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Examining possibility thinking in action in early years settings

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Whilst the existence of 'possibility thinking' has been acknowledged in some of the educational research literature on creativity in the UK (e.g. Craft, 2001; Craft and Jeffrey, 2004), as yet its role, as manifest in the pedagogical strategies of teachers and learning engagement of young children, has not been fully illuminated. It has been conceptualised as being core to creative learning (Jeffrey, 2005) and could be seen as representing an articulation of the 'being imaginative' part of the current policy framework for creativity in England (QCA, 2005a). Drawing on existing work in this area, this research project sought to identify and analyse what characterises possibility thinking in young children's creative learning and in the pedagogies of practitioners in the early years. In addition, the project aimed to develop innovative methodological ways of identifying and recording the existence of possibility thinking in teacher pedagogies and the learning experience of young children. The research team, comprised staff in an early childhood centre, in an infant school and in a primary school, all of whom worked collaboratively as co-participant researchers with the three university-based researchers. The 12-month long study posed considerable challenges for the team who worked to capture the complex interplay between learning and pedagogy making use of video stimulated review, observation and micro event analysis in the process. This paper shares the conceptual frameworks created, the key insights developed thus far and reflects upon the complexity involved. The team aimed to provide an informative analysis in relation to possibility thinking that would resonate with the everyday experiential evidence of other early years practitioners and would extend both theoretical and practical understanding of possibility thinking in action.
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EXAMINING POSSIBILITY THINKING IN ACTION IN EARLY YEARS
SETTINGS
Teresa Grainger, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK
Anna Craft, The Open University, UK
Pamela Burnard, The University of Cambridge, UK
ABSTRACT
Whilst the existence of ‘possibility thinking’ has been acknowledged in some UK research
literature, as yet its role, as manifest in the pedagogical strategies of teachers and
learning engagement of young children, has not been fully illuminated. This 12 month
long study sought to identify and analyse what characterises possibility thinking in young
children’s creative learning and in the pedagogies of practitioners in the early years. It
also aimed to develop innovative methodological ways of identifying and recording the
existence of possibility thinking. The research team, comprised teachers in an early
childhood centre, an infant and a primary school, working collaboratively as co-
participant researchers with university-based researchers. This paper shares the
conceptual frameworks created, the key insights developed thus far and reflects upon the
complexity involved.
INTRODUCTION
Currently, across Europe, creative learning is being explored in terms of both its
characteristics and accompanying teaching strategies (Jeffrey, 2003, 2004, 2005). The
analysis emerging from this empirical work suggests that the creative in ‘creative
learning’ signals the involvement of pupils in “being innovative, experimental and
inventive” (Jeffrey, 2005, p. 42), and that the learning signifies that pupils ‘engage in
aspects of …intellectual enquiry’. This research suggests that a significant dimension of
this intellectual enquiry is around “possibility thinking and engagement with problems”
(Jeffrey, 2005, p. 43).
In England, a focus on creativity, both in terms of teaching and learning has been
developing for several years, aided by work in schools and elsewhere, and supported by a
range of organisations. These include: Creative Partnerships (Creative
Partnerships/DEMOS, 2003, Creative Partnerships, 2004a, 2004b), the National College
for School Leadership (NCSL, 2004, 2005) and the Qualifications and Curriculum
Authority (QCA 2005a, 2005b). Much of this work, funded through a variety of
government departments, is influenced by the ‘definition’ proposed by the National
Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education, that creativity is “imaginative
activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value”
(NACCCE, 1999, p. 29). The work of this committee led to a four year development and
research project undertaken by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA),
which sought to enable teachers to find and promote creativity in classrooms with
children (aged four to sixteen); it also led to the development of a policy framework for
creativity (QCA, 2005a, 2005b). One aspect of this framework focuses on the
conceptualisation of ‘imaginative activity’ – what NACCCE saw as being at the heart of
creativity - which is where this study commences.
