Creativity in practice… What not to do…

This paper describes research carried out in two UK primary training providers as part of the ‘Creative Teachers for Creative Learners’ project, funded by a Research and Development Award from the Teacher Training Agency. Over the past two years a study of trainees has been undertaken at Manchester Metropolitan University and Goldsmiths College, University of London, as part of a larger collaboration with Bath Spa University College. During the first year this looked at undergraduates who were training to teach in primary schools. They expressed their own notion of the ‘creative person’ using cartoons and further data was collected using a questionnaire. This year, a task that had originally been piloted by Bath Spa to gain an insight into where postgraduate trainees located creativity within their practice, was used to further explore the undergraduates’ understanding of creativity while they were on school experience placements. This paper draws on data collected from two cohorts of undergraduate trainees in each institution. Comparisons will be drawn between the two sets of data collected to establish how one varies from the other and possible reasons for this will be mooted. Initial findings indicate that the Goldsmiths and MMU trainees expect to find opportunities for creativity in most areas of the curriculum with assumptions that certain subjects offer more opportunities than others. However, as the Goldsmiths and MMU trainees reflected on the reality of teaching on their school experience placements the data gathered offered some interesting insights, which are particularly pertinent in this time of further curriculum change in primary education, including inhibitors of creativity.