Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilNuméros86Creativity in teaching: What can ...

Creativity in teaching: What can teachers learn from artists?

La créativité dans l’enseignement : que peuvent apprendre les enseignants des artistes ?
Christine Hall et Pat Thomson
p. 55-77

Résumés

Au Royaume-Uni depuis le début du siècle, le manque de créativité dans les écoles a souvent été dénoncé tant dans le contenu des programmes que dans les méthodes d’enseignement. Récemment, l’accent mis en priorité sur les sciences, les mathématiques et les technologies s’est accentué, ce qui suscite des inquiétudes quant à la marginalisation des arts et de la créativité dans les écoles. À la lumière de ces préoccupations, cet article rapporte une recherche qualitative sur les pratiques pédagogiques d’artistes professionnels intervenant auprès des jeunes. Étudiant depuis longtemps les pratiques des artistes en milieu scolaire, Christine Hall et Pat Thomson relatent leur recherche basée sur l’hypothèse que ces pratiques, généralement très appréciées par les écoles qui sollicitent des artistes, sont à la fois uniques et généralisables. Leur recherche a consisté en l’étude de douze cas d’artistes intervenant en milieu scolaire, à l’aide d’observations et d’entretiens. Les artistes que Hall et Thomson ont observés font appel à des pédagogies « hybrides » inspirées à la fois par leur pratique artistique et par une pratique enseignante inspirée de leur rencontre avec des enseignants. Dans l’espace-temps créé par la rencontre entre des artistes plus ou moins enseignants et des enseignants plus ou moins artistes, il se passe quelque chose de différent de ce qui se passe dans un espace artistique et différent de ce qui se passe dans un espace de classe conventionnel. Hall et Thomson appellent « pédagogie-signature » l’ensemble des pratiques des artistes en milieu scolaire. La notion de « pédagogie-signature » est empruntée à la recherche explorant la formation de doctorants dans différentes disciplines universitaires, dont les objectifs sont à la fois de transmettre des connaissances mais aussi de développer des attitudes particulières propres à une activité professionnelle, telle celle du géographe ou de l’architecte. Ces approches pédagogiques sont uniques au même titre que des signatures manuscrites : elles sont étroitement reliées à des dimensions non seulement épistémologiques mais aussi ontologiques (choix de vie, rapport au monde, etc.). Une pédagogie-signature permet la combinaison de savoirs, de savoir-être et de savoir-faire où les apprentissages épistémologiques et ontologiques s’acquièrent conjointement. L’approche pédagogique des artistes est une pédagogie-signature car elle se traduit par une posture particulière et des pratiques pédagogiques cohérentes, complètement différentes de celles promues actuellement dans les milieux scolaires au Royaume-Uni. Hall et Thomson ont identifié cinq composantes des pédagogies-signatures des artistes : 1) une approche inclusive qui s’adapte aux élèves non pas en reconnaissant leurs difficultés mais au contraire leurs compétences ; 2) une attention portée à l’« agency » des élèves dans leurs prises de décisions ; 3) une concentration sur le présent, l’expérience vécue sur le moment, et pas seulement sur les connaissances antérieures (le passé) ou les objectifs à atteindre (le futur) ; 4) une volonté de donner aux élèves un sentiment de réussite grâce à des réalisations ambitieuses parce qu’imposantes, difficiles et exposées dans des lieux publics et 5) une approche qui intègre ce qui est généralement exclu à l’école, l’absurde, l’humour ou encore le carnavalesque. Hall et Thomson décrivent aussi dans leur article le répertoire des dix-neuf actions d’artiste en classe qu’elles ont observées et qui relèvent d’une pédagogie-signature : la provocation, l’utilisation d’artefacts, l’exploitation de l’espace en dehors de la classe, de l’ici et maintenant, d’histoires où connaissances scolaires et vécu s’entremêlent, de l’expérience vécue comme ressource d’enseignement… Elles ont regroupé ces actions en cinq catégories qu’elles décrivent avec précision : 1) les artistes réaménagent le temps et l’espace ; 2) ils travaillent consciemment avec des histoires ; 3) ils sont constamment à la recherche d’opportunités à exploiter ; 4) les élèves sont encouragés à être des artistes et 5) les artistes veillent à ce que la classe soit un lieu à la fois social et propice à la sociabilité. Les résultats de l’étude de Hall et Thompson offrent aux enseignants un ensemble de pratiques pédagogiques qui peuvent enrichir leur propre répertoire de pratiques. Les artistes contribuant au développement de la créativité et aux apprentissages artistiques dans les écoles où ils interviennent, les enseignants peuvent s’inspirer de ces pratiques pour favoriser la créativité de leurs élèves. Ces pratiques-signatures des artistes sont des pratiques pédagogiques à part entière, elles peuvent être adoptées par tous les enseignants, même par ceux qui ne se considèrent pas comme des artistes. Ces pédagogies créatives ne sont pas seulement restreintes aux enseignements artistiques. Elles offrent aux enseignants des alternatives d’enseignement des fondamentaux scolaires tout en favorisant la culture et la créativité de leurs élèves que certains emporteront avec eux bien au-delà de l’école.

Haut de page

Entrées d’index

Mots-clés :

créativité

Keywords:

creativity
Haut de page

Notes de la rédaction

* Hall, C. et Thomson, P. (2017). Creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists? Research Papers in Education, 32(1), 106-120. Reprinted by permission of the publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd, http://www.tandfonline.com. This article is published without alteration. The French abstract was written and added by Myriam Lemonchois.

Texte intégral

1Since the turn of the century, concerns about a perceived lack of creativity in schools, the narrowing of the school curriculum and the marginalisation of arts and cultural learning have been expressed regularly in influential discussions about educational policy in the UK. The Confederation of British Industry, for example, worrying that schools were producing uncreative ‘exam robots’, commissioned a report on the importance of school-level education (Confederation of British Industry 2013); in November 2014, the House of Lords held a debate to note the importance of arts education in schools.

2Different governments have responded to these concerns with policy initiatives (e.g. Creative Partnerships, an ambitious creative learning programme which ran from 2002 to 2011), reviews and reports (e.g. the Henley reviews of music and cultural education in 2011 and 2012), good practice guides (e.g. Ofsted’s Learning: Creative Approaches that Raise Standards, 2010) and plans (e.g. Scotland’s 10-year Creative Learning Plan, 2013; Wales’s Creative Learning Through the Arts – an action plan for Wales Plan 2015–2020).

3The response of the academic world has been no less vigorous. In 2012, the Arts and Humanities Research Council established a two-year research theme on the value of arts and culture to individuals and society (Arts and Humanities Research Council 2012); Creative Partnerships actively sponsored empirical research and literature reviews (e.g. Bragg 2010; Bragg, Manchester, and Faulkner 2009; Galton 2006; Safford and O’Sullivan 2008; Thomson 2007; Thomson, Jones, and Hall 2009). A substantial body of work on defining and understanding creativity (e.g. Amabile 1996; Csikszentmihalyi 1996; Gardner 1982; Sternberg 1999) provided an underpinning for important theoretical and practical work on creativity in teaching (e.g. Craft, Gardner, and Claxton 2007; Fisher and Williams 2004; Jeffrey and Craft 2004; Robinson 2001; Sawyer 2004) and, latterly, an emphasis on creative learning (e.g. Craft, Cremin, and Burnard 2007; Jeffrey 2006; Sefton-Green et al. 2011; Sellman 2011).

