This paper presents the first phase of a study in teacher education, which explored how a conceptual framework for creativity with information and communication technology (ICT) might be developed and expressed in professional development for primary education pre-service and newly qualified teachers. The Creativity and Professional Development Project (C&PD) involved 16 education ICT specialists in the final stage of their BA in an English University. They participated in the project to investigate their classroom practice in the use of ICT to promote creativity in the making of digital video movies, and to reflect upon the development of their pedagogy with ICT in primary classrooms. The analysis focuses on the student teachers’ experience of engaging in creative activities to prepare, teach and evaluate a school-based project, and identified themes of their understandings and personal experience of creativity, the contribution of ICT, and their reflections on professional development. This analysis raises the issue of designing learning experiences, which promote and support creativity with ICT in the context of teacher learning. A conceptual framework to describe creative practices with ICT in teacher education was developed from the study.
‘Creativity’ is currently a term used often in policy and practice of Primary education in the UK. After many years of concern about lack of creativity in the curriculum (Kimbell, 2000, NACCCE, 1999 and Robinson, 2001), government agencies engaged in consultation and policy development to include national initiatives to develop materials to promote pupils’ creativity (QCA, 2004), and a national primary strategy, named ‘Excellence and Enjoyment’, for teaching to improve standards in pupil attainment, measured in national testing arrangements (DfES, 2003). Creativity is therefore now discussed as ‘a good thing’, promoting both personal expression and enhancing opportunities to engage in the complexities of problem-solving in the economic and cultural landscape of the 21st century.
There are, however, concerns that both the definition of ‘creativity’ and the practical experience of creative processes become simplistic, unproblematic and unable to reflect the complexities and challenges of developing creativity in the curriculum and pedagogy. Prentice (2000) highlights the dangers of a complex and slippery concept leading to confusions and contradictions which do not help educators to focus on the purpose and possibilities of creative processes in the curriculum. Hartley (2003) draws attention to the ways in which government and business are attending to creativity and emotional literacy in education, attaching them to ‘practice which remains decidedly performance-driven, standardised and monitored’ (p. 16), and harnessing them for instrumental purposes in the knowledge and service-based economy. Craft also acknowledges the tensions and dilemmas which creative processes can raise within teachers’ professional practice and development, such as the culturally specific nature of creativity; the desirability of perpetual innovation in a consumerist economy; the potential challenges to the status quo; the organization of the curriculum; the role of the teacher and ‘professional artistry’ in a centralized pedagogy; and the tensions between teaching for creativity, creative teaching and creative learning (Craft, 2003). In this study, the focus was particularly on developing approaches in teacher education to prepare for teaching for creativity.
The Creativity and Professional Development Project (C&PD) was established in the School of Education in Brighton University, supported and funded by the Teacher Training Agency for a 12 month period from March 2004. The project had three key aims: to enable primary student teachers to investigate their classroom practice in the use of information communication technology (ICT) to promote creativity in a range of curriculum subjects; to reflect upon the development of their confidence and competence in pedagogy with ICT in primary classrooms in the transition from initial teacher education (ITE) to qualified teacher status (QTS); and to share their experiences with teachers, mentors and University tutors. Phase 1 of the project focused on the student teachers’ final semester in ITE. Phase 2 focused on their first term as newly qualified teachers (NQT) in school. This paper presents the analysis of the first phase which was informed by work in the areas of understandings of creativity, creative practices with ICT, and teacher learning in professional development.