CONCEPTUALISING ‘POSIBILITY THINKING’
The present study draws on a body of literature which posits the notion of
‘possibility thinking’ at the heart of creativity in education (Craft, 2000, 2001, and Craft
and Jeffrey, 2003). Possibility thinking is construed (Craft, 2001) as being at the core of
little ‘c’ creativity (as opposed to high creativity). At its most fundamental, it involves
the posing, in multiple ways, of the question ‘What if?’ - And, therefore, involves the
shift from ‘what is this and what does it do?’ to ‘what can I do with this?’ It thus has
implicit within it, the engagement of learners with what has been called “engagement
with problems” (Jeffrey, 2005).
Possibility Thinking Theoretical Concepts (Craft, 2001)
It is proposed by Craft (2001) that possibility thinking involves both problem
finding and problem solving; this conceptual distinction has been explored and validated
through empirical work in primary classrooms (Craft and Jeffrey, 2003). In an early
discussion, Craft (2001) suggests that possibility thinking can be understood from the
tripartite perspective of people or agents, processes and domains. She suggests nine
features are necessary which may be clustered into two overlapping sets of concepts; one
relating to the generative process itself, and the other relating more specifically to activity
and outcomes as represented in Figure 1. The present study sought to interrogate this
conceptual set of distinctions, to build upon it and to closely document, through
observation and analysis, the characteristic features of possibility thinking in early years
settings. In addition, it sought to document how teachers foster ‘possibility thinking’ as
an aspect of creativity in their classrooms.
Figure 1: Possibility Thinking Theoretical Concepts (Craft, 2001)
In addition to the work undertaken around possibility thinking, there is also a
body of UK research literature which explores the relationship between pedagogical
strategies and creativity (Woods, 1990, Woods and Jeffrey, 1996, Jeffrey and Woods,
2003, Jeffrey, 2003, 2005). Concepts of particular interest to this study included the
notions of ownership, relevance, innovation and control (Woods, 1990, 1995, Woods and
Jeffrey 1996, Jeffrey and Woods 2003) which, it has been suggested, are key features of
creative teaching. However, it is clear that whilst creative teaching may foster learner
creativity, this is not necessarily so, (Craft, 2005); much will depend on the extent to
which the pedagogy adopted is inclusive and co-participative. Craft and Jeffrey (2003)
propose that in fully co-participative classrooms, teachers and young learners explore
issues, pose questions, identify problems and possibilities together, and reflect upon their
thinking and their learning during the process. A critical feature of such an inclusive
approach to pedagogy is that control is handed back to the learner.
The present study, in exploring the nature and role of possibility thinking in
creativity—as manifest in the pedagogical strategies of teachers and learning engagement
of young children—sought to bring these two areas together. The work was undertaken
in the context of the development of the policy framework by the Qualifications and
Curriculum Authority, discussed earlier, which characterises creativity in education as
involving:
posing questions
making connections
being imaginative
exploring options
engaging in critical reflection / evaluation (QCA, 2005a, 2005b)
This framework is proposed as one for both identifying and promoting creativity
within the Early Learning Goals for three to five year olds, and in the core and foundation
subjects of the National Curriculum in England and Wales for pupils aged five to sixteen.
All of the practitioner researchers in this study and one of the university based
researchers were involved in the original QCA research development project, the
production of this framework and its dissemination to other practitioners.
The focus of the study can be summarised as follows: drawing on existing
documentation of classroom work in the area of creative learning and creative
partnerships, this project sought to identify and further document what characterises
possibility thinking in creative learning in early years settings with reference to the QCA
Creativity Framework (QCA, 2005a).
Research Method
Developing an appropriate methodology for theory testing and development in
this area represents a real challenge, since the shifting landscape within which young
children’s learning takes place calls for fine grained analysis (Anfara, Brown, and
Mangione, 2002), especially in early years settings (Marsh, 2005; Young, 2002). The
sort of enquiry appropriate for documenting the existence and uniqueness of ‘possibility
thinking’, in the events and actions arising from learner engagement and teacher
pedagogies, required careful reflection upon and reconstructions of practice, observation
and systematic event recording. The methodological approach chosen in this study was
naturalistic, collaborative inquiry.
The methodological process involved implementing a deductive-inductive
analytical approach. The team worked deductively by working with an existing
conceptual framework or set of categories (i.e. a ‘possibility thinking’ framework, linked
to the original theoretical conceptualisation, see figure 1.) and inductively (if one accepts
the belief that one can be truly inductive), by re-looking at the data to identify emergent
categories within it. By using this combination of approaches, the team benefited from
the focusing and bounding function of a conceptual framework, whilst allowing new
concepts to emerge, and thus made use of grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967;
Strauss and Corbin, 1998).
