Report Researchhttps://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity 2:23 "And the third part of this is that we've all agreed, nonetheless, on the really extraordinary capacities that children have -- their capacities for innovation." 2:56 "So I want to talk about education and I want to talk about creativity. My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status." 5:21 "What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original -- if you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this. We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities." 6:05 "Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it." 12:56 "We know three things about intelligence. One, it's diverse. We think about the world in all the ways that we experience it. We think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically. We think in abstract terms, we think in movement. Secondly, intelligence is dynamic. If you look at the interactions of a human brain,as we heard yesterday from a number of presentations, intelligence is wonderfully interactive. The brain isn't divided into compartments. In fact, creativity -- which I define as the process of having original ideas that have value -- more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things." 14:50 "And the third thing about intelligence is, it's distinct. I'm doing a new book at the moment called "Epiphany," which is based on a series of interviews with people about how they discovered their talent. I'm fascinated by how people got to be there." 16:50 "I said, "What happened?" She said, "She did. I can't tell you how wonderful it was. We walked in this room and it was full of people like me. People who couldn't sit still. People who had to move to think."" (Quotations from Gillian Lynne) 18:33 "What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination. We have to be careful now that we use this gift wisely and that we avert some of the scenarios that we've talked about. And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are and seeing our children for the hope that they are.And our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future. By the way -- we may not see this future, but they will. And our job is to help them make something of it." I'm researching the importance that creativity has in Child development and in this Speech by Robinson, he cleary dictates the crucial values creativity has upon a person. It's clear to see he fears it may be overlooked within schools, which I could probably understand from the school curriculums being very academicly approached, however schools are trying to tackle this stigma as seen when my previous Secondary school were incorporating a Lego space to cultivate innovative ideas amongst it's students. (Practice Research).
Report Research"The pre-school child's imagination has a positive educational value because in the process of playing he develops a firm desire to imitate adults, to take on the role of good people, to act as they do." Zhukovskaya, R. I., (2014) Development of the Child's Imagination in the Process of Play. Soviet Education. [Internet] December 2014, 4(5), 44-52. Available at: <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2753/RES1060-9393040544> [Accessed 16 November 2016] "All children need to have an environment where the act of imagining and its expression are not only respected but given visible outlets. Children's playing should be seen as a profound manifestation of this process." "Out of playing and dreaming comes the child's love of creating and doing - of bringing together what the child is thinking and feeling, of finding a means of expressing the inward world outwardly." "For all children, the world is freshly revealed, ready to be experienced in all it's subleties and elements. To allow children to gather the world, to embrace its energy and vitality, is to allow their imagination to be a life force in their becoming fully human." Lewis, R., (1984) Reaffirmations: Speaking Out for Children: A Child's Right to Imagine. Childhood Education. [Internet] July 2012, 62(1), 52. Available at: <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00094056.1984.10522343> [Accessed 16 November 2016] "The role of the arts in the development of imagination in early childhood is linked with children's need to explore and learn about their world. Learning to imagine is a crucial step in symbol‐making in early childhood. Decentration skills are hypothesised as the link between fantasy or pretense play activities and development in areas such as communication, co‐operation, perspective‐taking ability, creativity, problem‐solving skills and many areas of cognitive development. Children develop their own theories of the world well before starting school and, by being aware of these theories, teachers can build on children's prior learning rather than negating it. Examples of children's symbol‐making are used to illustrate the process of making meaning. Aspects of children's learning environments are considered in terms of how effectively they facilitate children's exploration and the development of imagination." White, M. H., (1993) Imagination in Learning: Learning to Imagine. Early Child Development and Care. [Internet] May 1993, 90(1), 99-111. Available at: <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0300443930900112> [Accessed 16 November 2016] "Results