Creative primary schools: developing and maintaining pedagogy for creativity

Abstract

This micro-ethnographic study investigated pedagogy in two English primary schools, following a change of government and challenges posed by economic austerity. Unlike the previous decade's emphasis on children's curiosity and agency and valuing arts and partnership, emphasis on knowledge and attainment was now foregrounded. A two-stage National Curriculum government review (2011–2012) brought primary schools little clarity. During the review period, the authors researched two purposively chosen schools, recognised nationally for their creative approaches. This paper discusses their creative teaching and learning pedagogic practices. Three shared characteristics emerged through triangulated qualitative analysis: co-construction, high value placed on children's control/agency/ownership and high expectations in skilful creative engagement, evident through the arts, use of integrated themes and topics, flexible time, children's immersive involvement and attending closely to children. Thematic findings are discussed alongside unique qualities of each school's pedagogy and implications for primary education considered.

Keywords:

• pedagogy for creativity
• co-construction
• control
• agency
• ownership
• creative skills

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to children, staff, parents and partners of the schools. Thanks, too, are due to colleagues who attended OU Creative Primary Schools National Conference (London, June 2012), BERA conference (Manchester, September 2012) and the OU (Milton Keynes, November 2012), where these findings were discussed. We acknowledge an OU CREET grant which made the work possible. Finally, we are grateful to our reviewers for detailed comments on an earlier draft.

Notes

1. Ball uses this term to delineate (negative) emergent phenomenon of teachers and schools subjected to accountability measures which include children's performance in standardised tests, inspection evidence and other external monitoring of teachers by others who are not teachers. He notes that such measures are altering not just how learning takes place, but they redefine what learning is and the construction of learner and teacher identities. Performativity is frequently described in English education as the enemy of creativity.

2. The government inspection agency.

3. A government-funded initiative in areas of rural and urban deprivation, funding partnerships with creative specialists and to nurture children's creativity. As part of economic austerity measures the incoming Conservative dominated government in 2010 closed the programme.

4. A particular government instruction at one stage in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

5. A term used by Thomson et al. (2012) to mean ‘the ways in which people live together and find a place in a community’ (14).

6. The transformation of ‘what is’ to ‘what might be’ through ‘what if’ and ‘as if’ thinking, as conceptualised by Craft (2002) and subsequently the focus of over a decade of empirical studies by Craft, Burnard and others.

7. Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study initiated by the International Association for the Evaluation of Achievement in 1995 for grades 4 and 8.

8. Progress in International Reading Literacy Study initiated by the International Association for the Evaluation of Achievement in … In 2001, for grades 4 and 8.

9. Programme for International Student Assessment, initiated by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for 15-year-olds in 1997.

10. In 2009, PISA involved 74 countries. Both produce summative data through specially administered tests.

11. Academies (self-governing, specialist schools, directly funded by government free of local government control and also often in receipt of corporate funding or support – mainly secondary but some primary) and Free Schools (set up by parents, charities, religious groups businesses and parents in response to local needs but funded by the taxpayer and free to attend) are exempt from the National Curriculum. They do, nevertheless, have to ensure a balanced and broad curriculum and are not exempt from testing.

12. The pedagogy focus explored the teaching, whereas the other focus explored the way in which curriculum (i.e. planned learning in the school) was interpreted and organised.

13. The conversation schedules used with governors, teachers, heads and senior leaders and in each school can be found in Appendix 1.

14. Foundation stage: 3- to 5-year-olds, key stage 1: 5- to 7-year-olds and key stage 2: 7- to 11-year-olds.

15. The two field researchers blind coded a sample of one another's data mirroring open, axial and thematic coding. The two Principal Investigators in turn blind coded samples of this already-triangulated analysis. Post-coding discussions at each level increased inter-rater reliability.

16. An arts-based charity based in the south-west of England involving groups of artists, educators and cultural centres working in collaboration with children and young people.