Creativity and Creative Pedagogies in the Early and Primary Years

Whilst recognition of the role and nature of creativity and interest in creative pedagogical practice has grown, tensions persist at several levels, particularly in accountability cultures, where international comparisons of literacy, numeracy and science frame, shape and often limit policy, practice and curricula. Responding to this context, the book draws together the work of a number of eminent scholars of creativity and creative pedagogies. It offers diverse perspectives from Colombia, Denmark, England, France, Poland, Hong Kong, and the USA and highlights differences as well as similarities across cultural contexts. Individually and collectively, the authors reveal both the complexities and the possibilities of creative pedagogies. While some focus more upon conceptual challenges, others examine classroom practice, both that of teachers and visiting artists, and identify difficulties as well as potential possibilities. In offering hope as well as challenge, creative approaches to learning are of interest to all educators. This book was originally published as a special issue of Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education.

Introduction: Perspectives on creative pedagogy: exploring challenges, possibilities and potential 1. Widening our understanding of creative pedagogy: a North–South dialogue 2. Creative potential in educational settings: its nature, measure, and nurture 3. Development of children’s creative visual imagination: a theoretical model and enhancement programmes 4. Creativity in Hong Kong classrooms: transition from a seriously formal pedagogy to informally playful learning 5. Creative Little Scientists: exploring pedagogical synergies between inquiry-based and creative approaches in Early Years science6. ‘Everyone can imagine their own Gellert’: the democratic artist and ‘inclusion’ in primary and nursery classroom 7. ‘It’s a real journey – a life changing experience.’ A comparison case study of Creative Partnership and other primary schools

Teresa Cremin is Professor of Education at The Open University, UK, A Fellow of the English Association, the Academy of Social Sciences, a Director of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust and convenor of BERA’s Creativity SIG. Teresa’s sociocultural research focuses on creativity in teaching and learning, teachers’ literate identities and practices and the pedagogies of reading and writing for pleasure.