4Our own concern in the research project discussed in this article has been to contribute to this broad and evolving field by finding out more about the pedagogies of artists who work regularly in schools. Our long-standing interest in how and what artists teach (see for e.g. Hall, Thomson, and Russell 2007; Thomson, Hall, and Russell 2006), and particularly the emphasis in the Creative Partnerships programme on developing partnerships between teachers and artists, left us with a sense that there are features of artists’ teaching in schools that are distinctive, and to a certain extent, generalisable. We wanted to test out this hypothesis and – if it proved to be of value – find ways of sharing the findings with other artists who teach and with teachers, in the interests of promoting diverse and creative practice.

5The article is therefore set out in the following way. We begin with a brief review of the existing literature on the work of artists in schools. This is followed by an explanation of our research design and the way we used the notion of ‘signature pedagogies’ to investigate the case studies we developed. Because our aim has been to identify similarities as well as differences and to create a heuristic that provokes discussion about teaching, we discuss the findings in two sections: one on the key characteristics of the artists’ pedagogies and the other on the repertoire of pedagogic practices we identified. The final section aims to draw conclusions and identify the contribution of the work.

Artists in school

6There is a significant history of artists working in schools and a critical literature that identifies a range of questions, benefits and issues about their work. Some research (e.g. Remer 2003) investigates the work of artist–teachers – that is, teachers who are part of the school staff and also artists – but studies of artists working in schools generally emphasise their particular status and contribution as outsiders, who bring with them their own professional knowledge, networks and creative practices. Artists are seen as ‘stirring things up’ (Pringle 2002), creating ‘magic moments’ (Harding 2005) and a ‘wow factor’ (Bamford 2009). There is considerable interest, of course, in the perceived benefits of this work for pupils (Kendall et al. 2008; Sharp 1990) and pupils’ own views of the value of working with artists (Burnard and Swann 2010; Sanderson and Savva 2004). But there is also some questioning of easy assumptions about the sustained benefits that might arise from these encounters, for pupils (De Backer et al. 2012) and for teachers (Galton 2010; Hall, Thomson, and Russell 2007).

7Initial confusion about the value and purposes of the artists’ work in schools (Schiff 1973; Tyrrell, Williams, and Blanchard 1974), gave way to an effort to establish descriptions and standards of good practice (e.g. Oddie 1998; Orfali 2004; Sharp and Dust, 1997). Investigations into the nature of productive partnerships between teachers and artists (Free, Nalder, and Fullarton 2009; Griffiths and Woolf 2009) led to work that identifies the factors necessary to optimise the benefits of these partnerships (e.g. Joseph and Southcott 2009 who identify the need to incorporate training about partnership working into pre-service teacher education). Other researchers raise critical questions about the ways in which audit policies and testing regimes frame what is possible within artist–school partnerships (Thomson, Hall, and Russell 2006); the conditions necessary for successful arts integrations in the curriculum (Bresler, De Stefano, Feldman and Garg, 2000; Burnaford, Aprill, and Weiss 2001) and the kinds of systemic support necessary for artist-inspired change to occur across a school (Thomson et al. 2009; Noblit et al. 2009). Our interest in this project was in seeing whether we could develop a heuristic of artists’ pedagogical practice that would be useful in initial teacher education and continuing professional development.

Research design

8The research consists of 12 case studies of creative practitioners at work in school with children and young people. The researchers, initially a team of four (Hall, Jones, Sefton-Green and Thomson), selected schools on the basis of their involvement in the ‘Schools of Creativity’ network, assuming that this would make it possible to capture experiences of working with creative practitioners who were already embedded in the schools. Because our intention was to research the practice of artists experienced in teaching, we selected our sample purposively, also ensuring that we had examples from both primary and secondary schools and across art forms and practices. Six primary and six secondary sites were observed once ethical clearance had been granted. The primary locations were all in the Midlands while the secondary were in and around London and the south of England. In the primary schools, we observed three story-makers, one storyteller, one dancer and one visual and movement artist. In the secondary schools, we observed work on radio, physical theatre, visual art, dance, media and creative activities such as problem-solving.

9We used observation and interview to develop rich descriptions of the pedagogies. Observation was conducted in two ways: firstly through researcher visits in which detailed field notes were kept; secondly, by filming two days when the creative practitioners/artists (henceforth artists) were working with students. Filming allowed us to watch sessions repeatedly and was particularly good for capturing non-verbal interactions, which are more difficult to record in conventional field notes. It also allowed us to watch each other’s field visits. The artists were interviewed formally and informal conversations were recorded in field notes. Further discussions with the Midland group of artists took place in the second stage of the project, when we shared our findings and discussed the construction of a project website which explains and uses film clips to illustrate key elements of the signature pedagogies (www.signaturepedagogies.org.uk).

10We analysed the data-set in two ways. We developed a common analytic framework (see Figure 1), which we used to create the 12 separate descriptive case studies; we also identified themes from across the whole data-set, drawing on our previous experience of researching creative practice and on the existing literature in the field. This process provided us with a conceptual toolkit that, we felt, enabled us to identify the specific characteristics of the pedagogies developed by the artists, to suggest ways in which they differ from pedagogies of the mainstream, and to make claims for their educational value.

Signature pedagogies

11We define pedagogy as including teaching methods, curriculum and assessment practices but also how these are made into patterns of activities, actions and interactions by a particular teacher, with a particular group of students (Leach and Moon 2008; Schatzki, Cetina, and Savigny 2001). We consider that pedagogy encompasses relationships, conversations, learning environments, rules, norms and culture within the wider social context (Ellsworth 2005; Facer 2011; Moss and Petrie 2002; Sandlin, Schultz, and Burdick 2010); also that it takes in the ways in which what teachers and students do is framed and delimited within specific sites, policy regimes and historical contexts (Alexander 2008).

12The notion of ‘signature’ pedagogies is borrowed from research that explored the education of doctoral students across different disciplines in universities (Golde 2007; Guring, Chick, and Haynie 2009; Shulman 2005). This research showed that there were some pedagogical practices that were distinctive across individual or small clusters of disciplines; the field trip, for example, in geography or studio practice in architecture. In the arts, we might add the workshop in creative writing, the vocal warm-up in singing, the studio ‘crit’ session in art. These distinctive practices are designed to inculcate knowledge (what you need to know and know how to do to be a geographer or an architect), but also to develop particular habits of mind (how geographers and architects think). This offers students an induction into the particular traditions and mores of a profession (how geographers and architects do their work).