showed that activities such as gardening and construction were as valuable for supporting creative thinking as ones traditionally associated with creativity, for example, music and painting. Outdoor play of all kinds and socio-dramatic play were particularly effective contexts." "Child-initiated activities featured the highest levels of involvement, and were associated with trying out and analysing ideas, flexibility and originality, imagining and hypothesising." "There is increasing recognition of the importance of supporting creativity and creative thinking at all phases of education (Siraj-Blatchford, I. 2007. Creativity, communication and collaboration: The identification of pedagogic progression in sustained shared thinking. Asia-Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education, 1(2): 3–23. ).This paper presents data produced as part of the Froebel Research Fellowship Project, ‘The Voice of the Child: Ownership and Autonomy in Early Learning’, at the University of Roehampton. In particular, it looks at young children's creative thinking, as inferred through observations of their everyday behaviour whilst they engage in child-initiated, adult-directed and adult-led activities in an early childhood setting." "The National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE) defines creativityas ‘imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value’ (National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE) . 1999 . All our futures: Creativity, culture, and education . London : DfEE ., 29), whilst Sternberg defines creative thinking as ‘thinking that is novel and that produces ideas that are of value’ (2003, 325–6). They share ideas of imagination, and originality or novelty" "Rather, creative thinking is thinking which is new for that individual." " Hypothesising, and making leaps of the imagination require confidence on the thinker's part, and a willingness to take risks, suggesting a key role for motivation, particularly intrinsic motivation (Amabile, T.M. 1996. Creativity in context, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. )." "Accordingly, this paper addresses the research question: How do children express their creativity and creative thinking in early childhood settings?" "The data show that all participant children displayed evidence of creative thinking, although in some this was more frequent than others." "In addressing the research question: ‘How do children express their creativity and creative thinking in early childhood settings?’ the data are considered from three perspectives:
"In the case of the first factor, the data here endorse the view that child-initiated play may be more supportive of creative thinking (Craft, A., Cremin, T., Burnard, P. and Chappell, K. 2008. “Possibility thinking with children in England aged 3-7”. In Creative learning 3-11 and how we document it, Edited by: Craft, A., Cremin, T. and Burnard, P.65–73. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books. ). In the case of the second factor, the differences between indoors and outdoors as contexts for creative thinking may be significant. The vast majority of outdoor play we recorded showed high levels of creative thinking behaviour in the participants, whether alone or with others, and regardless of adult presence or absence." "Pretend play, particularly socio-dramatic play, was the most likely activity to lead to high levels of creative thinking." "Much pretend play, particularly in this age group, is collaborative, providing a context for children to engage with others, hypothesising about their wishes and intentions, as they negotiate story lines, and imagine how co-players will feel, think and act." "At the same time, however, it was evident that children's exploratory play with materials and resources of all kinds proved a very strong context for their creative thinking." "Laevers believes that a key factor of support for higher levels of involvement (seen by him as an indicator of children's ‘intense mental activity’) is the opportunities children have for choice: ‘the more children can choose their own activities, the higher will be their level of involvement’ (Laevers, F. 2000. Forward to basics! Deep-level-learning and the experiential approach. Early Years, 20(2): 20–9. [Taylor & Francis Online], 26)." "In RDs, children often referred to the presence of friends as important, and friends have been shown to be more likely to succeed in problem solving activities than non-friends (Smith, P.K., Cowie, H. and Blades, M.2011. Understanding children's development, 5th ed, Oxford: Blackwell. ). Some children also talked about not wanting to play with children that they did not count as friends, and the impact this had on their choices of activity." "However, whilst using prior knowledge is important, Vygotsky's famous statement, ‘What a child can do with assistance today she will be able to do by herself tomorrow’ (Vygotsky, L.S. 1978. Mind in society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. , Vygotsky, L.S. 1986. Thought and language, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ), emphasises the value of the acquisition of new knowledge and insights, gained through joint thinking." "Children's exploratory play with materials and resources of all kinds proved a very strong context for their creative thinking. However, two particular contexts which may be supportive