Reflecting on Creative Teaching and Learning.

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Introduction

This paper will attempt, within its restricted parameters, to reflect all the learning that has taken place during the university sessions on the Creative and Effective Curriculum and synthesise this with my individual practice experience in school.

First we will explore the contextual background to the focus on creativity in schools today. Where did the idea of creativity in education stem from? We will travel rapidly through the twentieth century research before coming to more recent developments and initiatives.

Then we will endeavor to understand creativity and creative thinking. Is it possible to define either? Is it easier to understand it in terms of processes rather than outcomes?

From here we will visit a variety of lines of research advocating the development of Creative Thinking, giving light to their exponents and opponents alike.

Strategies of Teaching Creatively, Teaching for Creativity and developing Creative Integration within a curriculum will follow. What does it mean in practice when the plates of Theory and Practice collide?

So how do I know if what I do in class makes a difference? I will evaluate and reflect upon my practice gathering evidence from personal reflections give a critical commentary on what I have learned.

Finally I will conclude with summarizing my personal view of Teaching Creatively and Teaching for Creativity and my learning at the end of the module.
Contextual Background

To begin to think about creativity we must look back at the historical context in which our current understanding is set.

A natural point to start might be the Plowden Report, Children and their Primary Schools (1967). It can be seen as an anchor to much of todays thinking around learning and educati...

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...', Educational Studies (03055698), 30, 1, pp. 77-87, Education Research Complete

National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (1999). All our futures: Creativity, culture & education : report to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Sudbury: DfEE.

Piaget, J, Inhelder, B, Parsons, A, & Milgram, S 1958, The Growth Of Logical Thinking From Childhood To Adolescence : From Childhood To Adolescence / Jean Piaget, Barbel Inhelder; Translated By A. Parsons, S. Milgram, n.p.: London, Routledge & Kegan Paul PLC, 1958.

Sternberg, R. J. & Lubart, T. L. (1999). "The Concept of Creativity", in ed. Sternberg, R. J.: Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind and society: The development of higher mental processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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