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Creativity and Creative teaching and Learning
No full textNurturing learner creativity is a key aim for many schools. Teachers and school leaders continue to see the development of creativity as an essential part of their job. They recognise that an appropriate climate for creative thought and activity has to be established (Ofsted, 2006, 2009), and know that pressures to improve standards in ‘the basics’ can crowd creativity out of the curriculum.
In a world dominated by technological innovations and rapid change, creativity is a critical component; human skills and people’s imaginative and innovative powers are key resources in a knowledge-driven economy (Robinson, 2009). As social structures and ideologies continue to change, the ability to live sustainably with uncertainty and deal with complexity is essential. So organisations and governments all over the world are now more concerned than ever to promote creativity (Craft, 2011).
As primary professionals, it is our responsibility to steer the creative development of young people in our care. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, creativity was given a high profile in education policy and the media, and children were expected to think creatively, make connections and generate ideas, as well as problem solve (Craft, 2011). In 2012 the EYFS (Department for Education) acknowledged that, alongside ‘playing and exploring’ and ‘active learning’, the third characteristic of effective learning is ‘creating and thinking critically’. In relation to the current primary curriculum however, explicit references to creativity are few. Nonetheless, there is professional recognition that developing the creativity of the young cannot be left to chance (e.g. Cremin,2017).
Academic explorations of creative teaching and teaching for creativity continue to expand (e.g. Jeffrey and Woods, 2009; Cremin et al., 2015, 2017; Sawyer, 2011; Craft et al., 2013), and teachers still seek innovative ways to shape the curriculum in response to children’s needs. Creative teaching should not be placed in opposition to the teaching of essential knowledge, skills and understandings in the subject disciplines; neither does it imply lowered expectations of challenge or behaviour. Rather, creative teaching involves teaching the subjects in creative contexts that explicitly invite learners to engage imaginatively and that stretch their generative, evaluative and collaborative capacities.
However, many teachers still feel constrained by perceptions of a culture of accountability. You too may already be aware of the classroom impact of an assessment-led system. Such pressure can limit opportunities for creative endeavour and may tempt you to stay within the safe boundaries of the known. Recognising that tensions exist between the incessant drive to raise measurable standards and the impulse to teach more creatively is a good starting point, but finding the energy and enterprise to respond flexibly is a real challenge. In order to do so, you need to be convinced that creativity has an important role to play in education, and believe that you can contribute, both personally and professionally. You may also need to widen your understanding of creativity and creative practice in order to teach creatively and teach for creativity
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Developing creative learning through possibility thinking with children aged 3-7
Full text linkAbstract not available
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Books, toys and tablets : playing and learning in the age of digital media
No full textIntroduction\ud
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During a recent study of how parents source information about children‘s early learning, one of us made our first serious foray into a local store licensed to the global chain Toys'R' Us. While walking the aisles, closely observing layout, signage and stock, several things became obvious. Firstly, large numbers of toys were labeled'educational'. Secondly, many toys in that category were intended for children under the age of two years. These were further differentiated as intended for 'babies' or 'infants', and sub-categorized on packaging or shelving using even smaller age increments (e.g. 0-3 months, 12-18 months, and so on). Thirdly, many products were labeled as 'interactive' and 'learning' toys that promised to assist children‘s early learning and development. The activation of some of these toys relied on embedded computer chip technology and promised to 'connect' children with the home television, computer and the Internet. These products were hybrids between a toy and a platform for digital media interaction. Closer inspection of toy packaging and other promotional material suggested that industry had begun to invest heavily in developing highly differentiated children‘s markets for products that yoked together concepts of learning and development, the 'fun toy' that incorporates digital technology, and offline- and online participation. In this chapter we explore the growth of this contemporary cultural phenomenon that now connects books, toys and mobile digital media with children‘s play and learning
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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