At the beginning of this project we set out with five clear areas for focus. These were the context, knowledge¸ agency, pedagogies and leadership required to foster creativity.
Our project began with a launch conference for teachers, school leaders and governors involved in the first phase of our collaborative. This conference set the scene for the collaborative, introduced the aims of the project and involved input from leading experts in the field, including Professor Paul Sowden of the University of Winchester, Professor Bill Lucas from the University of Winchester, Dr Stephan Vincent-Lancrin, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and Professor Ron Beghetto, Arizona State University. Professional learning for the teachers has been in the form of our Teacher research group, which meets for a full day every half term and involves all the project teachers. In the first year we focused on examining creativity through three lenses:
1) The contexts and school climate necessary for creativity to flourish
2) The creative thinking process, that is the individual thinking skills involved in being creative
3) The creative actions, practices and habits that can support a creative thinking process
We co-constructed a framework of teaching for creativity that emphasised a three phase, explore-ideate-evaluate, iterative process of creative thinking.
The explore phase focuses on developing a rich understanding of a creative challenge, exploring relevant knowledge and resources, understanding a range of perspectives and considering what conditions an effective outcome needs to meet.
The ideate phase focuses on generating multiple ideas about ways of approaching a creative challenge and what potential ‘solutions’ might be.
The evaluate phase focuses on reflecting back on the possible solutions, selecting among them and considering how they could be further developed and elaborated.
Teachers and leaders also considered how creative practices, actions and habits, such as working collaboratively, could support different aspects of the creative process.
It was really important that teachers and leaders had a prolonged period of time (months) to ‘wrestle’ with the nature of creativity and how a creative process can be fostered. This process was really important as what emerged was a deep and informed knowledge about creativity, building a sense of creative agency and ownership, and benefitting teachers and their pupils.
Taking place at the same time and location as the Teacher Research Group, has been our half-termly Leadership group. This has enabled the Headteachers of the schools involved in the collaborative to come together and discuss, in the early stages, how the project aims aligned with their own vision for teaching and learning in their schools and to crystalise what they hoped to be the outcome of their involvement in the project.
This open, honest sharing of ideas and reflecting on where their schools were at the start and where they were hoping to develop, was integral to the buy-in of the leaders and, therefore, the overall impact and success of the project. The Leadership group was very deliberately planned to run at the same time and in the same location as the TRGs in order that we could ensure the leaders and their teachers had some sustained time together, developing shared understandings and demonstrating to the teachers in the group that this work was of importance for the leaders.
We collected evidence on the impact of our areas of focus, we used a ‘mixed-methods’ research approach. This means we are collecting quantitative data through a range of survey measures and qualitative data through focus groups and interviews with pupils, teachers and school leaders. Teachers also observed the impact of the work by exploring creative activity and outcomes in the classroom.