What’s stopping us? Barriers to creativity and innovation in schooling across Europe

Abstract

IntroductionTheoretical definitions of creativity influence how and to what extent it is valued pedagogically and hence the usefulness awarded to innovation in the classroom. If it is seen as a realm for young geniuses, removed from the everyday of learning situations, then creativity becomes an elite affair and not the remit of most teachers. Similarly, if pedagogic innovation in teaching is something that requires an enormous infrastructure of new technological tools, then its absence can be blamed on the lack of such tools. A democratic view of creativity as something that can be nurtured to greater or lesser extents in all humans and that enhances both learning and lifeskills, however, is, of late, a more common claim in discussions of this topic. Classroom practices, however, do not always remain in synch with the latest debates in any given field. This chapter articulates practical insights from research carried out by the authors for the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies (henceforward IPTS) in Seville on Creativity and Innovation in compulsory education across Europe. In particular, the expert perspectives -of high school inspectors, government education advisors, teacher trainers and academics, with a specialisation in teaching with new technologies, creative learning or innovative teaching -complemented research on teacher perspectives and curriculum documents carried out on behalf of IPTS by other teams of researchers. While that research involved large-scale self-reporting surveys of teachers in European schools and comparative textual analysis of available national and regional documentation involving references to creativity, the expert perspectives collected for our part of the study identify and contextualise the political and philosophical underpinnings of widespread pedagogic beliefs and practices with regard to creativity and innovation in schools. For instance, findings from the survey of curriculum documents note the general dearth of references to creativity outside the context of the Arts curriculum, and the gradual linking of innovation in more recent documents to new media technologies. Interviews with expert stakeholders delved into these perceived gaps and the changes as well as into the role such documents might be said to have on the actual class-room practices of teachers, children and young people. The data generated, thus, systematically describe and debate factors seen to structure, support, hinder or 2 block pedagogic innovation and educational creativity in policy and practice. In this context, our chapter draws on the views of these targeted educational stakeholders in order to reflect on the systemic (governmental, political) and contextual (economic, cultural) or historical (regional, national) and individual (local, school-specific) barriers to implementing innovative methods in the teaching and evaluation of creativity in formal schooling. It is therefore framed around two key research questions: 1) What are the links between educational policies on Creativity ...

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