This study explored how a teacher-training course helped secondary art student teachers in Taiwan to develop their perceptions and practice of creativity and creative pedagogy [CPed]. A series of CPed workshop sessions, based on the Western theoretical framework of possibility thinking [PT] and its pedagogy [PTCPed], were designed to introduce to the twelve secondary art teacher training students in an arts university in Taiwan. Through adopting an action-based case study approach, qualitative data were collected from the participants’ interviews together with the reflective documents of the participants and the researcher, and any possible visual materials. Observations were also video-recorded. The analytical methods focused on both inductive and deductive approaches to explore how student teachers developed their perceptions of creativity and CPed and the possible influences in practice. Adopting the idea of “contextualising” one set of cultural values in another, a new landmark of PTCPed emerged. This study confirmed most features of PT, but found question-posing and question-responding to be intriguingly absent in the participants’ definitions of creativity (PT) and their practice of CPed; and it also, significantly, identified several emerging PT characteristics and attitudes: originality, confidence, no limitations, and problem-solving. These features were fostered by teacher’s creative teaching [CT] and learners’ creative learning [CL] in an enabling and effective context in which teachers offered the learners’ opportunities (including time, space and challenges) to develop ideas and confidence to play with the materials, prioritised learners’ agency (including individual and group activities), and stood back to offer freedom, and at the same time moved step forward to observe the learners’ engagement and check when to offer help. Finally, this study also highlighted the implications for the practice in the Taiwanese initial art teacher education [IATE], in which teacher educators are suggested to appreciate this complexity, and to understand and allow student teachers to interact with different perspectives or approaches when interpreting their pedagogy through reflective practice.

Keen efforts have been put by Taiwanese government into creative education projects; however, possible paradoxes resulting from adopting the ethos behind the Western theories and practices have not been considered. Questions of how creativity and creative education should be defined in the Taiwanese educational context, how compatible the Taiwanese school cultures are with the objective of enhancing creativity, or how teachers and pupils cherish creativity, have not been asked. Within the reformed curriculum and creative education projects, there is no clear picture of what kind of creative capacity should be developed through education, nor guidelines of what pedagogical strategies to adopt for promoting creativity. In this research the responses of pupils and teachers are investigated through designing and teaching a series of drama lessons based on the school curricula in the two cases under study. The approaches to teaching drama are linked with a framework of creative pedagogy informed by theories of fostering creativity in educational settings. A descriptive case study approach was employed to capture the dynamics, modes of involvements, and subtle relationships of the participants, whose accounts were collected concerning their views of the lessons, the evaluation of the ways of teaching and learning, and the ethos behind the pedagogy. Key issues in adopting creative pedagogy in Taiwan context are discussed, and implications for contextualizing creative pedagogy are proposed. Suggestions for future research in creative pedagogy are also provided.

Creativity is valued in many fields. In theatre, creativity celebrates the imaginative power of a theatrical experience. In theatre for young audiences (TYA), creativity is extended from the stage to the classroom, where theatre empowers learning through creative and imaginative teaching. Teaching artists and theatre makers in the field of theatre for young audiences utilize creativity as a means of connecting artistic and educational value. Through professional development and qualitative research, this project demonstrates the importance of creativity and its role in the classroom and on stage. This study examines my role as Project Coordinator in Orlando Repertory Theatre's (The REP) Writes of Spring 2014 and the developments I add to enhance the educational and artistic value and project. Specifically, I survey the findings of selected students' submissions in a creative writing contest by developing and facilitating an arts integration professional development workshop for their teachers. By evaluating these findings I gain insight into the positive effect of enhancing creativity in public school classrooms. To project the value of creativity further, I apply a theoretical framework to my research. Specifically, I apply creative pedagogy, constructivism, and collective creativity to develop a fully-supported educational and artistic project. This project allows students to find writing inspiration through theatre, guides teachers to find clarity in new practices through creativity, and encourages artists to celebrate creativity in developing and producing new works.

This study investigates the literature of the Creative Pedagogy of Play to examine the potential for this pedagogy to support cultural identity development of immigrant preschoolers in the Swedish context. Twelve articles were reviewed in order to characterize outcomes of the Creative Pedagogy of Play potentially relevant for this support. Identified outcomes included: recognizing and promoting children’s agency, co-creation of an imaginary world through diverse forms of expression, emotional involvement (“perezhivanie” as lived through experience), building peer relationships, valuing ambivalence, narrative teaching and narrative learning.  In this thesis, we argue that these outcomes of Creative Pedagogy of Play have the potential to create supportive conditions associated with the development of cultural identity (such as: social inclusion, respect for diversity, care, guidance and teaching offered by adults, recognizing children’s agency, and building relationships with friends and peers). The combination of these conditions creates a potential for the cultural identity formation through the Pedagogy of Play. Implications of this systematic review for early childhood education research and practice are discussed with particular focus on implications for engaging with questions of culture in preschool pedagogy.