The research was co-participative in nature; a dimension of this was the inclusive
structure and composition of the research team, which included two head teachers, two
teachers and a teaching assistant; these professionals worked variously in an early
childhood centre, an infant school and a primary school. Three core university-based
researchers were also involved; a fourth was more peripherally involved. All colleagues
were encouraged to engage in ways that were meaningful to the development of their
practice and to the depth of their own interests and purposes. The core research team
sought to develop inclusive ways of working in order to encourage maximum self-
determined involvement within a shared and agreed upon set of objectives.
Data Collection and Analytic Method
The data collection methods selected within this collaborative inquiry included
the following.
Video-stimulated review (VSR), or dialogic view viewing as it has been called,
was used to stimulate reflection and critical conversations about possibility thinking as a
form of engagement in the service of creativity and creative thinking processes. VSR has
been recognised as a particularly useful tool for educational research and reflecting upon
interactive teacher-pupil strategies (Walker, 2002; Zellermayer and Ronn, 1999). In this
project, it helped make visible the children’s involvement and the pedagogy being
employed. The initial material for the video stimulated review was drawn from the QCA
Creativity: Find it! Promote it! video compilations (QCA, 2005a). The two schools and
one nursery involved in this project were among those featured in the video, thus
enabling the teachers the opportunity for analysis of their own practices. The practitioners
and researchers engaged in analytic and interpretive discussion in and across the case
record archives.
Observation was used, underpinned by an ethnographic approach to the process.
The university researchers observed in an open-ended way, screening nothing out and
noting as many details as possible, guided by overarching categories whilst remaining
open to new insights (Jones & Somekh, 2005).
Event record or event sampling analysis was drawn from detailed transcription of
action and talk by a particular child in contemplative time, immersed activity, or
children’s interaction as they engaged with a particular object, event or particular setting.
In order to understand children’s learning, each of the actions—nonverbal and verbal—
that was used by children to ‘possibility think’ in educational settings was documented at
the micro level. It was hoped that this documentation of short sequences of children
engaged/immersed in talk and action would illustrate something of the variation with
which ‘possibility thinking’ might be concerned. It was decided that event or activity
recordings would be helpful to describe a specific recurring activity. The activity record,
as described by Werner (1992), documents specific actions making activities very
explicit.
In addition, interviews of the teachers and other support staff as well as field notes
from informal conversations, along with documents such as students’ work, photographs,
curriculum guidelines, and data on class planning were collected and analysed, and a
further 15 hours of videoed observations were recorded in each classroom. It was
perceived that the collection of multiple sources and data collection strategies offered
sufficient saturation and triangulation of the data.
In seeking to unravel the issues of what constitutes possibility thinking in the
learning experiences of young children and how teachers foster possibility thinking as an
aspect of creativity, the researchers sought to frame the data collection and analysis as
creatively as possible. They used probes and questions as well as diagrams to facilitate
constructed understandings of the data. Such analytic tools, employed during the two and
a half-day data surgeries and other sessions were designed to clarify thinking, provide
alternative ways of thinking, and facilitate the teasing out of emergent interpretations
with the practitioners. This opportunity to engage in VSR and focused discussion in the
group enabled the teachers to engage in in-depth reflective practice, involving both
reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action (Schon, 1987).
Introducing the Settings
At Thomas Coram (the Early Childhood Centre), the way of working (with four to
five year olds) for both the head teacher and the class teacher was with a focus group of
ten children. The close observation employed and the fact that the setting as a whole
takes children from six months to five years creates supportive conditions and a rich
knowledge of each child.
At Cunningham Hill (the Infant School), the emphasis for both class teacher and
teaching assistant, ( working with five to six year olds), was on facilitating the transition
from home, or previous setting, to school by making relationships with the children prior
to entry. The children’s ownership of space and the contribution of their ideas to the
development of the learning environment, in particular through interactive display, were
profiled highly. The time spent on developing children’s skills and knowledge to
facilitate this co-participative approach, created enabling conditions and was combined
with real knowledge about each individual and his or her context.
