david price
TRANSCRIPT
Creativity, Policy and Pedagogy:
How do we shift our thinking to enable our voices to become significant in
educational reform debates?
David Price
WEAA, Newcastle 2009
Context:
• Global, industrialised, model of education has run its course - new paradigms needed
• Opportunity exists for arts advocates to join with education reformers to press for 21st century view of learning - but only in a language and framework which governments understand
• ‘Creativity’ widely touted as one of the cornerstones of reform, BUT language and dislocation of the concept (plus its ghetto-isation in the arts subjects) has led to disappointing results so far
• We have to frame our arguments as positive solutions to improving schooling if we’re to get centre-stage
Content:
1. Locating our arguments within the mindset of inter-governmental competition (OECD, PISA, TIMMS, etc)
2. Challenges around shifting school culture to promote creativity
3. Two cases studies of two international education programmes I lead: Learning Futures & Musical Futures
4. Some re-framing concepts?
5. Some questions for us to consider?
“…if we’re going to hold schools ‘accountable’, it should be for something that standardised tests do not and cannot measure: the creation of an environment that supports and enhances students’ interest in learning”
Alfie Kohn, The Schools Our Children Deserve
Historically, top-down, government initiatives obsessively focused upon ‘achievement’ and ‘accountability’
Have studiously ignored ‘interest/engagement’ of the person at the centre - the student
The irony is, as Kohn, reminds us......
When interest appears,
achievement usually follows.
How can we foster the right environment for creative learning in
school? The way (some) schools are organised impedes creative
learning through:
Pedagogy
Curriculum
Culture
Non-arts teachers freeze at the word ‘creativity’, yet relax at notion of engagement - therefore talk about engagement, creativity will take care of itself
What can we learn from the way young people learn creatively outside schools and can/should we try to integrate it with what goes on in the classroom?
Learning Futures A Case Study in Engaging Pedagogy
UK Programme in 40+ schools 2009 - 2012
Hypothesises that drivers for whole school change (and system change) need to shift attention to the engagement of students, and the integration of other locations and partners for learning which have happened outside school
Theoretical framework for our interventions is as follows.....
New Models of Engagement Needed
Engagement historically seen as ‘instrument’ to raise standards
Traditional model supports compliance
Classic model of student engagement is the three-legged stool:
Behaviour
Cognition Emotion
We need to re-think the concept of Engagement!
School
Relationship between student & teachers
Family
Support for student from
parents, siblings, carers
Community
Peers, friends, mentors, other adults
Learning Futures:The Four Ps of Deep Engagement?
Placed: located in the world they are interested in ( family, immediate community, wider world); relevant to their lives outside school; utilises internet technologies to locate it in their lives
Principled: appeals to their moral purpose; values-driven; engage passion, it matters to them
Purposeful: results in action/product/service of practical benefit; fosters a sense of ‘agency- they can change the world; answers the question ‘so what?’
Prolonged: supported by family, carers, peers beyond school; has life (and reward) beyond the exam; can be extended through independent (and inter-dependent) informal learning
Characteristics of engaging pedagogy?
Fosters independent (and interdependent) learning
Subverts power relationships/authorityIs highly socialIs enquiry drivenBlends knowledge and skillsIncorporates student voiceWorks from near to the far (starts where they’re at)
When engagement appears, creativity
usually follows.
Musical Futures: Case Study of a radical approach to engaging and creative
pedagogies
Musical Futures: In Practice
•Radical approach to T&L in secondary school music
•Curriculum and pedagogy are co-constructed
•Non-formal teaching and informal learning in formal environment
•Competence-based, theory when needed
•Project as enquiry based intervention
Musical Futures:In Operation
• Sustained funder commitment (Paul Hamlyn Foundation)
• From 20 schools to >1000 currently and pilots in Australia, Canada, USA, Thailand, Cyprus, Italy
• Scaled - up through developing relevant materials, CPD and networks
• Importance of practitioner testimony and student involvement
• Government endorsement: a radical experiment, driven by arts subjects, has now become government poicy!
Musical Futures - The 7 Re’s which steered our
ship....• What’s wrong with this picture? (Reflect)
• What can we do that’s different? (Respond)
• Will it be OK if we screw up? (Request)
• How can we engage with students as joint enquirers? (Recruit)
• What’s working? What’s not? (Reflect / React)
• How can we prove it’s working? (Research)
• How can we transfer/scale up what’s working? (Repeat elsewhere)
Questions:
How do we change the organisation of learning to allow
for students to become more engaged & creative?
How do we define teaching which fosters creativity?
How can schools become more engaged & creative
with our communities, parents, learning styles,
locations? What stops them from doing so?
How do we position our advocacy so that it is
irresistible to governments?
What are the best forms of networks to support our
advocacy?
Follow-up?
• www.musicalfutures.org
• www.numu.org
• www.davidprice.org.uk
• www.davidpricesblog.blogspot.com