of creative thinking are outdoor play and pretence. Socio-dramatic play, in particular, was the activity most likely to lead to high levels of creative thinking." Robson, S., Rowe, V., (2012) Observing young children's creative thinking: engagement, involvement and persistence. International Journal of Early Years Education. [Internet] December 2012, 20(4), 349-364. Available at: <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09669760.2012.743098>. [Accessed 16 November 2016] "Imagination is closely related to creativity. It is also distinct from fantasy. The basic distinction between imagination and fantasy is that while imagination is related to reality, fantasy is related to unreality. The key link between imagination and creativity lies in the opportunity that, based upon reality, imagination provides for innovation and original changes and possibilities. That is creativity itself as well." Mellon, E., (1995) Creativity: The Imagination Condition. Early Child Development and Care. [Internet] June 1995, 114(1), 97-106. Available at: <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0300443951140108>. [Accessed 16 November 2016] "From the three translated papers of Vygotsky which directly addressed creativity, one can extract the outlines of a viable theory explaining the development of creativity. Vygotsky claimed that creative imagination is the distinguishing feature between the world of culture and the world of nature, and the basis of all mature mental activity. He found the origins of creative imagination in early manifestations of play, and explained that it goes through a process of integration and evolution following the development of concepts and reasoning during adolescence. It develops into mature creative imagination only in adulthood. The argument in the present article is that Vygotsky's explanation can resolve contradictions that exist in the empirical findings on the development of creativity during adolescence. In addition to a general theoretical examination of Vygotsky's perspective on creativity, the theory's relevance to developmental issues in creativity is critically examined, and its relationship to existing knowledge about development of creativity is discussed." Ayman-Nolley, S., (1992) Vygotsky's Perspective on the Development of Imagination and Creativity. Creativity Research Journal. [Internet] November 2009, 5(1), 77-85. Available at: <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10400419209534424>. [Accessed 16 November 2016] Multiple journals to gather extensive research to back up any points included in my report in reference to how imagination, creativity and play are used within child development. The conclusion of my report is becoming more and more clear the more I read. Many different sources agree with the same statement that play manifests creativity and imagination (play is a way for a child to experiment with their imaginative and creative skills to help further their development).
Report ResearchN/A (N/A) Play: The Work of Lev Vygotsky. Available from: <http://www.childdevelopmentmedia.com/articles/play-the-work-of-lev-vygotsky> [Accessed 16 November 2016] "Imaginative play is a crucial component of a child's normal development." "Children have dialogues with themselves when they engage in imaginative play. Role-playing means creating a story and giving a voice to the different characters in the story. When children imitate others, they are developing a vocabulary that allows them to name and navigate the world around them. Less verbal children may talk more during imaginative play than in other settings." "Children at play are making sense of the world through a process of "inner speech" - that is, they are often talking out loud to themselves. As adults, we lose this capacity because it is not socially sanctioned." "If we really listen to children at play, we can hear the way they converse with themselves in order to make sense of the external world. Mimicking adults is often the most obvious way this process can be observed." "Vygotsky was also interested in the role of social interaction on cognitive development and argued that development first takes place socially." "Through child-centered play, children take on different roles and try out different language uses, all of which help them on the journey from being externally regulated to internally regulated in cognition. Through play, children become more competent in their language use and begin to regulate their own thought processes." " If a child is learning to complete a task, such as building a bridge with blocks, and a more competent person provides assistance, then the child is able to move into a new zone of development and problem solving. " What I can base Vygotsky's views on play within child development upon, is that children develop strongly with the involvement of communication and social engagement. The social aspect within a child's youth is very important because it allows interaction with the world.
Report ResearchNotes
Overall, I'm feeling very confident with how my report is taking place. I believe that I've got a strong use of research to back up my points and conclusion of how these roles affect child development. My issue lies in that I feel that I've "finished" my report with 3000 words spare to write. I've managed to explain my findings in relevance to the title/question.
