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Creativity in
Primary Education
Creativity in
Primary Education
Second edition
Edited by Anthony Wilson

First published in 2007 by Learning Matters Ltd
Second edition published in 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Learning Matters.
ß 2009 Anthony Wilson, Anna Craft, Avril Loveless, Teresa Cremin, Elizabeth Wood,
Tony Eaude, Liz Chamberlain, Jane Johnston, Mary Briggs, Sue Chedzoy, Paul Key,
Sarah Hennessy, Hilary Claire, Richard Woolley, Dan Davies, Alan Howe, Hilary Cooper
and Simon Catling
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
The right of Anthony Wilson, Anna Craft, Avril Loveless, Teresa Cremin, Elizabeth Wood,
Tony Eaude, Liz Chamberlain, Jane Johnston, Mary Briggs, Sue Chedzoy, Paul Key,
Sarah Hennessy, Hilary Claire, Richard Woolley, Dan Davies, Alan Howe, Hilary Cooper
and Simon Catling to be identified as the Authors of this work have been asserted by them
in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 978 1 84445 198 2
Cover design by Topics

Project management by Deer Park Productions, Tavistock, Devon
Typeset by PDQ Typesetting Ltd, Staffordshire
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow
Learning Matters Ltd

33 Southernhay East
Exeter EX1 1NX
Tel: 01392 215560
[email protected]
www.learningmatters.co.uk
Contents
Introduction 1
Anthony Wilson
Part 1: Setting the scene
1 Changes in the landscape for creativity in education 5

Anna Craft
2 Thinking about creativity: developing ideas, making things happen

Avril Loveless
22
3 Creative teachers and creative teaching

Teresa Cremin
36
4 Play and playfulness in the Early Years Foundation Stage 47

Elizabeth Wood
5 Creativity and spiritual, moral, social and cultural development 58

Tony Eaude
Part 2: Creativity in the core primary curriculum
6 Creativity and literacy

Liz Chamberlain
68
7 What is creativity in science education? 77

Jane Johnston
8 Creative mathematics 94
Mary Briggs
v
Contents
Part 3: Creativity in the foundation primary curriculum
9 Children, creativity and physical education 105

Sue Chedzoy
10 Creative and imaginative primary art and design 117

Paul Key
11 Creativity in the music curriculum

Sarah Hennessy
134
12 What has creativity got to do with citizenship education?

Hilary Claire and Richard Woolley
148
13 Creativity in primary design and technology 164

Dan Davies and Alan Howe
14 Creativity in primary history 177

Hilary Cooper
15 Creativity in primary geography 189

Simon Catling
Index 199
vi
Contributors
Anthony Wilson is Primary PGCE Programme Director at the University of Exeter. His
research interests are poetry pedagogy, poetry writing by children, and creative approaches
to literacy teaching. A published poet, he has worked as a primary school teacher, visiting
writer in schools and writing tutor for adults. He is the co-editor of The Poetry Book for
Primary Schools (Poetry Society, 1998).
Mary Briggs is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Education, University of Warwick

where she teaches across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Her
research interests are mathematics education, early years, assessment and leadership and
she has published a number of books in these areas.
Simon Catling is Professor of Primary Education, specialising in geography in primary

education. From 2000-08 he was Assistant Dean of the Westminster Institute of
Education, Oxford Brookes University. He taught in primary schools in London before
moving into higher education. He is a Past-President of the Geographical Association. He
is author of the Mapstart series (revised, Collins, 2009) and of Placing Places (Geographical
Association, 2002). He has written extensively on primary geography, publishing materials
for children and guidance and research for teachers and teacher educators.
Liz Chamberlain is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Winchester, where she
coordinates English across the different courses. She is also the Strategic Consultant on the
Everybody Writes project, which aims to put creativity at the heart of the writing process.
Sue Chedzoy is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Exeter. Her key interests
are promoting physical activity from the early years and throughout life. Her publications
include: Fitness Fun (Southgate Publishers), Physical Education at Key Stages 1 and 2 for
Teachers and Co-ordinators (David Fulton), Physical Education – Access for All (David
Fulton) and Physical Education in the School Grounds (Southgate/Learning Through
Landscapes).
Hilary Claire taught history and citizenship in ITE at London Metropolitan University. She
published extensively in both primary history education and citizenship education and was
the national co-ordinator of the Primary Educators Network for the Advancement of
Citizenship (PENAC).
Hilary Cooper is Professor of History and Pedagogy at the University of Cumbria. Previously
she taught at Goldsmiths’ College, London University, and in a variety of London Primary
Schools. Her doctoral research on ‘Young Children’s Thinking in History’ was undertaken as
a class teacher. She has published widely.
Anna Craft is Professor of Education at the University of Exeter and The Open University.
Once a primary teacher, and with a background in national curriculum development work,
Anna works with learners, teachers, researchers and policymakers to develop creativity and
learning futures. She has written and edited sixteen books, co-edits the journal Thinking
vii
Contributors
Skills and Creativity and co-convenes the BERA Special Interest Group, Creativity in
Education.
Teresa Cremin (formerly Grainger) is a Professor of Education at The Open University. She is
currently President of UKLA, a Trustee of The Poetry Archive and of Booktrust and joint
coordinator of the BERA Creativity SIG. Teresa has published widely, including Teaching
English Creatively (2009, Routledge), Building Communities of Readers (PNS/UKLA, 2008),
and Creativity and Writing: Developing Voice and Verve in the Classroom (RoutledgeFalmer,
2005).Teresa is concerned to make learning an imaginatively vital experience for all involved
and seeks to foster the creative engagement of both teachers and younger learners.
Dan Davies is Professor of Science and Technology Education, Head of Applied Research
and Consultancy, and leader of the Centre for Research in Early Scientific Learning at Bath
Spa University.
Tony Eaude was the headteacher of a multicultural first school in Oxford. He now works as
an independent research consultant and is a Research Fellow, Department of Education,
University of Oxford.
Sarah Hennessy is a Lecturer in Music Education at the University of Exeter where she
teaches both specialist and generalist primary music courses. She also undertakes research
into music teacher education and children’s musical creativity. She is author of Music 7–11:
Developing Primary Teaching Skills (Routledge, 1995) and Coordinating Music Across the
Primary School (RoutledgeFalmer, 1998). She is editor of Music Education Research, direc-
tor of the International Conference for Research in Music Education (RIME) and Chair of the
Orff Society.
Alan Howe is Senior Lecturer in Primary Education and Primary Science Team Leader at
Bath Spa University. He is co-author with Dan Davies and others of Primary Design and
Technology for the Future – Creativity, Culture and Citizenship (2001), Teaching Science and
Design and Technology in the Early Years (2003), and Science 5–11: A Teacher’s Guide
(2005) all published by David Fulton.
Jane Johnston is a Reader in Education at Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln

where she is involved in initial teacher training and continuing professional development of
practitioners. She has contributed to the development of primary science education both
nationally and internationally and has a particular interest in early years education, the
development of scientific attitudes and pedagogical approaches to science. Her many publi-
cations reflect her varied interests, enthusiasm for primary science and desire to develop
awe and wonder in scientific learners. They include Early Explorations in Science, Enriching
Early Scientific Learning, Teaching the Primary Curriculum and Developing Teaching Skills
in the Primary School all published by the Open University Press and contributions to the
ASE’s Primary Science Handbook, Laying the Foundations in the Early Years and The
Curriculum Partnership: Early Years Handbook. She is one of the first five science teachers
to achieve the qualification Chartered Science Teacher (CSci Teach), which recognises high
quality science teaching.
Paul Key is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Winchester. His
interests are exploring teaching approaches which encourage imaginative and playful art
viii
Contributors
and design activities for primary school children and examining the ’landscapes’ of art
practice and art teaching.
Elizabeth Wood is Professor of Education at the University of Exeter, specialising in early

childhood. Her research interests include play in and beyond early childhood; teachers’
professional knowledge and practice; curriculum, pedagogy and assessment in early child-
hood education, and the policy/practice interface.
Richard Woolley is a Senior Lecturer in Primary Education and Teaching Fellow at Bishop
Grosseteste University College Lincoln. His interests include religious education, social
justice and citizenship. He is co-author of The Spiritual Dimension of Childhood (Jessica
Kingsley, 2008).
ix
Acknowledgements
Teresa would like to acknowledge the work of her colleagues Jonathon Barnes and Stephen
Scoffham in the Kent Creative Partnerships funded research upon which Chapter 3 draws.
Introduction
Anthony Wilson
Large numbers leave school with the bitter taste of defeat in them, not having
mastered even moderately well those basic skills which society demands, much
less having become people who rejoice in the exercise of creative intelligence.
Margaret Donaldson, Children’s Minds
‘Creativity’ is a quality we are often made to feel we should value in our society. At the very
least we feel we should be ‘for’ it, even if we do not know how to quantify or explain it. We
may even feel slightly reluctant to define something so appealing and powerful. Like other
nouns we sometimes use to signify qualities of positive value, for example, ‘genius’, ‘poetry’
or ‘art’, we feel we instinctively know creativity when we see it. This does not make it any
easier to define.
For teachers this unease is compounded by the feeling that we should be planning for
creativity and bringing to bear all of our energies on teaching towards it, including the
implications this might have for planning, assessment and progression. These feelings
can be complicated even further when we take into consideration the weight of curriculum
orders and recommendations which teachers need to engage with, interpret and deliver.
The last word of the previous paragraph is freighted with different expectations in a context
of targets and accountability. As the late Ted Wragg stated in an interview in the first edition
of this book, many teachers enter into teaching not because they are passionate about
‘delivery’, but because they see it as a creative profession where they can develop their
own creativity as well as those of their pupils. It is possible that we sign up to the idea of
creativity when we begin teaching because it is emblematic of something, a quality we want
to be known for, perhaps. Conversely, when we detect its absence, in curricular documenta-
tion, schemes of work, or in our own practice, we can be quick to label that as very negative.
With so much support, in terms of curricular recommendations, now available to teachers,
there has, perhaps, never been a better opportunity to address issues of individual and
collective creativity within the profession. Anna Craft reminds us that we are most likely
to feel creative about our practice when we have ownership of it. The implications of this are
not easy, for it involves self-examination, honesty, risk-taking and the possibility that we may
encounter failure.
How to use this book

This book is an attempt to illumine and discuss what this view of creativity means for us as
primary practitioners, and how it might be put into practice across a range of curricular
areas. Far from being an ‘instruction manual’, however, the aim of the book is to make you
reconsider any preconceived notions of what creativity might be, and to ask that you recon-
ceptualise your own responses to different subjects by trying out the suggested activities in
each chapter.
1
Introduction
You will also encounter ‘Reflective Task’ sections within each chapter. Please use these to
reflect on the challenge to think about concepts within each subject in ways which you might
not have considered before. Recording for yourself how your responses change as you read
the book might be a good way of developing the four modes of creativity noted by Guy
Claxton (1999) referred to in Chapter 2 by Avril Loveless: Resilience, Reflection,
Resourcefulness and Relationship.
Intended audience
It is hoped that this book will be of direct interest to primary trainee teachers on all courses of
initial teacher training and education in England and other parts of the UK. One of the themes
running through the book is that creativity is not the preserve of the arts alone. While visual,
performing and literary arts are tackled explicitly within it, the book is aimed at generalists as
well as specialists on PGCE courses. The book will also be of interest to those studying
creativity within educational and/or childhood and youth studies on undergraduate
programmes and all primary teachers looking to reconsider the place of creativity in their
practice.
Chapter details
The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 contextualises the concept of creativity and how it
came to be such an important term in educational discourse. In ‘Changes in the landscape
for creativity in education’, Anna Craft gives us an overview of how creativity came to be
represented in educational thinking in the UK in three distinct ‘waves’. As well as providing a
historical overview, the chapter contains a summary of different models of how creativity
develops, and a critique of the tensions inherent in teaching in a fast-changing world.
Avril Loveless’s chapter ‘Thinking about creativity’ is an extremely useful summary of differ-
ent models of creativity. The chapter locates its discussion of creativity much more explicitly
on personal responses to questions such as: What wider role do teachers play in both being
creative themselves and encouraging creativity in others? One of the central tenets of the
chapter is that creative people do not work in isolation. How schools and teachers take up
the challenge to draw upon local and global knowledge is exemplified by a case study
showing how trainee teachers came to further their own understanding of creativity through
working with children and ICT.
There follow three chapters new to this edition of the book. In ‘Creative teachers and creative
teaching’ Teresa Cremin underlines the autonomy of each individual teacher. Truly creative
teaching, she says, is one which actively models the processes of making connections and
developing curiosity.
In ‘Play and playfulness in the Early Years Foundation Stage’ Liz Wood challenges the notion
that play belongs only in the early years of education. Whilst recognising that societal and
technological changes have transformed the way we think of play, the benefits of a play-
based approach to creativity which takes account of pupil voice are explored for children
across the whole of the primary age phase.
Tony Eaude asks us to consider how the spiritual, moral, social and cultural aspects of
creativity can be developed in ‘Creativity and spiritual, moral, social and cultural develop-
ment’. Making links with the Every Child Matters agenda in particular, he sites the place of
2
Introduction
most influence as being individual teachers rather than government policy: ‘Your most
important contribution to children’s personal development comes from who you are and
the way of acting and interacting which you demonstrate.’
Creativity in the core primary curriculum

Parts 2 and 3 of this book tackle creativity in the core and foundation subjects respectively. In
Chapter 6 Liz Chamberlain reports on schools who have taken part in the action research
project ‘Everybody Writes’, where the key attitude of teachers was that they remained
flexible in their determination to offer children real-life opportunities for writing which
were practised across the whole school.
In Chapter 7 Jane Johnston asks ‘What is creativity in science education?’ Creative science
teaching, she says, involves teachers adapting their pedagogy to suit the learning objectives,
children and context they find themselves in. Promoting a view of science teaching which
develops curiosity, motivation and self esteem, the chapter also reminds us that interaction
with peers and supportive adults in the undertaking of exploratory and investigatory tasks
are key to successful learning.
Mary Briggs’s chapter ‘Creative mathematics’ is critical of recent curricular recommenda-

tions and challenges the reader to re-evaluate mathematics as a creative subject. The
chapter argues that children need to be given open-ended and problem-solving tasks
which cater for a variety of learning styles in order for their interest and development in
mathematics to be sustained.
Creativity in the foundation primary

curriculum
In ‘Children, creativity and physical education’ Sue Chedzoy gives a useful overview of how
PE teaching has changed in the postwar period. She sees the key to unlocking creative
potential in PE lessons as belonging to individual teachers. Being ‘expert’, she says, is not as
important as feeling secure in setting up safe environments for children and having a basic
understanding of how children learn and develop through PE.
Paul Key’s chapter, ‘Creative and imaginative primary art and design’, asks us to consider
ourselves as artist–teachers, and to base this not only on the standards set by others but on
what we believe to be right. Described as a ‘pathway of possibilities’, this way of teaching art
to children is one which demands flexibility, ambition and trust in pupils’ and individuals’
instincts and ideas.
Sarah Hennessy, in ‘Creativity in the music curriculum’, develops further the idea of the
teacher as artist, a role which involves risk-taking, confidence, imagination and the mutual
handing over of responsibility between teacher and pupils. Using creativity theory devel-
oped by Wallas (1926) she presents practical ideas for music teaching based on four stages
of the creative process: preparation, incubation, illumination and verification.
In Chapter 12 Richard Woolley adapts the work of the late Hilary Claire to ask: ‘What has
creativity got to do with citizenship education?’ As in previous chapters, this question
requires individual teachers to place their own sense of self-esteem, confidence and identity
3
Introduction
at the core of their citizenship education. Only when we value ourselves, they argue, can we
begin to value the ‘worth’ of others. Using the metaphor of ‘journey’ to describe citizenship
education, teachers are encouraged to set small achievable goals on a road towards greater
collaboration, responsibility and autonomy in response to global and societal issues.
In ‘Creativity in primary design and technology’ Dan Davies and Alan Howe challenge us not
to set children artificial problems, but to support them in developing strategies that will help
them to think through problems in the midst of designing and making. Synthesising the work
of Csikszentmilhalyi (1997, 2002) with good classroom practice, they advocate a style of
teaching design and technology which is centred on building on children’s interests, identi-
fying real opportunities and using relevant contexts for learning.
The book closes with two further new chapters: Hilary Cooper’s ‘Creativity in primary
history’ and Simon Catling’s ‘Creativity in primary geography’. In the latter we are challenged
to ‘use children’s perspectives; ‘‘problematize’’ the topic; question the ‘‘accepted’’; become
aware of alternative possibilities; create personal responses and meanings; and to make
judgments and decisions and justify them’. Hilary Cooper puts it slightly differently. Learning
history, she says, requires us to develop and defend arguments, to listen to others and to
recognise that there may be no single ‘right answer’ to the questions we pose in the class-
room. As she says, that is part of social, emotional as well as cognitive, growth. Can the goal
of education be any more important? And can the need for creative pedagogy which
promotes these be any more urgent than it is now?
Anthony Wilson, 2009
4
PART 1
SETTING THE SCENE
1
Changes in the landscape
for creativity in education
Anna Craft
Chapter objectives
By the end of this chapter you should have:
. understood that creativity is no longer the preserve of arts education;
. explored how creative teaching focuses on the teacher;
. seen how creativity is critical for individuals to thrive in a rapidly changing world.
This chapter addresses the following Professional Standards for the award of QTS:
Q1, Q8, Q15, Q25(a)
Introduction
In the last part of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first, creativity in education
has increasingly become a focus in curriculum and pedagogy. It is now embedded in the
Foundation Stage Curriculum and the National Curriculum for schools (England). There has
been a substantial investment in staff development and the creation of teaching resources
for school teachers.
This chapter explores why the landscape has altered so radically from the policy context
which immediately preceded it. It also explores current concepts of creativity in use in
education, and strategies used to enhance opportunity for pupils to be creative.
Finally it raises some fundamental tensions and dilemmas that face teachers fostering crea-
tivity in education.
What has changed?