Figure 1. Analytic framework

Introductory activities
(entrance, session opener, planning)

Self presentation of artist

Ressources
(provided and created)

Artefacts
Cultural, intellectual resources
Use of student work
Use of artist’s own work

Classroom discourse
(questions, responses, feedback, professional discourse, personal anecdote)

Professional and technical language
Prompts, suggestions
Unanswered questions
Change to IRF patterns
Self conscious use of affect

Flow
(rhythm, transitions, timing, lesson sequences over time)

Lesson shape
Thinking time
Taking a break
Ongoing projects over days/weeks
Pace
Time for review

Use of space
(by students, by teachers)

Organisation of space
Movement within the space
Personal space
Symbolic spaces

Behaviour management
(communication of rules, teacher stance, where the authority lies)

Authority of the discipline/endeavour
Internalised codes of behaviour
Explicit teaching of conduct
Humour
Public/private explanation of anti-social behaviours

Teaching methods
(direct instruction, coaching, modelling, experimentation)

Individualised/group/whole class teaching
Skill development
Use of environment, artefacts, music, movement
Provocations

Framing
(disciplinary [Art, etc], self expression, vocational/technical)

Focus on the individual within a community, or part of a collective endeavour?
Reference to the discipline specificity, traditions
School subjects v professional pratice
Themes (eg making something from nothing, therapy)

13We therefore understand signature pedagogies as being distinctive, as in a handwritten signature, epistemological but also ontological, in that they are about the ways we orient ourselves to being and making meaning in the world. In practice, these elements cannot be separated out: the epistemological and ontological combination becomes a kind of ‘indwelling’ (Polanyi 1966), a tacit knowledge, which is conveyed as much through the presence of practitioners and through the way that they orient themselves to questions and tasks, as it is about what they actually say and do. The combination of knowing, doing and being that make up signature pedagogies is therefore not separable into distinctive elements: the epistemological and ontological learning progress together, at the same time, and through one pedagogical practice.

Key characteristics of the artists’ pedagogies

14The signature pedagogy of contemporary English schooling revolves around the lesson, with its opening and closing plenaries and the middle period of direct instruction followed by individual or small group practice. The lesson should begin with an outline of a curriculum objective; students are expected to understand how this objective will assist them to achieve a specified level of attainment set out in a curriculum framework. Teachers therefore plan lessons around particular objectives, and exercises and tests are designed in order to determine what level they have achieved. We have called this a ‘default’ pedagogy in a previous research report (Thomson, Jones, and Hall 2009) and described it in some detail in a paper which told the story of one day in a school in which the default lesson was the dominant experience on offer (Thomson, Hall, and Jones 2010).

15The artists we observed challenged this default pedagogy by establishing what might be considered ‘third spaces’ (Soja 1999) where hybrid pedagogies were developed. A temporary space/time was created in the timetable – a special day, week or project. While they existed, these time/spaces were relatively independent from the ways in which the rest of the school operated, leaving those in them relatively free to experiment with new ways of talking, teaching, learning and assessing. New connections were sometimes established with parents and the school’s wider community. These experiences were variously able to be transferred back into the school once the time/space had closed down. Schools where creative practices were more embedded found more permanent space/times – within and between some subject areas, across a year level, in regular extracurricular activities where both teachers and artists worked in ways very different from the default.

16Creative practice was characterised by its hybridity. Artists generally did not do in schools what they did in their own creative practice. They all ‘taught’ – that is they had thought about and developed, through experience and in dialogue with teachers, ways to make important aspects of their creative practice pedagogical. These practices were not the same as those that occurred routinely in classrooms. Some artists of course were more teacher-like, just as some teachers were more like artists in their pedagogical repertoires. Nevertheless, what we have observed is that in the space/time of creative pedagogies something happened that was different from what happened in either an arts or conventional classroom space/time. A variety of blends and mixes occurred, depending on the age of children, the degree of institutional ‘readiness’, the creative practice and practitioner, the teacher and the children and young people themselves (see Galton 2006 for a comparable discussion).

17We think of the sites we observed as being more permeable (Dyson 1997) than most schools. They were willing and more able to let the outside world in through information and communication technologies, through artists, through community and family partnerships, and through the curriculum. This stands in contrast to the default school position of locked gates and doors and security restrictions on computers. These more permeable schools also often modified their physical learning environments by knocking down walls, building outside spaces, changing appearances of rooms and corridors. They were also marked by more mobility – students and teachers moved around the classroom, they went out of the classroom and out of the school more, students were trusted to work in groups in unsupervised places, to use store cupboards, to leave lessons routinely if what they were doing required them to go elsewhere. Again, this is in stark contrast to the default school model where movement is kept to a minimum. Permeability, modification of learning environments and mobility also enhanced the sociality of the institution since it provided more public spaces within which children and adults could come together in different ways. There was also considerable time-flexibility. Not only were large blocks of time carved out of the regular timetable but very often there was no definite end point. While a project did have a beginning and an end, a ‘session’, as opposed to a lesson, took as long as it took.

18We identified five important components of the hybrid signature pedagogies we observed. They are: the approach to inclusion, the importance of choice and agency, the challenge of scale and ambition, the role of the absurd and the carnivalesque, and the lived experience of the present. We consider each of these in turn.

19One of the most notable things that we observed in this project, and that we had seen in previous research on the creative arts, was that artists had a different approach to inclusion. Rather than see that some children had special needs that had to be taken into account and therefore that teaching approaches had to be adjusted for them in some way (usually through a reduction of difficulty), the artists began with the view that all children and young people were capable of having ideas, making meanings and participating (cf. the argument made by Rancière 2004 about assuming universal capability, not incapability, as the starting point). If they saw that this was not happening, then the artists generally encouraged and persisted, rather than changed what they were doing. Because the pedagogies they used were open-ended and because they made explicit that there would be a range of ways in which children could participate, we often recorded artists explaining that nothing was either right or wrong; that there was no one way better than another; that doing the very best that you could was all that was required. This invitation offered every student the opportunity to act in ways that felt comfortable. The high expectations of artists were usually met, often to the surprise of teachers who commented on the ways in which creative pedagogies allowed students who appeared to struggle in other aspects of school to exceed their expectations of them.

20The vast majority of the activities that we observed offered students opportunities to make meaningful choices. There were some important exceptions to this, which related to particular disciplines practised at a more expert level (for example, some ensemble dance work). Many artists worked on an improvisational basis, which required students to contribute ideas. They negotiated activities. This was a direct ‘take’ from their creative practices, where a multitude of ideas were generated before one or a small number were chosen to develop further. These pedagogies often offered students real choices not only about what they did individually, but also what a group or the whole class might do. Some of these activities have been documented in Creative Partnerships reports as student ‘voice’ (see, for example, Bragg, Manchester, and Faulkner 2009). The artists we observed, however, tended to use a term with a stronger inflexion – ‘empowerment’ – imported into the permeable school from the community arts sector. Empowerment connoted the practitioners’ view that arts practice was a way of developing students’ sense of their own capability and agency, of their ability to resist manipulation and make distinctive, autonomous choices about means and purposes.

