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Creativity in primary schools: exploring perspectives on creativity within a
Scottish primary school classroom
Thesis
· July 2018
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Krystallia Kyritsi
The University of Edinburgh
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Creativity in primary schools: exploring perspectives
on creativity within a Scottish primary school
classroom
Abstract
This thesis explores children’s and teachers’ perspectives on creativity, and its implementation,
within one primary school classroom in Scotland. The data collection
phase of the research
employed an ethnographic approach, involving four and a half months of fieldwork in the primary
school classroom. Data were generated from participant observation/informal conversations with
children and teachers and one round of semi-structured interviews with twenty-five children (aged
eleven to twelve) and two teachers. Creativity within primary education has been mainly studied
through psychological research, which is mainly based on theories of developmental psychology.
Such theories view creativity solely as an individual trait. Despite recognition of the importance of
sociocultural issues to the flourishing of children’s creativity, the study of their collaborative
creativity has been neglected – particularly in relation to socio-cultural power dynamics. This thesis
specifically analyses the balance between individual and collective
creativity in the primary
classroom, examines how collaborative creativity can acknowledge childhood diversity, and poses
questions about how we include children with differing and complex identities in creative
processes. Furthermore, this research has been carried out in Scotland, within the context of a fairly
new curriculum, the Curriculum for Excellence. This curriculum has been viewed by some as a
progressive, modern and motivating curriculum that enables children’s autonomy, and by others as
one that has been highly influenced by accountability and performativity regimes, which leave
limited space for children’s and teachers’ autonomy. This thesis examines how the Curriculum for
Excellence is interpreted in everyday practice and the extent to which it enables the cultivation of
children’s creativity. The thesis does so by shedding light on the practical interconnections between
children’s and teachers’ agency, structural enablers/barriers, and cultural processes. The findings of
this study
show that children perceive, perform and embody creativity not only as an individual
trait, but also as a collaborative process. However, the findings also show that collaborative
creativity entails many complexities and that cultural barriers to creativity may emerge when power
among people (children and teachers) operates in ways that create cultures of exclusion. The thesis
concludes that the multiple identities of the Curriculum for Excellence, its multiple interpretations,
and lack of coherence regarding what is expected of teachers, leads to a blurred landscape of
implementation. The thesis argues that lack of a clear plan, strategy
and framework for enabling
creativity inhibits the founding principles of the Curriculum for Excellence from being achieved.
The thesis also argues that environmental and structural barriers within the research setting inhibit
the flourishing of children’s creativity, but that the structural barriers can sometimes be overcome
through the construction of enabling cultures. The thesis is able to define enabling cultures as
cultures that value diversity, promote inclusion, and view space not as static, but as a dynamic
process. In so doing, the findings of this study emphasise the interconnected importance of: viewing
creativity
as an individual trait; perceiving creativity as a collaborative process; and thinking in
spatial terms, for example, in ways that create the space for children to perceive, perform and
embody
creativity in their diverse, but equally valuable ways. This finding enables this study to
argue that there is a need for future policies and curricula which promote and encourage greater
flexibility in teaching and learning practices, in order to enhance children’s and teachers’ agency
and thus allow them to collaboratively create the types of enabling environments,
originally
envisaged by the Curriculum for Excellence, that will allow children’s creativity to flourish.
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