, and the individual creative actions of each member of the group.

[Findings]
After step 1, 2, and 3, identified 2 types of dramatic structure that collaboratively emerged: foundational elements of narrative (character, relationship, and plot); and short segments of dialogue and action, known as bits, emerged collectively and were retained through subsequent performances.
Our findings are consistent with theoretical perspectives that emphasize that collective nature of situated social activity, perspectives that include distributed cognition (Salomon, 1993) and sociocultural theory (Rogoff, 1990, 1998). 

Several prominent creativity researchers, influenced by the onset of sociocultural and distributed approaches to cognition in the 1980s, have begun to analyze the role of collaboration and context in creativity. This second wave of creativity research focuses on how novelty emerges from unstructured and improvised group collaboration. This collaborative turn in creativity research has provided us with a deeper understanding of how new things are created--not only by solitary individuals, but also by collaborative teams and social networks. 

[Abstract] Sociocultural theory focuses on group processes through time, and argues that group phenomena cannot be reduced to explanation in terms of the mental states or actions of the participating individuals. This makes sociocultural theory particularly useful in the analysis of group creativity and group learning, because both group creativity and group learning emerge over time from the successive contributions of individual members, and they are difficult to reductively explain in terms of the mental states or actions of participating individuals. This paper presents a case study of group creativity, analyzing how a collective creative product emerges over 17 successive encounters of an improvisational theater group. This case study demonstrates the value of sociocultural theory in the study of group processes over time. And yet, it suggests that to fully explain group creativity and group learning, existing sociocultural theory must be extended beyond a narrow focus on process and practice, to focus on three levels of analysis: individual creative acts, interactional dynamics over time, and the emergence of collective group creations.

[Notes]

Sociocultural psychology is the most recent in a long history of attempts to study groups and individuals together, by incorporating both anthropological and psychological perspectives (Cole, 1996). 

This paper examines a core  theoretical assumption of socioculturalism: that processes (sometimes called practices or situated social practices) are the fundamental unit of social reality. This focus on process raises a serious problem: it makes it difficult to understand the mutual relations between individuals and groups, because it elides the distinction between these two levels of social reality by wrapping them both into the unit of analysis of "social practice" (Archer, 1995). As a way of resolving this problem, this paper proposes an extension of sociocultural theory, referred to as "collaborative emergence," and demonstrates the potential value of this theoretical extension by applying it to an empirical example of group creativity.

The unifying features of sociocultural theory: the unit of analysis is situated social practice, rather than the individual as in traditional psychology (Hatano and Wertsch, 2001, p. 79) Situated social practices are the fundamental unit of social reality, with individuals and groups secondary and derivative.

The scientific study of group creativity raises similar issues, because a full explanation of group creativity requires an analysis of the individual creativity of each group member, as well as the group processes that bring together each member's contributions.

Until quite recently, most creativity research has been conducted by psychologists, who have focused on the mental processes and the personalities of creative individuals (see Runco 2007). 

A sociocultural orientation suggests that psychological accounts of creativity are limited and that a complete explanation of creativity requires scientists to bring together studies at both the individual and the group levels of analysis (Cole & Engestrom 2007; Sawyer 2006).

Some limitations of sociocultural approach to fully explain collaborative creativity:

1. empirical focus on collective social practices, neglected the internal psychological processes of participating individuals (say little about internal mental processes, cognitive development, or conceptual change); psychological individuals learning, predictable; group creativity involves novel contributions from the individual participants, and the outcome is unpredictable and emergent. To fully explain group creativity, individualist and sociocultural approaches should be combined in an interdisciplinary approach, one that considers both individual mental processes  as well as group interactional processes.
2. sociocultural approach focus on collective social practices, do not analyze individual contributions and how they relates successively through time. However, the moment -to-moment analysis of actions of each member of the group and how they build on prior actions and also how these influence future actions is necessary to integrate explanations at the individual level with explanations at the group level (Greeno 2006; Nercessian 2005). When groups of individuals engage in free-flowing and unstructured conversation, the flow of the conversation emerges from the successive individual contributions of the participants. Sawyer (2003) called this process collaborative emergence, because the group's properties and outcomes emerge from individual actions and interactions. The theory of collaborative emergence builds on theories of emergence developed in the study of complex systems in many other scientific disciplines. Emergent phenomena are often observed in systems that contain many components that interact in complex configurations (Sawyer, 2005). In emergent phenomena, a high-level system pattern or property is observed, and the pattern or property must be explained in terms of the components of the system and their interactions. Emergent phenomena are unpredictable before they occur, even given a fairly complete knowledge of the system components and how they interact. (p. 63)

The focus of the analysis is on how successive individual contributions result in the gradual emergence, over time, of a collective creative product. The analysis requires a constant consideration of both individual-level and group-level phenomena, as well as the moment-to-moment interactional dynamics of the group.

The analysis of the improvisationally developed scenes resulted in the identification of two types of dramatic structure that collaboratively emerged over the course of multiple rehearsals and performances: 1) foundational elements of narrative, character, relationship, and plot; 2) short segments of dialogue and action, known as 'bits', emerged collectively and were retained through subsequent performances. 

To analyze how the performance emerged, all five performances were transcribed, and interaction analyses were conducted on the transcripts. 

Two time scales: 1) the moment-to-moment conversational processes within a single improvised instantiation; and 2) the processes that occur from week to week, across successive rehearsals and performances. Interaction analyses conducted by socioculturalists have only considered the first time scale, the processes that occur in face to face groups in a specific encounter. This focus ends up rather narrowly constraining the analytic perspective to a single encounter. (p. 71)

Socioculturalism is valuable in that it has encouraged psychologists to focus on the emergence of group phenomena during situated social practices in social encounters. But socioculturalists tend to neglect how social properties emerge over longer periods of time, through successive encounters. (p. 71)

Collaborative emergence, a bottom-up process, is paralleled by downward social causation, a top-down process. The emergent collective product, the shared dramatic frame, is collectively created by the participants, and yet has causal influence over those participants. (P. 71)

The explanation of creativity requires us to consider three levels of analysis simultaneously : 1) individual mental processes that result in the creative contribution of a specific action; 2) interaction between these individual creative contributions; 3) the emergent, group level of analysis, the shared social creation that is represented by the dramatic frame.

The relation between the individual and the emergent frame is complex (Sawyer, 2003). Once the frame emerges, it has a high degree of stability, yet it is not fully constraining; individuals always have some range of freedom to act. (p. 71)

This paper has emphasized two valuable features of sociocultural theory: 1)  focus on processes through time, and its insistence on simultaneous examination of individual level and group level phenomena.  This paper further argues that these two features must be extended to more fully explain group creativity. The proposed way forward is to focus on the processes of collaborative emergence. This alternative theoretical perspective rejects two claims associated with sociocultural theory: a process ontology and strong inseparability.  A revised sociocultural appraoch, focused on collaborative emergence, would allow socioculturalism to better connect with individual psychology,  on the one hand, and macrosociology, on the other.(p. 72)

Empirical studies of collaborative emergence identified several characteristics of groups that are more likely to result in collaborative emergence: 1) moment-to-moment contingency (the possible appropriate actions are constrained to varying extent by the prior flow of the conversation); 2) retrospective interpretation (contribution only acquires meaning after it is responded to by the others); 3) equal participation (no group leader who establishes topic and flow of the collaboration, collective phenomena like topic, topic shifts, and decisions emerge from the conversation).