Fostering students’ creativity in school subjects has recently become a central focus of educational researchers, educators, and educational policymakers around the world. In Kuwait, educational researchers and teacher educators have supported the need to foster students’ creativity via a national curriculum. Yet, the Ministry of Education has conducted few studies to explore practitioners’ perspectives on how to foster creativity through the current curriculum. The overall aims of this study were to explore science teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and practices in fostering creativity in science classrooms as well as to investigate the influences of sociocultural factors on teachers’ beliefs and practices in fostering creativity. The study also examined the consistency and inconsistency levels between teachers’ beliefs and practices. The study has a qualitative nature that stands on an interpretive worldview. The methodology uses eight case studies, each of which consisted of a male science teacher and one of his classes. Multiple methods were used, including semi-structured interviews (pre- and post-observational interviews), student focus groups, unstructured observations, participants’ drawings, and field notes. The analysis was based on thematic analysis model proposed by Braun and Clarke (2006). Thematic findings and case studies findings were drawn from the analysis of the data collected. In general, the thematic findings indicated that science teachers are able to define the meaning of creativity and its main aspects. Professed pedagogical beliefs enforce four teaching approaches to foster creativity in the science classroom: the teaching of thinking skills, inquiry-based learning, cooperative learning, and practical investigation (experimentation). The teachers believe that these approaches could promote students’ creativity in science classroom when specific sociocultural factors facilitate the effectiveness of such approaches in terms of fostering creativity. Three interdependent categories represent these facilitating factors: (1) educational setting-related factors, (2) teacher-related factors, and (3) student-related factors. Differences and similarities appeared when these professed beliefs were compared to the applied classroom practices. The thematic analysis revealed several themes underlying the main categories. Extensive teacher-centred practices and modest student-centred practices were evident; more specifically, the observations revealed primarily teacher-centred approach inside the science classes. Meanwhile, student-centred approaches were modestly applied in comparison to teacher-centred activities. The teachers justified their practices in accordance with the sociocultural factors that mediate their beliefs and practices as well as the role of their goal orientation. The science teachers perceived the mediating factors as constraints that prevent them from applying their beliefs about fostering creativity in classroom practices. Multiple constraining factors emerged, and they were categorised into personal, external, and interpersonal constraints. Concerning the case study findings, consistencies and inconsistencies were identified using a cut-off point as an analytic technique to classify teachers’ beliefs and practices into traditional (non-creativity fostering), mixed, or progressive (creativity fostering). The case study findings identified four consistency and inconsistency levels characterizing teachers’ beliefs and practices: traditional (consistent level), mainly traditional (inconsistent level), mixed (consistent level), and mainly progressive (inconsistent level). Each level was represented by an exemplary case study. The exemplary case studies revealed that sociocultural contexts influence teacher’s belief-practice relationship with respect to fostering students’ creativity in science classroom. Further, the thematic and case study findings were discussed in relation to the existing body of knowledge, followed by an illustration of significant conclusions, including some implications, contributions, limitations, and future suggestions.

M. Tech. (Department of Information and Communication Technology, Faculty of Applied and Computer Sciences), Vaal University of Technology. / The work-integrated learning (WIL) concept was introduced to enhance the employability of students completing their IT qualification at universities of Technology (UoTs) in South Africa. Employability is defined as a combination of characteristics that make a person a useful and thereby desirable employee. WIL is defined as a component of a curriculum to improve the value of student learning by integrating academic training and practical workplace exposure. However, a large cohort of students registered for the IT qualification at UoTs do not find company placement for WIL, resulting in these students having to complete this final qualifying module of their qualification by undertaking a group project on campus. The group project entails developing a software system for a client. The overall sentiment expressed by employers, lecturers and students in this study is that students who remain on campus for the group project are not as well-prepared as those who find placement at a company for their in-service training. This study aimed to develop and propose an approach to a creative pedagogy in the form of a simulated working environment on campus within a tertiary educational setting to contribute towards enhancing the learner-content relation of WIL students, in order to improve the employability of students by providing the on-campus project students with an equal opportunity to those going into industry for their in-service training. The philosophy adopted for this research is interpretivism, with the Vaal University of Technology as the case of the research. The investigation adopted a mixed-method approach where respondents were requested to complete questionnaires focusing on their perceptions of on-campus group work vs. in-service training at companies for the WIL component of the IT qualification. Five respondent groups were identified for participation in the study, namely: i) In-service training students, i.e. WIL students who found placement in a company; ii) Project students, i.e. WIL students who remained on campus to do a group project; iii) Graduates, i.e. students who already completed WIL and graduated; iv) Employers of WIL students who found placement at a company; and v) Lecturers involved in WIL training on campus. The responses of the various respondent groups were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. Comparisons of the perceptions of the respective groups were made to explore the possibility of a viable solution to the on-campus group work challenges that were identified. Based on reviewing recent literature, analysing the data collected from the completed to questionnaires by different role players, and adapting and the institutional strategy framework for WIL developed by Jacobs in 2015, an approach to a creative pedagogy in the form of a virtual company on campus for WIL students is presented to provide students who cannot find placement in industry for their in-service training with an equal experience to the in-service training company students. The proposed pedagogical approach incorporates the five standards defined by Tharp in 2018 as requirements for an effective and successful curriculum in the development of the actual virtual company. These include: contextualisation, challenging activities, joint productive activity, intellectual conversation and language development. The proposed approach adopts a three-layered approach to a creative pedagogy, with the aim of improving the employability of on-campus WIL students. The first layer lays the basis for implementing a virtual company on campus and includes aspects such as the objective for a simulated working environment on campus, employer preferences, and the skills set students should possess for employers to offer them a placement in their company for in-service training. The second layer focuses on the details that should be in place for a virtual company to be successfully implemented. This practical layer in the implementation of the virtual company focuses on infrastructure, Finance, HR, legislative approval, and appropriate assessments. The third layer only follows when the second layer has been put into place. This layer deals with how academic content can be included in the proposed pedagogical approach. The study also revealed that in addition to adopting the concept of a virtual company on campus for WIL students, a substantial focus should be on soft skills training. The exit level outcomes (ELOs) related to a simulated working environment for the WIL module of the IT are specified in the HEQF (Higher Education Qualifications Framework) document as set out by the South African Qualifications Authority.