Thankfully when I adressed this issue, the reader group session was able to provide me with some new directions to take my report further. I still need to input images, not so much as a visual aid, but more so for raising a point further, analysing the image to see if the theories are in practice by children. I'm hoping to return to the Primary School again during school ours to see child development within the school environment. Research for BothHe spent the whole afternoon in the newly arranged forest school area in his primary junior school. He climbed trees. He said the afternoon was for fun and had free roam, and he played with friends playing chase around the trees. All the children were individual animals based on the first letter of their name, and Euan was an eagle. This led him to pretend to be an eagle at points when playing. Euan could see the circle, at the centre of the forest, when he was in the tree. Three whistles and they had to return to and sit at the circle where there was a fire. The adult demonstrated how to light the fire. They spoke about what they did in the forest and what they liked/enjoyed about it. Then they had to say their name and do their action (Euan was pretend to be an eagle). Euan did a lot of digging as well. He found a root from a tree creating a hole around it. He very, very enjoyed being an eagle, climbing and running around in the mud. He liked running around in the mud because he made everyone else muddy. His class, Year 4, does this once a week every Wednesday until end of year. One thing to say about writing the notes for this topic was that when I asked Euan to explan what he did for my notes, I had to cut out alot of the notes because he said honestly that half of it was lies/made-up. I kind of wish at this moment that I hadn't erased those lies/stories because I believe that's part of his imagination being developed from his experience. He managed to make up new stories based on his personal experience of venturing in the forest location. (I think I can remember him speaking about finding dinosaur bones, I initially thought he meant toy ones, however I think he meant real dinosaur bones - similar to what an archeologist may discover through digging in the dirt).
What I've learnt from visiting Ravens Academy and from Euan's story is that schools efficiently use the technique of repetition. Here the adults/teachers at the end of the day make children speak about their experience, a mode to re-live it but carefully thinking as to why and how to demonstrate this to their peers, expecially through the terms of "playing"/pretending to be an animal of the forest. The natural setting of the forest provided Euan with many opportunities to use it as a "laboratory"; to experiment and find new possibilities, such as seeing the ground from a different perspective in a tree. Research for Both10:00am Reception - Swans Carpet for sitting space in the centre (core) of the classroom. Dedicated space on each animal face on the carpet. Milk and water drinks break in a circle before sitting on their dedicated space. Discussion about the film Up, watched previously in the week. Using conversations amongst each other and with the tutor as a group to learn about adjectives. Write a single sentence and read it aloud. Understanding when to use capitals and pronunciations. Also acting out certain writing rules such as acting out a full stop with a motion of a fist. 10:30am Outdoor Play Group play initially running against the wind which was very strong and first thing everyone noted when emerging outside. Then Teacher initiated duck duck goose group play. Children began to leave the group play and dispersed into their own play. Playing individually or a group of them. One girl dressed as a cat immediately and stayed pretending to be a cat the whole session. In the construction area, two children had built a see-saw using wooden blocks. One girl held a baby doll the entire session, through both group play at the start when playing self-initiated, and during the group play she treated her alike any of her peers in the rules of the game. 11:00am Phonics Indoors YouTube video of nursery rhymes, listening and singing to nursery rhymes to improve their phonics. 11:30am Lunch As a new stranger in the classroom, I was a distraction to some children and treated me like a teacher - adult association. 12:30pm Reception - Robins Begin with JollyPhonics, activities with pronunciation, reading and writing. Conversations within pairs and working together to solve problems. Self delegated roles when tidying up after an activity, working with each other. Independence and free roam of choice of play in an area that encourages learning through play. More capable children designated an afternoon task, working in pairs using lego to create a house and tie on a 'hot air balloon' they previously made in order to imitate the Up house, with an image for referenced which the teacher 'researched' for them for inspiration. When the balloon inside the paper-machè was popped, the teacher would request the entire class to stop and listen to the crackling it made of the balloon separating from the decorations. I got the opportunity to re-visit Ravens Academy during school hours which gave me an great insight as to how the children responded and behaved with the plan of their day. When playing children made the upmost use of all the materials around them to play - including the wind and their peers for games such as duck, duck, goose that requires just interaction. As I saw in the afternoon, after practising their phonics and writing skills, children were free to choose their activities apart from one group who were designated an activity to build a house with lego to create an 'UP' house. The children in this group were more developed and so needed a different progression level of using team-work to approach the task.