The last twenty or so years have seen a global revolution so that in many places creativity
has moved from the fringes of education and/or from the arts to being seen as a core aspect
of educating. No longer seen as an optional extra, nor as primarily to do with self-expression
5
Changes in the landscape for creativity in education
through the arts, early twenty-first century creativity is seen as generative problem-identifi-
cation and problem-solving, across life (Craft, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2005).
Three waves of creativity in education

We can describe the change in creativity policy as occurring in three ‘waves’.
. The ‘first wave’ of creativity in education was perhaps in the 1960s, codified by Plowden (CACE, 1967),
drawing on child-centred philosophy, policy and practice.
. The second wave began in the late 1990s, about ten years after the introduction of the National
Curriculum.
. And the third is well under way in the early years of the twenty-first century.
The first wave: Plowden and beyond

The recommendations of the Central Advisory Council in Education in 1967 (which became
known as the Plowden Report), formed thinking about creativity in education for the genera-
tion which followed it (CACE, 1967). Drawing on a large body of so-called liberal thinking on
the education of children, it recommended that children learn by discovery, taking an active
role in both the definition of their curriculum and the exploration of it. Active and individua-
lised learning was strongly encouraged, as well as learning through first-hand experience of
the natural, social and constructed world beyond the classroom. A core role was given to
play.
Plowden made a significant contribution to the way in which creativity in education was
understood. It influenced the early years of education but had an impact on the later primary
years and secondary education, too. It provided an early foundation for the more recent
move in creativity research towards emphasising social systems rather than personality,
cognition or psychodynamics.
Through Plowden, creativity became associated with a range of other approaches: discov-
ery learning, child-centred pedagogy, an integrated curriculum and self- rather than norm-
referencing.
However, within the Plowden ‘take’ on creativity, there are several problems.
The first is the role of knowledge. For while we cannot exercise imagination or creativity in
any domain without knowledge if we are to go beyond the given or assumed, Plowden
nevertheless implies that a child may be let loose to discover and learn without any prior
knowledge.
Secondly, there is a lack of context implied in the rationale for ‘self-expression’. Plowden
appears to conceive of the child’s growth and expression in a moral and ethical vacuum. It
has been argued more recently that encouraging children and young people to have ideas
and express them should be set in a moral and ethical context within the classroom (Craft,
2000, in press; Fischmann et al., 2004; Gardner, 2004).
Thirdly, Plowden suggests that play provides the foundation for a variety of other forms of
knowledge and expression and in doing so appears to connect play creativity within the arts
only and not with creativity across the whole curriculum.
6
Related to the third point is a further problem, which is that play and creativity are not the
same as one another, for not all play is creative.
Such conceptual and practical problems, it has been argued (NACCCE, 1999), were in part
responsible for creativity being pushed to the back of policy-makers’ priorities in curriculum
development. Until, that is, the late 1990s, which saw a revival of official recognition of
creativity in education: the second wave (Craft, 2002, 2003a, 2004).
The second wave of creativity in education

During the late 1990s, there was a resurgence of interest in psychology and education
research. This accompanied policy shifts reintroducing creativity into education.
Three major curriculum-based initiatives occurred.
The National Advisory Committee on Creative and

Cultural Education Report
The report linked the fostering of pupil creativity with the development of culture, in that
original ideas and action are developed in a shifting cultural context. It suggested that the
fostering of pupil creativity would contribute to the cultural development of society, since
creativity rarely occurs without some form of interrogation of what has gone before or is
occurring synchronously. The Report proposed the idea of democratic creativity, i.e. ‘all
people are capable of creative achievement in some area of activity, provided the conditions
are right and they have acquired the relevant knowledge and skills’ (paragraph 25). This
notion has some connection with Plowden, in that children’s self-expression is valued and all
people are seen as capable of creativity. But it contrasts with the Plowden approach too.
First, it argues for the acquisition of knowledge and skills as the necessary foundation to
creativity – reflecting the wider research context in the ‘situating’ of knowledge. Secondly, it
has a great deal more to say on creativity than Plowden since that was its main focus.
Criticisms of the NACCCE Report are very few. Since its publication, it has increasingly
informed the way that creativity is being developed in the codified curriculum for
Foundation Stage and beyond.
’Creative development’ in Foundation Stage and Early

Years Foundation Stage
The codifying of this part of the Early Years curriculum for children up to the age of five in
2000, reinforced in 2007, meshed closely with the existing norms and discourse about early
education. ’Creative development’ in both sets of policy guidance encompasses art, craft
and design, imaginative play, music and dance, all of which have traditionally formed a core
part of Early Years provision. It emphasises the role of imagination and of children devel-
oping and deepening a range of ways of responding to experiences and expressing and
communicating ideas and feelings through a wide range of media and materials. In the 2007
guidance, creativity and critical thinking is seen as a core aspect of provision, allowing
children to make connections, transform understanding and develop sustained, shared
thinking. It involves valuing creativity and critical thinking right across the curriculum and
balancing freedom with structure. In addition, creative development continues to be named
as one of the six areas of learning and development and comprises being creative (respond-
ing to experiences, communicating and expressing ideas), exploring materials and media,
7
creating music and dance, and developing imagination and imaginative play. It emphasises
the need to support children in exploratory risk-taking, absorption in their activities, initiating
ideas, choices and decisions, and recognising novelty in children’s explorations. It includes,
very significantly, offering children opportunities to ‘work alongside artists and other creative
adults’ (DfES, 2007, card Creative Development, side 2).
Codifying creativity within the early learning curriculum has been a significant landmark;
particularly in the 2007 version which acknowledges that problem-finding and problem-
solving using imagination and posing ‘what if?’ questions occur within a whole range of
domains. On the other hand there are at least two difficulties with seeing creativity in terms
of ‘development’.
Firstly, conceiving of creativity as something which may be ‘developed’ implies that there is
a ceiling, or a static end-state, and that, given the appropriate immediate learning environ-
ment, children will ‘develop’. Both presuppositions are problematic.
Secondly, the implication is that play and creativity are the same. As already suggested, they
are not. Play may be, but is not necessarily, creative. For example, ‘Snakes and Ladders’,
being dependent upon a mix of chance and a set structure, is not creative, but ‘Hide and
Seek’ may well be. Similarly, imaginative play may be imitative but it may equally be highly
creative.
‘Creative thinking’ named as a key skill in the National

Curriculum
This contrasts with the Early Years formulation in seeing a cross-curricular role for creativity
in the aims of the school curriculum, suggesting that creativity is not the preserve of the arts
alone but that it arises in all domains of human endeavour.
Criticisms of the National Curriculum focused on the lack of exploration of how this skill was
manifest in different curriculum areas, although at the time of writing the 2nd Edition of this
text (Summer, 2008), the primary National Curriculum is under review. It seems very likely
that the new formulation will reflect the 2007 formulation of the KS3 curriculum (DfES, 2007),
to be implemented from September 2008. This includes six personal learning and thinking
skills (PTLS), one of which is creative thinking, reflecting the NACCCE definition.
All kinds of other policy initiatives have flowed from these major developments in the
second wave. These include the following:
. Excellence in Cities, a scheme to replace Education Action Zones and designed to raise achievement
particularly in the inner city, was launched in 1999. Targeted to start with at secondary schools and then
introduced to primary schools too, this programme was believed to have led to higher attainment in both
GCSEs and vocational equivalents for pupils whose schools were in the scheme. Some schools and action
zones focused on creativity (DfES, 2005a; OFSTED, 2004).
. For several years at the end of the 1990s and start of the 2000s, DfES Best Practice Research
Scholarships and Professional Bursaries for teachers enabled teachers to research creativity in their
classrooms (DfES, 2005b). From 2004 the theme was continued through the Creativity Action Research
Awards offered by Creative Partnerships and DfES (Creative Partnerships, 2004).
. OFSTED took a positive and encouraging perspective on creativity through two reports published in
August 03: Improving City Schools: How the Arts Can Help (OFSTED, 2003b) and Raising Achievement
Through the Arts (OFSTED, 2003b).
8
. DfES published Excellence and Improvement in May 2003 (DfES, 2003), exhorting primary schools to take
creative and innovative approaches to the curriculum and to place creativity high on their agendas
following this in 2004 with materials.
. DfES established the Innovation Unit with the brief to foster and nurture creative and innovative
approaches to teaching and learning.
. DfES funded research, development and CPD initiatives including the Creative Action Research Awards
(Craft et al., 2007).
. The Arts Council and DCMS became integrally bound into the delivery of Creative Partnerships and
associated activities (Creative Partnerships, 2005).
. A creativity strand was established within the DTI from the end of the 1990s (DTI, 2005).
. The National College for School Leadership developed the notion of Creative Leadership for fostering
creativity in pupils (NCSL, 2005).
. DfES introduced ‘personalised learning’ (DfES, 2004a, 2004b, 2004d).
. QCA developed creativity CPD materials for Foundation Stage through to KS2 (QCA, 2005a, 2005b).
The work of the QCA in this second wave is particularly significant as a landmark. It
attempted to both describe and promote creativity in schools, through its creativity curricu-
lum development and research project launched in 2000, Creativity: Find it! Promote it!
Drawing on the NACCCE definition of creativity, QCA added an emphasis on purposeful
shaping of imagination, producing original and valuable outcomes. It aimed to exemplify
creativity across the curriculum, through a framework providing early years and school
settings with both a lens and strategies for finding and promoting creativity. Specifically,
the QCA suggest that creativity involves pupils in thinking or behaviour involving
. questioning and challenging
. making connections, seeing relationships
. envisaging what might be
. exploring ideas, keeping options open
. reflecting critically on ideas, actions, outcomes
(QCA, 2005a, 2005b).
There are many other aspects to the framework, including suggestions for pedagogical
strategies and ways in which whole schools might develop their creativity.
The model of learning which underpins the QCA framework, is found commonly in what
might be called second- to third-wave work in creativity, including that which focuses on
creative partnerships of a variety of kinds. For it assumes, perhaps unsurprisingly, that
creativity is situated in a social and cultural context. A situated perspective, then, it empha-
sises the practical, social, intellectual and values-based practices and approaches involved
in creative activities. From this perspective, ‘creative learning’ is seen as an apprenticeship
into these, a central role being given to the expert adult, offering induction to the relative
novice.
Aspects of apprenticeship include:
. modelling expertise and approaches

When the adults taking a lead role in stimulating young people to work creatively are creative
practitioners in their own fields, they offer novices ways into their own artistic practices. This model of
teaching and learning could be seen as quite different to that of the traditional classroom teacher in a
school (Craft et al., 2004).
9
. authenticity of task
The more closely the activities generated by the adult expert correspond to those that form part of their
normal professional life, the greater the likelihood that pupils will be able to effectively integrate
propositional and procedural knowledge, and the greater the chances of learners finding personal
relevance and meaning in them too (Murphy et al., 2004). This is sometimes referred to as ‘cultural
authenticity’.
. locus of control
It is very important that the locus of control rests with the young person (Jeffrey, 2001a, 2001b, 2003a,
2003b, 2004; Jeffrey and Woods, 2003; Woods 1990, 1993, 1995, 2002). Connected with this, the
quality of interactions between adults and pupils determines, in large part, the decision-making authority.
. genuine risk-taking
If the locus of control resides with the pupils, this can facilitate greater and more authentic risk-taking
than might otherwise have been undertaken.
When creative practitioners lead the apprenticeship, children can see work created as part of
the leader’s own artistic or commercial practices, and are therefore engaged in coming to
understand the artist’s own ways of working.
The model of creative learning as apprenticeship implies ownership by children of ideas,

processes and directions, together with engagement in and motivation toward, their own
creative journey. But an apprenticeship is finite. Ultimately the novice becomes a newly
fledged expert, taking off without the scaffolding, travelling alone or with others, making
their own map. Griffiths and Woolf (2004) document the ways in which skilful creative
practitioners are sensitised to when it is appropriate to encourage young people to move
to the edge of, and then beyond, the scaffolding.
There are two other issues touched on but perhaps not yet adequately explored, by the QCA
framework in this particular incarnation.
. What is the relationship between individual and collective work?

