References

Barrance, T. (2010). Using Film In Schools: A Practical Guide. Retrieved May 6, 2014, from http://mediaedwales.org.uk/pdf/usingfilm.pdf
 
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity . Cambridge: Cambridge University press.

Duffy, B. (2006). Supporting Creativity and Imagination in the Early Years (pp. 3 – 27). . Berkshire: : Open University Press.
 
Heathcote, D., & Bolton, G. (1996). Drama for learning: Dorothy Heathcote’s Mantle of the Expert Approach to Education. Portsmouth: NH: Heinemann.
 
Indiana University. (n.d.). Guilford's Alternative Uses Task (1967). Retrieved February 10, 2014, from Instructional Strategies for Critical Thinking, Collaboration, and Motivation: http://www.indiana.edu/~bobweb/r546/modules/creativity/creativity_tests/guilford_uses_task.html

Mantleoftehexpert.com. (2014). Mantle of the Expert. Retrieved March 17, 2014, from http://www.mantleoftheexpert.com/about-moe/introduction/what-is-moe-for/
 
Oxford English Dictionary. (2014). Oxford Dictionaries. Retrieved February 10, 2014, from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/creativity

Robinson, K. (2009). The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. London: Viking. .

Wenger. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

 

Film Education

In these most modern of times with the technological advances increasingly growing ever so important and unavoidable in our life, in order to flourish with this digital culture, school children need to be able to work with a whole range of critical and creative practices involving technology and media. These practices of ‘digital literacy’ are likely to become even more important throughout school pupils’ lives as the development of technology advances and the media continues to affect how we as humans work, how we   socialise, communicate, spend our leisure time and how we learn and share knowledge.

The importance of digital literacy is now becoming noticeable and has been acknowledged by educators as they recognise that not only does the teaching profession have a vital role to play in preparing children for our digital world, but that a sustained engagement with technology and media is now integral to the development of knowledge across disciplines and subjects.

It is also worth noting that children live in the most mind stimulating time ever. There are so many video games and movies, media and resources available to them that it would be hard for them to concentrate in school without getting bored. The technological world you’d think you’d say is working against these children but it is possible through things like film education to integrate technology in a stimulating/ engaging way for our children.

Film education involves three different elements these are known as the three Cs and are:

·         Critical (understanding and analysing of films).

·         Cultural (widening pupils’ experience of film).

·         Creative (pupils get to make films themselves).

There are plenty of opportunities for each of these throughout the curriculum, it is also a good idea to combine all three approaches together in the lesson. You can use the critical approach in English, for example pupils can be analysing how camera, sound and editing are used in an adaptation, a documentary or a persuasive text such as an advertisement.

 Cultural is when you can use unfamiliar films, and films from different countries and periods, in a range of subjects. This is seen as ‘World Cinema’. It can be used to explore subjects such as Citizenship and political subjects such as globalisation or poverty. Classical films can help pupils to learn about the history of the past, and experimental films can be used for inspiration in Art and Music.

Creative Filmmaking can be used as a way of recording, analysing and depicting processes from  anything from Science experiments to Dance performances; to present information in subjects from Mathematics to History: and for creative expression in English, Drama, Art and Music. The opportunities are endless. All subjects can benefit from using screens.

“A project in the East Midlands offered teachers in schools across eight local authorities the chance to use film for a year. Many had never done so before. By the end of the first year, two thirds were reporting that the project had made them more enthusiastic about teaching, and had changed their pedagogy. 100% of teachers felt that film could reach difficult or challenging pupils (80% strongly)”. (Barrance, 2010)

I remember from my own personal experience in secondary school studying media studies and really getting fully immersed in my work because it let me explore my creativeness.  In my opinion Film education would be good for all schools.

The Mantle of the Expert

The mantle of the expert is a system for learning through the active imagination and enquiry methodology.  It was developed by the educator Dorothy Heathcote. She sees the mantle of the expert as “an active urgent, purposeful view of learning, in which knowledge is to be operated on and not merely taken in.” (Heathcote & Bolton, 1996)

The mantle of the expert makes the learners pretend as if they are the experts. Through the work the pupils do they create an imaginary enterprise.  They then work on an imaginary job as if they were the real people in charge. This project work creates opportunities for the children to explore the curriculum in any subject. The “enterprise” part provides the context for learning. This is good for teachers and pupils alike as the teacher could bring together different areas of the curriculum, rather than trying to teach them separately. It is a ‘drama’ based way of learning, this allows for more imagination skills to be used as well as the classes developing ways to “see through each other’s eyes” helping young people develop ownership over their enterprise. (Mantleoftehexpert.com, 2014)The pupils are motivated by the challenge and chance of making their enterprise work. They also take great pride in their work. The mantle of the expert also allows the pupils to get a hands on approach to learning and be fully involved in projects. These projects give them a great idea of what they are studying in a very memorable environment

The aim of reducing subject boundaries resonates with the work of Dewey whose focus was to involve learners in problem-solving. Having strong problem solving skills is a great trait to work on and have for the future for these children who would participate in the mantle of the expert.

The only disadvantage I could think of Is that this may only be beneficial to children who are not shy and want to have a hands on approach to learning, whilst some children may well want to take a step back and not have such a lead role in the enterprise. However, it could be possible that by giving these children a specific task in the group (which is something that happens in this way of learning) they can excel and their confidence can grow so they feel that their opinions do matter and are valued.