21The creative practices we observed were often marked by their boldness. Students were encouraged to work on big projects, with imposing objects and difficult materials, for extended periods of time, with professional artists, often in public performance and exhibition spaces. Our accumulated research data contain repeated references by students to the sense of accomplishment they derived from achieving something that, at the outset of a project, they had thought beyond their reach. The importance of being enabled to think big, to be writ large, and to be supported to develop the necessary skills and knowledge to achieve this, was the foundation for building new notions of what-I-can-do and who-I-might-be. Achieving something initially beyond their reach opened up new horizons of possibility for the young people. It is important to note also that the sociality that we referred to earlier was not achieved at the expense of high standards of work and the acquisition of skills and knowledge. On the contrary, sociality was integral to ambitious work.

22We often found ourselves observing and experiencing events that could be seen as odd and eccentric. Artists quite often entered school spaces dressed and behaving differently. They were quite often ‘larger than life’ and brought with them a light-hearted disruption to the generally conservative school environment. A lot of creative practice was accompanied by laughter, jokes, play and satire. While this might seem more normal in early childhood settings, it was often at odds with the serious tone taken in higher levels of education, where play tends to be confined to out of lesson time. However, we suggest that the kinds of play that we observed were very serious in their intent and effect. Tinkering, experimenting, generating and trying out ideas with humour, disruptive intent, questioning and gentle mockery can accompany learning every bit as meaningful as that acquired through quiet contemplation (Bruner, Jolly, and Sylva 1976; Sutton-Smith 1997; Winnicott 1989). Play is part of many forms of artistic practice – theatre for example – where it is understood to be part of the creative process, a medium for exploring taken for granted assumptions, and for communicating ideas (Izzo 1997; Turner 1982). ‘Serious fun’ (Fair Go team 2012) is a means of engaging students both intellectually and emotionally, and particularly in challenging tasks that require patience, practice and the investment of personal as well as school time. The artists deliberately set out to make the work of extending students’ knowledge and skills pleasurable.

23One of the characteristics of default pedagogies is that they are simultaneously focused on both the past – what you learnt yesterday, last term, last year – and the future – learning you need to achieve this level, pass the test and get a job. While these are undoubtedly very important, they tend to ignore the value of the present. Much of what we observed in creative pedagogies had a profound emphasis on the here-and-now, being worthwhile in and of itself. Williams (1973, 1977) wrote of this phenomenon in relation to literature and to forms of rural life. He sought to understand how it was possible to immerse oneself in a book or activity and be there, fully focused on and living in the moment. For Williams this was a way of describing the moment before meanings and possibilities are closed down. In the present, ideas are being formed, not finished, events are experienced, not remembered. Williams called this ‘the structure of feeling’. This idea has been taken up in contemporary work on emotions in education (e.g. Boler 1999; Zembylas 2002). We can find no better term to describe the combination of affect and cognitive attention, the sheer exhilaration, delight and joy that students often displayed during their encounters with creative pedagogies.

The repertoire of pedagogic practices

24We identified a repertoire of nineteen practices that were rooted in the key characteristics of the artists’ approaches outlined above. These practices are by no means exclusive to creative pedagogies but we consider them to be part of a repertoire of expert professional practice in this area, and therefore constitutive of its signature pedagogy. Of course, no single project contained all of these practices; the blend was dependent on the stage of the project, the students, the art form and the nature of the task. Particular combinations of practices were variously paced and sequenced, often in an improvised or negotiated process that was responsive to events and participants’ expressions of need and interest. This level of responsiveness required sophisticated ‘reading’ by the artists, who had to keep an eye on the end point and the limits to their own time with the students, as well as the immediate activities. The practices are:

Practice Description
1. Provocation

A provocation is an object, image, sound, person, event or action that is deliberately ambiguous, unexpected, strange, out of place, open and contingent. It does not arrive with a predetermined interpretation. It is intended to act as a stimulus to meaning making, a trigger for individual and collectives to draw on their own knowledge and experiences in order to provide a meaningful response to what is on offer. It provides a platform for thinking of ideas and possibilities. What the provocation wants from participants is that they give it narrative substance, an explanation, a rationale, a legitimate place in their location

2. Use of artefacts

We noted a preference for the use of found, rather than commercially produced, objects; the treasuring, display and curation of everyday objects imbued with great personal or cultural significance; the creation of new, special, everyday resources. Photographs functioned both as a record and reminder of the work and as artefacts in their own right, recognising and reifying otherwise transitory experiences and creations

3. Moving out of the classroom

The artists were much more likely to move beyond traditional classrooms. They used studio spaces, but the work often moved into available spaces in the local community (for example, the public areas in a tower block and a gated estate; on an allotment). The artists recognised the importance of particular local places and found different ways of populating the spaces

4. Making an occasion

Performances and exhibitions are central to the processes, but the readiness to create special events, celebrate and appreciate was a feature of most of the teaching we observed. The vision was often large-scale and whole-school, ambitious. Combined with the commitment to the quotidian and the local and the readiness to work at scale, creating occasions helped make the ordinary special and validated the creativity in everyday life

5. Use of ‘the texts of our lives’ (Fecho 2011)

An interest in community stories and funds of knowledge; porous borders between school and home knowledge; a readiness to translate and re-imagine events, stories, characters in familiar settings (in the work of the story teller and story-makers, for example)

6. The self as a teaching resource

The artists tended to speak openly about their personal lives; they assumed that students were interested in their identity as artists and they shared information about their own experiences. Some self-consciously presented themselves as role models. Because of the difference in their role, the artists seemed more open and less defensive in this respect than most teachers. They were less risk averse, more inclined to touch students and less concerned about school rules and safety regulations. This contributed to the sense that things were more free and open in artist-led sessions

7. Costume

The artists tended to dress less formally than the teachers did; the costume requirements for their roles in school were different to the expectations about teachers’ clothing. This had some symbolic impact on the teaching context. Specialist clothing was an important aspect of some dance and drama work, and dressing up in character costumes signified expanded or new teaching roles. ‘The Story Lady’, for example, wore a costume that had been carefully constructed to be an exaggerated, almost comic book representation. When working as Story Lady, the artist was in character, but she did not wear the costume or call herself Story Lady when she was working with the children to conduct interviews, construct stories or develop and rehearse the performance. In this way, she demonstrated to the children the difference between front and back stage work, using costume to enable her to move between roles

8. Use of the body

There was more movement, greater use of the body to make meaning, more attention to the development of physical skills, gesture, and mime – and a greater sense of the need to coordinate with other people’s bodies in shared endeavours. This was particularly obvious in the dance and drama projects, but physical involvement was also, for example, a feature of story-making and story-telling

