Creativity has received significant interest in variety of fields and disciplines with a major focus on individual level creativity. As more and more achievements started originating from groups, researchers turned their attention to creativity on group level. Current thesis explores the group creativity as well as flow experience in collaboration. It explores the group creativity phenomena and its correlates in different contexts, age groups and cultures. The overarching aim of the thesis is to extend our knowledge on group creativity and contribute to open questions in the field such as - How does (group) creativity develop? Which interpersonal and motivational processes play a role in group creativity? How can we measure group creativity? In four studies, the present research found that (social) flow can be explained by empathy and motivation of group members as well as domain of performance. To build on these results, the role of interpersonal processes in group creativity was explored with adults. While closeness was found to benefit group creativity, combination of closeness with perspective taking was harmful on creative performance. Moreover, with an aim to understand how group creativity develops, this thesis explored group creativity in children and adolescents from England and Turkey. Across these two samples, group creativity performance developed with age and advances in social perspective coordination was one mechanism explaining that development. Additionally, study conducted with Turkish children found task cohesion as a facilitator of group creativity. Major similarities in findings obtained from two samples implicated cultural universality in development of group creativity, however, slight differences in results pointed to the possibility of culture-specific differences in processes underlying group creativity. Finally, the current thesis contributed to literature by adopting and validating a collaborative story writing method as a promising measurement of group creativity. Overall, the studies presented in this thesis illustrate the role that interpersonal and motivational process play in group creativity practices of different age groups and cultures. Findings lead us to the next steps on the adventurous discovery of group creativity.

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<p> </p><p><strong>Purpose: </strong>The purpose with this study is to investigate how preschool teachers understand the concept <em>the competent child and in what ways this understanding affects their role in children’s learning. </em></p><p><strong>Question at issue:<em> </em></strong>What perspective on children do the contributing educationalists have? How do they define a competent child? Do such children exist and if so, are they always competent in all situations? What is the educationalists perspective on learning and knowledge? What is the preschool teacher’s view of their role as educationalists? What do they consider as their most important tasks?</p><p><strong>Method: </strong>To execute this study I have made a qualitative research based on interviews with eight teachers from four different preschools.</p><p><strong>Main theories: </strong>I have built the theoretical part of this study based on four different perspectives on the concept the competent child according to the philosophies of Dion Summer, Jesper Juul and Reggio Emalia. I also describe different theories about learning, knowledge and educationalists as well as the preschools role in the development of child according to different well-known scientists and researchers.</p><p><strong>Summarized conclusion: </strong>The study shows that the interviewed preschool teachers chose to interpret the concept the competent child in three ways. The individual choice affects their expectations of the child and as such the way that they treat it. This shows that it´s important for all preschool teachers to constantly reflect on how they see and treat the children since this shapes them as they grow.</p><p> </p>

Purpose: The purpose with this study is to investigate how preschool teachers understand the concept the competent child and in what ways this understanding affects their role in children’s learning. Question at issue: What perspective on children do the contributing educationalists have? How do they define a competent child? Do such children exist and if so, are they always competent in all situations? What is the educationalists perspective on learning and knowledge? What is the preschool teacher’s view of their role as educationalists? What do they consider as their most important tasks? Method: To execute this study I have made a qualitative research based on interviews with eight teachers from four different preschools. Main theories: I have built the theoretical part of this study based on four different perspectives on the concept the competent child according to the philosophies of Dion Summer, Jesper Juul and Reggio Emalia. I also describe different theories about learning, knowledge and educationalists as well as the preschools role in the development of child according to different well-known scientists and researchers. Summarized conclusion: The study shows that the interviewed preschool teachers chose to interpret the concept the competent child in three ways. The individual choice affects their expectations of the child and as such the way that they treat it. This shows that it´s important for all preschool teachers to constantly reflect on how they see and treat the children since this shapes them as they grow.

The purpose of this study is to find out what the educators idea of educational documentations in ratio to childrens inclusion and impact in pre-school are, together with the child's own perception of the concepts of documentation. We proceeded from the following issues: What are the significance of educational work according to the teachers? What is the teachers idea of a childs impact and inclusion in educational documentation? In what way do the children have influence over, and inclusion in educational documentation? What are the childrens feelings of the documentations? In order to find answers to our questions, we used qualitative examinations consisting of seven educators and seven children from various pre-schools in Stockholm, and thereby, we have analyzed our results. As our theoretical frame, we used ourselves of Vygotskijs and Säljö's sociocultural perspective that is about "progress and learning", which is achieved by interaction and cooperation in a social context. The result shows that the aim of educational documentation is to reveal the childs development and learning, and also to involve the parents by putting up documents on the wall. It is important for children to both participate and influence both the documentation and other sections of the school where it affects the children, but this is sometimes hard to fulfill in all situations. The educators realises that to make the children participate, they simply have to rely on the child group and their interest. They also have given activities that everyone should follow. The lack of time is an obstacle for all educators, but what they all have in common is that having the participation and weight of the child would benefit the childs growth.

