Michael Park Kindergarten and Four Seasons Kindergarten (TLIF 5-056) - Fostering communities of creativity Publications
Publication Details
Project Reference: Michael Park Kindergarten and Four Seasons Kindergarten (TLIF 5-056) - Creativity is widely understood as playing a critical role in individual and national wellbeing. It is also regarded as a strength of the Steiner education system. However, the leaders of this project discovered that teachers lacked confidence in their own creative ability. Early experiences had wounded them, so that only one teacher out of a group of eight self-identified as a creative person.
Author(s): (Inquiry Team) led by Karen Affleck (Michael Park Kindergarten, Auckland) and by Tracey-Lee Hooton (Four Seasons Kindergarten, Taupō)
Date Published: January 2019
Overview
The leaders designed a project, based on the notion of communities of learning, that sought to encourage and promote creative behaviours and practices in teachers. They hoped that this would enable teachers to become more effective in activating children’s creativity.
The deepening of play has been breathtaking to witness. Their flow in play has increased. We are seeing play resources used in ways that we’ve never seen before. Nothing is static; the transformation is deep.
Teacher involved in inquiry
The project had powerful benefits, both for teachers, who overcame their ‘artistic wounding’ to self-identify as creative individuals, and for children, whose creativity flourished. It confirmed that the construction of supportive communities of creativity can release reserves of creativity within teachers who are then better able to recognise, guide, and encourage creativity in children.
The inquiry story
This year-long inquiry involved the communities of learning in two Steiner kindergarten settings, one urban and one rural. The communities included two lead teacher-researchers, eight teachers, and two critical friends.
What was the focus?
Creativity is internationally recognised as critical to growing the skills needed to confront the ‘wicked’ problems facing the world in the twenty-first century, growing individual well-being, and the economic wellbeing of nations. However, while most teachers understand its importance, many feel ill-equipped to facilitate it. Research indicates that this is due, in part, to teachers’ lack of confidence in their own creative skills. In scoping for this project, its leaders and critical friends found that this hesitancy is shared by teachers in Steiner settings. The team also found that, while there is ample evidence about the principles of pedagogical practices that foster creativity, more needed to be learned about how to transfer this to practice. For example, the promotion of creativity requires the ability to appreciate and even foster non-conformity, but learning communities also require people to comply with certain social norms. How does one maintain these norms while also fostering creativity?
Further research uncovered the value of interventions that foster creativity in teachers, extending their notions of what creativity is and fostering more complex responses to children’s needs, strengths, and interests. Such interventions can enable teachers to confront and overcome the attitudes and habits that inhibit their own creativity and their ability to foster it in others. In addition, such experiences have been shown to enable teachers to incorporate cultural considerations into their thinking and practices around creativity. The research also revealed a prevailing view of creativity as something that resides in the individual rather than the group.
With all this in mind, the project team set out to investigate what would be involved in establishing ‘communities of creativity’ within which teachers would grow their own creativity and use culturally responsive practices to grow it in children. The team developed the following innovation statement:
We would like to know whether developing a community of creativity (that is, seeking and incorporating culturally diverse values about creativity and developing deeper and more holistic context-specific pedagogies for fostering culturally diverse creativity) will enhance creative behaviours for all children and their families.
What did the teachers try?
The project commenced with the collection of baseline data about teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and pedagogies regarding creativity. This revealed diverse perceptions about what creativity is and the pedagogical practices required to foster it. Despite Steiner education’s emphasis on creativity, only one teacher identified themselves as a creative individual. Thus, the first task was to challenge these self-perceptions and create a safe space in which teachers could explore their artistic strengths and weaknesses.
Each teacher chose an art medium they wanted to engage with over the course of the project. For example, some chose storytelling and others tried the visual arts. The teachers were encouraged to share their personal creative learning journeys with the children, beginning by creating pictures or stories in front of the children and inviting them to help. At the same time, they created materials and space for the children to be creative, either by themselves or in groups.
What happened as a result of this innovation?
Early in the project, the team came across the concept of ‘artistic wounding’. This became an overarching theme. It describes the sense of insecurity or uncertainty a person may feel around the arts and creativity. On investigation, this vulnerability almost always arises from previous life experiences when the individual received feedback telling them that they were not creative or that their creative expression was inadequate. From the beginning, the teachers all chose an artistic endeavour that they found personally challenging. They kept stepping over personal thresholds at every stage, finding the courage to overcome their wounds and find the creative person within themselves.
