Creativity and Education
According to the media, there is a tension between the need to educate creative humans and the fact that our examination systems seem to reward fact-based rote-learning. Your teachers probably have their own opinions about this (think about it, just the fact that an IRP or a PIP exists suggests a high level of creative engagement with sociology!). There is an enormous amount of information on this topic, from a very wide range of perspectives, so your particular methodologies will probably have a big impact on how you approach your secondary research. Questions to think about include:
To start the debate, have a look at these articles:
Choosing one of the issues from the "tensions and dilemmas" (p 6-10) section of Creativity in Schools: Tensions and Dilemmas would also be a good way to get started on this topic.
- Is there a particular subject or co-curricular activity you'd like to focus on?
- Have you done any particular assessment tasks that you found encouraged you to be creative?
- Are there particular ways of teaching that you think enable or limit creativity?
- Is there a particularly creative teacher that might be willing to be a case study (if you have a study period that overlaps with a class you could observe)?
- Who constructs/limits a creative environment, teachers, students, bureaucrats?
- Who should have input into making a syllabus or curriculum creative?
- What are the different types of creativity (technical, intellectual, musical etc)
- Why is creativity important for students' futures?
- How do you use the school as canvas for creativity?
- Are home-schooled kids more creative than school students?
To start the debate, have a look at these articles:
Choosing one of the issues from the "tensions and dilemmas" (p 6-10) section of Creativity in Schools: Tensions and Dilemmas would also be a good way to get started on this topic.
What is creativity?
What's happening in classrooms?
Creativity in the classroom is a teacher training video put together by the American Psychological Association. There are plenty of other courses that cover this content but this is an excellent short summary of what teachers all learn about creativity. It also has a good bibliography divided into particular issues.
Creativity in Schools: A Survey of Teachers in Europe gives an overview of how teachers view and use creativity in their classrooms. If your're working with teachers you'll want to read the whole article and have a look at the surveys and the the way they were analysed. Otherwise just read the Conclusion which starts on p.57.
John Hattie is a meta-researcher. He looks at other people's research and makes generalisations about what works in classrooms. His work is very influential in educational circles, but the quantitative nature (He measures 'effect size') of his analysis does not reflect the individual circumstances of these studies. For instance, going to a religious school rates highly, but this might be nothing to do with the school and lots to do with the socio-economic status and educational expectations of the families whose students study there and will change depending on the status of religious schools in the educational system (religious schools enjoy high status in Australia but low status in Europe). Here is a quick list of Hattie's current research findings.