برداشتهای معلمان قبل از خدمت از خلاقیت در مدرسه ابتدایی انگلیسی

Widely thought to be something worth encouraging in young learners, creativity has popularly been associated more with music and art than with other areas of the curriculum. There have been many studies of creativity but few that focus explicitly on what counts as creative thinking in specific subject areas. The aim of the research reported here was to determine pre-service teachers’ conceptions of creativity within the curriculum for English. The study involved analyses of primary school trainee teachers’ responses to questionnaires and follow-up focus group discussion to identify their conceptions. A group of 48 trainees in the final year of an undergraduate degree in primary education leading to qualified teacher status in England completed the questionnaire. Of these, eight volunteered to participate in a follow-up focus group discussion to further explore ideas. Responses were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Conceptions of creativity in English were found to be limited, focused mainly on naïve views of story writing and dramatic activity. Responses indicated that they were often unable to distinguish clearly between the concept of creativity, an example of its occurrence in the classroom, and what feature of that example made it creative. Consequently, their limited constructions of creativity were confused. It is important that teachers in schools as well as those responsible for training teachers in universities are advised that trainees’ conceptions of creativity in English may be inadequate in several respects and that they may not recognise opportunities for creativity. Pre-service training programmes could well benefit from structured courses on the forms and applications of creativity.

Studies on creativity usually agree that it is a process involving some form of activity resulting in something of worth and novelty, at least to the person creating it. NACCCE (1999, item 29) captured the essence of this in its definition of creativity as: Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value. Thurstone (1952) argued that even if an outcome has already been ‘discovered’, if it is new to the individual then it is a creative act. He suggested that for children, since they do not have the same experiences, knowledge-base or technical expertise as adults, they can have novel ideas and produce creative products that are new to them. This is Eysenck's (1996) private novelty, Boden's (1996) personal creativity and Craft's (2002) ‘small c’ creativity. Discussing teaching for creativity, Persaud (2006) suggested that the criterion of novelty is not enough. He argued that to focus on the production of something novel neglects the process by which the creative products are critically evaluated, selected and altered, or rejected by the creator. He proposed that any judgement of creativity must also involve confirmation of value or worth by experts. For children, of course, the expert is usually the teacher. Compton (2007) provided a detailed review of definitions of creativity in various documents and identified the key skills underpinning creative thinking as: enquiry; evaluation; ideation; imagination; innovation; and problem solving. These are skills accessible to most people, thus reinforcing the notion that everyone can be creative to some degree (Boden, 2004 and Torrance, 1975), and seem to us to be context-independent skills. If, as Piaget argued, the principal goal of education is to produce creative people (Fisher, 1990, p. 30), then this in itself would seem to make teaching for creativity in any subject in the school curriculum worthwhile. An improvement in social skills, motivation, achievement, self-esteem and behaviour have all been reported in classrooms where creative thinking is encouraged (OFSTED, 2006 and QCA, 2003). It can contribute to an individual's ability to cope in new situations, act autonomously and be independent (Craft, 2002). The potential of someone who can think creatively to contribute to culture and society is also emphasised by, for example, NACCCE (1999). Creativity is increasingly on the agenda of education policy makers and one of the OECD's broad goals for educational policy is to foster creativity (Knight, 2002). Consequently, there are calls for a transformation of standards-driven, prescribed curricula to ones in which creativity is valued and encouraged (Burke Hensley, 2004 and Hall and Thomson, 2005). Yet, despite teachers being urged to foster creativity, there is evidence that schools tend to ignore it (Craft, 2002, Fisher, 1990 and Garner, 2007). Why might this be? Being creative is something pupils must do for themselves but teachers can scaffold the process by providing conditions likely to increase the possibility that pupils will be creative (D.P. Newton, 2012, Nickerson, 1999 and Weisberg, 1988). However, pupils must also be able to be creative in the absence of a teacher. Therefore, we should be helping them to develop abilities which increase the likelihood that they will be creative unaided. Skills and behaviours need to be established which support future independent creative thinking. Can teachers do this? While there have been many studies of creativity, few have focused explicitly on creative thinking in subject areas. The aim of this study was to determine some conceptions of creativity within the curriculum for English.

What is significant, as already emphasised by Woods (2001) and Hilton (2006), is the influence of political agendas surrounding curriculum development. The emphasis on reading standards in particular constrains teaching and learning in English and is felt when teachers want to foster creative thinking. Cremin, Burnard, and Craft (2006), in their study of imagination and possibility thinking with young children, identify seven areas for teachers to think about when encouraging creative thinking: posing questions; play; immersion and making connections; being imaginative; innovation; risk taking; and self-determination. They also note the difficulties in doing this when teachers have ‘to reconcile the pressures of curriculum prescription with the demand to teach for creativity’ (p. 117) and suggests that it only works when teachers can allow pupils (and themselves) the time and space to experience these. Yet if teachers, and this includes new teachers, do not know what counts as creative activity, then this is not likely to happen. This is a salutary lesson for those who train teachers, whether in higher education institutions or in employment based contexts. If teachers are to meet expectations and develop the pupils in their care as creative learners, they need to be prepared for this during their training stage. Are the trainers confident in their own understandings and interpretations of what creativity is generally and what counts as a creative learning experience in the context of the discipline of English? This paper has reported on a study of trainee primary teachers’ notions of creativity in the curriculum subject of English and makes some recommendations as a result of the findings. Although the context of the study is England, the findings from more general studies would suggest that these recommendations could be of interest to colleagues further afield.