How do the two interact? Although this question has been examined by researchers over some twenty
years at least (Amabile, 1983, 1988, 1996, 1997; Craft, 1997; John-Steiner, 2000; Miell and Littleton,
2004; Sonnenburg, 2004; Wegerif, 2004), it is still not well understood.
One aspect of the individual/collective negotiation is negotiating the balance between the creative needs
of the individual and the collective creative needs of a group. Nourishment and support for the individual
occurs in a wider social context. Seeing how ideas are responded to is a part of this, and therefore so is
evaluative two-way feedback in written, dramatic, symbol-based and other forms. The creator should be
able to negotiate meaning and possible implications with evaluators.
. Models of how creativity can be fostered
It may not be fruitful to consider creativity as being ‘triggered’ in any simple or direct way. As with all
social science, it is very hard to be sure of cause–effect relationships. But we do have some working
hypotheses implied in some key terms: teaching for creativity, creative teaching and creative learning.
Creative teaching is focused on the teacher. Studies suggest that teachers feel creative when
they control and take ownership of their practice, are innovative and ensure that learning is
relevant to learners, envisaging possibilities and differences, seeing these through into
action (Jeffrey and Woods, 2003; Woods and Jeffrey, 1996).
Teaching for creativity by contrast focuses on the child and is often ‘learner inclusive’
(Jeffrey and Craft, 2004; Jeffrey and Woods, 2003). A learner inclusive pedagogy involves
10
giving the child many choices and a great deal of control over what is explored and how. It
is, essentially, learner-centred (Jeffrey and Craft, 2004).
Research suggests that a teacher who is successful in stimulating children’s creativity does
some or all of the following:
. encourages development of purposeful outcomes across the curriculum;

. develops children’s motivation to be creative;
. fosters the study of any discipline in depth, developing children’s knowledge of it, to enable them to go
beyond their own immediate experiences and observations;
. offers a clear curriculum and time structure to children but involves them in the creation of new routines
when appropriate;
. provides an environment where children are rewarded for going beyond what is expected;
. uses language to both stimulate and assess imaginativeness;
. helps children to find personal relevance in learning activities;
. models the existence of alternatives while also helping children to learn about and understand existing
conventions;
. encourages additional and alternative ways of being and doing, celebrating, where appropriate to do so,
their courage to be different;
. gives children enough time to incubate their ideas.
(Sources: Balke, 1997; Beetlestone, 1998; Craft, 2000; Edwards and Springate,1995; Fryer,
1996; Halliwell, 1993; Hubbard, 1996; Jeffrey and Woods, 2003; Kessler, 2000; Shallcross,
1981; Torrance, 1984; Woods, 1990, 1993, 1995; Woods and Jeffrey, 1996.)
OFSTED (2003a, 2003b) would add to this the significance of:
. partnership;
. authentic relationships with the social, economic, cultural and physical environment.
The middle ground between creative teaching and teaching for creativity has been gradually
expanded to include a relatively new term in the discourse: ‘creative learning’, which has
been described as a ‘middle ground’ between teaching for creativity and creative teaching,
emphasising the learner’s experience (Jeffrey and Craft, 2006). So what does this term
mean? European work (Jeffrey and Craft, 2006) suggests that it involves learners in using
their imagination and experience to develop learning, that it involves them strategically
collaborating over tasks and contributing to the classroom pedagogy and to the curriculum,
and it also involves them critically evaluating their own learning practices and teachers’
performance. It offers them, in many ways, a form of apprenticeship.
Nevertheless, the teaching profession and other collaborative partners still have a long way
to go in characterising creative learning as distinct from other kinds of learning (Cochrane et
al., 2008).
During the second wave of creativity, then, there were common themes to many of the
policy initiatives, for example:
11
. role of the arts;

. social inclusion;
. raising achievement;
. exploration of leadership;
. place of partnerships.
Within the research community both prior to and during the second wave, there was a
matched growth. After a relatively fallow period from the 1970s until the late 1980s, the
last part of the twentieth century saw greatly increased activity in creativity research as
applied to education.
Research foci included the conceptualising of creativity (Craft, 1997, 2001, 2002; Fryer,
1996), exploring how creativity could be fostered and maintained (Jeffrey, 2001a, 2001b),
investigation of creativity in specific domains such as information and communications
technology (Leach, 2001), documenting creative teaching (Woods and Jeffrey, 1996) and
exploring creative leadership (Imison, 2001; NCSL, 2005).
In common with other educational and social science research a significant direction of
research into creativity, both within education and beyond it, has been to situate within it
a social psychological framework which recognises the role of social structures and colla-
borative practices in fostering individual creativity (Jeffrey and Craft, 2001; Miell and
Littleton, 2004; Rhyammar and Brolin, 1999).
Since the 1990s, research into creativity has focused more on the creativity of ordinary
people within aspects of education, what Boden calls ‘p’ creativity (Boden, 2001). The
methodology for investigating creativity in education has also shifted, from large-scale
studies aiming to measure creativity toward ethnographic, qualitative approaches to
research focusing on the actual site of operations and practice, again contextualising crea-
tivity in the social and cultural values and practices of both the underlying disciplines and the
particular setting. There has also been a move toward philosophical discussions around the
nature of creativity (Craft, 2002).
This was – and is – quite distinct from the earlier climate, in its changed emphasis on:
. characterising, rather than measuring;

. ordinary creativity rather than genius;
. complexity rather than simplicity;
. encompassing views of creativity which include products but do not see these as necessary;
. emphasis on the social system rather than the individual;
. recognitiion of creativity as situated, not ‘universalised’.
The third wave: a tsunami?

The first years of the twenty-first century have, then, seen a gradual move from a second to a
third wave, which goes beyond seeing creativity as universalised, to characterising it as
everyday (Craft, 2001, 2002, 2005; Feldman, 1999) – seeing creativity as necessary for all at a
critical period for our species and for our planet. For the children in our schools will help to
shape the world in which they grow up and in which we grow old. Their ability to find
solutions to the problems they inherit from us and to grow beyond the restrictions we have
12
placed upon our own world-view will, more than in any other generation, define the future of
our species and our planet.
The third wave can be viewed as a ‘tsunami’, or tidal wave, of change, reflecting under-
pinning seismic shifts that now see creativity as fundamental to 21st century learning and
living. The third wave policies all have their foundations in the second wave, and include:
. The Roberts Review (2006)

. Select Committee (2007)
. Creative Economy Strategy (2008).
The Roberts Review and the Government’s response to it

The Roberts Review was perhaps the most significant of the third wave policies, in further
codifying creativity in the curriculum and channelling the tsunami of change into an
economic position and one which would also enhance learner engagement and inclusion.
The review was established in late 2005 by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport
(DCMS) and Department for Education and Skills (DfES). Led by Paul Roberts, a civil servant,
it was established to consider initiatives under way to support the creative and cultural
development of young people and creativity in schools since the 1999 NACCCE Report,
as well as considering how creativity as a set of skills could be poised to feed the creative
and cultural industries, helping to establish Britain as the world’s ’Creative Hub’ (Purnell,
2005).
The Roberts Review (DfES, 2006) mapped out a framework for creativity, including provision
in the early years, extended schools, building schools for the future, leadership in creative
teaming, initial teacher education, professional development, partnerships, frameworks of
regulation and support, and introduced the idea of the individual creative portfolio, arguing
creativity is a key part of the development of young citizens.
The Government’s response, in late 2006, committed to the recommendations made in the
Roberts Review. It emphasised the cross-curricular approach to creativity as broader than
the arts, and indicated the need to retain high standards alongside creative engagement.
This should include opportunities across the curriculum, some of these involving creative
partnership, and creativity should be nurtured through teacher development and school
leadership; support for developing these priorities was to come from both DfES and
DCMS. It confirmed the QCA version of the NACCCE definition of creativity, stating:
We believe, as QCA makes clear, that:
. Creativity involves thinking or behaving – imaginatively;

. This imaginative activity is purposeful: that is, it is directed to achieving an objective;
. These processes must generate something original;
. The outcome must be of value in relation to the objective.
(DCMS/DfES, 2006, p4)
The eight areas of commitment made by Government at this point were:
. the development of a Creative Portfolio, in a wide range of settings and reflecting creative industries-
related activities;
13
. a commitment to the Early Years, ensuring that creativity remains at the heart of the Foundation Stage,
and that creative practice is encouraged and rewarded;
. development of creativity within Extended Schools, paying attention to supporting schools to mirror this
within formal provision;
. closer attention to the development of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme to provide
inspirationally designed built environments to nurture creative engagement, involving young people in this
process;
. developing further support for Leading Creative Learning through head teachers and other school leaders,
to regard ’every subject as a creative subject’, considering how both initial teacher education and
continuing professional development may contribute to this;
. fostering appropriate and systemic Practitioner Partnerships between schools and creative industries and
partnerships with particular attention to the future of the Creative Partnerships programme;
. mapping access and progression routes of Pathways to Creative Industries, through apprenticeship
frameworks and diplomas;
. further development of Frameworks and Regulation such that the holistic, enquiry-based approaches of the
Primary and Secondary National Strategies are supported through development of the Ofsted subject
surveys and other regulatory frameworks.
A Board (The Cultural and Creative Education Board – CCEAB) was established in late 2006
to progress the recommendations of the Roberts Report and over the year of its existence,
laid increasing emphasis on ‘cultural learning’ rather than ‘creative learning’. It was perhaps
unsurprising, then, that the McMaster report (2008), commissioned by the Secretary of State
for Culture, Media and Sport, to explore how the public sector might encourage innovation,
risk-taking and excellence, describes it as a ‘cultural’ rather than ‘creative’ learning
programme, and that in February, 2008, Government launched the ‘Cultural Offer’, ten
regional pilots for which were to sit within the Youth Culture Trust, within a slimmed-
down Creative Partnerships organisation (DCMS, Feb 2008).
The Education Select Committee report (2007) and the

Government’s response (2008)
The House of Commons Education Select Committee (2007), was focused on creative
partnership in particular. Entitled Creative Partnerships and the Curriculum, it argued crea-
tivity was a set of skills relevant across the curriculum, broader than the arts, and suggested
there was an ‘urgent’ need to prioritise ‘developing new methods of assessing incremental
progress’ stating that ‘existing measures of progress which focus on the attainment of Key
Stages, are unlikely to capture small but steady improvements, or progress in areas such as
self-confidence, and team-working’ (ibid, para 28, page 17).
The Government response to this report, recognised that ‘creativity is not just about the arts
. . . it applies across all subjects.‘ (House of Commons Children, Schools and Families
Committee, January, 2008, Appendix, page 1), also stated that ‘both Departments consider
that Creative Partnerships’ principal focus should remain on the arts and culture’ (ibid, p3).
Creative Economy Strategy (2008)

This document, published by the Government in February 2008, shortly after the response to
the Select Committee on Creative Partnerships brought together a number of aspects of
creativity in relation to the economy, initiated in 2005. It focused on creativity as a set of skills
to be developed in relation to careers and progression into the creative and cultural indus-
14
tries. As Cochrane et al, (2008) argue, two clear narratives were evident from it. The first
focuses on ‘nurturing talent’ to enable young people to progress into careers and further
education in the arts, cultural and creative industries. The second focuses on broader
support for ‘cultural learning’ embedded in the Cultural Offer (Creative Partnerships, 2008).
Taken together, these three initiatives alone provide a powerful recognition of creativity and
culture as embedded in education for children and young people of all ages. They emerge,
too, in the context of a developing framework for ensuring that Every Child Matters, which
has led to interprofessional practices to ensure that children and young people thrive. The
2007 Children’s Plan identified creativity as important (albeit in terms of the economy), the (at
the time of writing) current independent review of the primary curriculum is working to a
remit given by the Secretary of State in January 2008, to ensure that the new curriculum
both encourages creativity and inspires a lifelong commitment to learning. The DfES
Manifesto to Learning Outside the Classroom (DfES, 2006) also urges the need to respond
to children’s curiosity and to nurture creativity.
The shift toward cultural development seems significant; at the time of writing the second
edition of this book, it remains unclear whether creativity or culture, or both, will remain the
main priority. Whilst the most recent shifts in England have been toward cultural develop-
ment, the European Union plans to announce 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and
Innovation, which shifts the emphasis back again toward creativity. What seems undispu-
table is that this is a period in which creativity, culture and innovation are highly valued,
particularly in relation to the ‘creative economy’.
Why the changing landscape?

The reasons for this resurrection of interest and the shift from a first to a second and then to
a third wave of change to the landscape of creativity emerge from a mix of political,
economic and social change.
The globalisation of economic activity has brought with it increased competitiveness for
markets, driving the need for nation states to raise the levels of educational achievement of
their potential labour forces (Jeffrey and Craft, 2001). Changes in our economy mean an
increased proportion of small businesses or organisations, employing less than five people
and with a turnover of less than £500,000 (Carter et al., 2004). Employment in no organisa-
tion is for life. We have shifted our core business from manufacturing to a situation where
‘knowledge is the primary source of economic productivity’ (Seltzer and Bentley, 1999, p9).
Education has, of course, a dynamic relationship with this shifting world of employment and
the wider economy. In response to changes in these domains, what is considered significant
in terms of educational achievement is changing.
It is no longer merely sufficient to have excellence in depth and grasp of knowledge. Critical
to surviving and thriving is, instead, creativity. For it is creativity which enables a person to
identify appropriate problems and to solve them. It is creativity that identifies possibilities
and opportunities that may not have been noticed by others. And it is argued that creativity
forms the backbone of the economy based on knowledge (Robinson, 2001).
In the wider social environment, certitudes are in many ways on the decrease. Roles and
relationships in family and community structures, unchanging for centuries, are shifting fast;
15
a young person growing up in the twenty-first century has a much more active role than
perhaps ever before in making sense of their experiences and making choices about their
own life (Craft, 2001).
And alongside all this, information and communication technology plays an increasing role,
both offering potential for creativity and demanding it.
All this change in the economic, political, social and technological context means that our
conceptualisations of creativity, how to investigate and foster it, are changing. An aspect of
the third wave in creativity is that the notion of creativity as ‘universalised’ is now common-
place, i.e. the perspective that everybody is capable of being creative given the right
environment (Jeffrey and Craft, 2001).
But the third wave also problematises creativity. It has brought with it exploration of the
tensions and dilemmas encapsulated in fostering it.
Tensions and dilemmas

There are some fundamental tensions and dilemmas inherent in developing creativity. They
are rather more than mere tensions between policy and practice although these too pose
serious challenges in perspective, disconnected curricula and curriculum organisation to
name a few.
There are at least four much more fundamental challenges, bearing in mind that in this third
wave the education of children must nurture the creativity which will determine their ability
to survive and flourish in a chaotic world.
Culture and creativity

There is growing evidence (for example, Ng, 2003; Nisbett, 2003) that creativity is mani-
fested and defined in different cultural contexts. To what extent can and should we take
account of this in a multicultural learning environment? It has been argued that it is impera-
tive that we do address these possible differences in the ways that we foster creativity in the
classroom (Craft, 2005). And yet, in these times when teachers and creative partners are still
celebrating the relative freedoms afforded by increased policy support for creativity, and
therefore not perhaps critically scrutinising their practices in ways that they might later do,
there is little sign of this occurring at present.
Creativity and the environment

How does creativity impact on the wider environment? For the creativity we are experien-
cing is anchored in a global marketplace that has a powerful influence on values. It is heavily
marketised, so that wants are substituted for needs, convenience lifestyles and image are
increasingly seen as significant and form part of a ‘throw-away’ culture where make-do-and-
mend are oldspeak, and short shelf-life and built-in obsolescence are seen to be positive. In
this marketised context, the drive to innovate ever further perhaps becomes an end in itself.
And this occurs against a rising global population and an increasing imbalance between
nations in the consumption of reducing world resources. How appropriate is this? What
significance do we accord the evaluation of the impact of our ideas on others or on our
wider environment? For to do so might mean seeing creativity in perhaps a more spiritual
16
way in terms of fulfilment, individual or collective. And so it could also mean taking a
different kind of existential slant on life (Craft, 2006).
Ethics
This is of course related to the environmental point. We want to encourage children’s
choices, but in a wider social and ethical context. What kind of world do we create where
the market is seen as God? And how can we see creativity divorced from its ends? For the
human imagination is capable of immense destruction as well as infinitely constructive
possibilities. How do we balance these? An aspect of the teacher’s role is to encourage
children to examine the possible wider effects of their own ideas and those of others and to
determine worth in the light of these. This, of course, means the balancing of conflicting
perspectives and values – which may themselves be irreconcilable, particularly where they
stem from fundamentalist beliefs (Craft, 2005).
Such fundamental challenges clearly leave us with pedagogical challenges. For example, if
creativity is culturally specific how do we foster it in a multicultural classroom? And how do
we rise to the direct and indirect challenges posed by creativity linked to the market? How far
does creativity in the classroom reflect or challenge the status quo?
Wise creativity
Stemming from all three of the previous challenges, is the question of how creativity is
fostered with wisdom in schools, since the development of policy can be seen as under-
pinned by Western individualism, in relation to a globalised market economy which brings
with ‘blindness’ to diversity in culture and values (Craft, 2008), a dissipation of trust and
responsibility (Gardner, 2008) and a reluctance to consider what ‘good’ or ‘wise’ creativity
might involve (Claxton, 2008). The time has perhaps come to explore how responsibility is
equal to self-realisation, to recognise the intuitive and other resonances between our own
actions and those of others; to recognise dispositions which may enable us to foster in the
classroom creativity which dares to consider a moral role for creativity beyond current,
economy-bound and habitual horizons (Craft et al., 2008).
We have a challenging agenda ahead of us in education, but an exciting one.
. How familiar are the three creativity waves in your own experience of fostering creativity in education?
. How can you go about using the QCA framework to help you identify and promote creativity in learning?
. To what extent do partnership and apprenticeship form a part of your own pedagogy?
. How can you document children’s perspectives about creative learning experiences?
. Which of the fundamental tensions and dilemmas could you begin to address in your own practice, and
how?
17
A SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS

Changes in the landscape for creativity in education:
4 No longer the preserve of the arts or arts education, creativity has moved from the fringes of
educational concern to being seen as a core aspect of educating, which pertains to all aspects of
human endeavour.
4 Creative teaching focuses on the teacher. Studies suggest that teachers feel creative when they
are in control and take ownership of their practice. Teaching for creativity focuses on the learner
and includes giving the child many choices over what is explored and how.
4 ‘Creative learning’ is a phrase which explores the middle ground between creative teaching and
teaching for creativity. This involves learners using their imagination and experience to develop
learning while strategically collaborating over tasks, critically evaluating their own teachers’
practices. This mode of teaching often involves an ‘apprenticeship’ approach.
4 In a world of rapid economic and social change it is no longer sufficient to have excellence in
depth and grasp of knowledge. Wise creativity is critical for individuals to thrive and survive in the
twenty-first century. This is because wise creativity enables a person to identify appropriate
problems, possibilities and opportunities and to solve them in ways which others may not notice.
MOVING ON >>>>>> MOVING ON >>>>>> MOVING ON

In developing your own practice in fostering children’s Creativity keep in mind three key questions.
What am I trying to nurture? Familiarise yourself with the NACCCE definition developed by QCA: creativity
as imagination that is purposeful, leading to original and valuable outcomes. Try to be specific about how
you can foster this in children you work with.
How can I do this? Consider resources, including people within and beyond school that you could work with
to nurture children’s creativity, enabling children in navigating choices and possibilities.
Why am I trying to develop children’s creativity? How does your practice relate to the creative and cultural
agenda? How far does it reflect the themes of creativity and innovation? How can you encourage children to
develop ‘wise’ creativity in your classroom?
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2
Thinking about creativity:
developing ideas, making things happen
Avril Loveless
Chapter objectives
This chapter will also raise some questions and discussions to help you to think about:
. how we might recognise creativity in ourselves, in other people, in our communities
and in our wider societies;
. how these ideas about creativity can be expressed and developed through using
information and communication technologies (ICT);
. how we might approach our own teaching to reflect creativity for our pupils and for
ourselves.
Q1, Q6, Q7(a), Q23
Introduction
How can teachers recognise and promote creativity in their pupils, without a personal
understanding of the experience of being creative themselves? This chapter will address
some of the conceptual frameworks that we can use to help us recognise and think about
creativity, and illustrate some of these theoretical approaches by describing creative prac-
tices in a project using ICT as a tool to develop ideas and make things happen.
What makes a person creative?

Poets, sculptors, engineers, photographers, software designers, geographers, jazz musi-
cians, film directors, writers, theologians, political activists and teachers are not often
presented together in the same list. This list represents some of the people in my immediate
group of friends who I would consider to be ‘creative’ – but this leaves out many others who
express their creativity without having a formal occupation or label. My grandmother, Alice,
for example, was a ‘carder’. She worked in a cotton mill and raised her children in the first
half of the twentieth century, and was renowned in the family for her imaginative solutions to
practical problems – such as a Heath-Robinson contraption for washing those awkward
upstairs windows. Why should I be thinking about a jazz musician, a teacher and my grand-
mother in the first paragraph of a chapter in a book on ‘Creativity’? What is it that these
people have in common, yet enables them to express their individuality and difference? How
do we recognise those qualities in their lives? Why do we think that we – as individuals,
communities and societies – are richer for knowing such people and for being engaged by
their creativity? What wider role do teachers play in both being creative themselves and
encouraging creativity in others?
22
Thinking about creativity: developing ideas, making things happen
I believe that teaching is a creative activity that requires approaches to imagination, inspira-
tion, preparation, engagement, improvisation and interactive relationship that the more
commonly accepted ‘creative’ professions demand. Teachers in all stages of their profes-
sional lives, from initial teacher education to continuing professional development and
postgraduate study, need to make time and space to think about creativity in their own
lives, as well as in their teaching.
REFLECTIVE TASK
. Make a list – or diagram if you don’t like lists – of people you know, who you would describe as
‘creative’, and try to identify what it is that you recognise in them.
. Make another list, or diagram, of words and phrases that help you to describe the creative ‘qualities’
that you see and experience in these people.
Seeing creativity as an interaction

Creativity is possible in all areas of human activity and it draws from all areas of
human intelligence.
(Robinson, 2001, p138)
There are some challenging questions to consider when thinking about creativity in educa-
tion:
. Where do we find creativity? Is it ‘in’ individual people, or groups, or societies?

. Are there conditions under which creativity can thrive more easily than others, and how does creativity
express itself in, or despite, adversity?
. How might our education systems, from classrooms to national policy, provide opportunities for creative
experiences which engage in the full cycle of creative interactions?
A useful way of looking at, and trying to describe and explain our understandings of,
creativity is to consider it as an interaction between characteristics of people and commu-
nities, creative processes, subject domains and wider social and cultural contexts. In the
1950s to the 1970s, psychologists’ interest in creativity focused on areas of personality,
cognition and the stimulation of creativity in individuals, but awareness of the influence of
social contexts and environments on the creativity of individuals and groups and organisa-
tions has developed in the last twenty or thirty years (Rhyammar and Brolin, 1999). All Our
Futures, the report of the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education,
defined creativity as, ‘imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both
original and of value’ (NACCCE, 1999, p29). This definition is helpful in that it expresses five
characteristics of creativity which can be considered for individual people, as well as the
local and wider communities and cultures in which they act:
. Using imagination – the process of imaging, supposing and generating ideas which are original, providing
an alternative to the expected, the conventional, or the routine;
. A fashioning process – the active and deliberate focus of attention and skills in order to shape, refine and
manage an idea;
. Pursuing purpose – the application of imagination to produce tangible outcomes from purposeful goals.
Motivation and sustained engagement are important to the solving of the problem. A quality of experience
in the creative activities of fashioning and pursuing purpose have been described as ‘flow’, where the
23
person’s capacity was being stretched despite elements of challenge, difficulty or risk (Csikszentmihalyi,
1996);
. Being original – the originality of an outcome which can be at different levels of achievement: individual
originality in relation to a person’s own previous work; relative originality in relation to a peer group; and
historic originality in relation to works which are completely new and unique, such as those produced by
Fermat, Hokusai and Thelonius Monk;
. Judging value – the evaluative mode of thought which is reciprocal to the generative mode of imaginative
activity and provides critical, reflective review from individuals and peers.
Creativity and individuals

If we were asked to name our creative heroines and heroes, it is likely that we would include
many exceptional, perhaps famous, individuals who have expressed creative ideas, activities
and outcomes which have enabled us to experience the world differently in some way. They
are recognised as contributing ideas and work that is considered to be original and of value
in our society. My personal list might include such people as Norman Foster, an architect;
Jane Austen, a writer; Picasso, a painter; Isambard Kingdom Brunel, an engineer; Rosalind
Franklin, a scientist; Bill Evans, a jazz musician; Emeric Pressburger, a screen writer; Akira
Kurosawa, a film director; Anthony Gormley, a sculptor; Anthony DeMello, a priest; and
Helen Levitt, a photographer. (Such a list might say quite a lot about how I see and hear the
world, and how such people have influenced me). Craft describes the creativity that we
ascribe to such exceptional people as ‘Big C’ creativity, yet she also highlights our concern
with the creative potential of all individuals: ‘little c creativity’ and ‘possibility thinking’ in a
creative approach to life for everybody (Craft, 2000, p3).
There are many examples of the attempts of different writers and thinkers to recognise and
describe the personal qualities of creative individuals. Shallcross (1981) described them as:
openness to experience; independence; self-confidence; willingness to take risk; sense of
humour or playfulness; enjoyment of experimentation; sensitivity; lack of a feeling of being
threatened; personal courage; unconventionality; flexibility; preference for complexity; goal
orientation; internal control; originality; self-reliance; persistence (cited in Craft, 2000, p13).
Another perspective on such personal qualities is described in Sternberg and Lubart’s
‘confluence model’, in which six resources converge: intellectual abilities; knowledge;
styles of thinking; personality; motivation and environment (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999)
Robinson also offers a useful approach to thinking about individuals being actively creative
within a medium, in which they have control, and are able to play, take risks, and exercise
critical judgement (Robinson, 2001).
Csikszentmihalyi identifies a common characteristic of creative people as ‘flow’ – the auto-

matic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness when engaged in activities, often
painful, risky or difficult, which stretch a person’s capacity while involving an element of
novelty or discovery (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). He elaborates the description of this charac-
teristic in identifying nine elements which such activity provides.
1. Clear goals.
2. Immediate feedback.
3. Balance between challenges and skills.
4. Merging of action and awareness.
5. Elimination of distractions.
6. Lack of fear of failure.
24
7. Lack of self-consciousness.
8. Distortion of sense of time.
9. Autotelic activity (enjoyment for its own sake).
Individual states of intuition, rumination, reverie, even boredom, play a role in creativity and
problem-solving and some studies indicate how creativity is enhanced in a state of reverie
and imagery (Claxton, 2000). Such states are not just ‘letting it flow’ or ‘leaving it to luck’, but
acknowledging a way of knowing which is not necessarily conscious and draws upon
resources of knowledge, skill and experience in order to make new combinations, explora-
tions and transformations (Boden, 1992).
It is interesting that these descriptions of creative characteristics can also be recognised in

discussions of what it takes to be a good learner. Alice, in her adventures in Wonderland,
met the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon who told her about their lessons in Reeling, Writhing
and the different branches of Arithmetic – Ambition, Distraction, Uglification and Derision.
Guy Claxton speaks of a different classification of the ‘3Rs’, indeed, he names four:
Resilience, Reflection, Resourcefulness and Relationship (Claxton, 1999). Good learners,
and creative people, need to be able to encounter and cope with puzzles, problems, seem-
ing failure and disappointment, in order to learn from these experiences and demonstrate
perseverance and resilience. They also develop their abilities to think about patterns and
connections, and reflect upon how new situations might relate to earlier experiences or need
novel solutions. They know how to draw upon a wide range of resources to help them solve
problems, from materials and memories to networks of other people. They also know how
to be aware of, and engage in, relationship with other people and places.
REFLECTIVE TASK
. Who would you describe as your creative ‘heroines and heroes’ who have enabled you to think
differently about aspects of the world?
. How have they demonstrated imagination, fashioning, purpose, originality and value in their field?
. How have you been able to demonstrate various creative characteristics in your own life?
. How have you been able to demonstrate resilience, reflection, resourcefulness and relationship in your
own life?
Creativity and communities

Generative ideas emerge from joint thinking, from significant conversations, and
from sustained, shared struggles to achieve new insights by partners in thought.
(John-Steiner, 2000, p3)
The creativity of individuals can flourish or be stifled within the communities in which they
act. These communities can be in families, peer-groups, schools, workplaces, and wider
society and culture, and are also expressed in the physical as well as cultural environments
in which we develop. It is, therefore, important to recognise the potential of interactions
between people and their communities, and the opportunities for design of environments
for nurturing creativity within those communities.
25
Western individualism – and romantic images of poverty-stricken artists struggling to create

their work in isolated garrets – has contributed to our ideas of creativity being located within
individuals. These people, however, rarely work in isolation. Their ideas and outcomes may
be highly original and iconoclastic, but they are likely to have been generated through
interaction with other people’s ideas and reactions. It is no accident that many exceptionally
creative people tell tales of their supportive families, or engaging network of friends, or
group of like-minded people in studios or laboratories. Vera John-Steiner’s work with crea-
tive people explores the essential nature of their collaborations with others, in which they
can challenge, discuss and try out their ideas (John-Steiner, 2000). She discusses the influ-
ences upon creative work of the intimate relationship between partners such as Simone de
Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, or Pierre and Marie Curie; and highlights the patterns of
collaboration between artists such as Picasso and Braque who encouraged and challenged
each other, learned from each other and were transformed by working together. As well as
these ‘Big C’ creative collaborations, she notes a large number of groups who work together
and acknowledge the shared nature of their thinking and knowing – from writing plays to
scientific discoveries.
An interesting focus of her work is on the importance of mentorship and inter-generational

creative collaborations, in which senior participants provide continuity, guidance and a ‘new
embodiment’ of complex knowledge by working with younger people with energy and fresh
approaches to questions in the field. Our traditions of ‘apprenticeship’ are rooted in this type
of collaboration in which experts think and work with novices to mutual benefit, and provide
interesting models for the relationships between teachers and pupils as ‘expert’ and ‘novice’
learners.
Of all the communities and places in our society, one would expect that schools would be
creative and enriching learning communities. We are, however, sadly familiar with experi-
ences of schools in which approaches to active learning and the development of creativity
have been lacking in the general ethos, the physical environment, the organisation of the
curriculum and the appropriation of the pressures for improvement measured by attainment
in a narrow range.
One example of a school which addresses these issues and expresses its identity as a
creative community is Coombes County Infant and Nursery School. Jeffrey and Woods
(2003) offer an inspiring account of the Coombes’ ethos, described through the themes of
dynamism, appreciation, captivation and care which permeates the learning and teaching
activities. The everyday knowledge of the wider community is drawn upon and celebrated in
the activities of the school that are grounded in the cycles of the natural world, and local and
global communities. The learning environment encompasses all the space, both inside and
outside the school. It draws upon the imaginative development of the school grounds as
extensions to the physical space of the classrooms, corridors, resource areas and meeting
halls, attaching the curriculum to the cycles and connections of natural life on the doorstep
and in the wider world. The spaces in the school are ‘Aladdin’s caves’, representing the
range of activity and experience through resources and displays which provoke responses,
questions, enquiry, development of ideas and celebration of the pupils’ achievements.
What matters is not just the substantive knowledge, but the maze-like structure of
the knowledge and the interdependence of its many different parts and forms.
(Jeffrey and Woods, 2003, p94)
26
PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK
. Think about the different communities in which you have lived, worked and engaged with other people.
What were the characteristics of those you felt encouraged your creativity, and what were the
characteristics of those you felt inhibited your creativity?
. How would you envisage developing the physical spaces in your own classroom and school to promote
a creative learning environment?
Creative processes
Anthony De Mello described an image of God’s relationship with creation developed in
Hindu India as God ‘dancing’ creation.
He is the dancer, creation is his dance. The dance is different from the dancer; yet
it has no existence apart from him. You cannot take it home in a box if it pleases
you. The moment the dancer stops, the dance ceases to be.
(De Mello, 1984, p14)
Creativity can be thought of as the ‘dance’, which does not exist separately from the people
who are performing the dance. Creative processes are an expression of the individuals and
groups engaging in them, not activities that are independent of them. They can be modelled,
encouraged, and nurtured, rather than transmitted. Being able to take risks is the next level in
which the person engages in the ‘creativity cycle’ of preparation, letting go, germination,
assimilation, completion and preparation. Robinson emphasises the need to recognise that
creativity involves ‘doing something’ – in different subject areas, with different media and
materials: ‘Whatever the task, creativity is not just an internal mental process: it involves
action. In a sense, it is applied imagination.’ (Robinson, 2001, p115). These processes
express, shape and encourage creativity as an approach to life.
Trying to identify creative processes helps us to think about how we recognise when
creativity ‘is going on’. We can’t lift off the tops of people’s heads to see if they are thinking
more creative thoughts at one time rather than another; but we can see and discuss how
they express creativity through their behaviours, activities, experiences and outcomes. The
NACCCE definition of creativity encompasses processes of imagining, fashioning, pursuit of
purpose, and evaluation of originality and value. We can also overlay these processes with
behaviours of questioning and challenging, making connections and seeing relationships,
envisaging what might be, playing with ideas, representing ideas and evaluating the effects
of ideas (QCA, 2004).
Thus people and communities engage in these processes using a wide variety of tools and
media to express and fashion their imaginative ideas. A musician, a mathematician, or a
marine biologist would each approach their endeavours by asking ‘what’s going on here and
what would happen if . . . ’; playing with ideas and materials; paying close attention to cause
and effect; practising and refining techniques and skills; standing back and evaluating the
outcomes; and learning from experiences in order to engage in the processes in new
situations. Sculptors might work with stone; engineers with steel; photographers with
film; multimedia designers with pixels – each is working and fashioning with chosen
media to represent and express their imaginings. Digital technologies can be used as
tools in creative activity in physical and virtual learning environments, and for developing
27
ideas; making connections; creating and making; collaboration and communication and
evaluation (Loveless, 2007a).
PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK PRACTICAL TASK
. Think of a variety of creative outcomes or artefacts – from a dance to a design for a new toothbrush –
and imagine how the ‘creators’ engaged in a range of creative processes in order to realise their ideas.
. List the different media and tools that were used to create these outcomes.
. When do you have the opportunities to pose a problem and apply your imagination?
Creativity in subject domains

Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T.S. Eliot ‘The Rock’, 1934)
Creativity is, of course, not confined to particular subject domains, such as art, drama, music
and design and technology, but can be expressed in all areas of our knowledge and ‘ways of
knowing’. Our understandings of ‘learning domains’ as ‘subjects’ are related to our under-
standings about the nature of knowledge. It is possible to distinguish four perspectives on
the nature of knowledge within the UK education system and traditions. A ‘rationalist’ view,
described by writers such as Hirst and Peters, identifies subject areas as distinguishable by
different ways of thinking and the kinds of methods and evidence used in enquiry within the
subjects. In the National Curriculum the clear identification of subject boundaries is related to
this view (DfEE, 1999B). An ‘empiricist’ perspective draws attention to the structuring of
knowledge through active engagement in the environment, that is the application of the
intellect to experience. Such an approach is grounded in a constructivist, Piagetian view of
learning. An ‘interactionist’ approach to the nature of knowledge focuses on a social-
constructivist perspective expressed by theorists such as Vygotsky and Bruner, in which
knowledge is constructed through social interaction and agency. An ‘elitist’ view, described
by writers such as Bernstein, would highlight the role of powerful social groups defining the
status and appropriateness of certain types of knowledge. Discussions of learning domains
will therefore reflect a variety of approaches to knowledge, concepts, skills, philosophies,
communities, ways of working, cognitive demands and ways of knowing (see Pollard, 2002).
The structure of the National Curriculum and the training of teachers to offer a ‘subject
specialism’ in their teaching, indicates how school curriculum and assessment systems
are rooted in a view of ‘subject knowledge’. Pupils also learn from people with recognised
subject expertise beyond school settings and many schools offer opportunities to engage
with ‘experts’ or ‘practitioners’. These ‘experts’, such as artists, musicians, scientists, engi-
neers, writers, historians, sportsmen and -women, can model their own high levels of
practice which draw upon their deep conceptual understanding, knowledge and skills
within authentic contexts in the subject area. This approach to learning from the expertise
of others is reflected in theories of learning in ‘communities of practice’ and by apprentice-
ship in ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991).
It is argued that creative individuals within subject domains demonstrate knowledge and
understanding of the concepts and traditions within the domain while knowing how to ‘break
28
the rules’ in order to present original combinations of ideas. This can be illustrated in the
ways a jazz musician, for example, can improvise to high levels when grounded in the
history, philosophy, technique and practice of jazz (Humphreys and Hyland, 2002;
Loveless, 2007b; Nachmanovitch, 1990). The conceptual understanding of subject ‘experts’
enables them to make decisions about the appropriate use of tools and technologies to
support and explore creative processes of imagination, fashioning, pursuing purpose, being
original and judging value within the field. Looking closely at how ‘experts’ are creative in
their different areas offers vivid illustrations of the relationship between subject knowledge
and creative processes. In my own work in teacher education I have had the opportunity and
privilege to work with scientists, artists, photographers, sculptors, film-makers and writers
who work alongside pupils and teachers in schools. We have often witnessed how these
practitioners – who are immersed in, and passionate about, their practice – can represent
and draw out a deeper conceptual understanding from the pupils in their creative work
(Hawkey, 2001; Loveless, 1999a, 1999b; Loveless and Taylor, 2000).
REFLECTIVE TASK
. Who are the creative heroes and heroines in your own favourite subject areas?
. What have they contributed to our knowledge and practice in these domains?
Creativity in social and cultural contexts

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
Lord Kelvin (1824–1907), ca. 1895, British mathematician and physicist
The wider contexts in which we promote and reward, or stifle and disregard creative people
and practices, act as ‘gateways’ to recognition or marginalisation of creative activities in our
societies. Teachers who are interested in developing creativity need to be able to ‘read the
world’ in order to recognise not only the subject and local contexts in which creativity can be
expressed and acknowledged, but also the wider cultural, political and economic spheres in
which creativity is encouraged.
Recent research in communities of practice also presents a view of learning as social,

situated and characterised by interaction and communication between individuals
(Wenger, 1998). Leach (2001) cites examples of creative individuals, such as Nobel Prize
winners who benefit from association with other creative people within their communities
which supported and celebrated the creative process. Feldman, Csikszentmihalyi and
Gardner (1994) propose that creativity arises from the interaction between the ‘intelligence’
of individuals, the domain or areas of human endeavour, disciplines, crafts or pursuits, and
the field, such as people, institutions, award mechanisms and ‘knowledgeable others’
through which judgements of individual performances in society are made.
Csikszentmihalyi develops his discussion of the field as a component of creativity wherein

other individuals act as ‘gatekeepers’ to a domain by recognising, preserving and remem-
bering creative outcomes (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). He presents a systems model in which
creativity is in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and actions, their knowledge and
skills within a domain and a sociocultural context which can encourage, evaluate and
reward. In such a systems model, the recognition and value of creativity is related as
much to the wider context of domains and fields as to individuals. This has important
29
implications for thinking about creativity and learning, where the context could be a school
classroom, education system or a large corporation that can either nurture or dismiss the
development of creative individuals, groups and communities. There can be a tension,
however, between the current policy of promoting creativity in education that can be
linked to political and economic imperatives, and the place of creative people and commu-
nities who can be challenging and disruptive to the status quo.
Creativity is currently a term used often in policy and practice of education in the UK. After
many years of concern about lack of creativity in the curriculum (Kimbell, 2000; NACCCE,
1999; Robinson, 2001), government agencies engaged in consultation and policy develop-
ment to include national initiatives to develop materials to promote pupils’ creativity (QCA,
2004), and a national Primary Strategy, named ‘Excellence and Enjoyment’, for teaching to
improve standards in pupil attainment, measured in national testing arrangements (DfES,
2003). Creativity is therefore now discussed as ‘a good thing’, promoting both personal
expression and enhancing opportunities to engage in the complexities of problem-solving
in the economic and cultural landscape of the twenty-first century.
There are, however, concerns that both the definition of creativity and the practical experi-
ence of creative processes become simplistic, unproblematic and unable to reflect the
complexities and challenges of developing creativity in the wider spheres of curriculum
and pedagogy for the twenty-first century. There are dangers of creativity being used as a
complex and slippery concept leading to confusions and contradictions which do not help
educators to focus on the purpose and possibilities of creative processes in the curriculum
(Prentice, 2000). Hartley draws attention to the ways in which government and business are
attending to creativity and emotional literacy in education, attaching them to ‘practice which
remains decidedly performance-driven, standardised and monitored’ (p16), and harnessing
them for instrumental purposes in the knowledge and service-based economy (Hartley,
2003; Troman, Jeffrey, and Raggl, 2007). Craft also acknowledges the tensions and dilem-
mas which creative processes can raise within teachers’ professional practice and
development, such as the culturally specific nature of creativity; the desirability of perpetual
innovation in a consumerist economy; the potential challenges to the status quo; the orga-
nisation of the curriculum; the role of the teacher and ‘professional artistry’ in a centralised
pedagogy; and the tensions between teaching for creativity, creative teaching and creative
learning (Craft, 2003, 2005).
Being creative is not easy or straightforward, indeed, not always desirable in every situation.
In our work with creative practitioners, teachers, children and policy makers engaged in a
variety of ‘creative experiences’ in projects, workshops and consultations in recent years, we
have been aware of the dangers of creativity being perceived as just the elements of ‘having
good ideas’ or ‘making pretty things’, rather than the challenging, and often painful or
frustrating, experience that characterises the practices of creative people – the ‘hard fun’
and the ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Papert, 1993). Teachers who wish to promote crea-
tivity in the lives of their pupils need to be able to model and share the range of creative
experiences from their own lives – as individuals working in communities which are shaped
by engagement in, and resistance to, the wider social, economic, cultural and political arenas
in which education takes place.
Craft, Claxton and Gardner have drawn our attention to the desirability of creativity being
characterised and enriched by wisdom and trust within our wider community and society,
30
providing a foundation for Good Work which is excellent, creative and ethical in our lives
with others (Craft, Claxton, and Gardner, 2008).
REFLECTIVE TASK
. How does a view of creativity as an interaction between people and communities, creative processes,
subject domains and wider social and cultural contexts help you to understand your own creative
experiences and possibilities?
. How would you like to describe yourself as a creative teacher?
Creativity in context: Student teachers

working with children
I feel that I have been able to engage with creative processes in ways that I haven’t
had the opportunity to do before. I feel that being able to work in small groups
during session one and then in pairs during session two, allowed me to be creative
with my peers. I have been able to use my imagination to develop my ideas and to
be creative with other people’s ideas. I feel that I have also seen that creativity is a
process rather than simply one activity. I have seen that there is a process from
developing an idea to working with that idea and then developing it further with
the technology.
(Jan, student teacher, 2004)
If it is useful to think about creativity as an interaction between people and communities,

processes, subjects and the wider social and cultural contexts, what might that look like in a
real case study for teacher education? The following example focuses, not on the technol-
ogies used, but on the underlying creative processes that bring the activities to life. The
Creativity and Professional Development Project at the University of Brighton focused on
student teachers, and one of the aims of the project was to develop a conceptual framework
for looking at creativity in the context of the use of ICT in Primary classrooms. The students
were given opportunities to experience working to a creative brief at their own level, as well
as working with young children in school (Loveless, Burton, and Turvey, 2006).
The framework for creativity and ICT attempted to describe the interaction between three
elements of creative practices with ICT:
. creative processes – for example, using imagination, fashioning, pursuing purpose and evaluating
originality and value;
. the features of ICT – for example, provisionality, interactivity, capacity, range, speed, automatic functions,
multimodality (see Sharp, Potter, Allen, and Loveless, 2002);
. and ICT capability as an expression of elements of higher order thinking – for example, finding things out,
developing ideas and making things happen, exchanging and sharing information, and reviewing, modifying
and evaluating work as it progresses, through a breadth of study (see Department for Education and
Employment, 1999a).
The study focused on the experiences of a group of 16 student teachers, all ICT specialists in
primary education, working collaboratively in using digital technologies to support creative
digital video activities in primary schools. They worked with ten ‘digital media labs’ of
31
portable ICT resources which included a laptop, digital video camera, digital camera, music
keyboards and software for image and sound editing and manipulation. The student
teachers were given two days to familiarise themselves with the resources by investigating
what the hardware and software could do, working in groups of four. Firstly, they were
shown the key features of the DV cameras and editing software, and then given two hours to
make a mini-movie to a brief of getting someone through a door in only 10 shots. The
following week they were asked to work with digital still cameras and music composition
software to create a slideshow that evoked memories of childhood toys.
After another two half-days of visiting schools and planning, the groups spent two days
working in small groups in two Primary schools – one class of 5-year-old children and one
class of 10-year-old children. Each group of children worked on making a digital movie from
starting points emerging from the children’s ideas – from stories shared in class to music
videos and original dramas. Half a day was spent in viewing and evaluating the outcomes
from all the groups, and a final half-day was used as an exhibition of the groups’ work and
critical reflections. Group feedback from this exhibition informed the students’ individual
presentation of their module assignment.
By engaging with the project and analysing their experiences, the student teachers reflected
upon their personal understandings of creativity, the contribution of ICT as a tool, and their
own professional development. Their own definitions of creativity were wide-ranging, from
creative qualities in all individuals, to a focus on having ideas, or the making of tangible
products. Many discussed the experience of being engaged in activities that they thought
were creative, and emphasised not only the ideas and outcomes, but also on the feelings in
that engagement. They described enjoyment, enquiry, excitement which led to their greater
involvement, and desire to follow things through. Many focused on the opportunities, and
frustrations, of working in groups to develop creative ideas. They commented on the experi-
ence of offering their ideas to the group and learning how to adjust them, rethink and
develop new ideas through discussion. One group highlighted the word ‘compromise’ in
describing this experience, and acknowledged the difficulty of having to put aside, or
compromise their personal ideas within the group activity. After the presentation of all the
work, the students remarked upon their feelings of pride and achievement in what they had
done. They later observed that their own experiences of generating ideas in groups, excite-
ment and frustration in shooting and editing images, and enjoyment and pride in exhibiting
the final movies were echoed in the children’s experiences. They also recognised that their
earlier experiences with playing and exploring with the equipment had enabled them to
support the children’s ideas in a more flexible manner. All recognised how they personally
had engaged with a cycle of creativity activities and processes, from developing initial ideas,
through fashioning and reworking, to presentation and evaluation.
In considering how they thought the technologies have helped or hindered them in being
creative in these activities, they highlighted the affordances of ICT to try out lots of ideas,
revise and make choices. They described how they felt that they had used their imagination
and collaborated to produce a mini video story. In order to do this they had to master the use
of the technology, collaborate, pool ideas, discard ideas that did not work, edit their work
and show it to their colleagues. The provisionality of the technology enabled them to try
things, then discard or edit them easily. The immediacy of seeing their work in progress,
without the constraints of limited film footage, allowed them to move on quickly to produce
an acceptable product. There were, of course, feelings of frustration and impatience in
32
learning to use new techniques with unfamiliar technology, but the groups developed stra-
tegies to share their knowledge with each other.
The focus on creativity and ICT afforded the opportunity to practise and advance their ICT
capability in a context that was more challenging than many of their previous school place-
ments. As well as learning to work with colleagues, they acknowledged the need for
teaching strategies to support creative and collaborative group work for the children.
Despite being experienced and successful student teachers nearing the end of their training,
they recognised that they had learned much by working with small groups of children.
An important aspect of the project was the challenge it raised for the students working within
the wider context of systems of primary schools and teacher education. They recognised the
usual constraints of timetable, curriculum and assessment targets – for the children and for
themselves. Designing opportunities for student teachers to experience, model and evaluate
creativity in their practice is a challenge in the context of a schooling and teacher training
system characterised by centralised pedagogy, monitoring and inspection, and aspirations
focused on standards of achievement in a limited range of ‘measures’. A conceptual frame-
work for creativity and ICT must describe not only the interaction in the activities themselves,
but also the interactions between the activities and the wider contexts of policy and practice
as they affect people, and communities. By engaging in creative practices within the C&PD
project, the student teachers experienced tensions and resolutions that helped them to ‘read
the world’ in which they were acting in a more informed and interrogative manner.
REFLECTIVE TASK
. Look back at your own experiences of being creative in your life. What have you learned from those
experiences? How will you take this into your own teaching?
. How would you like to express and develop your own creativity and creative habits of mind? What
practical steps can you take to make that happen? How can you build a network of like-minded people
to support and encourage each other?
A SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS

