Exploring the enactment of creative practices and associated learner creativity in primary arts and science lessons

Creativity is an important educational aim with benefits for the individual and wider society. In a mixed methods design this study explored how award scheme primary teachers understood and nurtured learner creativity. The research demonstrated originality in exploring and contrasting creative practices and learner creativity with the same teachers in the contexts of arts and science lessons and contributed to the field through the advancement and combination of frameworks for researcher analysis in the less frequently studied upper primary age range. In Phase 1 a questionnaire gathered teacher self-reports about the nature of creative lessons and the enactment of creative practices in arts and science. Practitioners reported that they adopted a wide range of creative practices regularly in arts and science lessons, with some subject-specific differences recognised, such as more frequently including a wider range of activities and groupwork in science. In Phase 2, arts and science lesson observations, reflective semi-structured teacher interviews and pupil focus group discussions in five Year 5/6 teachers’ classrooms elicited alternative perspectives on the research questions within a convergent design. Data from audio and video recordings was transcribed, and lesson plans, field notes and photographs were also collected. Diagrammatic representations of lessons illuminated the ways in which the five experienced practitioners nurtured learner creativity through their adoption and sequencing of creative practices in arts and science lessons. The creative practices demonstrated by the participant teachers tended to resonate with themes of generating and exploring ideas, encouraging autonomy and agency, as well as co-constructing and collaborating. However, a degree of inconsistency was noted between teacher reports and evidence of enactment. In science, learner creativity was identified in pupils’ dialogue and actions as they discussed approaches to tasks that were often collaborative, while in arts it more commonly manifested in imaginative details that children chose to include within tangible creative products.

Grantor dc:publisher

Oxford Brookes University

Author dc:creator

• Bell, Polly

Contributors dc:contributor

• McGregor, Debra
• Gaciu, Nicoleta
• Frodsham, Sarah
• Wright, Susannah

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.24384/n7nw-9488

OAI identifier oai:identifier

tle:4beed0b6-b137-4602-aa69-a8cfd77b35f3:d6bd9758-527a-46cd-bfe2-c433766e8fca:1