At Hackleton Primary School, the Key Stage One teacher (working with six and
seven year olds), focused upon developing autonomy and agency through ‘curriculum
flows’, and planned for creative teaching and learning in response to the children’s
questions and interests. Research, reasoning and recording were seen to be essential
complements to the traditional ‘3 R’s’ in this context; the emphasis was upon children
working in teams, experiencing, exploring and helping one another while the teacher set
directions, offered opportunities and acted as a guide and a resource.
Discussion of Findings
The team collaboratively developed a documentation framework based upon the
conceptual framework (Figure 1). This was organised into a three-fold structure (process,
outcome and process plus outcome). The documentation framework also connected to the
QCA Creativity Framework (QCA, 2005a). As data was collected and analysed, multiple
revisions were made to the three-fold structure, and some features of possibility thinking
were repositioned. For example, the team came to recognise that ‘risk taking’ was
involved at different levels and in different ways for individuals in both the process and
the outcomes of possibility thinking, and agreed it should not be conceived as an outcome
alone. It was also noted that children’s deep immersion in activity formed a critical and
missing ingredient in the conceptualisation of possibility thinking. These new
connections are represented in Figure 2. This mapping represented a departure from the
earlier conceptual representation shown in Figure 1 and enabled the team to focus in
more closely.
Figure 2. Possibility Thinking Re-conceptualised
Following close observations in each context using the possibility thinking
documentation framework and further discussion as a research team, core areas of
possibility thinking in the context of children’s learning were identified. These were
evidenced in each context and identified by both university researchers and the teacher
researchers. They included the three aspects of ‘Process’:
Posing questions
Play
Immersion
They also included three aspects of ‘Process-Outcome’:
Being imaginative
Innovation
Risk taking
On the ‘Outcomes’ side, little evidence was found of the notion of ‘development,’
except as implicit within the children’s learning, and the question of taking intentional
action was problematic particularly in relation to the youngest children, as so much of
what they were engaged in was ‘invisible thinking’ until later. It was only possible over
time for a practitioner to surmise that a child might have been taking ‘intentional action’.
In terms of Process and Outcome, the notion of innovation was also difficult in
terms of its relative meaning. What, for example, might be normal activity in one class
or setting culture, and therefore for learners within it, might not be for another. Thus, at
Hackleton Primary School, after four years of developing creative learning, where
children have experienced, through siblings, critical events in school (such as the making
and burning of medieval London to signify the Great Fire of London), it is difficult to be
sure that the curriculum remains innovative for each new child.
Through discussions of this kind, the team considered at length, not only the
extent to which some features were central or otherwise to possibility thinking, but also
whether the second-stage representation of features of possibility thinking within the
areas of process, process-outcomes and outcomes, as described in Figure 2, was a useful
distinction. The separation of process and outcome was not easily evidenced in practice
in these early years classrooms and appeared too structured to accurately reflect the
fluidity observed, since for example, children often took risks as part of the process of
moving their thinking forwards and this was not necessarily an outcome. In addition,
considerable autonomy and agency (‘self-determination’) was documented in each
classroom, and whilst the degree of this was task-dependent, it too could not be
confidently assigned within the outcome arena alone.
Furthermore and perhaps most significantly, the team perceived that the dynamic
interplay between teaching and learning needed to be properly recognised and
conceptualised. As a consequence, a new diagrammatic representation was created which
reflected more accurately the integration of the creative teaching and learning which
appears to foster the development of possibility thinking (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. An Evidence-based Model of Possibility Thinking
The overlapping domains of teaching and learning were set within a wider circle
which sought to profile the significance of the enabling context both in the classroom
setting and in the wider school environment. These external and internal enabling factors
clearly influenced and surrounded the playful endeavours of teachers and children and
fostered the development of self confidence and self-esteem. This enabled young children
to ask questions, to pose problems and to develop their disposition to learn. It was clear
for example, that the historical trajectory of Hackleton primary school had contributed
significantly to what is currently possible within any given classroom there; furthermore,
the co-construction of the curriculum enriched the learners’ remarkable independence
which was observed and documented in this context.