4 A useful way of looking at creativity is to consider it as an interaction between characteristics of
people and communities, creative processes, subject domains and wider social and cultural
contexts.
4 Creativity can be described as combining the following five characteristics: using the imagination;
a fashioning process; pursuing purposes; seeking originality; and judging values.
4 Good learners, and creative people, need to be able to encounter and cope with puzzles, problems,
seeming failure and disappointment, in order to learn from these experiences and demonstrate
perseverance and resilience. They also develop their abilities to think about patterns and connec-
tions, and reflect upon how new situations might relate to earlier experiences or need novel
solutions.
4 Creative people rarely work in isolation. Their ideas and outcomes are likely to have been gener-
ated through interaction with other people’s ideas and reactions.
33
4 A challenge for schools to think creatively in this regard is to draw upon the everyday knowledge
of local and global communities; and to promote imaginative use of school environments as
extensions to the physical space of classrooms.
4 Being creative is not easy or straightforward, indeed, not always desirable in every situation.
Tensions can arise when pursuing creativity: for example, between individual teachers, who
challenge the status quo of pedagogical and curricular recommendations, and their schools.
4 Teachers who wish to promote creativity in the lives of their pupils need to be able to model and
share the range of creative experiences from their own lives.
MOVING ON >>>>>> MOVING ON >>>>>> MOVING ON

In order to develop your understanding and expression of teaching as a creative act, and yourself and your
pupils as creative people, you should think about how you might:
. realise creativity in your own life experiences;
. recognise and engage with other people in your community and networks who can inspire, support and
sustain creativity;
. identify creative ‘niches’ and environments in which pupils’ creativity can be fostered;
. draw upon creative connections within and between subjects;
. understand the wider social and cultural contexts for creativity beyond the boundaries of classroom and
school.
REFERENCES REFERENCES REFERENCES REFERENCES REFERENCES REFERENCES

Boden, M (1992) The creative mind. London: Abacus.
Claxton, G (1999) Wise up. London: Bloomsbury.
Claxton, G (2000) The anatomy of intuition, in Attention, T and Claxton, G (eds) The intuitive
practitioner. Buckingham, Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.
Craft, A (2000) Creativity across the primary curriculum: framing and developing practice. Abingdon:
Routledge.
Craft, A (2003) The limits to creativity in education: dilemmas for the educator. British Journal of
Educational Studies, 51:2, 113–27.
Craft, A (2005) Creativity in schools: tensions and dilemmas. Abingdon: Routledge.
Craft, A, Claxton, G and Gardner, H (eds) (2008) Creativity, wisdom, and trusteeship. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Corwin Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M (1996) Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York:
HarperCollins.
De Mello, A (1984) The song of the bird. New York: Doubleday.
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and communication technology. London: DfEE.
Department for Education and Employment (1999b) The National Curriculum. Handbook for primary
teachers in England. Key Stages 1 and 2. London: DfEE.
Department for Education and Skills (2003) Excellence and enjoyment. Retrieved 3 May 2004, from
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/primarydocument
Feldman, DH, Csikszentmihalyi, M and Gardner, H (1994) Changing the world: a framework for the
study of creativity. Westport, CT and London: Praeger.
Hartley, D (2003) The instrumentalisation of the expressive in education. British Journal of Educational
Studies, 51:1, 6–19.
Hawkey, R (2001) Science beyond school: representation or re-presentation? in Loveless, A and Ellis,
V (eds) ICT, pedagogy and the curriculum: subject to change. Abingdon: Routledge.
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Humphreys, M and Hyland, T (2002) Theory, practice and performance in teaching: professionalism,
intuition and jazz. Educational Studies, 28:1, 5–15.
Jeffrey, B and Woods, P (2003) The creative school: a framework for success, quality and
effectiveness. Abingdon and New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
John-Steiner, V (2000) Creative collaboration. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kimbell, R (2000) Creativity in crisis. The Journal of Design and Technology Education, 5:3, 206–11.
Lave, J and Wenger, E (1991) Situated learning. Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
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(eds) Creativity in education. London: Continuum.
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Brighton: University of Brighton.
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people, creativity and new technology: the challenge of digital arts. Abingdon: Routledge.
Loveless, A (2007a) Creativity, technology and learning: a review of recent literature (update). Bristol:
Futurelab.
Loveless, A (2007b) Preparing to teach with ICT: subject knowledge, Didaktik and improvisation. The
Curriculum Journal, 18:4.
Loveless, A, Burton, J and Turvey, K (2006) Developing conceptual frameworks for creativity, ICT and
teacher education. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 1:1, 3–13.
Loveless, A and Taylor, T (2000) Creativity, visual literacy and ICT, in Leask, M and Meadows, J (eds)
Teaching and learning with ICT in the primary school (pp65–80). Abingdon: Routledge.
NACCCE (1999) All our futures: creativity, culture and education. Sudbury: National Advisory
Committee on Creative and Cultural Education: DfEE and DCMS.
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Putnam a member of Penguin/Putnam Inc.
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London, Toronto, Sydney, Tokyo and Singapore: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Pollard, A (2002) Reflective teaching. London: Continuum.
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Journal, 11:2, 145–56.
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g.uk/creativity.
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development. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 43:3, 259–73.
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practice (2nd edition). Exeter: Learning Matters.
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35
3
Creative teachers and creative teaching
Teresa Cremin
Chapter objectives
By the end of this chapter you should have:
. widened your knowledge of theory and practice about creative teachers and creative
teaching;
. considered your own personal qualities and emerging pedagogic practice in relation
to creativity;
. reflected upon specific features of creative pedagogic practice and identified ways
forward.
Q1, Q2, Q4, and Q27.
Introduction
What are the key features of creative teachers’ pedagogical practice and just how do
teachers teach creatively and teach for creativity, thus fostering children’s creative learning?
This chapter seeks to respond to these questions putting forward a three-dimensional model
in which creative practice is seen as a product of the dynamic interplay between the
teacher’s personal qualities, the pedagogy they adopt and the ethos developed in the
class and school. A number of key features of creative practice are highlighted including:
curiosity, making connections, autonomy and ownership as well as originality. These are
explored and the difference between good teaching and creative teaching is examined.
Exploring creative teaching

Although in the late 90s the literacy and numeracy strategies in England (DfEE, 1998; DfEE,
1999) heralded a move towards increasingly centralised conceptions of classroom peda-
gogy over the last decade many teachers have exercised their professional artistry and
sought to teach more creatively and nurture children’s creativity (Jeffrey and Woods,
2003; Grainger, Goouch and Lambirth, 2005; Craft, Cremin and Burnard, 2007). They have
been encouraged in their endeavours by numerous government reports and recommenda-
tions (DfES, 2003; OFSTED, 2003) as well as support materials (QCA, 2005a, 2005b) which
have tried to encourage teachers to adopt more creative approaches to the curriculum and
to teach for creativity as well as teach creatively.
Distinctions between creative teaching and teaching for creativity tend to highlight the
teacher orientation of the former and the learner orientation of the latter. Creative teaching
is seen to involve teachers in making learning more interesting and effective and using
imaginative approaches in the classroom. Teaching for creativity by contrast is seen to
involve teachers in identifying children’s creative strengths and fostering their creativity.
36
Creative teachers and creative teaching
The National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education suggests that the first
task in teaching for creativity is ‘to encourage young people to believe in their creative
potential, to engage their sense of possibility and to give them the confidence to try’
(NACCCE, 1999, p90). The same challenge might well be set your education department
lecturers who need to help new entrants to the profession like you to recognise and believe
in your own creative potential and enable you to take risks as you learn to teach creatively
and teach for creativity. In the process they will be developing your professional awareness,
understanding and capacity for making connections between your own creativity and that of
the children you teach.
There has been considerable research into creative teaching, some of which focuses on
people’s perceptions of creative educators, and tends to result in long lists of particular char-
acter traits and propensities which such teachers possess (e.g. Fryer, 1996; Beetlestone, 1998).
Other research makes use of close observation and analysis of creative teachers, resulting in
case study accounts of individuals’ classroom practice (e.g. Jeffrey and Woods, 2003;
Grainger, Barnes and Scoffham, 2004, 2006; Cremin, Burnard, and Craft, 2006). The research
work of Woods and Jeffrey has been particularly influential in this area in documenting the
creative response of primary professionals to the changing face of education (Woods, 1995;
Woods and Jeffrey, 1996; Jeffrey and Woods, 2003; Jeffrey, 2006) and in identifying features
of creative teaching, namely relevance, ownership, control and innovation.
In seeking to become a creative teacher you will want to widen your understanding of your
own creativity, and the imaginative approaches and repertoire of engaging activities that you
can employ in order to develop the children’s capacity for original ideas and action. You will
also want to exert your professional autonomy, learning to be flexible and responsive to
different learners and diverse learning contexts. For as Joubert (2001, p21) observes:
Creative teaching is an art. One cannot teach teachers didactically how to be

creative; there is no fail-safe recipe or routine. Some strategies may help to
promote creative thinking, but teachers need to develop a full repertoire of skills
which they can adapt to different situations.
In a study of creative teachers, funded by Creative Partnerships Kent, the university-based

