I find myself thinking about how to define creativity almost every day. (Who cares about defining it I hear you say? I do, because I value it, in all its manifestations and I also happen to think it’s crucial to the very fabric of an educational institution.) Ensconced in the exciting and driven atmosphere of a
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Thoughts on the Reflective Conservatoire Conference
It is sadly not often enough that we get to stop and think about what, as educators and practitioners, we do on a daily basis – it is so easy to get caught up in the daily operations and delivery, but the Reflective Conservatoire Conference held at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama earlier
Read on »Are teachers still needed in our digital age classrooms?
How does learning happen? Are teachers still necessary in today’s learning environments? Two questions crucial to learning and teaching are addressed in an article by Kirschner and van Merriënboer. The authors engage with current but established thinking about the learning journey, and implicitly, about the role of teachers on that journey. [Urban Legends in Education
Read on »Rules of collaboration – a few ‘big ideas’
While browsing through a book called ‘Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom’ (Sylvia Libow Martinez & Gary Stager), I came across a passage dealing with lessons learnt from a research project from 1999 led by Seymour Papert. He laid out his ideas in a document designed for a visitor to the
Read on »Innovative Conservatoire Seminar 10: Student as Teacher, Dartington 2014
The innovative conservatoire seminar is always such an inspiring space to inhabit. Over three days key members from various European institutions gather at Dartington Hall to share practice and ideas creating a vibrant and supportive community of practice. In this positive place, fear is cast aside and experimentation is encouraged. I find that this kind of
Read on »Curiosity (my first teaching principle)
As teachers we are often in a position of needing to teach a subject that students do not consider as being immediately valid to their current practices or necessary for their experience. Yet, (and they may not know this or be able to visualise this yet) it may be an area that they will come
Read on »Creativity in teaching
How important is creativity in today’s teaching spaces? It’s a question that is gradually coming more into focus and one which is certainly worthy of our attention. As 1-1 teachers, or eve small group facilitators is this something we need to be thinking about? Perhaps because I work in an arts environment, it has always
Read on »Thoughts on John Connell’s ‘I am Learner’
I’ve been reading various texts on learning and creativity over the past few weeks and have of course needed to think about the kind of learner that I am. I have never really thought about what kind of learner I am, but through this research I have begun to see my own learning processes in
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