The children’s immersion in a ‘benign environment’ appeared to be significant in
all three settings, particularly in the context of fostering creativity. As many writers
within the psychoanalytic tradition (Winnicott, 1974; Freud, 1914) have noted, allowing
ideas to come spontaneously from inside exposes the child (and adults too) to levels of
insecurity and possible anxiety in novel encounters; so care has to be taken to make the
situation as free from criticism, mockery or shame as possible. In each of the classrooms
in this study, the adults sought to make learning from experience an empowering and
generative experience, by providing a safe, known and trusted environment, so that
children were able to move into original and creative spaces with confidence and take
risks. During analysis sessions, each practitioner talked about the importance of removing
some of the time pressures upon themselves and the children, of not rushing or being a
slave to ‘pace’. This issue is developed further under ‘pedagogy’.
EVIDENCE OF POSSIBILITY THINKING IN LEARNING AND PEDAGOGY
The seven elements of possibility thinking, which were evident in all the
classrooms, are now discussed from the dual perspectives of both learning and pedagogy.
For ease of reference and in the interests of economy, they are grouped together as
follows: play and immersion, posing questions, self-determination and risk taking, being
imaginative and making connections.
PLAY AND IMMERSION
In all three educational contexts the children were offered opportunities to
immerse themselves for extended periods of time in particular activities; these were
returned to and were frequently revisited. The provision of real time for immersion
allowed ideas to incubate and questions to emerge through their playful encounters with
each other and with the available materials. Motivated by their own knowledge and
interests, and supported by the space and scope offered for exploration, children often
travelled further in play and in such contexts were “a head taller than themselves”
(Vygotsky, 1978). In such playful situations, they extended boundaries and stepped into
un-chartered waters with considerable engagement, interest and motivation. Such creative
play was paradoxically serious and arose out of interactions with others, with ideas and
experience set within generative, problem solving and imaginatively involving contexts.
Their affective engagement in this ‘third area’, as Winnicott (1974) calls the deep play of
childhood, was rooted in the body and the senses, and prompted an openness to learning
which their teachers built upon. It is a matter of conjecture as to whether this may be a
necessary condition for possibility thinking within creative learning.
POSING QUESTIONS
The focus of questioning, generating ideas through pondering and positing ‘what
if ‘scenarios in the mind, was a central feature of possibility thinking. Both audible and
inaudible questions were documented; many in the latter category were visible in the
behaviour of the young learners through close observation and deep knowledge of the
children. Reverse questioning on the part of one teacher was also in evidence and the
asking of questions and modelling of genuine enquiry was seen to be common practice
and a core element of developing self determination. Children’s questions were treated
with a deep respect and real interest by these professionals and multiple examples were
recorded of unusual questions arising. In some of the data collected, the posing of
questions sometimes incorporated an ‘as if’ (imaginative) thinking quality, and thus the
permeability of elements of possibility thinking were highlighted. In addition, the posing
of questions, in an ‘as if’ space, were evidenced through children making connections
through prediction, compensation, improvisation and testing. Video evidence of the
event recording indicated that some of the youngest children mirrored the adults echoing
strategies, changing the possessive pronoun in order to pose such ‘borrowed’ questions to
other children. The role of the adult modelling ‘as if ‘ thinking and using a tentative open
ended questioning stance was clearly critical in these closely analysed encounters.
SELF DETERMINATION AND RISK TAKING
By providing more freedom and framing regular “challenges where there is no
clear cut solution and in which pupils can exert individual and group ownership” (DfES,
2003, p. 9), these teachers encouraged the children’s involvement and fostered the taking
of risks. In the open environments observed, which extended to perceiving the whole
school as a resource for learning, the learners appeared to grow in confidence and
developed a degree of ownership of the learning space, both physical and intellectual.
The children clearly developed the courage to take risks, working as they were in safe,
supportive environments in which their contributions were manifestly valued and they
were expected to exercise agency and autonomy. The teachers were very adamant that the
curriculum was designed through action and interaction with the young learners and that
the children were expected, even required from the outset, to take ownership of their own
learning. They were expected to take risks in order to learn and were supported in so
doing by working on individual and collaborative, often self initiated activities.
