‘What you risk reveals what you value’: fostering creativity in primary physical education

Abstract

Creativity has become a buzzword in UK culture in the twenty-first century and is in increasing demand across many spheres. In education, its usage is often generic and has become ever more widespread as it has found its way into a plethora of government documentation pertaining to primary schools over the last decade. However, with a continued focus upon a performativity discourse, creativity continues to be underdeveloped in primary schools, even in areas such as Physical Education (PE), which has great potential for fostering creativity due to an endless range of movement possibilities. Using Nicholson's model (Enhancing creativity, in R. J. Sternberg, Ed., Handbook of creativity; Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999) for creative enhancement, this paper examines key issues that concern the development of creativity within primary PE and seeks to construct some ‘real’ recommendations for how this could manifest itself in practice.