As teachers developed personal confidence, they experienced an awakening – a transition from feelings of constraint to a sense of freedom. Having addressed their own artistic wounds, they then found themselves better placed to activate the children’s creativity.
One of the most significant changes in practice was in the provision of extended time for the children to express their creativity. Each kindergarten continued to follow a rhythm, often likened to breathing, which is typical to many Steiner settings and that moves between activity and rest. However, both shifted to a more flexible approach that allowed more time for free play and incorporated fewer structured activities.
Initially, teachers were concerned about how their colleagues would judge their creative outputs. This was overcome through the construction of a deeper sense of community. The project team deliberately created a safe space within which teachers could talk about their artistic projects without judgement or pressure and where they could offer and receive understanding and support. A core philosophical idea emerged for many of the teachers of creativity residing in the “doing and exploring” rather than in the output. This freed teachers to innovate and be less concerned with the judgment of others.
There was diversity in the teacher’s creative projects, and the projects sometimes developed in unexpected ways. For example, one teacher began with book making. This inspired children to make their own books, some for several weeks afterwards. But this teacher found that her sense of creativity was centred in creating provocations to inspire imaginative play for children, such as hiding fairy crystals in the garden. This less tangible creative act prompted play in which children created whole environments for fairies and explored the space between fantasy and reality.
Teachers came to see spirituality as being at the core of creativity. Creativity involves processes and can generate outcomes that are invisible and cannot always be articulated. The teachers came to believe that if they were to enable children to explore their innate creativity, it was necessary to have high trust relationships with them. They became ferocious in protecting children’s creativity and shielding them from the possibility of being wounded.
Teachers noticed that children’s creative outputs tended to be related to the creative realms their teachers had explored. For example, children whose teacher had explored poetry began incorporating rhyming in their play, and children whose teachers explored storytelling began creating stories that were more complex and sustained.
Children developed complex social norms around their responses to each other’s creative endeavours. They seemed to understand when someone was working on an individual project and when they could join in, and they recognised when someone’s work called for a ‘reverential’ response and when it might be more playful and collaborative.
The children enjoyed and often chose collaborative work, and some began to invite their teachers to collaborate with them as artistic partners. However, at times, there was conflict between children’s expression of creativity – an endeavour that is essentially non-conformist – and group harmony. A balance was needed between individualism and respect.
Some teachers actively modelled specific artistic techniques in front of children and later saw children try them in their own work. They became increasingly interested in the role of imitation in children’s learning. Some of the teachers also modelled creative behaviours and dispositions, such as trying things out, managing uncertainty, reconfiguring ideas when things did not work out, and managing unexpected situations. For instance, one teacher was working on a drawing when a child drew on her picture. The teacher openly described to the children how she saw the unexpected addition as an opportunity.
Several teachers also shifted the way they positioned play. For example, they observed groups of children using materials in creative ways or creating sophisticated play narratives that could be sustained for several days. Teachers needed to be attentive to notice these things happening.
Whānau workshops revealed that whānau held similar conceptions of creativity as teachers and conceptions that were similarly diverse. For example, some associated creativity with messiness and others with discipline. The notion of ‘flow’ came up, which teachers had also begun to explore. However, most whānau saw creativity in terms of activities rather than attitudes and traits (such as problem-solving) that are crucial to creativity.
Like teachers, most whānau had experienced creative wounding. The Covid-19 lockdowns interfered with plans to offer creative experiences to whānau, extending the community of creativity. Instead, whānau were provided with suggestions of things they could do at home with their children.
Whānau workshops also suggested several directions for further exploration. For example, whānau could identify many of the intangible positive outcomes of creativity, but not those around identity and self-expression. Some whānau talked of how their cultural backgrounds can sometimes spark and at other times restrict creativity. There is more to learn here.
What did they learn?
The learning in this project connected with learning theories about finding ‘flow’, the importance of moving through the ‘learning pit’, and the ways an individual interacts with their environment. But the most important learning was that for teachers to unleash the creativity within children, they first need to go through their own period of transformation, overcoming their artistic wounds to recognise and release the creativity within themselves. This requires the creation of safe and trusting communities of creativity where they can be open and vulnerable.
Inquiry team
This project was led by Karen Affleck (Michael Park Kindergarten, Auckland) and by Tracey-Lee Hooton (Four Seasons Kindergarten, Taupō).
The project had two critical friends:
- Dr. Neil Boland (Auckland University of Technology)
- Dr. Anita Mortlock (Victoria University of Wellington).
For further information
If you would like to learn more about this project, please contact the project leader, Karen Affleck, at karena@michaelpark.school.nz
Reference list
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