BEING IMAGINATIVE AND MAKING CONNECTIONS
There was a wealth of evidence in the videos and the observations of young
children demonstrating different kinds of imagination in their thinking. Being
imaginative and imagining were evidenced extensively in the data as the children
imagined what might be, adopted roles and imagined alternative world frames. Children
often created imaginary worlds in which they could explore fictional and, on occasions,
historical scenarios and in which they could position themselves differently and postulate
the reasons for this. In another sense, being imaginative enabled children to extend their
experience of decision making in a way that was not normally available to them in school
activity. There was evidence of them positioning themselves as decision-makers about
the quality of ideas, content of their learning tasks, and ways of conducting these.
Equally, this coupling of imagination with the content of the curriculum enabled children
to create their own entries into different learning activities; this essentially generative
mode also enabled them to experience the curriculum differently, from an alternative
viewpoint for example. The children’s deep immersion in a relatively seamless early
years curriculum, which reflected few distinctions in terms of subject domains, fostered
their ability to make unusual connections between, for example, ideas and activities or
their own and others’ lives.
PEDAGOGY
The pedagogy being employed by these professionals in each context was a
somewhat ‘invisible one’ (Bernstein, 1977; David et al, 2000); they positioned
themselves off-centre stage and promoted learning through the children’s self chosen
activities and interests within any given broadly conceived subject domain. Whilst they
were clearly not afraid to use direct instruction and teacher-led work where necessary,
they sought to balance teacher and child-led initiatives and explicitly focused on fostering
independence and autonomy in their young learners. There was evidence of teaching and
learning being combined in action, as the teachers encouraged the children to direct more
of their learning journeys.
The children were frequently observed taking such a lead, but they did not do so
alone and were not rushed into new spaces. Rather they were closely observed and
supported as they travelled safely and purposefully forwards. The rhythm of the learning
was reminiscent of Woods’ (1995) description of orchestration and pattern and was
described by one of the teachers as “the very opposite of pace” and “more of a dance.”
This notion of teaching and learning being conceptualised as a form of dance was
explored by the research group. The kind of dance discussed was akin to a free-style—a
Salsa perhaps—with some known steps and moves but with each participant relating
closely to others on the dance floor, with intricate awareness and a real sense of volition
on the part of each dancer. This conception appeared to be more in tune with the
pedagogic practices and learning observed than a more strictly choreographed piece, in
which each dancer has a set of pre-arranged steps and is expected to take part according
to the ‘rules’ and conventions of the dance.
The creative teachers in this study took time to watch and listen, pondering what
particular actions might mean to the children and offering them options and challenges as
they immersed themselves in playful and open ended contexts. The teachers sought to
avoid undue haste and allowed the activities to be undertaken at the children’s pace.
Unusually perhaps, they were not driven by any imposed need for speed to cover the
prescribed curriculum objectives which has arguably dominated the agenda in England in
recent years (Burns and Myhill, 2004). These professionals allowed themselves and the
learners’ time and space to play, to explore, to speculate, to question and to possibility
think their way forwards. The critical pedagogical principle underpinning such creative
learning communities was that the teachers often led by following, creating flexible maps
en route with the class. This fostered the children’s autonomy and volition and often led
to innovation. As Neelands (2000, p. 54) observes, “the true art of teaching lies in the
complex tempering of the planned with the lived” and whilst subject knowledge and
curriculum content was engaged with, this was in response to the children’s genuine
interests and needs. The young learners were actively taught to value each others’
contributions and experienced a considerable degree of ownership over the curriculum.
Within this ‘invisible pedagogy’, high levels of professional artistry were
observed and documented in action. The commonalities identified across each setting
included: an enabling environment, time and pace seen as a flexible and permeable
resource, leading by following the children and a clear focus on agency and co-
participation (Jeffrey and Craft, 2004; Craft and Jeffrey, 2003).
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The study has begun to identify and document what constitutes possibility
thinking in the learning experiences of young children, and how teachers foster
possibility thinking as an aspect of creativity. Its many features deserve close
examination and the methods used to document it deserve wider use in developing
practitioners’ understanding of children’s thinking and their own pedagogies (Burnard et
al., 2006). The researcher-teachers in this study clearly valued the chance to reflect upon
their practice, to share their insights with others and to engage with innovative research
techniques. The opportunity to collaboratively consider the consequences of their
developing understanding about children’s thinking has prompted them to make more use
of the techniques of video-stimulated review and micro event analysis as revealing
applications for developing pedagogic understanding.