9. Different classroom discourse patterns

The patterns of classroom talk differed from traditional teacher–student exchanges. The tone and style of the talk differed from conventional teacher-talk in that it was often highly personal and anecdotal. Unlike teachers, the artists did not explicitly identify the learning objectives they had in mind for the group. There were clear, often moral, messages in their talk, but they were delivered more as warnings or beliefs than as lessons. The underpinning logic of the artists’ talk was not generally the school logic of cause and effect (hard work bringing reward; misdemeanours bringing punishment); it tended to be a looser logic of going with the flow, trying hard and trusting that things will probably turn out right if you approach them cheerfully and with good intentions. The most marked distinctions between teacher and artist talk related to the work the students were engaged in producing: teachers were more oriented towards judging quality and artists were more concerned about the inherent meanings of the piece. Some of the artists spoke to students at considerable length. The artists asked and answered fewer questions. They used a lot of analogies, but explained less than teachers typically do. They tended to avoid giving feedback, other than in situations where praise could be offered. They encouraged guessing and welcomed suggestions, other than in the strongly professionally framed sessions

10. The creation of a rich narrative environment

The artists’ own uses of analogy, anecdote and personal history, combined with a freeing up of the classroom atmosphere, a widely shared interest in local and community stories, and a readiness to improvise and use drama tools, supported the creation of rich narrative environments in many of the classrooms. This seemed to expand the ‘horizons of possibilities’ for the students (Langer 1991)

11. The use of professional norms

For example, a theatre company ran workshops, initially within drama lessons, around some of the main affordances of physical theatre – awareness of space, of precision of timing, and of ensemble work: ‘we’re exploring what the body can do’. The discourse and the practice of ensemble were the main elements of dramatic ‘discipline’ that the company introduced to the classroom, and along with these came an emphasis on the transformation they required in the behaviour of students: ‘we’re a company now. You’re NO LONGER students’. There was no sense of negotiation in these utterances. This insistence on establishing professional ‘not school’ norms was also very clear in dance and media projects. The professionals’ general talk with the students was informal and focussed on the inter-personal, but a large proportion of the exchanges were concerned with solving the practical problems and challenges of the work at hand. This highlighted the expertise of the professionals, which was also evident in the ways they made judgments and applied standards from their field. Sometimes these judgments and standards were made explicit, at other times they were not. Quite often, the students had to strain to comprehend the implicit and the tacit. In these professionally oriented projects, the students were made aware that the everyday practices were specific to the area they were working in. The models of teaching and learning contrasted with models on offer in their schools. Students frequently made reference to the specialness of these situations; despite the absence of teacher-facilitated reflection on the differences, the students developed their own comparative framing of the pedagogic differences

12. Alignment with disciplinary expectations

For example, at one school, the framing of the creative arts practice was very strongly through the discipline of Fine Art. Students worked autonomously, alongside their teachers and the artist in residence. The language was about self-expression, form, technical and aesthetic problems. Some aspects of the pedagogy were analogous to the professionally framed sessions: the focus on individual skill development, for example, and on spending the time necessary to get the task done properly, rather than fitting the tasks to the allotted time. The ‘rules of the game’ were laid down through modelling, the organisation of space and – more explicitly than in the case of the professional norms – through direct instruction in the lower years of the school. Within this disciplinary framing, and in contrast with the professionally oriented sessions, the traditions of fine art were a frequent point of reference as the students learned about and looked at work from different periods and different artistic movements. The study of art and the development of aesthetic responses were central to the identity of the school, and through the school’s practices they were made available to individual students as part of their own identities

13. The valorisation of collective endeavour

Because of the predominating attitude towards inclusion, plus the fact that the teaching was generally intended to bring people together into a shared endeavour, the emphasis was on sociality. Whole class teaching and direct instruction were commonplace. The emphasis was on involvement, collective creation and sharing rather than on individuation and competition. Even where the work was individualised, the collective endeavour was, for example, to construct a studio environment where art practice flourished. There was a weaker sense of the hierarchy of achievement than there is in many other lessons and a stronger sense of collective accomplishment

14. Managing behaviour differently

Creative practitioners tended to rely on students’ commitment to the collective endeavour, the professional or disciplinary norms, the virtuosity of the artist’s display of expertise, the use of praise and careful listening. Because the artists were actively seeking not to individuate or exclude, and because their frames of reference did not tend to include school rules interpreted at the classroom level, their behaviour management techniques were different to teachers’. Generally, they worked extremely successfully and students seemed to feel both respected and respectful. Occasionally, the artists had to call upon the teachers’ expertise in behaviour management if the norms they had established were disrupted

15. The use of routine

The artists used routines to create atmosphere and a way of being in the class, to reinforce norms of their discipline (rehearsal, warm-up, etc.) and to produce the group performing as one responsive voice and one networked body. Their routines were distinctively different to everyday classroom routines

16. Flexibility in pacing

Characteristically, the teaching we observed was brisk in terms of pace while feeling unhurried. In the artists’ sessions, events took time; time did not tend to dictate the event. In contrast to lessons where tasks might be cut short by the bell, or teachers create obvious time-filling activities because they have misjudged how long a task will take, the artists demonstrated a very strong commitment to the work that was being created – the dance, the artwork, the story, etc. This in turn led the students to invest more seriously in the work. This was an important element of the role modelling the artists provided (an example of which would be the children who explained to an artist how she had inspired them through her commitment to her artwork). On the whole, rhythm and flow were highlighted rather than speed. Either explicitly within the session, or in conversation afterwards, the artists identified the fact that they considered rhythm and flow to be important contributory factors to the quality of the work being produced, in line with ideas proposed by Csikszentmihalyi (1996). This emphasis oriented the artists towards the present time of the activity, rather than to the future. Changes of direction in the session tended to be driven by the practitioner’s reading of the energy level of the class rather than a time-sensitive plan prepared in advance

17. The use of open-ended challenge

In contrast to lessons with pre-specified learning outcomes, the matter of what exactly would be learned in the artists’ sessions tended to be quite open. The trajectory of the lesson was not so much about following a road map as journeying together and seeing where the group arrived. At the start of the creative practitioners’ sessions, the challenge was often presented as being just out of reach but probably attainable through collective hard work. This gave sessions a feel that was distinctly different to lessons where the learning outcomes are chosen and asserted by the teacher in advance. The artists’ sessions celebrated challenges met through hard work, in contrast to lessons where failure to achieve the required learning becomes the main marker of distinction. Also, it was observable across all of the sessions that the practitioners were at pains to stress to the students that there was no definitive right or wrong answer to artistic problems. The emphasis was on whether the work looked and/or felt right to the student in the context of what else was happening in the class. So standards were apparent and applied, but individuals were expected to develop their own skills of discrimination and judgement. There was therefore a stronger orientation towards intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation and evaluation in the artists’ sessions

18. Building commitment to the community

The artists were all very positively oriented towards the schools’ wider communities. Their artistic practices were about the remarkable nature of everyday life, rather than the exotic or esoteric. For each of them, the notion of creativity itself offered a ‘way in’ to new connections with the community, bringing the worlds of school and home into closer contact with one another. The performances and occasions created new opportunities for parents and member of the wider community to build new and different connections with the school. This philosophy, combined with the collectivist approach they adopted and the emphasis on the agency and creativity of each individual, sometimes resulted in a ‘campaigning’ edge to their teaching. Whilst the political dimensions of topics did not tend to be explored, the artists talked about their beliefs and the impact of their work and in doing so suggested alternative modes of dissent and critique

