A summary of the feedback received following the session on Thursday 15th July 2010
Participants were asked to quickly summarise one idea or theme they had gained from the session:
- Try to be a bit more creative!
- Creativity involves many elements – all of which need to be address to ease the transition into creative classrooms.
- That every week #ukedchat goes slightly off track but I learn so much more because of it. Its like us throwing out the lesson plan, but I love it!
- Wow…so much! love it and learn from everyone. I want to have a lesson where I’m on the carpet and children lead, been ages since I’ve done that.
- Facilitate learning, allowing the children to express themselves showing what they have learnt. Learning time to be engaging.
- Teachers value and want to be creative.
- Creative teaching practice vs Ofsted … formative assessment has a place in the teaching and learnin of our pupils – why isn’t this value shared by HMI?
- Using outdoor space more.
- Can creativity be assessed?
- children at the heart of creativity; some people see Creativity (cap c) as regiment and obstructive; assessment interferes with creativity.
- creativity is not necessarily easy to have or teach (or be taught). We need to model (and be explicit) about it, with students and colleagues. We also need the whole team on board.
- I like seeing that most of us in [uk]edchat are all for creative lessons but I believe teachers are to safe in their own subject areas (mainly secondary) lets get out of our safe areas and have a go at other things. It stopped me from going stale and opened my eyes when i was thrown in at the deep end teaching maths and English after teaching art for 8 years. Also i had a new approach to subjects compared to that of other specialists. Sorry bit of a ramble.
- Need to remember children will learn many things which teachers haven’t planned ans we should welcome this and also remember how much they can teach us and each other if given the opportunity.
- That people are so engaged in this format online – perhaps it is worth trying it with pupils at some point.
- People talking about different things:
* creative meaning arty vs creative as approach to thinking/active engagement
* creative teaching; creative learning (creative teaching does not necessarily lead to creative learning – just as IWBs aren’t necesarily interactive)Found it very hard to follow any threads – not much building on what other people said – which makes me wonder about the effectiveness of Twitter with large groups for co-construction of ideas … Probably mostly about group size combined with lack of ways to show threads …
Clearly a desire within this group to ‘be creative’ – but we are the odd ones? Or are we?
- I was concerned about the “taken for granted” assumptions about creativity from some teachers. We need to think pedagogy, not just practice. Pedagogy is an old fashioned term and much maligned, but if plumbers and haurdressers can have a theory that informs practice so can teachers. Regulators can own and control what we do, as it is public and visible, but they can’t own what teachers think – that is private and reflexive. Which is the most challenging?
- Allowing myself/learners to make mistakes and learn from them.
- Can you teach creativity?
- It all did – I am going to investigate more and write a blog post
Although there were over 75 participants for the session, 19 responded to the feedback form.
UKEdChat 
I don’t think it is true that it is a question of ‘creativity v Ofsted/HMI’. Inspectors value, recognise and acknowledge creativity where they find it just like everyone else. Reading reports of ‘Outstanding schools’ seems to confirm this. Criteria for evaluating teaching, developed by Ofsted – used by everyone – defines outstanding teaching as being ‘highly effective in inspiring pupils’. It is true that where creativity is judged to be strong it is linked to learning and progress. But that is not a bad thing. However, we do have a system which is now highly accountable and risk-averse. This may lead to a tendancy to project concerns onto Ofsted and make assumptions about the expectations of anyone monitoring teaching which are unfounded. It may result in less risk taking and as a consequence less creativity. An HMI told me of a lesson they observed with the Lesson Objective ‘to be amazed’ – judged to be an outstanding lesson.