There are, however, many issues which the team wishes to examine further,
including when there are opportunities to develop creativity in the domains of the early
years and primary curriculum. Issues related to this include the challenge of developing
possibility thinking in older classes with an overloaded and content-heavy curriculum, the
balance between structure and freedom, power and pedagogy, and the relationships
between possibility thinking and the standards agenda which seeks to see rising
achievement in specific curriculum areas. The development of possibility thinking in
different areas of the curriculum, from the perspectives of both learning and pedagogy,
are certainly areas which would warrant future scrutiny, as would ways of describing
progression in possibility thinking, indeed a first foray into this arena has already
commenced (Craft et al., 2006). Through examining possibility thinking in action in early
years settings, the researchers and researcher practitioners have begun to capture some of
the complexities and interplays between learning and pedagogy. Capitalising on these
insights and examining the issues arising still further constitutes the next collaborative
challenge.
.
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to all the collaborators in this project: Bernadette Duffy and Ruth
Hanson from Thomas Coram Early Childhood Centre, London, Jean Keene and Lindsay
Haynes from Cunningham Hill Infant school, Hertfordshire, Dawn Burns from Hackleton
Primary School, Northamptonshire, Susanne Jasilek, and Anne Meredith, Consultant
Researchers to the Open University and Peter Woods, Visiting Professor at Plymouth
University – and of course all of the children and their parents / carers who gave willingly
of their time. Thanks are also due to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority for
their permission to use the video and rushes from Creativity: Find It! Promote It! (QCA,
2005) and Yvonne Davies and Paul Davies at Television Junction who made this video
and gave their blessing for us to use it in this study.
Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at Cambridge University, England; in
April, 2005: International Symposium on Documenting Creative Learning (Craft et al.,
2005a) and at Strathclyde University, Scotland in October, 2005: ESRC Creativity in
Education Seminar, organised by BERA Special Interest Group, Creativity in Education
(Craft et al., 2005b).
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Article
This article is located in current debates about how English teachers can create classroom environments that promote creative writing. It focuses on two senior primary teachers’ conceptualisations and enactments of imagination and imaginative writing pedagogy. The article illustrates how these different conceptualisations translate into different creative writing pedagogies. I propose that key variables which facilitate or limit creative writing include the teachers’ school writing histories, conceptualisations of imagination, classroom discourses and pedagogy. The article shows how the interaction of these key variables results in the two teachers creating different sites of imaginative possibilities. Conceptually, the article explores the relationship between imaginative/creative writing, freedom and constraints, cognition and affect. I conclude that it is critical for teachers to find a balance between unlimited freedom and excessive structure. The concepts of structured freedom and enabling constraints provide a space for imaginative writing pedagogy between the two extremes of unlimited freedom and excessive structure. Keywords: (5-6) imagination; creativity; writing; structured freedom; pedagogy; enabling constraints; discourses; cognition; affect.
Chapter
A perennial debate in the teaching of literacy is that between those arguing the need to concentrate on the acquisition of the basic skills of reading and writing, the other arguing the merits of appreciation, imagination and critical capacity. The best solution is probably a combination of the two, but this is not easy to achieve. This chapter describes how reading can bring about personal change, through for example, finding your identity and through child development. Reading can bring empowerment, through helping the reader to find a voice; reading can help the reader to become critically aware; and reading can also have a distinctive therapeutic effect. But these results need space in which to develop, not an overcrowded curriculum.
Article
There have been several studies of young children's spontaneous vocalizations in free-play and, arising from these, an interesting similarity of findings. However, a close reading reveals that while there is similarity, in the finer detail there are also differences and ambiguities. Furthermore, the reading reveals that findings and interpretations have mostly been drawn from evidence gathered from preschoolers attending kindergarten and nursery education. Younger children of two to three years old, particularly those attending day-care or nursery education, are less represented. The purpose of this study was to provide information which would add to and assist in the process of clarifying information arising from prior studies. Research was undertaken to observe and collect the spontaneous vocalizations produced by two- to three-year-olds in a day-care setting in London, UK. Six regular attenders at the day-care were observed over a series of six free-play hours. Details of their vocalizations in the context of their general play were collected in field-notes. The total collected observational data were compared in order to identify common features which would lead to the formation of categories. These categories are presented and, to assist description, each one is illustrated by vignettes drawn from the play of one child. These categories are then discussed in the light of findings from prior studies. Finally, some implications for practice are proposed.
