This action inquiry responded to the inclusion of creativity in the Northern Ireland curriculum from 2007, with little clarification about how to implement this. An in-service module on a Masters in Education programme, Creativity in Practice for Educators, was designed to develop teachers' understandings and practices of creativity and awareness of their own creative identities. A total of 38 teachers participated in four iterations of the module, each addressing one of the research questions in sequence. These were: how teachers construct creativity in relation to their professional and personal identities; the nature of the processes of creativity, and how teachers might be engaged in exploring them; teachers' conceptualisations of creative spaces, and how participation in these spaces takes place; and how teachers might develop their awareness and practices of assessing creative work. An arts-based model of reflexivity, The 'Art/i/culate Eye', developed awareness of creative processes and researcher positionings in the inquiry through collage, photo inquiry and poetic inquiry. The conceptual frameworks for the inquiry were based on the affordances of arts-based methods for enhancing teachers' creative identities and understandings of creativity. These affordances were integrated into a framework for participation in the inquiry, 'Creative Reflection', which scaffolded participants' arts-based explorations of the research themes. These explorations were presented as an 'exhibition' on each theme. The findings were synthesised into a model of "responsiveness", which identified six facets of teacher creativity: Ontological (acknowledging and drawing on one's creative identities); Psychological (personal qualities such as self-awareness, curiosity and openness to experience; interpersonal skills and qualities such as empathy and acceptance); Epistemological (making conceptual connections; reflecting on creativity); Social (collaborating in creating discourses of creativity) ; Pedagogic (establishing creative learning environments and facilitating participation in these) and Aesthetic (using creative methods, and making judgements about creative work).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:675479 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Tracey, Shelley Ziona |
| Publisher | Queen's University Belfast |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0021 seconds