Creativity in practice… What not to do…

This paper describes research carried out in two UK primary training providers as part of the ‘Creative Teachers for Creative Learners’ project, funded by a Research and Development Award from the Teacher Training Agency. Over the past two years a study of trainees has been undertaken at Manchester Metropolitan University and Goldsmiths College, University of London, as part of a larger collaboration with Bath Spa University College. During the first year this looked at undergraduates who were training to teach in primary schools. They expressed their own notion of the ‘creative person’ using cartoons and further data was collected using a questionnaire. This year, a task that had originally been piloted by Bath Spa to gain an insight into where postgraduate trainees located creativity within their practice, was used to further explore the undergraduates’ understanding of creativity while they were on school experience placements. This paper draws on data collected from two cohorts of undergraduate trainees in each institution. Comparisons will be drawn between the two sets of data collected to establish how one varies from the other and possible reasons for this will be mooted. Initial findings indicate that the Goldsmiths and MMU trainees expect to find opportunities for creativity in most areas of the curriculum with assumptions that certain subjects offer more opportunities than others. However, as the Goldsmiths and MMU trainees reflected on the reality of teaching on their school experience placements the data gathered offered some interesting insights, which are particularly pertinent in this time of further curriculum change in primary education, including inhibitors of creativity

Technology insight: virtual visits to industry using the Web

The paper describes the philosophy and structure of a new Web service for technology education that is being developed by the authors. The fundamental concept is that the site allows pupils and teachers to ‘visit’ industry and to learn how products are designed and made. Each ‘visit’ focuses on a particular product and tells its story through the people involved in its production. The ‘visit’ is complemented by ideas for follow-up activities in schools and hotlinks to other relevant resources on the Web

How do trainee primary teachers understand creativity?

This paper draws upon preliminary findings from research undertaken in three UK primary training providers as part of the Creative Teachers for Creative Learners project, funded by a Research and Development Award from the Teacher Training Agency. The project aims to support the development of primary trainee teachers’ understanding of, and teaching for, children’s creativity in design & technology (D&T) and other curriculum areas by producing an interactive bank of teaching and learning materials set within a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). As an initial stage in the development of these materials, the project team has been exploring trainees’ current understandings and perceptions of creativity, both as a personal attribute and as fostered by the primary curriculum in England. This paper will focus upon two sets of data generated as part of this process and the extent to which Harrington’s (1990) ‘creative ecosystem’ is a useful theoretical and evaluative framework for trainee teachers. At Bath Spa University College, primary PGCE trainees have been set a directed task in schools during which they select lessons from two curriculum areas to observe: one which they expect to offer scope for creativity and another which they judge to lack creative potential. They have evaluated the support offered for children’s creativity in each subject area using the framework drawn from Harrington (1990) and have frequently found their preconceptions challenged. At Manchester Metropolitan University and Goldsmiths’ College, undergraduate trainees have produced cartoons to express their own notion of the ‘creative person’. This has produced some interesting outcomes with regard to where opportunities for creativity can be found