How Could Creativity Potentially Impact Primary Education? Beth Gibbs

WHAT IS CREATIVITY?

Within this blog I will discuss the meaning of creativity and what impact it has on primary education. Glăveanu (2006) suggests that there are two different types of creativity, the ‘evolutionary, adaptive type’ and the ‘improvisation in responding to obstacle’ type. Freire (1996) believes that problem posing education stimulates creativity, similar to Freire, I tend to steer towards the ‘thinking on your feet’ to solve problems definition of creativity as well. However, there are different perspectives like (Fleming 2012), who believes that creativity derives from the word ‘creation’, therefore you have to invent something new to be creative. In early years education creativity is has been promoted and associated through expressive arts and design activities (Early Years Matters, 2014). This could possibly be because you are actually producing something, (art, dance, crafts), to show for your creativity, which you do not get with a creative idea or thought.  

BARRIERS TO CREATIVITY

Banaji et al (2013), explored the biggest barriers to creative pedagogy, which were performative schemes and low pay. Where the curriculum forces teachers to constantly set and reach targets as well as all the other responsibilities that being a teacher involves, it leaves little time to practice creative pedagogy and give children creative play opportunities. According to the OECD (2014), teachers do too much with very little monetary reward and are not held in high esteem in society. This indicates that teachers do not have the time nor the motivation to incorporate creative and innovative teaching into every day.  These are not just barriers to creative teaching in the United Kingdom but across Europe as well (Banaji et al, 2013). 

CREATIVE PLAY

According to Meggitt and Bruce (2015), “creative play allows children to explore and experiment using different media, like materials or music. Adults can encourage creative play by offering children a range of resources and play opportunities. An example of this could be to give learners a recording device like an ipad/tablet and allow them to access the outdoor environment to collect natural resources and then use them together to be creative. Myself and two of the other University Bloggers did this and created an autumn themed animation using an app called ‘stop motion’. We had a limited time to gather the resources we needed and to also make the video.

The video captured our interpretation of autumn and got creative with the resources we had available to us. From a teachers point of view this activity could be easily tailored to meet cross-curricular links to a range of subjects for example, digital literacy, mathematics (time limit), team work and physical activity. Waite (2011) believes that physical activity is integral to children’s holistic education as it supports creativity whilst releases energy.

These project based activities inspires, not just creative learning put also creative pedagogy. It is the teacher’s role to facilitate learning and children learn effectively when they are enjoying their task or lesson. This is why it is so important for teachers to have a creative pedagogy to adapt to individual learners interests and abilities. It is not always easy to make learning fun for every pupil in a class so teachers have to practice innovation to grasp the interest of their pupils as well as reflect the curriculum. An example of this could be to bring technology into the classroom to be used as a resource to allow children to actively find answers to questions themselves rather than teachers just transmitting knowledge and children listening.

Whilst attending a placement, at a primary school once a week, I have observed the teachers practicing creativity as they adapt every activity and project to be holistic so that children develop their literacy/digital literacy, mathematics and other areas of learning. An example of this is when they conducted their Christmas fair they created a table on computers that said how much they spent on the fair and how much was earned to calculate the total profit. They then had to present it as a graph. This showed that they had a holistic learning output from this activity. According to the NACCCE, every child and person has the potential to be creative and ‘Creative education involves a balance between teaching knowledge and skills, and encouraging innovation.’ (NACCCE, 1999, p.6). This suggests that all teachers should practice creative pedagogy but to make sure that there is a learning outcome for children.

Reference List:

Banaji, A Sue Cranmer and Carlo Perrotta What’s stopping us? Barriers to creativity and innovation in schooling across. Available at:  http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/55204/1/Banaji_Cranmer_Perrotta_What%27s-stopping-us_2013.pdf (Accessed: 19.01.2018) 

Early Years Matters (2014) Development Matters. Available at: http://www.earlyyearsmatters.co.uk/revised-eyfs-published/ (Accessed: 19.01.2017)

Fleming, M. (2012) The arts in education: An introduction to aesthetics, theory and pedagogy.  Oxford: Routledge

Freire, Paulo. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Penguin. London

Glăveanu, V. (2006) ‘Educating Which Creativity’, Thinking Skills and Creativity, 27, 25-32

Meggitt, C. and Bruce, T. (2015). Childcare and Education: Early Years Educator. London: Hodder Education

N.A.C.C.C.E. (1999) All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education. London: Department for Education and Employment (DfEE).

Waite, S. (2011) Children Learning Outside the Classroom. London: Sage

OECD (2014) Teachers love their job but feel undervalued, unsupported and unrecognised. Available at: http://www.oecd.org/newsroom/teachers-love-their-job-but-feel-undervalued-unsupported-and-unrecognised.htm (Accessed: 19.01.18).