The impact of national approaches to early years education on the cultivation of creativity in young children : a tale of two systems

Prompted by the prevalence of discourses surrounding the need to cultivate creativity for the benefit of wider society and for children themselves, this study aims to explore how creativity is fostered in young children aged 3 to 4. The study recognises that the cultivation of creativity in young children is indivisible from the social ecology in which they are located: it is subject to a network of influences, from the cultural to the local. By inquiring into these influences, it creates an account of how they interact to shape a national approach to early years education and the fostering of children's creativity within it. Using the concept of story as a model, this study has adopted a narrative-style methodological approach in order to look at the phenomenon in a holistic manner. For this purpose, the approach combined documentary analysis with interviews, reflective stories, observations, walking tours and map-making with children and early years practitioners. Beyond this, it compares the educational system of England with Catalonia in order to look beyond more popularly researched national systems of early years education and to use the comparison as a lens to help identify the dominant influences on the cultivation of creativity of children in a national approach to early years education. The study particularly highlights the effects of history, cultural values, policy and practice on the fostering of individual children's creativity in early years settings, extending understanding of this process beyond the confines of classroom and curriculum

Remote and blended teacher education : a rapid review

Initial and continuing teacher education are increasingly making use of remote and blended modes of education. Conducted in the summer of 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, this rapid review brings together literature and evidence to inform planning for remote and blended teacher education during restrictions in face-to-face teaching activity. The review consists of three main parts: first, a descriptive framework of modes of remote and blended teacher education; second, an exploratory review of the affordances and limitations of remote and blended approaches connecting the literature on effective teacher education with reviews of remote and blended approaches; third, a rapid review of evidence on the efficacy of remote and blended approaches, including of a small number of studies comparing these to face-to-face equivalents. We conclude that remote and blended teacher education is likely to become an increasingly important part of the teacher education landscape and there are plausible theoretical reasons suggesting that it can be effective with suitable design. However, we find too few studies presenting robust evidence to enable firm conclusions to be drawn on the relative effectiveness of modes and approaches. The review provides a foundation for further research and practice in this area

Addressing the low skill levels of university undergraduates in the United Kingdom

There seems to be an increasing problem with basic skills acquisition for young people in the UK. Lower levels of facility with literacy and numeracy than older generations are being reported, including for those with higher levels of education. In this article, we attribute the problem to prevalent fixed mindsets, resulting in a lack of attention to developing both narrative and scientific modes of thought in all learners, and also to the important affective domain: beliefs, attitudes and emotions. This can lead to the unintended exclusion of learners within certain subjects, based on their existing strengths and weaknesses. We propose the development of a newly sensitive and inclusive approach, rooted in the use of both narrative and scientific modes of thoughts across all subject areas, developing growth mindsets, promoting academic resilience and using the ‘growth zone model’ explicitly with learners

Working together to promote academic safe-guarding

In line with the purpose of this special issue, we examine how school leaders can lead to create the vision and reality for schools and their communities to explicitly address forms of academic anxiety and emotional exclusion. We suggest how school leaders can work to engage parents in helping to remove acquired affective disability and ‘emotional handbrakes’, promote academic resilience and enhance progress. We describe such a process as ‘academic safe-guarding’