team sought to investigate the presence of commonalities between teachers who were
identified as highly creative professionals in both primary and secondary schools
(Grainger, Barnes and Scoffham, 2006). This case study research, acknowledging the
close relationship between teacher and learner creativity, focused on the nature of creative
practice. It proposed an emergent creative teaching framework, highlighting three interre-
lated dimensions of creative practice: namely teachers’ personal characteristics, their
pedagogy and the class/school ethos (see Figure 3.1). Research in the field of creative
teaching has highlighted different aspects of these dimensions and this is now explored,
before a closer examination is made of the core features of creative teachers’ practice.
Consider the many teachers whose practice you have observed in your training so far. Which do you
consider to be the most creative teacher and why? Discuss your reasons with a colleague. What does
your discussion tell you about how you currently perceive creative teachers? Is there a tendency for us
to assume creative teachers are extroverts, flamboyant professionals? There is no evidence to suggest
this is the case.
37
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with fruit and flowers placed on a table, formed a sort of altar in
front of it. Round doorways, without doors, led to guest-rooms on
either side of this hall, and we were hospitably entertained in one
with tea and cakes. By permission of the Abbot, I returned next day
to make a sketch of this picturesque interior, and in this sketch the
doorway is shown, which is very characteristic of Szechwan
architecture. Many of the inns in this province have circular
doorways and windows. The Abbot came and talked with us very
politely, and on inquiry I learnt that a most beautiful painting of lotus
blossoms in black and white, which hung over the doorway, was by a
celebrated artist, and had been presented to the monastery by a
pious worshipper. The Abbot sat down and began discussing our
respective religions, which he said were exactly the same. While
agreeing as to their fundamental principle being the same, I felt
unable to discuss their differences, being somewhat inattentive, I
fear, owing to my endeavour to get on with the sketch as rapidly as
possible. Next the Abbot was sure we must be hungry, though we
had just been regaled with excellent sweets and tea, and, despite
our refusing it, he insisted on sending us some of the meal to which
he had been summoned. A monk soon appeared with bowls of
vermicelli and greens. It was not unpalatable, and much easier to
manage with chopsticks than might be supposed, as the bowl is held
close to the mouth and the food shovelled in with chopsticks aided
by suction. At intervals the novices came in to worship, and
prostrated themselves before the altar. Most of the monks were
dressed in pretty silver-grey robes, but some in the orthodox orange,
and the Abbot wore a blue cloak. It was certainly an attractive
community, a great contrast to those we saw in Peking.
Educationally Chengtu stands in the front rank of Chinese cities.
Everywhere there are schools and colleges established on the new
lines, and more are being built. The people are so enthusiastic that
they have rather overshot the mark, it may be thought. In order to
facilitate the girls’ going to school they are being dressed as boys, so
that they may pass through the streets unnoticed to attend the
various schools which have been started for them. One girl came to
a friend of mine to seek admission to her school, and not only did
the European take her for a boy (telling her the boys’ school was on
the other side of the road), but so also did the Chinese gatekeeper,
who insisted she had come to the wrong place. At the recent athletic
sports the students put up a notice that no lady with bound feet
would be admitted to the ground, and we hear that this notice is
now being put up everywhere throughout the empire on such
occasions. Anti-foot-binding is certainly making good progress
among the upper classes, and we even saw a shoe-shop with large
shoes for ladies prominently displayed on the counter. Nowhere else
have we seen this.
There is a large military medical college at which there are three
French doctors. Their presence is not altogether agreeable to the
Chinese, and when one retired recently the officials took the
opportunity of suggesting that he should not be replaced. They said
that they could not afford his salary. How great must have been their
disappointment when they were informed that their new professor
had already arrived, and that the French authorities were quite
willing to pay for him! Foreign competition in China has its funny
side, but I marvel at the way the Chinese endure it.
The University is an interesting but eminently unpicturesque
place, and the students are cramming Western subjects in a way to
cause intellectual dyspepsia. As everywhere in China, English is the
main subject, and they have a professor from Cambridge, with two
English assistants and a Dane. French, German, and Japanese are
also taught, and there is only one professor for Chinese classics.
Sunday is a holiday, and many students spend the week-end at
home. The walls of the class-rooms are nearly all window, but it is in
no ways disturbing to Chinese students to have any number of
spectators, or to be able to see into the adjoining class-rooms. Each
study is occupied by three or four students, and the studies are
simply partitioned corridors with a passage down the centre and a
railing on either side of it, instead of walls. The dining-rooms are like
outdoor restaurants with a roof over them, and the students sit four
at a table. The fees for the year, including everything, are thirty
dollars (about £3. 10s.). Many students are very anxious to study in
England, but cannot possibly raise the necessary funds; and until
proper arrangements are made to look after them when they do
come, it is hardly a desirable plan. America is far ahead of us in this
respect, and England would do well to follow her example.
Everything is in our favour at present, and it might be of the utmost
value as regards the development of China, and the commercial
interests of England, to seize the opportunity of educating some of
her ablest scholars. A Chinese gentleman told me that students
returning from England are very apt to be full of bumptiousness
because they have come out head of their class in English schools,
while they have failed to assimilate what they have learnt. We spent
an evening with some students, answering questions about the
different countries we had visited. They wanted to know about the
government, the religious and general conditions of other lands.
Naturally the questions covered far too big an area to admit of
satisfactory answers, but probably the men would have been willing
to listen all night, if we had been willing to go on talking. They were
most interested to hear the reasons why we admire China and the
points of superiority which it possessed.
MILITARY YAMEN
On the last day of the year the Viceroy and the Tartar general
sent presents to all the foreign community. Their visiting-cards were
brought in, and a list of the presents which were waiting outside—
hams, pigeons, ducks, fruits, and sweetmeats. We went outside to
see them, and found the presents displayed on trays on the top of
large boxes, or hung round them. It is customary to select about two
things; visiting-cards are sent back with the remainder, and a small
present of money is given to the servants who bring the gifts. They
replace what has been selected from a supply inside the box, and
then carry them on to the next house. We went to see the Tartar
general’s yamen in the Manchu city, a very pretty spot embowered in
trees, and quite typical of Chinese official buildings. The inscription
over the entrance is “Yamen of the greatest General,” and on the
doors and walls are highly coloured pictures of the tutelary gods,
two celebrated generals of the T’Ang dynasty (a.d. 618 to 905); one
is white-faced, and the other red-faced. These pictures are repeated
all along the wall, and also on the doorways of the inner courtyard,
which in the sketch appears in the background. They are singularly
ugly, but as the pictures of the door-gods are seen on the houses of
all, even the poorest, the sketch of them may not be devoid of
interest. On private houses some of them are quite little papers like
advertisements, while again some of the private houses have large
gilt figures covering the whole doors. One day we went outside the
city to visit a fine temple, and came to a place where there is a road
on which you can drive in carriages. This is the only place in the
province where there is a carriage, but we did not have the privilege
of seeing it. The walls are broad enough and smooth enough on the
top to make a splendid carriage drive—four or five vehicles might
easily drive abreast—and as they are ten miles round, it would really
be a fine promenade. In the spring the view must be very beautiful,
for there is a range of snowy mountains in the distance, and many
branches of the Min River water the intervening plain. During the
whole week that we spent at Chengtu we never saw the mountains,
on account of the mist; but it was not hard to imagine the beauty of
the place when the flowers are out and the brilliant butterflies
hovering round them.
We took part in an interesting event while we were staying here
—the purchase of land for a Christian university. Heavy bundles of
silver “tings” had to be weighed before the payment was settled.
Four different missionary societies have each agreed to build a
college and to provide a certain number of qualified teachers. It is
also proposed that Etonians should furnish a hostel. This university
scheme for the west seems likely to be the forerunner of one also in
the east of the empire, but the latter will be on more ambitious lines.
We were sorrier when the time came for us to leave Chengtu
than we were to resume our journey on any other occasion. We had
decided to go by river to Kiating, despite the fact that it was very
low; and as we left the city we came to the wall where the new
barracks are situated, and saw some soldiers doing the goose-step.
Others were jumping into a trench, where nearly every one landed
on all-fours. There was very great hesitation before they dared leap
at all. The city is enclosed by one of the branches of the river, and
we had not to go very far outside the wall before we reached the
point where our boat was moored.
CHAPTER XVI
The Min River
W
E reached the riverside—it looked merely a stream—and
found our boat, with the luggage already aboard, looking
most unpromising, despite the efforts of our men. It was a
small river craft about eight feet broad. Bamboo matting not more
than five feet high formed our house-room, with a few planks for a
door in front. Fragments of matting made a partial screen in the
centre. The floor was of a rudimentary character, just a few boards
with large gaps between them, through which one could study the
depth of water over which our luggage was precariously poised on
low props. In order to prevent all our small things from dropping
through the floor, we spread over it our invaluable sheets of oil-
cotton (a kind of waterproof largely used everywhere in China), and
fastened up a curtain at each end of the tiny boat to secure a small
amount of privacy. There was just space for our two carrying-chairs
and our mattresses. One of the chairs we used as a wardrobe, and
the other as a store-cupboard. The bamboo chairs we had procured
at the penitentiary of Chengtu, despite the advice of our friends, as
we found sedan-chairs very irksome, and decided that open ones
would be more comfortable and enable us to see the country better.
With long fur coats and foot muffs we felt that we could brave the
cold, and there was always the resource of walking if we got too
chilly. We never for a moment regretted our decision, and we found
that the men carried the open chairs far better than the heavy
closed ones. We profited at once by the exchange, as they were able
to be used for going to Mount Omi, and we were carried some
distance up the mountain. Under the seat was a box in which we
could carry all our small things, and the coolies hung their coats,
hats, &c., on the back.
As our room was so small we sat mostly on the floor, so as to
have everything within reach without getting up. The cooking was a
somewhat difficult matter, as the brazier on which it was done was
only six inches in diameter, and rather apt to burn a hole in the floor
if it was heated sufficiently to do any cooking. We were glad of its
warmth, as the weather was very cold. Chopsticks were evidently
the correct fireirons, and are just the right size to match the
charcoal. With practice I got fairly expert at making palatable dishes,
as naturally the range of the menu was much limited. From this time
onward I did all the cooking, and I cannot help attributing to this
fact mainly the excellent health we enjoyed throughout the whole
journey.
It was on his way from Chang Te to Mount Omi that the
unfortunate Lieutenant Brooke was murdered by Lolos about a year
later than we were there. We were strongly warned about the care
requisite in dealing with Lolos, and told that it was imprudent even
to mention the name in public, as it is considered a term of
reproach. It was suggested that we should spell it if desirous of
speaking of them. Their country is marked on the maps as
“Independent Lolos,” and covers about 11,000 square miles: no
Chinaman dare penetrate into it without the safe-conduct of a Lolo.
Their speech, dress, customs, religion, and laws are entirely different
from those of the Chinese. No one has yet come into sufficiently
close contact with them to ascertain even approximately the number
of Lolo tribes in existence at the present time, speaking different
dialects. What was true at the time that Baber explored Western
Szechwan is equally true to-day—that practically nothing is known
about them. He gives a graphic description of the Lolos whom he
met, which I quote at length: “They are far taller than the Chinese;
taller probably than any European people. During the journey we
must have met hundreds of them, but we never saw one who could
be called, even from an English standard, short or undersized. They
are almost without exception remarkably straight-built, with thin
muscular limbs. Their chests are deep, as becomes mountaineers:
the speed and endurance with which they scale their native
mountains is a prodigy and a proverb for the Chinese. Their
handsome oval faces, of a reddish brown among those most
exposed to the weather, are furnished with large, level eyes,
prominent but not exaggerated cheekbones, an arched but rather
broad nose, an ordinary mouth, somewhat thin-lipped, and a pointed
and characteristic chin from which the beard has been plucked. The
same process has denuded the upper lip, which is of good
proportion. Their teeth are remarkably white and regular, a
preservation for which they account by asserting that they never eat
roast meat, but always boil their food. Perhaps the most marked
character of their faces is a curious tendency to wrinkles, especially
on the forehead, which is low, but broad and upright. The lowness
of the features may be merely an illusive appearance, since it is
overshadowed by a peculiar style of hairdressing. With very rare
exceptions the male Lolo, rich or poor, free or subject, may be
instantly known by his horn. All his hair is gathered into a knob over
his forehead, and then twisted up into a cotton cloth, so as to
resemble the horn of a unicorn. The horn with its wrapper is
sometimes a good nine inches long.” Baber mentions slave raids
made by the Lolos to capture Chinese children, whom they usually
bring up like their own children. They tattoo the slaves on the
forehead with a blue cross. Apparently it is to have a place of safety
in case of such raids that the Chinese have built towers like the one
I have sketched on the borders of Yünnan. Many of the customs of
the Lolos are peculiar and interesting, and the position of woman is
far above that enjoyed in China. The birth of a girl is more highly
esteemed than that of a boy, and a stranger introduced by a woman
Lolo has the best possible guarantee. Baber considered that a
European would be quite safe in Lololand if properly introduced and
of honest character. The most experienced and successful travellers
always seem to emphasise the importance of the latter fact.
We were escorted by two soldiers, as usual. Our progress was
far from rapid, as the river is extremely low at this season. For the
first two days we were generally able to see to the bottom, and
often we scraped the stones if we did not actually stick fast. The
men seemed to spend nearly as much time in the river, pushing and
pulling us, as on the boat. It was a picturesque and interesting
journey, as we continually came to the dams made for irrigation
purposes. We much regretted that we were unable to visit Kwan
Hsien (thirty-six miles north of Chengtu), where the system of
irrigation of the plain can be seen at its source. As we were short of
time, and also heard that we should not see much at this time of the
year, it did not seem worth while going there. The Min River flows
from the Min Hills, and just near Kwan Hsien a cutting was made in
order to divide it into two large branches. These again were
subdivided into many others, forming a network to irrigate the whole
of the plain in which Chengtu lies. This was done by an able
governor more than 200 years b.c., and the original system, which is
still in use to-day, has turned an unproductive plain into one of great
fertility. Naturally, there have been many improvements made in the
course of centuries, and dams and dikes have been erected to
regulate the flow of water. We were able to see quite a number of
these after leaving Chengtu, and to marvel at their simple and
successful construction. They are mostly made of bamboo crates,
filled with stones, and rising about three feet above water. These are
placed in long lines, and the temporary dike is made of sand. The
channels have to be cleaned regularly, and large sums have to be
spent on repairs. The farmers pay a tax of about ½d. an acre, and,
in order to get the money in regularly, they are compelled to pay
double if it is not paid before a certain date. For about a month
yearly the river below Chengtu is closed, and there is always a great
crowd of boats at that time, both above and below the dam, waiting
for the re-opening. The opening of a big dam, such as the “Frog’s
Chin,” is an imposing ceremony, preceded by a day of worship at the
temples and the inspection of dikes. All the officials attend, and
when the sluice is opened the runners of the officials lash the water,
and the women and the children throw stones in to make the water
run faster to irrigate the fields!
HOUSE ON MIN RIVER
Throughout the plain there are many water-wheels to raise the
water to higher levels, and some also are apparently used for
grinding corn. At the close of our first day’s journey on the river
there was a great deal of loud talk when we halted for the night,
added to the tiresome beating of the drums by the night watchmen,
who patrol the towns and big villages all night long. It turned out
that a man had come to try and persuade our captain to undertake a
bigger job than ours. On being warned that the interpreter would
hear what he said, he remarked that it did not matter, as he would
not be able to understand the dialect. Mr. Ku, however, had studied
the dialect when he was at college, and thoroughly understood the
plan that was being devised. This was that we should slip down the
river in the middle of the night, while the escorts were away sleeping
at the inn. Then some story would be trumped up that the boat
could not take us any farther, and we should have been obliged to
find another one. Mr. Ku had the good sense to go ashore at once
and apply to the Yamen for a couple of soldiers to come and sleep
on board, so that there was no opportunity for the captain to
undertake the new job even if he had been willing to do so, and we
had no further trouble. Certainly, one could hardly be surprised if the
captain wished to make a little more money, for he receives about
6s. for a trip which lasts four days, and out of this money he has to
pay and feed two other men besides feeding our two. We hear that
a man can live (without starving) on a penny a day for food, and the
regular allowance of soldiers is only 2d. per day.
We passed many picturesque villages, some built in lath and
plaster, which, at a little distance, might almost have been taken for
Cheshire villages, if it were not for the beautiful blue figures flitting
about; for blue is the universal colour of the clothing here. We were
much interested to see a large number of fishing cormorants at one
place; but unfortunately they were not at work. Very light rafts are
used for this purpose, turned up at one end, as in the sketch. We
also twice saw otters used for the same purpose. The Chinese
declared to us that the otter brings the fish up in its paws, and not
in its mouth; but they always invent an answer so glibly to your
question, whether they know the answer or not, that I should
certainly not believe the above without further corroboration. We
were surprised to see in one place that the cormorants (after diving)
were fished up to the surface in baskets very much the same shape
as the birds, and evidently made for the purpose.
OTTER FISHING ON MIN RIVER
About forty miles below Chengtu, the two main branches of the
river unite and form something more worthy of the name of river.
The branch which flows through Chengtu is called the “Walking
Horse River” at its division from the main current—a very dangerous
spot for navigation, and one where there are constant disasters. It is
said that the rafts generally carry coffins with them in consequence;
and certainly the number of those carrying coffins which passed us
going upstream gives colour to the story. It was curious to see the
boats being towed along by men walking beside them in the water
harnessed as trackers. Lower down, the river becomes deeper, and
some of the rapids look very pretty, as the water is a bluish-green
colour and the rocks are red sandstone. Sometimes the road from
the riverside leads up precipitous hills by long stone staircases. The
reflections of the common blue clothes of the people, as seen in the
river, are an exquisite turquoise colour. The scenery becomes
increasingly beautiful as one proceeds down the river. Our escort
was changed daily, and one man brought a fowling-piece on board
with which to beguile the time. He tried to shoot the wild ducks,
which are the size and colour of our tame ones, but he had not the
smallest success. We were interested to see the loading of the
weapon, which had a piece of smouldering rope finally thrust down
the barrel, preparatory to its being fired off. The gun had to be
balanced on a bundle of sticks while careful aim was taken at a very
near bird sitting quite still. Even then, the bird was in no danger, so
far as we could see, but ineffectual attempts to shoot kept the man
busy all day. The soldier wore a silver ring, of which he was
extremely proud. This had to be entrusted to the other soldier each
time that he fired his weapon. Part of the way we had police
boatmen, who spent some time in rowing, and were of material
assistance to us; but unfortunately this was only a rare occurrence.
Kiating was the first large town we reached, and here we left the
boat in order to make our expedition to Mount Omi.
CHAPTER XVII
Mount Omi
W
E reached Kiating in the morning, and set to work at once
on our preparations for the next day. The people there
considered us very extraordinary for wishing to make the
ascent at such an unusual time of year, and told us that it would be
worse than useless, for we should certainly see nothing at all from
the top. They pointed out how arduous an ascent it would be, as the
snow would make climbing extremely difficult. The weather had
been cloudy for some time, and we were in the land of mists, but
nothing would deter us from our intention. We had read
discouraging accounts of other travellers who had been up there,
and it certainly sounded as if we should find the ascent beyond our
strength, but we determined, at all events, to try. We arranged to
take as little luggage as possible, but it was necessary to take food
for six days, as on the sacred mountain there are no inns. There are
plenty of monasteries, which give you reasonable accommodation,
but it was quite unlikely we should get food there. The first day we
travelled across the plain some twenty miles to the foot of the
mountain. The scenery was pretty, but nothing remarkable was to be
seen at this time of the year. One of the principal objects of interest
is the white wax tree, a sort of ash, called by the Chinese “Pai-la-
Shu.” The white wax insects are bred in the celebrated valley of the
Chien-ch’ang, some 200 miles away among the mountains. When
they reach the right stage of development they are put in paper
boxes, in bamboo trays, and brought to the plain of Kiating by the
swiftest runners. These men only travel by night, as it is essential
that the process of development should not proceed too rapidly. The
boxes have to be opened every day and ventilated, and the men
secure the best rooms in the inns, so that other travellers have much
to suffer if they are on the road at the same time. Finally, the
education of the grub is finished in the plain round Kiating.
POLICE BOATMAN: MIN RIVER SIGNBOARD OF INN
We crossed a large river, and cliffs were pointed out to us

