Abstract
Zip Zap is a Creative Social Enterprise, which offers an author/illustrator- led Continuing Professional Development and Learning (CPDL) programme to develop teacher knowledge, confidence and skills in delivering creative writing and illustration activities, and a Festival of artist-led activities for school pupils. It is one of a number of initiatives that UK schools can buy into. This paper draws on an evaluation of Zip Zap’s CPDL programme and Festival across two UK sites, with two quite different creative learning contexts – Wales and England, to explore issues affecting the pedagogies at work in the space where teachers and creative practitioners elide. An analysis of findings from teacher/pupil/parent/creative practitioner interviews and observations of classroom teaching and CPDL sessions highlighted a number of key issues in relation to pedagogies of creative writing. These are: the teachers’ lack of confidence in creative writing pedagogies, a lack of shared approaches to teaching creative writing, and the potential for shared creative pedagogies. We propose a theoretical framework based on Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of the third space that offers a framework for professional learning that enables collaboration between teachers and creative practitioners, and the emergence of shared, creative pedagogies that would nurture pupils’ creative writing.
Highlights
CREATIVITY IN SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND AND WALESFrom the introduction of the 1944 Education Act until Callaghan’s Ruskin University speech in 1976, creativity was at the very core of teaching and learning in primary education in England and Wales
We identified a number of key issues in relation to how the teachers responded to the opportunities for professional learning offered through the Zip Zap programme, and the potential for teachers to develop pedagogies to support creative writing in the primary classroom
The above discussion highlights the recurrent lack of confidence in adopting/adapting to examples of practice from artists. We believe this points to the need for sustained professional learning opportunities that would enable the development of shared creative pedagogies that are embodied rather than enacted
Summary
CREATIVITY IN SCHOOLS IN ENGLAND AND WALESFrom the introduction of the 1944 Education Act until Callaghan’s Ruskin University speech in 1976, creativity was at the very core of teaching and learning in primary education in England and Wales. The 1976 speech took place against the backdrop of some high profile media reports of progressive education gone awry and Callaghan flagged up the need for education to be centrally controlled, for teachers and their work to be scrutinised and for pupils to be prepared for the world of work. This fledgling neoliberal agenda paved the way for the introduction of the Primary National Curriculum and Standard Attainment Tests (SATs) in 1989 and the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) in 1992. In their discussion of creativity and performativity, Burnard and White write of the issues of ‘risk-taking, time constraints, student-teacher agency and the explicit practice of teaching to the test’ (2008, p. 672)
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