Vid brister i föräldraförmågan, där modern inte kan se till att sitt barn får de grundläggande behoven tillgodosedda tvingas hon ibland till familjehemsplacering av sitt barn enligt Socialtjänstlagen (SoL, SFS 2001:453) eller enligt Lag med särskilda bestämmelser om vård av unga (LVU, SFS 1990:52). Dessa mödrar har enligt lag rätt till stöd för att bearbeta de känslor som kan uppstå vid denna typ av trauma. Mödrar med egna erfarenheter, exempel Widerlöv (2012) och Trullson (2008) har skrivit // artiklar och böcker där de berättar om att mödrar kan drabbas av känslor som skuld, skam och sorg, och att de har ett behov av stöd i samband med familjehemsplaceringarna.Studien är gjord efter en kvalitativ metod med ett induktivt förhållningssätt. För att kunna besvara studiens syfte och svara på frågeställningarna har sju semi-strukturerade intervjuer med biologiska mödrar genomförts.I resultatet har det framkommit att alla mödrar utom en är missnöjd det stöd som de har erbjudits. Det handlar både om att de inte har blivit erbjudna stöd och att det har varit fel sorts stöd för dem. Andra viktiga aspekter som har framkommit i resultatet är mödrarnas känsla av sorg när deras barn blir familjehemsplacerade, den nya föräldrarollen som uppstår, att socialtjänsten har ett barnperspektiv vid utredningar och beslut samt vilken typ av stöd mödrarna önskar. Detta analyseras sedan med hjälp av den tidigare forskningen som har hittats inom ämnet och med hjälp av Fyhrs sorgteori samt anknytningsteorin. I slutet av uppsatsen presenteras de slutsatser författarna har kommit fram till och en diskussion om dessa. / In lack of parenting skills, where the biological mother can´t give her child its fundamental needs, they´re sometimes forced to place their children into foster homes according to the Swedish law. The two laws who decide if the social services need to help the child is the law of social services (SoL, SFS 2001:453) or the law with special provision about care of children and youth (LVU, SFS 1990:52). These mothers have according to the law the right to get support from the social services to handle the feelings that can come up in these types of trauma. Mothers with direct experience, for example Widerlöv (2012) och Trullson (2008), have written books and articles where they explain that mothers suffer feelings like quilt, shame and sorrow. Therefore they really need the support from the social services. This study is made out of a qualitative and inductive method and to answer the questions of this study, seven semi-structured interviews with biological mothers have been made.In the result the reader can see that all mothers except one are not satisfied with the support that they´ve been offered. It´s both that they haven´t been offered support and that it has been the wrong kind of support for them. There are other important aspects shown in the result which is for example the mothers sorrow when their children move to a foster family, the new role of parenting, and the sorrow for the mothers that the social services works in the perspective of children in investigations and decisions, and what type of support the mother has the right to get. In the analysis the results connects to research related to this subject and the theory of sorrow by Fyhr and the attachment theory. The writers will in the end of this essay account about the conclusions of this study and follow that up with a discussion.

The aim with this study is to study how young children’s influence expresses itself in some educators’ stories about their work with children. The study also looks at the relations between pedagogues’ approaches to children and aims at identifying the educator’s perspectives of children. To get to know more about this I have interviewed five pedagogues who work with children in the ages of 3-6 years in different fields at a preschool area in India.The result shows that childrens’ influence and participation for the educators involves children selecting activities. A consequence of this is that the teacher is the one who decides when and what kind of influence the child can practice. Furthermore the teachers express different views on the child which sometimes are contradictory but still coexist. A conclusion of the study is that the images of children that the pedagogues are expressing have to be looked upon in relation to the context of the activity. The context of the activity becomes therefore also central for how the children’s influence expresses itself. / Syftet med den här studien är att undersöka hur barns inflytande kommer till uttryck i några pedagogers berättelser om sitt arbete med barn. Studien syftar även till att undersöka pedagogernas förhållningssätt i relation till olika bilder av barn. För att närma mig studiens intentioner har jag intervjuat fem pedagoger som arbetar med barn i åldrarna 3-6 år och inom olika professioner på ett skolområde i Indien. Resultatet visar att barns inflytande enligt pedagogerna involverar barns möjligheter att välja aktiviteter. Resultatet visar även att lärarna är de som avgör när och vilket slags inflytande barnen har möjlighet att utöva. Vidare visar resultatet att lärarna ger uttryck för varierade bilder av barn som ibland kan verka motstridiga men samtidigt samexisterar. Studiens slutsatser visar att de bilder av barn som pedagogerna bär med sig måste ses i relation till den kontext verksamheten utformas i. Verksamhetens kontext blir på så sätt även avgörande för hur barnens inflytande kommer till uttryck.