containing caves called Man-tsi dwellings, and we were told that
they were formerly inhabited by aborigines of that name. The banks
of the Min River are honeycombed with them, and it is only quite
recently that this Chinese tradition has been called in question. A
resident in that district, who was interested in the pottery mounds
left by the Man-tsi when they were driven farther west by the
Chinese during the Han dynasty (200 b.c.-200 a.d.), was told of the
existence of an earthenware coffin. He went to see it, and further
investigation proved that such coffins were to be found habitually in
the caves, together with fragments of household implements. He
found also drawings of architectural columns and figures of winged
gods and winged animals carved on the rock, of a totally different
character from anything Chinese. The caves differ very much in size,
varying from small ones, ten feet deep by seven broad and seven
high, to large ones, a hundred feet in depth and eight or ten feet
broad and seven or more high. Some of the larger ones have side
compartments. Sometimes large simple caves are to be found some
thirty or forty feet square, and they are supported by pillars of rock,
with well-chiselled chapiters and ornamental masonry above them.
These caves have all the same kind of doorways, but they vary
considerably in fineness of design and execution. Some of the lintels
and sides are well carved. The entrances have been built up, and
sometimes so skilfully filled in with earth that all external traces of
them are obliterated.
As may be supposed, a large number of these caves have been
broken into by the Chinese and rifled of their contents. In a cave
opened at Penshau in 1908, two skeletons were found lying on
either side of the entrance, one with a long sword lying beside it,
and the other with a short sword. There were small images in niches
at the upper end of the cave, and a large jar full of cash, besides
many household dishes. As this was evidently the burying-place of a
poor family, there were no earthenware coffins; but in a similar one,
evidently belonging to a rich family, the corpses were all in
earthenware coffins, the material of which was the same as that
now used in the district for making tiles for the houses. In this cave
there were a number of birds and domestic animals in burnt clay, a
variety of crockery, and various traces of its former wealth, but it
had evidently been robbed of such things as the brass basins and
cash which are found in these wealthier tombs. The writer of the
article in the North China Herald (Dec. 26, 1908), from whose
account I have made this brief summary, goes on to say that the
coffins are made in two pieces, the main body and the lid. He
investigated a large number of these caves, which are being
ruthlessly destroyed by the natives, who have no idea of the value of
what they find in them, and will sell such things as swords for a few
pence to be used as old iron. Stone coffins are also not uncommon
in them. The caves were evidently closed about the beginning of the
Christian era, when the Man-tsi were still living on the banks of the
Min River. It is to be hoped that some capable archæologist will soon
take up the study of these caves before it is too late, as evidently
there is much to be learnt with regard to the history of the Chinese
as well as of the Man-tsi in that district.
Marco Polo, in referring to the Man-tsi district, mentions the
widespread culture of cinnamon, and what we procured in Chengtu
was certainly the most delicious we had ever tasted.
Rain began to fall as we neared the town of Omi, and we found
there was no chance of our getting farther that night. Fresh coolies
had to be engaged the next day, as it requires experienced men for
going up the mountain. The usual method of being carried is to sit
on a wooden perch attached to the shoulders of the coolies. A young
American whom we met had been carried up to the top in this way.
At one point the coolie stopped on the edge of a precipice to take a
little rest, and suddenly stooped down, so that the American hung
over the abyss. On his uttering a remonstrance, the coolie remarked
quite unconcernedly, “Have no fear; I am only picking up a pebble
with my toes.” He was standing on one leg!
MOUNT OMI BRIDGE
We arranged to start at our usual hour, 6.30; but we waited for a
long time in vain. A few coolies came and fussed round the luggage,
but while the others were being brought they disappeared, so that
we began to fear we should never do our stage. A great deal of
scolding and losing of one’s temper (no simulation in the present
case, though that is often necessary in China in order to make the
coolies start) had to be gone through before we started. At last we
got off at 8 o’clock, with the understanding that the coolies were to
get us as far as Wan Yen Sz that day, for we had been told that we
must be sure to go to that place and stop at a comfortable
monastery. There are seventy monasteries on the mountain; some
of them very large, but others small and ill-kept. As soon as we left
the plain the scenery became more and more beautiful. At the foot
of it magnificent banyans and groups of sacred cedars formed a fine
contrast to the slender trunks of the other trees. Then we came to a
charming crystal stream, shaded by arching bamboos. The path was
so narrow that whenever we met any one, they had to stride across
the stream to let us pass, or they would scuttle away (if they were
women) to some spot where there was room to stand, for the chair-
bearers never pause or give way to other passengers; they simply
ignore their being there and walk straight into them. Maidenhair and
every kind of lovely fern was reflected in the green water. As we
went up the valley the path led perilously round lofty rocks; once my
chair stuck fast, unable to be moved either way, with the horrible
precipice yawning below. My bearers yelled (from anger, not fear, I
think), and one of the soldiers happily came to the rescue, for I
cannot think what would have happened otherwise. Another time
one of the front coolies fell flat coming down a flight of steps, so
that on the whole we found that part of the journey very anxious
work, both going up and coming down. We soon abandoned our
chairs and began walking up endless flights of steps. We crossed an
interesting little bridge ornamented with a dragon facing up the
stream, whose tail projected from the farther side of the bridge, as
in the sketch. These dragons are a favourite ornament of bridges in
this province, and are there not merely for ornament but also to
ward off the evil spirits. That is why they always face up the stream.
The person crossing the bridge is a typical Szechwan woman.
We reached Wan Yen Sz much earlier than we expected. The
bronze elephant in the temple there is considered very interesting,
but it is certainly not ornamental. It is said to have come from India,
and how it was conveyed thence nobody can explain. It had been
damaged by fire, and there was a large hole in the under side, so a
shrine had been made there, and two little Buddhas put in it, with
incense in front. The tail was also extremely defective, so bits of
incense like hairs had been stuck at the end of it. The Chinese really
have no sense of the ludicrous in such matters, though they have a
keen sense of humour, and one is constantly tempted to laugh in the
temples. Happily, they do not mind this at all, and would not think
that we were showing any lack of reverence. In the adjoining temple
the monks were chanting, while two or three of them kept up a
continuous beating on the Buddha fish and other gongs, as seen in
the sketch. In front of the Buddha, and almost concealing him, was
a large stone monument put up by an Indian prince. Near here we
were shown a piece of stone which was said to be the Buddha’s
tooth. It weighed several pounds, and is much venerated by
pilgrims.
We provided ourselves with stout pilgrim staves, which we found
of the utmost value on both our up ward and downward journeys.
They have quaintly carved dragons or tigers at the top, with a loose
wooden pea which rattles in their mouths. These sticks cost from a
penny to 2½d., and after the pilgrimage has been performed it is
the correct thing to have them painted red and black and gold. The
tiger is the mountain god who was worshipped long before the
existence of the Buddha, and whose shrines are still to be seen all
the way up the mountain, with incense burning before them.
BUDDHIST MONK, CHANTING
TIGER SHRINE
It was interesting to find on Mount Omi the two great Chinese
symbols of power, the dragon and the tiger. As Laurence Binyon puts
it: “In the superstitions of literal minds the Dragon was the genius of
the element of water, producing clouds and mists; the Tiger the
genius of the Mountains, whose roaring is heard in the wind that
shakes the forest. But in the imagination of poets and of artists
these symbols became charged with spiritual meanings, meanings
which we should regard as fluid rather than fixed, and of imports
varying with the dominant conceptions of particular epochs. In the
Dragon is made visible the power of the spirit, the power of the
infinite, the power of change; in the Tiger the power of material
forces.”
It is worthy of note that the Buddhists selected mountains
already sacred, where they might establish themselves and form
Buddhist sanctuaries. They tolerated the gods in possession, so that
they still continue to be worshipped simultaneously with the Buddha.
The mixing up of religions is seen everywhere in China, but nowhere
did we notice it so grotesquely carried out as here. We counted no
fewer than twelve tiger shrines on the way up the mountain, many
of them with vivacious beasts half out of their shrines, as if they
were tired of their rôle and were meditating a raid on their
worshippers. In the evening the Abbot had prepared a feast for us,
but we declined it, so he sent in a tray of nuts and sweets instead.
The following morning we set off betimes on foot, and very soon
the coolies left the carrying-poles behind, and were obliged to carry
our chairs on their backs. Soon the steps became almost continuous
and increasingly slippery. The longest flight was over 1200 steps,
and as the steps sloped downwards and were covered with ice the
ascent was most fatiguing and toilsome. The day was grey and
cloudy, but the shifting mists revealed crags and abysses, and all
along our path there was a wealth of lovely shrubs—camellias,
rhododendrons, bamboos, and ferns. The frost had coated
everything, and the leaves were reproduced in ice, looking exactly
like clear glass; sprays of dead blossom, tall grasses, delicate ferns,
everything was duplicated in ice, and the slight thaw early in the day
detached this ice from the vegetation. We were sorry not to see in
full beauty the flowers and ferns for which Mount Omi is justly
celebrated, but it would have been impossible to conceive anything
lovelier than what we did see.
Our midday halt at a monastery was provokingly long, as the
men’s food had to be cooked, so that we did not start for a couple of
hours. The sight of fowls here was a pleasant surprise to us, as the
Buddhists obviously could have no use for them and our larder
needed replenishing. We secured some eggs, and asked for a fowl
also. When we came to pay for it, however, the monks said that they
did not sell anything. If we liked to put our names down on their
subscription list (which a monk forthwith produced) for the
restoration of the monastery, we should be welcome to a fowl as a
gift, not otherwise. We set out again, and found our way grow more
and more precipitous and slippery. We met Tibetan pilgrims, a wild
and fierce-looking company, toiling painfully upwards like ourselves,
or slithering down. All these are welcomed and entertained in the
monasteries. Our soldier escort was evidently very much afraid of
them, and had a great deal to say of their evil doings, warning us to
keep close together and close to himself. As I approached a group of
pilgrims in one of the monasteries, in order to watch a man blowing
up his fire with a goatskin bellows, one of them scowled at me and
waved me away, as if he feared our sharing his thieving propensities.
This is the season for Tibetan pilgrims, and many of them had
travelled far, bringing their beasts of burden with them. The Chinese
pilgrims come in the spring, and there was a big pilgrimage ten
years ago—so a monk told us. The air grew intensely cold and
dense, and, as twilight fell, our men urged us to halt about two
miles short of the summit, where there was a good monastery. To
this we willingly agreed, the more so as my breathing had grown
extremely difficult, and I was beginning to feel at the end of my
strength. Our lofty room was clean and well built, and the ten beds
around it all stood empty. Soon a large glowing brazier was brought
in, and we were thankful not only to get warm, but also to dry our
clothes, which were heavy with mist.
Mount Omi is 11,000 feet high, and Kiating is only 1200, so we
had come into a wholly different temperature, and when we woke in
the morning it was to find everything frozen hard—sponges like
boards, oranges as hard as bullets, and the water in my sketching-
bottle a lump of ice. But the sun was shining brilliantly, and the
mountain-top was a dazzling vision of loveliness emerging from a
vast ocean of clouds. It took us about an hour to arrive at the
summit, and the priest told us that as the sun shone we were
evidently good people. This was highly satisfactory, as so many
people thought us fools for attempting the ascent at this time of
year, telling us of all the people who had toiled to the top and seen
nothing. We anxiously inquired at what time of day we could see
“Buddha’s Glory,” a sort of Brocken spectre which is rarely seen by
travellers, and which we were told could not be seen at all at this
time of year. Standing on the edge of the summit, you look down a
precipice of more than a mile, and we could only feast our eyes on
the ever-changing scene, the clouds looking as if they were boiling
up from some hidden caldron, now concealing, now revealing the
peaks of distant mountains. On a clear day the far-distant snowy
peaks of Tibet are visible, and the glorious fertile plain out of which
the limestone peak of Mount Omi rises.
SUMMIT OF MOUNT OMI
I established myself in a sunny nook under the temple eaves,
and sent for hot water with which to sketch the neighbouring crag of
the “10,000 Buddhas.” After lunch I sketched the interior of the
Buddha shrine with all its gaudy, squalid trappings, a harmony in
reds. I was amazed to see the brevity of the worshippers’ prayers;
owing, I think, to their fear of my introducing them into the sketch.
The three figures of the Buddha were behind a large red curtain, in
which were openings through which they could be dimly discerned.
We went back to our former quarters for the night, but had very
little rest, as the coolies went in for a night of revelry, in which we
felt sure the monks shared, although our suggestion to that effect
next day was vehemently repudiated. The descent of the mountain
we found extremely arduous, despite our being shod with straw
sandals and having the support of our pilgrim sticks; it was
dreadfully slippery, and for six and a half hours we toiled steadily
down flights of steps, or glissaded down them on our backs. We
calculated the distance as not much less than twelve miles. The
stiffness produced was not quite so bad as I had anticipated, but it
makes you feel extremely foolish to have to watch each step you
take in order to be sure that your feet are obeying your bidding.
Then you see the coolies pick up the chairs and carry you for
another three hours after you are dead beat as if they had done
nothing. We spent the night at a clean new inn about three miles
from the town of Omi, and for the first time we occupied an upstairs
bedroom in a Chinese house. After this occasion we always used to
try and secure one, but our stiffness then made it extremely painful
to get up the steep staircase. It was like mounting into a loft, and
was a very pleasant variety from any inn we had yet encountered.
The following morning we made an early start, so as to have a
little time in Kiating to collect our belongings and go on board a boat
to take us to Sui Fu. Our temper was sorely tried by the delay of our
men and the changing of some of them at Omi Hsien, which delayed
us about an hour. By dint of offering extra pay, however, we made
up some time, and came upon an interesting sight to beguile us on
the way—namely, cormorants and an otter fishing. When we got to
the Tong River—the third river that we saw at the base of the
mountain—we were rowed down to Kiating, a distance of some four
miles. We were curious to see what the coolies would pay for the
boat journey, as they had arranged the matter. For the four chairs
and the eighteen people, the whole cost was thirty cash—namely,
three farthings. We got back to Kiating soon after four o’clock, and
found that our friends had kindly got everything ready for our
departure. The thought of two quiet days on the boat was not
unacceptable after a somewhat laborious but entirely satisfactory
trip up Mount Omi, and it was many days before we recovered from
our stiffness. Owing to mist, we did not see the impressive view of
Mount Omi as it rises from the plain.
CHAPTER XVIII
From Szechwan into Yünnan
T
HE boat in which we continued our journey down the Min
River was rather larger than the one we had previously, but
still we could not stand upright in it. It is not always easy to
get just what you want in the way of boats, especially at this time of
year; but it was not a long journey, although our men took about
four times as long as they ought to have done, and it was only by
offering extra payment that we managed to do it in two days. We
had one piece of good luck on the way. Our kind friends at Chengtu,
when replenishing our stores, had lamented the non-arrival of a
large case of biscuits sent out by friends in England, mentioning the
name of the firm from which they were coming. As we neared Sui Fu
we were watching divers getting up cases which had evidently been
shipwrecked, and conspicuous amongst them was a large case
bearing the name referred to. On arrival at Sui Fu we reported this
at the mission station where we stayed, and learnt that they had
heard of the wreck and sent to inquire whether the case had been
got up. Shortly afterwards their messenger returned, saying that it
could not be found. Our information being explicit, we described
exactly the spot where we had seen the wreck, a few miles above
the town; the man was sent again and told that he must bring the
case, as we had seen for ourselves that it had been got up. This
time he returned in triumph with it. Probably the divers thought that
they would get a better price by selling the contents, and if we had
not seen it our friends would not have seen it either.
The town of Sui Fu is most charmingly situated, lying at the
junction of the Yangtze and the Min rivers, and is enclosed in a fork

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Full download ebook at ebookgate.

Creativity in Primary Education Cross

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Mind Expanding Teaching For Thinking And Creativity In

Shadow and Shelter The Swamp in Southern Culture 1St

Safety and Risk in Primary School Physical Education

Nelson International Science Student Book 5

Nelson International Science Student Book 2

Primary Education in Ireland 1897 1990 Curriculum and

Autistic Spectrum Disorders Advances in Special

The Labyrinth of Universality Wilson Harris s Visionary

Edited by Anthony Wilson

Second edition published in 2009

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

ISBN 978 1 84445 198 2

Cover design by Topics

Learning Matters Ltd

Part 1: Setting the scene

1 Changes in the landscape for creativity in education 5

2 Thinking about creativity: developing ideas, making things happen

3 Creative teachers and creative teaching

4 Play and playfulness in the Early Years Foundation Stage 47

5 Creativity and spiritual, moral, social and cultural development 58

Part 2: Creativity in the core primary curriculum

6 Creativity and literacy

7 What is creativity in science education? 77

Part 3: Creativity in the foundation primary curriculum

9 Children, creativity and physical education 105

10 Creative and imaginative primary art and design 117

11 Creativity in the music curriculum

12 What has creativity got to do with citizenship education?

13 Creativity in primary design and technology 164

14 Creativity in primary history 177

15 Creativity in primary geography 189

Mary Briggs is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Education, University of Warwick

Simon Catling is Professor of Primary Education, specialising in geography in primary

Jane Johnston is a Reader in Education at Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln

Elizabeth Wood is Professor of Education at the University of Exeter, specialising in early

How to use this book

Creativity in the core primary curriculum

Mary Briggs’s chapter ‘Creative mathematics’ is critical of recent curricular recommenda-

Creativity in the foundation primary

Anthony Wilson, 2009

What has changed?

Three waves of creativity in education

The first wave: Plowden and beyond

The second wave of creativity in education

Three major curriculum-based initiatives occurred.

The National Advisory Committee on Creative and

’Creative development’ in Foundation Stage and Early

‘Creative thinking’ named as a key skill in the National

(QCA, 2005a, 2005b).

Aspects of apprenticeship include:

. modelling expertise and approaches

The model of creative learning as apprenticeship implies ownership by children of ideas,

. What is the relationship between individual and collective work?

. encourages development of purposeful outcomes across the curriculum;

OFSTED (2003a, 2003b) would add to this the significance of:

. role of the arts;