19. Permission to play

Several of the artists used silliness, eccentricity and ‘larger than life-ness’ to gently disrupt taken for granted ways of school thinking and doing. Silliness sometimes had obvious links to direct and school-sanctioned learning: for example, one artist encouraged the children to ‘speak like bees’ starting every word with zzzz …, which not only took concentration but was also absurdly amusing to everyone involved

This repertoire of practices can be grouped under five headings:

(1) Artists carefully managed time and space (items 3, 15,16)

25The norm in schools is for time and space to be tightly organised: the day is organised into lessons, the building into various general and teaching spaces. The artists often worked in open spaces. If in the classroom, they moved the furniture around. They more often took over halls, gymnasia, drama studios and outside spaces. They often worked in blocks of time taken out of the regular timetable.

26These spaces and times were carefully managed. Routines (for example, warm-ups and rehearsals) were used to induct students into professional and disciplinary norms. Activities were bounded within large spaces. Students worked in circles, in groups, they moved from one activity space to another. Students were allowed personal space within group activities. The body, as well as the mind, was seen as a site of learning. The pacing of activities was flexible but the artists generally knew what they wanted to accomplish within the time available. They recognised that sometimes students needed variety in activities but they were noticeably more likely than is now the norm in English classrooms to grant students extended time to concentrate and complete the work they had started to the students’ own satisfaction.

(2) Artists consciously worked with stories (items 2, 5, 6, 9, 10)

27The artists were generally highly conscious of their use of language and stories. Characteristically, they talked about their personal lives more than most teachers do: they talked about their own school experiences, how they came to be artists and how they practised their art when they were not in school. These narratives served multiple purposes. They encouraged trust and established the basis for personal relationships. They encouraged students to reciprocate with important stories from their own lives, which in turn stimulated further conversation. They also provided a context for the creative activities that were to come, a sense of why it mattered, what it might be and also a ‘vocational’ story of the arts as a possible choice for training or a career.

28In this way, the artists created a rich narrative environment in the classroom; they used narratives of their own everyday lives and arts experiences to build connections with students’ lives and experiences. They often used artefacts – usually everyday objects that were of symbolic value or precious because of their associations, or objects they had made – to stimulate interest in these stories or to illustrate a point. As they talked, they shared their values, used technical language, passed on information about their work. The telling and the listening to stories shifted the classic classroom discourse patterns based on question, response and feedback; the artists were particularly prone to answering questions with other questions, or responding to students’ questions with stories or expressions of fellow feeling with the emotion that seemed to lie behind the question. Students generally responded with ease and openness to the associative logic of this kind of talk, which was familiar to them, though not necessarily in the classroom context.

(3) Artists looked for ways to make an occasion (1, 4, 7)

29All of the artists we observed wanted to make experiences special for students. For some this meant presenting themselves as ‘non-teachers’. Most came to school dressed for the kind of work they intended to do – dancers and theatre workers wore clothing that allowed them to move freely, artists wore clothes they could get messy. Some artists arrived in costume, ready to perform as a character. These, and other, ‘provocations’ were used to stimulate interest and excitement. Examples we observed included artists arriving in class in role as a dinosaur, an army colonel and as Story Lady, a noisy figure dressed entirely in lime green carrying a basketful of story ideas. But we also saw areas of the classroom or school field set up as intriguing spaces, and art, craft or natural objects left unexplained for students to explore.

30Generally the artists sought to make each session memorable and eventful. They spent time working on ways to surprise, engage and extend students in activities that also required them to build new skills and understandings. They often arranged for students to meet new people, encounter something unfamiliar, go somewhere new. They looked for audiences for work-in-progress and they encouraged students to take work home to share with their families. The artists were often expected to produce a ‘product’, usually an exhibition, a performance or a film. Generally, they sought to make this product challenging, public and risky, as well as achievable. So students were encouraged to work on these big projects, for extended periods of time, often in front of an audience. These occasions gave students a strong sense of achievement, a sense that they had managed something that, at the outset, they would have considered impossible.

(4) Students were encouraged to be artists (items 8, 11, 12, 17)

31When they were engaged in creative activities, students were invited to leave behind their ‘student’ selves and adopt new identities as artists. The artists did not tend to identify precise learning outcomes for their sessions; instead they set up open-ended challenges. Using themselves as a teaching resource, the artists exposed students to the ways of thinking and being in the world that were intrinsic to their own arts practice and to the arts more generally. They often referred to professional artistic norms and aligned their expectations with the requirements of the discipline or form, rather than with school procedures and subjects. Students were expected to generate many ideas before deciding on one or two to develop further. They were encouraged to experiment, make mistakes and assess what they were producing, sometimes against criteria for expressiveness and aesthetic value that they had developed themselves. They were often engaged in conversations that required them to explain and justify the artistic decisions they had made. Often, practice, skill development and cognitive challenge were combined with play, invention and pleasure. Students were supported by artists to become more patient, to challenge their taken-for-granted assumptions, to use the language and stance appropriate to the arts practice and to communicate their ideas through a wide range of media and events.

(5) Artists made sure the classroom was a highly social and sociable place (items 13, 14, 18, 19)

32The artists placed a high value, in their talk and in their management of students’ behaviour, on sociality – the ways in which people live together and find a place in a community. They gave particular value to collective endeavours, foregrounded the inclusion of everyone in the group and gave permission to play as well as encouraging hard work. Teachers and artists alike very often referred to the ways in which creative activities supported children and young people in gaining confidence. We understood this confidence as stemming from the particular affordances of the pedagogies – the events, activities, associations, conversations, processes of meaning making – which encouraged students to choose to act in ways that allowed them to gain new understandings of who they were, what they could do and what they might do in the future (Wexler et al. 1992). This kind of learning is profoundly social and highly dependent on the ways in which the artists and teachers came together within school to produce temporary and fragile time/spaces where it was possible to do things differently.

Conclusions

33Our research project certainly did not set out to idealise artists’ teaching or to suggest some deficit in teachers’ practice. We purposively chose to observe a small, probably atypical, group of pedagogically skilled artists who were highly valued by the schools they worked in because we wanted to identify aspects of the distinctiveness of their practice. We think we have been able to do that, although we are aware that in the process of articulating the features of this signature pedagogy a process of homogenisation is also taking place and the differences between the individual artists’ teaching styles are being reduced. From the outset, though, our aim has been to create a research-based heuristic, a tool for helping teachers reflect on their repertoire of practice and the values and beliefs that underpin their work. The promotion of creativity in schools is best served, we think, by encouraging dialogue and sharing new approaches and ideas.