Book
Is creative teaching still possible in English schools? Can teachers maintain and promote their own interests and beliefs as well as deliver a prescribed National Curriculum? This book explores creative teachers' attempts to pursue their brand of teaching despite the changes. Peter Woods has discovered a range of strategies and adaptations to this end among such teachers, including resisting change which runs counter to their own values, appropriating the National Curriculum within their own ethos, enhancing their role through the use of others; and enriching their work through the National Curriculum to provide quality learning experiences. If all else fails, such teachers remove themselves from the system and take their creativity elsewhere. A strong theme of self-determination runs through these experiences. While acknowledging hard realities, the book is ultimately optimistic, and a tribute to the dedication and inspiration of primary school teachers. The book makes an important contribution to educational theory, showing a range of responses to intensification as well as providing many detailed examples of collaborative research methods.
Book
The quality of teaching depends to a large extent on the opportunities provided for teachers to teach. Personal factors are important, as are the design and adequacy of learning tasks; but teacher interests and motivation, and social, political and economic factors have to be taken into consideration in ascertaining quality. 'Teacher Skills and Strategies' includes new and recent material on 'creative' teaching and the management of the teacher role, stress among teachers and the effect of the 1988 Education reform Act on classroom teaching. Peter Woods explores strategies in this new context, integrating them into a theoretical model based on 'opportunities to teach and learn'.
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This paper describes how the use of video helped us create dialogic intersub‐jective educational spaces in which transformative learning can take place. Focusing simultaneously on two learning contexts: action research and teacher‐student conferencing, it shows how the development of a dialogical space between researchers and teachers in action research enhances the development of such a space between teachers and students in classrooms. In addition, it describes how the participatory research relationship helped illuminate both for teachers and for students what they implicitly know is important to change, as they become aware of new possibilities for pedagogical improvement. Most of all, dialogic video viewing helped them step outside of themselves in order to see each other and return to look at themselves as others’. This article is based in part on PR's MA dissertation.
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Undaunted by theoretical debates which suggest the impossibility of realising the aspiration, case study research is essentially concerned with providing credible representations of reality. Case studies aim to give the reader a sense of 'being there'; whether this means seeing a classroom through the eyes of a child, a school through the eyes of a teacher, or education through the eyes of a parent (or more often, all of the above). Conventionally, research and evaluation have attempted this through the use of various forms of written text, usually heavily laced with quotations from interview transcripts, but current technologies bring to the scholar's workbench (and the teacher's desk) access to media previously available only to specialists. It is now possible for researchers (including teachers, parents and students) to use audio, photo and video media; to move beyond describing and interpreting to showing and explaining. This paper argues that a key theoretical resource available to us as we engage in this media shift is a set of ideas developed by Lawrence Stenhouse in the late 1970s around the idea of the 'case record'. These ideas are re-examined in the current context and some speculative comments offered about the ways in which we might move a step further in closing some of the gaps in Education between theory and practice, research and action, the present and the possible.
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Recent learning theories and the suggested importance of 'interactive' approaches in national initiatives, (NLS, NNS) led to an ESRC-funded action research project involving the University of Exeter and teachers in three schools--'Using Talk to Activate Learners' Knowledge' (TALK). This investigated how 'interactive' whole class teaching was and whether teacher-pupil interactions permitted recoding of information and understanding. The findings corroborate those from Galton (1999a, 1999b), Mroz (2000) and English (2002): that teacher-led questioning and explanation still dominate, as do teachers' objectives. Interaction as participation was differentially experienced by higher and lower abilities, boys and girls, with few opportunities for pupil initiation or extended response. The study, however, provides a model for more fully analysing the varying forms and functions of teachers' questions and statements which may lead to a greater clarity in recognising ways to provide more effective discourse for learning.