I believe that both Heathcote and Wenger share a concern that all learning has to be situated within a recognisable scenario for the pupils but Heathcote creates her social context in a way which tries to replicate the real world. Wenger and Heathcote share a common concern that learning is too often separated from familiar normal life and happens in a separate space, and that testing happens ‘out of context’ in an atmosphere that discourages most collaborative work. (Wenger, 1998)

 

When we took part in our project we had to make our own company which we called Jools & Sons. We then had to build a bridge with materials that would cost under a certain amount. This involved us researching material costs and finding out key information about bridge building. We also all collaborated our ideas in a way that benefited one another. We also made our bridges unique to ourselves to give ourselves a unique selling point by making our bridge colourful. Here is our finished bridge/tunnel design.

 

Does Education kill creativity?

School is where we go to learn, socialise and to gain an education which then sets us up for the rest of our lives to find a job. However, does the way we get taught in school turn us into robots who have had lost all their creativity?

You would think that schools would openly try to promote the idea of creativity and what use it can be for pupils but school can leave pupils that are highly creative and intelligent feel that they are not simply because the thing they were good at in school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatised. (Robinson, 2006)

After watching Ken Robinson’s Ted talk “how schools kill creativity” which is embedded onto this post, it has grown my understanding on what is wrong with creativity in schools today.

In the video, Robinson (2006) explains to us how schools kill creativity. He believes that children will take a guess at answers even if they don’t know the answer. This is because they’re not frightened of being wrong. This links with creativity as if you’re afraid of taking the risk of being wrong, you'll never come up with anything original. After going through school where it is taught that being wrong is a bad thing, by the time these children get to adulthood, most would have lost their creativeness. Robinson sees that they have become frightened of being wrong. We stigmatize mistakes in the national education systems, mistakes are seen as the worst thing you can make. Robinson shows that our schools through the way that there is only one right answer that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or as Robinson said, we get educated out if it.

A new education system based on using non-traditional approaches to problems would help us to make new/better connections with each other. This new education system would encourage the importance of an environment which encourages and values creativity and imagination. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999)

This would lead to more people finding their true talents in life instead of being stuck in a job they chose to do because they were told not to follow their dreams because there were only slim chances of a job.

To lead on to this point, during class we heard a quote from Ken Robinson's book The Element (2009), it was on Matt Groening (the creator of the Simpsons) and why he did not like school. He was told by both his teachers and parents to lead a different career path with his life completely and to make sure he had a solid profession, go to college and got a predetermined destination career. This in which Groening saw as boring. He did not want to do a job he did not want to do and hated to do and instead pursued artistry despite the risks. Our school system does not support people who have vulnerable but incredible ambitions because they see them as to unlikely when instead we should support the artistry of our students. (Robinson, 2009)

Creativity/Divergent Thinking

Creativity can be defined as “The use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2014) the ability to do this is something that has always been seen as an important trait.  “Creativity means connecting the previously unconnected in ways that are new and meaningful to the individual concerned” (Duffy, 2006)School children should inspire to have great levels of creativity as this will help them solve problems in later life.  All learners have this ability to be creativity which needs to be nurtured.

 Creativity is important for us as people as it helps us:

·         Express our deepest thoughts.

·         Think about and create new meanings

·         Solve problem and explore our curiosity.

·         Gain self-esteem from our ideas.

·         To make up our own minds on our view of the world.

 

In schools I believe that we should be inspiring to teach our children in the best environment to garnish this creativeness.  We could then test our children to see if their creativeness is nurtured. A test of creativity that can be done with school children which engages them to open their minds and to think as wildly and as imaginative as they can is called the alternative uses task. (Guildford, 1967) In this task students are asked to list as many possible uses for a common house hold item, such as a paper clip, brick or chair etc.

Scoring for this task then involves four components. These are:

·         Fluency

·         Originality

·         Flexibility

·         Elaboration

Fluency judges you on the amount of ideas you have come up with. Originality judges you on how uncommon and unique each idea is. Flexibility judges how many differing areas you’ve covered, for example ‘gun’ and ‘attacking someone’ would both fall under the area of weapon. Finally elaboration judges how much detail went into the response so door stop is a worth less than a door stop that is being used to stop wind slamming a door closed (Indiana University, n.d.)

This is a fun way to warm a student’s mind up and to get them engaging in learning in a creative manner instead of just having them sit in front of a teacher whilst the teacher just spouts information at them. This task also shows that all children can be creative and that creativity should not just be seen as something that elitists do.

This sort of test shows a person’s ability at divergent thinking. It I very interesting on the basis of this topic “is education killing creativity” that in a study of 1500 kindergarten children that was undertaken, a massive 98% achieved a score of genius level. These same children were then tested again when they were older and they scored less. This trend continued when they were later tested again. This shows that we are all born with huge levels of creativity and that we do in fact get taught out of being creative. (Robinson, 2010)

Another way of testing divergent thinking that can be done to see a pupil’s level of creativity are the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT). These were created by Torrance and I will be focusing on the picture construction task that I tried out in class.  In this task the pupils are given shapes for example a circle or potato like shape or squiggly lines. The pupils are then asked to draw pictures in which the shape that has been given is the main part. They should paste it wherever they want on the paper and add to it to make any novel picture. They then have to think of a name for the picture and write it underneath the picture. This is also interesting and is an enjoyable experience for the children to test creativity and interaction with one another as scoring for this can involve getting judgment from your fellow pupils on the same four scoring components as seen in the other test (Fluency, Originality, Flexibility and Elaboration) simply put the more creative the drawing is the better it will get scored. These tests will be beneficial to our school children.

The Enquiring Mind: Creative Approaches.

This blog is an assessment for one of my University course (Education Studies)’ modules. The module is called "The Enquiring Mind: Creative Approaches". Throughout this blog I will be posting my take upon key concepts that I have studied in the module and the significance that they have for 21^st century education.  I will be focussing mainly on creativity and the impact this has and can have in schools and on our school children.