34On a practical level, there is clear utility in considering what teachers might learn from engagement with artists. In the schools we worked in, we saw teachers learning new techniques and gaining new intellectual insights from working with the artists, and vice versa. But teachers’ and artists’ positions are not interchangeable; their standpoints, their responsibilities, their training and experience are different. These differences are an important part of the case for artists to feature, alongside teachers, in young people’s education in school, to increase the diversity of their experience.

35On a more fundamental level, though, the creative pedagogies identified here raise profound questions for us about educational values and purposes. We have commented on the fact that the artists’ teaching was refreshing because it interrupted the apparently unremitting default pedagogic patterns that are currently considered to be the essence of good teaching in England and elsewhere. What struck us as we were analysing our data was the extent to which the artists, who were not tied to curriculum frameworks and mandated approaches in the same way that teachers are, were free to view education holistically, to focus on purposes, values and impact that went well beyond passing exams and doing well in tests. The combination of epistemology, ontology and axiology that we observed in the artists’ teaching took us to the ‘four pillars’ identified by UNESCO as foundational for learning in the twenty-first century (Delors 1996): learning to know (discipline based and interdisciplinary intellectual resources for meaning making); learning to do (the dispositions and skills used to turn knowing into practice); learning to be (the development of new identities, embodiments and possibilities) and learning to live together (building meaningful associations, collaborations, networks and participatory practices). More than any other framework, these four pillars seemed to us to capture the domains of learning that occur in and through creative signature pedagogies.

36Where these domains of learning occur in powerful combination with one another, our view is that they need to be protected and cherished. Creative pedagogies, often associated with the arts, have the potential to re-engage teachers with these fundamental educational purposes; for young people they offer alternatives to the ways they are presently positioned and potential for cultural and creative engagement that some will carry with them well beyond school.

Disclosure statement

37No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

38Christine Hall is a professor of Education and former head of the School of Education at the University of Nottingham. She is currently working, with Pat Thomson and with partners from the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Tate, on research which tracks learning and engagement in the arts in schools (the TALE Project). She is also working on a book, co-written with Pat Thomson, called Inspiring School Change: Transforming Education through the Creative Arts (Routledge, 2016).

39Pat Thomson PhD PSM FAcSS is a professor of Education, School of Education, The University of Nottingham and convenor of the School’s Centre for Research in Arts, Creativity and Literacies. Her current research, with Christine Hall, is focused on pedagogies for, and the benefits of, arts learning. Her most recent books are Detox Your Writing: Strategies for Doctoral Researchers (with Barbara Kamler, Routledge, 2016) and Place Based Methods for Researching Schools (with Christine Hall, in press, Bloomsbury).

Haut de page

Bibliographie

Alexander, R. 2008. Essays on Pedagogy. London: Routledge.

Amabile, T. 1996. Creativity in Context: Update to ‘The Social Psychology of Creativity’. Boulder, CO: Westville Press. Arts and Humanities Research Council. 2012. AHRC Cultural Value Project. www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funded-Research/Fundedthemes-and-programmes/Cultural-Value-Project.

Bamford, A. 2009. The Wow Factor. Global Research Compendium on the Impact of the Arts in Education. New York: Waxmunn Munster.

Boler, M. 1999. Feeling Power. Emotions and Education. New York: Routledge.

Bragg, S. 2010. Consulting Young People: A Review of the Literature. a Report for Creative Partnerships. 2nd ed. London: Creativity, Culture and Education.

Bragg, S., H. Manchester, and D. Faulkner. 2009. Youth Voice in the Work of Creative Partnerships. London: Culture Creativity and Education.

Bresler, L., De Stefano, L., Feldman, R., and Garg, S. 2000. “Artists-in-Residence in Public Schools: Issues in Curriculum, Integration, Impact.” Visual Arts Research 26 (1): 13–29.

Bruner, J., A. Jolly, and K. Sylva. 1976. Play: Its Role in Development and Evolution. New York: Basic Books.

Burnaford, G., A. Aprill, and C. Weiss. 2001. Renaissance in the Classroom. Arts Integration and Meaningful Learning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Burnard, P., and M. Swann. 2010. “Pupil Perceptions of Learning with Artists: A New Order of Experience?” Thinking Skills and Creativity 5 (2): 70–82.

Confederation of British Industry. 2013, November 20. Schools Produce Exam Robots, Says CBI Chief. www.cbi.org.uk/media-centre/news-articles/2013/11/schools-produce-exam-robots-says-cbi-chief.

Craft, A., T. Cremin, and P. Burnard. 2007. Creative Learning 3–11: And How We Document It. London: Trentham.

Craft, A., H. Gardner, and G. Claxton. 2007. Creativity, Wisdom and Trusteeship: Exploring the Role of Education. London: Sage.

Creative Scotland. 2013. What is Creativity? www.creativescotland.com/resources/our-publications/plans-and-strategydocuments/scotlands-creative-learning-plan-2013.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1996. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Perennial.

De Backer, F., K. Lombaerts, T. De Mette, T. Buffel, and W. Elias. 2012. “Creativity in Artistic Education: Introducing Artists into Primary Schools.” International Journal of Art & Design Education 31 (1): 53–66.

Delors, J. 1996. Learning: The Treasure within. Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the 21st Century. Paris: UNESCO. unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001095/109590eo.pdf.

DfE. 2015. Creative Learning through the Arts – An Action Plan for Wales. Cardiff: DfE Welsh Government.

Dyson, A. H. 1997. Writing Superheroes. Contemporary Childhood, Popular Culture, and Classroom Literacy. New York: Teachers’ College Press.

Ellsworth, E. 2005. Places of Learning. Media, Architecture, Pedagogy. New York: Routledge Falmer.

Facer, K. 2011. Learning Futures. Education, Technology and Socio-technical Change. London: Routledge.

Fair Go Team. 2012. Exemplary Teachers of Students in Poverty. London: Routledge.

Fecho, B. 2011. Students and Teachers Responding to the Texts of Their Lives. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Fisher, R., and M. Williams. 2004. Unlocking Creativity: A Teacher’s Guide to Creativity across the Curriculum. Oxford: David Fulton

Free, M. L., G. L. Nalder, and L. Fullarton. 2009. “Primary Focus – A Partnership Model for Artists in Schools.” Australian Art Education 32: 1–14.

Galton, M. 2006. The Pedagogy of Creative Practitioners in Schools: Final Report of the Project. London: Arts Council England, Creative Partnerships.

Galton, M. 2010. “Going with the Flow or back to Normal? The Impact of Creative Practitioners in Schools and Classrooms.” Cambridge Journal of Education 25 (4): 355–375.

Gardner, H. 1982. Art, Mind and Brain: A Cognitive Approach to Creativity. New York: Basic Books.

Golde, C. 2007. “Signature Pedagogies in Doctoral Education: Are They Adaptable for the Preparation of Education Researchers?” Educational Researcher 36 (6): 344–351.

Griffiths, M., and F. Woolf. 2009. “The Nottingham Apprenticeship Model: Schools in Partnership with Artists and Creative Practitioners.” British Educational Research Journal 35 (4): 557–574.