I could really see the techniques being used that the teachers spoke about in my previous visit. I could also see how children were using the most out of their environment to create games and play, especially during the outdoor play where a majority of the class played and relied with each other to play, compared to indoors when they would segregate into little groups; probably due to the nature of the seperate areas being smaller than the outdoor play area. Page 1 "There is evidence that all children love to interact with variables, such as materials and shapes; smells and other physical phenomena, such as electricity, magnetism and gravity; media such as gases and fluids; sounds, music, motion; chemical interactions, cooking and fire; and other humans, and animals, plants, words, concepts and ideas. With all these things all children love to play, experiment discover and invent and have fun." Page 2 "In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it." (variables being loose parts) "What has happened is that adults - in the form of professional artists, architects, landscape architects and planners - have had all the fun playing with their own materials, concepts and planning-alternatives, and then builders have had all the fun building the environments out of real materials; and thus has all the fun and creativity been stolen: children and adults and the community have been grossly cheated and the educational-cultural system makes sure that they hold the belief that this is 'right'" Page 4 "The process of community involvement is actually inseparable from the study of human interaction and behaviour: for example, to carry the previous analogy further, the study of children and cave-type environments only becomes meaningful when we consider children not only being in a given cave but also when children have the opportunity to play with space-forming materials in order that they may invent, construct, evaluate and modify their own caves. " "The obvious pattern of behaviour that can be identified here is a self-instructional pattern - namely - that children learn most readily and easily in a laboratory-type environment where they can experiment, enjoy and find out things for themselves." 1. Give top priority to where the children are 2. Let children play a part in the process 3. Use an interdisciplinary approach 4. Establish a clear-housing for information "The 4-part programme could act at least as a start toward solving the problem of cultural availability of bits and pieces of the environment - in both the software and hardware sense - and the extent to which a new generation will be able to invent new systems with the parts." Nicholson, S. (1972) The Theory of Loose Parts. Studies in Design Education Craft & Technology. [Internet] Spring 1972, 4, (2). Available at: <https://jil.lboro.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/SDEC/article/view/1204> [Accessed: 9 January 2017]. In terms of my report, I feel like i'll be referencing to "loose parts" alot because of it's value towards the theories I've established throughout my research. It's clear to see in terms of play and experimentation, "loose parts" plays a crucial role and I've seen it in action personally.
Research for Bothhttp://www.aneverydaystory.com/beginners-guide-to-reggio-emilia/main-principles/ The Reggio Emilia approach sums up what I've learned from my research as the environment being a "teacher" through self-discovery learning. It explains the way I want to approach my work in order to create a play space that benefits children. http://www.racheous.com/reggio-inspired/exploring-light/ LIGHT PLAY EXHIBIT 18 Jul 2015 - 30 Aug 2015 Enter the dazzling world of Light Play where children can explore their artistic potential in an interactive space created especially for them! Play with overhead projectors and illuminated light boxes and discover what happens when light is cast on different materials. Explore transparency, reflection and shadow as well as other properties of light. See the Children’s Gallery transform into a constantly evolving light scape before your very eyes! Light Play embraces the philosophies of Reggio Emilia and REmida to provide a creative environment for young children which encourages collaborative play, experimentation and discovery-based learning. https://www.ipswichartgallery.qld.gov.au/allevents/light-play/ https://www.ipswichartgallery.qld.gov.au/kids/childrens-gallery/ " "A school needs to be a place for all children, not based on the idea that they are all the same, but that they are all different." -Loris Malaguzzi (founder of the first Reggio Emilia School) Reflective light has been the subject of discovery and object of fascination for the children for quite sometime. A few days ago we decided to experiment and play with sand on top of the light table. The children begun to explore the sand, perhaps attracted by the light that shined through the plexi glass… The explorations involved their entire body moving it up and down from left to right in rhythm with the sands movement. They used their palms, finger tips, elbows and different objects to move it around. The light created some dark and light shadows that altered the appearance of the sand. " http://casamarias.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/stripe-lights.html The Reggio Emilia approach inspires play discovering light, altering the perspective of objects. The combination of colour, light with objects follows the concept of "loose parts". How does this object look in the light compared to another? Why is that? I think creating a space that uses this approach can open up a variety of questions to children who are learning about the transparency and perspective of objects.
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