Creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists?

Since the turn of the century, there have been frequent expressions of concern about a perceived lack of creativity in UK schools, in both curriculum content and in teaching. Recently, as the emphasis on mathematics, science and technology has strengthened, serious concerns have also been expressed...

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Main Authors: Hall, Christine, Thomson, Pat
Format: Article
Published: Taylor & Francis 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50186/
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author Hall, Christine
Thomson, Pat
author_facet Hall, Christine
Thomson, Pat
author_sort Hall, Christine
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Since the turn of the century, there have been frequent expressions of concern about a perceived lack of creativity in UK schools, in both curriculum content and in teaching. Recently, as the emphasis on mathematics, science and technology has strengthened, serious concerns have also been expressed about the marginalisation of the arts and creativity in schools. In the light of these concerns, this paper reports in-depth, qualitative research into the pedagogies of practising artists experienced in working with young people and highly valued by the schools that employ them. We use the notion of ‘signature pedagogies’ to argue that the artist–teachers adopted a particular stance and set of pedagogic practices that are coherent and distinctively different to those that are currently officially promoted in UK schools, and that this distinctive pedagogy enhanced both creative practice and engagement in the arts in the schools in which the artists worked. In this paper, we identify the signature pedagogies of the artists, theorise their stance and argue that the findings of our study provide a heuristic which can be valuable to all teachers who are interested in expanding their teaching repertoires and fostering students’ creativity.
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spelling nottingham-501862020-05-04T17:36:22Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50186/ Creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists? Hall, Christine Thomson, Pat Since the turn of the century, there have been frequent expressions of concern about a perceived lack of creativity in UK schools, in both curriculum content and in teaching. Recently, as the emphasis on mathematics, science and technology has strengthened, serious concerns have also been expressed about the marginalisation of the arts and creativity in schools. In the light of these concerns, this paper reports in-depth, qualitative research into the pedagogies of practising artists experienced in working with young people and highly valued by the schools that employ them. We use the notion of ‘signature pedagogies’ to argue that the artist–teachers adopted a particular stance and set of pedagogic practices that are coherent and distinctively different to those that are currently officially promoted in UK schools, and that this distinctive pedagogy enhanced both creative practice and engagement in the arts in the schools in which the artists worked. In this paper, we identify the signature pedagogies of the artists, theorise their stance and argue that the findings of our study provide a heuristic which can be valuable to all teachers who are interested in expanding their teaching repertoires and fostering students’ creativity. Taylor & Francis 2016-02-19 Article PeerReviewed Hall, Christine and Thomson, Pat (2016) Creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists? Research Papers in Education, 32 (1). pp. 106-120. ISSN 1470-1146 Creativity signature pedagogies artists https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02671522.2016.1144216 doi:10.1080/02671522.2016.1144216 doi:10.1080/02671522.2016.1144216
spellingShingle Creativity
signature pedagogies
artists
Hall, Christine
Thomson, Pat
Creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists?
title Creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists?
title_full Creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists?
title_fullStr Creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists?
title_full_unstemmed Creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists?
title_short Creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists?
title_sort creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists?
topic Creativity
signature pedagogies
artists
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50186/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50186/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50186/