Guring, R. A. R., N. Chick, and A. Haynie, eds. 2009. Exploring Signature Pedagogies. Approaches to Teaching Disciplinary Habits of Mind. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Hall, C., P. Thomson, and L. Russell. 2007. “Teaching like an Artist: The Pedagogic Identities and Practices of Artists in Schools.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 28 (5): 605–619.

Harding, A., ed. 2005. Magic Moments: Collaboration between Artists and Young People. London: Black Dog Publishing.

Henley, D. 2011. Music Education in England – A Review. London: DfE/DCMS.

Henley, D. 2012. Cultural Education in England – A Review. London: DCMS/DfE.

Izzo, G. 1997. The Art of Play: The New Genre of Interactive Theatre. Portsmouth, NJ: Heinemann.

Jeffrey, B., ed. 2006. Creative Learning Practices: European Experiences. London: Tufnell Press.

Jeffrey, B., and A. Craft. 2004. “Teaching Creatively and Teaching for Creativity: Distinctions and Relationships.” Educational Studies 30 (1): 77–87.

Joseph, D., and J. Southcott. 2009. “Making It Real: Pre-service Music Teacher Education Students’ Ideas about Artists-in-Schools.” ASME 2009: Proceedings of the XVIIth National Conference, Launceston, Tasmania. pp. 91–95.

Kendall, L, J. Morrison, T. Yeshanew, and C. Sharp. 2008. The Longer Term Impact of Creative Partnerships on the Attainment of Young People. Results from 2005 and 2006. Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research.

Langer, J.A. 1991. Discussion as Exploration: Literature and the Horizon of Possibilities. Albany State University. New York: National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement.

Leach, B., and J. Moon. 2008. The Power of Pedagogy. London: Sage.

Moss, P., and P. Petrie. 2002. From Children’s Services to Children’s Spaces. Public Policy, Children and Childhood. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Noblit, G., C. Dickson H. B. A Wilson, and M. B. Mckinney. 2009. Creating and Sustaining Arts-based School Reform. The A+ Schools Program. New York: Routledge.

Oddie, A. G. 1998. Artist in Schools. A Review. London HMSO: Ofsted.

Ofsted. 2010. Learning: Creative Approaches That Raise Standards. Manchester: Ofsted.

Orfali, A. 2004. Artists Working in Partnership with Schools. Newcastle: Arts council of England.

Polanyi, M. 1966. The Tacit Dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Pringle, E. 2002. ‘We Did Stir Things Up a Bit’: The Role of Artists in Sites for Learning. London: The Arts Council for England.

Rancière, J. 2004. The Philosopher and his Poor. Durham, CA: Duke University Press.

Remer, J. 2003. “Artist-educators in Context: A Brief History of Artists in K-12 American Public Schooling.” Teaching Artist Journal 1 (2): 69–79.

Robinson, K. 2001. Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative. London: Capstone

Safford, K., and O. O’Sullivan. 2008. Their Learning Becomes Your Journey: Parents Respond to Children’s Work in Creative Partnerships. London: Centre for Language in Primary Education.

Sanderson, P., and A. Savva. 2004. “Artists in Cypriot Primary Schools: The Pupils’ Perspective.” Music Education Research 6 (1): 5–22.

Sandlin, J., B. Schultz, and J. Burdick, eds. 2010. Handbook of Public Pedagogy. New York: Routledge.

Sawyer, R. K. 2004. “Creative Teaching: Collaborative Discussion as Disciplined Improvisation.” Educational Researcher 33 (2): 12–20.

Schatzki, T., K. K. Cetina, and E. V. Savigny, eds. 2001. The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. London: Routledge.

Schiff, B. 1973. Artists in Schools. NEA/Office of Education: US Government Printing Office, Washington.

Sefton-Green, J., P. Thomson, K. Jones, and L. Bresler. 2011. The Routledge International Handbook of Creative Learning. London: Routledge.

Sellman, E., ed. 2011. Creative Learning for Inclusion: Creative Approaches to Meet Special Needs in the Classroom. London: David Fulton.

Sharp, C. 1990. “Artists in Schools: Issues and Implications.” Educational Research 32 (2): 140–143.

Shulman, L. 2005. “Signature Pedagogies in the Professions.” Daedalus 134 (3): 52–59.

Soja, E. 1999. “Thirdspace: Expanding the Scope of the Geographical Imagination.” In Human Geography Today, edited by D. Massey, J. Allen, and P. Sarre, 260–278. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Sharp, C., and Dust, K. 1997. Artists in Schools: a Handbook for Teachers and Artists. Slough: NFER.

Sternberg, R., ed. 1999. Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sutton-Smith, B. 1997. The Ambiguity of Play. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.

Thomson, P. 2007. Whole School Change: A Review of the Literature. A Report for Creative Partnerships. London: Arts Council England.

Thomson, P., C. Hall, and K. Jones. 2010. “Maggie’s Day: A Small‐scale Analysis of English Education Policy.” Journal of Education Policy 25 (5): 639–656.

Thomson, P., C. Hall, and L. Russell. 2006. “An Arts Project Failed, Censored or …? A Critical Incident Approach to Artist-school Partnerships.” Changing English 13 (1): 29–44.

Thomson, P., K. Jones, and C. Hall. 2009. Creative Whole School Change. Final report. London: Creativity, Culture and Education; Arts Council England. www.artsandcreativityresearch.org.uk.

Thomson, P., J. McGregor, E. Sanders, and N. Alexiadou. 2009. “Changing Schools: More than a Lick of Paint and a Well-orchestrated Performance?” Improving Schools 12 (1): 43–57.

Turner, V. W. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre. The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications.

Tyrrell, R., D. Williams, and D. Blanchard. 1974. “Artists-in-Schools: Why Bother?” Art Education 27 (8): 21–23.

Wexler, P., W. Crichlow, J. Kern, and R. Martusewicz. 1992. Becoming Somebody. Toward a Social Psychology of School. London: Falmer Press.

Williams, R. 1973. The City and the Country. London: Chatto and Windus.

Williams, R. 1977. Marxism and Literature. London: Oxford University Press.

Winnicott, D. W. 1989. Playing and Reality. New York: Routledge.

Zembylas, M. 2002. “Structures of Feeling’ in Curriculum and Teaching: Theorizing The Emotional Rules.” Educational Theory 52 (2): 187–208.

Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence papier

Christine Hall et Pat Thomson, « Creativity in teaching: What can teachers learn from artists? »Recherche et formation, 86 | 2017, 55-77.

Référence électronique

Christine Hall et Pat Thomson, « Creativity in teaching: What can teachers learn from artists? »Recherche et formation [En ligne], 86 | 2017, mis en ligne le 31 décembre 2020, consulté le 28 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rechercheformation/2983 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/rechercheformation.2983

Haut de page

Auteurs

Christine Hall

University of Nottingham

Pat Thomson

University of Nottingham

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search