This second round R&DA project investigated how an enriched idea of creativity might be developed by beginning teachers.
The project used digital video media resources and asked participants to explore and use these resources in an open ended way amongst themselves and also with pupils. Beginning teachers’ reflections on creativity and creative teaching were subsequently collected.
The contents of this report will be of interest to teacher educators working with ideas of creativity in the UK. The project was based on work from a BA QTS module in one institution and focussed on the development of ideas of creativity in teaching in two cohorts of fourth year students and is essentially a reflective analysis of a curriculum development. The students were ICT specialists and training for primary or KS2/3.
In the first year of the project the 16 student teachers worked in groups of four to make a mini movie and subsequently worked in pairs in school with groups of six to eight children in Year 1 or Year 5, again making a movie.
In the second cohort 15 students worked with 21 children in one middle school class. With the first cohort tutors visited the schools; with the second cohort tutors were more actively involved in school and with the pupils.
The main body of the work was based on the students in initial training, however, this was imaginatively supplemented by work with Newly Qualified Teachers. Student teachers who qualified and took up posts in local schools were able to take the digital media kits into their classrooms and use them between October and February, in whatever way they felt appropriate and manageable during their NQT year. The five NQTs in 2004 were visited in school and interviewed and they also visited the second cohort of trainees in 2005 for a half day session at the university to discuss their experiences. The interviews were used to construct summary case studies of the NQTs’ activity and experience. The three NQTs in 2005 were interviewed by telephone.
The research questions focused upon:
- student teachers’ understandings of creativity and reflections on their own creative experiences;
- the contribution of the digital technologies to creative practices;
- developments in professional knowledge and pedagogy in the school and in the University.
Questionnaires as well as concept maps and interviews, video diaries, classroom observations, written reports and the videos produced were all used to draw conclusions.
The researchers identified three themes from the students’ experience:
- Their understandings of creativity and what it meant in their own lives;
- The contribution of the digital technologies to the creative activities of making digital movies;
- Reflections on their professional development through the experiences of the project
Three further themes arose from the participation of the newly qualified teachers
- The influence of the school contexts for creative practices;
- The transitional identities in moving from ITT to NQT status;
- The mode of using digital media in their teaching
And two themes from teacher educators:
- A catalyst for change in the design of learning experiences for the student teachers;
- The development of conceptual frameworks for creativity, digital technologies and professional knowledge
The report elaborates these themes and gives some examples but is disappointing in the absence of explicit reporting of the findings in relation to the research questions. The report also states that the key findings informed the development of a conceptual framework, also not reported. A number of related papers by the same team are listed which give more detail.
The project was awarded further funding by Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for Creativity, based in the Universities of Brighton and Sussex.
The report contains a good bibliography
Reviewed by:
Hilary Constable
Keywords
Creativity, teacher education, LT
Authors :
Avril Loveless
Other Contributor :
Keith Turvey, Jeremy Burton, University of Brighton
Publisher :
TDA
Article Id :
13294
Date Posted:
5/5/2007