Janinka Greenwood :
University of Canterbury
(From previous issue)
The story book is itself a creative initiative. The visual images and the words of text combine to tell a story that is rich in subtext and provocative undertones of possibility. Where the boy came from and what happened to him is not explained. We are left to speculate and imagine. The play on the sound of the words asylum and silence is also just slipped in unobtrusively, but that subtle twist invites further exploration: about the need for different kinds of asylum, about the resonances between political persecution and industrial congestion, about the plight of forced silence and about the quest for inner quietness. It is a book with very adult ideas offered in a layering of images and story that are easily accessible to young people.
The key to the work with creative processes is to target some of the latent possibilities within the story and make them sites of new creative exploration. Some of the agendas develop in a way that might be seen as spontaneous, but the setting up of contexts and activities that would allow spontaneity are the result of strategic planning and targeted critical reflection.
In work such as this, as suggested in the narrative, the process of critical reflection occurs at a number of levels. It is the teacher’s task to reflect analytically on the needs of the students, the expectations of the curriculum and on the wider life skills that could be involved in the work. It is also the teacher’s task to reflect on progress and possibilities at each stage of the work and adapt it accordingly. A simplified model of the teacher’s reflection is suggested in the figure below (Figure 2).
Figure 2:Teacher’s critical reflection
Students also need to reflect critically because that is what changes the experience from entertainment or even robotic activity to active learning. The lenses for their reflection would be similar to those in the model, but coached in terms that arc meaningful to them. They need to be guided in how to do this, so it is the teacher’s task to structure short reflections incrementally during the work, processed through strategies that are short, clearly targeted and carry the work on to its next stages, as in the example I described above. And of course at the end of the work, and when the teacher thinks it would be useful during the work, the teacher and the students can reflect more formally together.
My example illustrates an approach to creativity that comes out of the practice that I have developed and feel particularly comfortable with. However, it is just one of many, many ways that teachers can be creative in their teaching and can encourage creativity in their students. I hope it may elicit other accounts of creative practice from teachers who work in other ways, perhaps in the physical or social sciences.
Critical reflection is not only important in teaching; it is also a key element in many research methodologies, and integral to investigations hat track how teachers and schools work to make changes in their practice involve. The following section examines two such research approaches.
Reflective practice and participatory action research
Reflective practice and participatory action research have a lot in common. They are both relatively new research paradigms that have gained an increasing degree of recognition in the formal academic arena. Their development comes out of the need to research professional practice in ways that go beyond, but do not necessary exclude, numerical analysis of particular outcomes, external observation and interview-based perceptions of participants. More flexible research strategies were called for, together with the opportunity to gather a rich and varied collation of data.
Both approaches are particularly concerned with change, in any of its forms, and with the processes of achieving it. Both recognise that people can effectively research their practice and that the insights they gain by doing so can be useful to other practitioners. And both recognise that it is not necessary to separate research from action: that in grounded practice research can immediately inform new action and that in turn will provide a shifting terrain for the research. The research report will seek to capture all the shifts in understanding, the fears and hesitations, the resolution of difficulties that arise during the journey towards change as well as the cumulative achievements that are made, Although at a textbook level these two approaches are described different scholarly literature acknowledges that they are strongly interrelated and that the choice of terms to describe various studies of cases might sometimes be interchangeable.
Reflective practice tends to be a focus by a particular practitioner on his or her own work and the way she or he strategises towards achievement of a set of goals or deals with challenges. :s the term suggests, the research is based on a continuing process of critical reflection by the practitioner, and usually a number of critical lenses will be utilised. One lens will probably be the specific practical outcomes that need to be achieved, be they learning outcomes, organisational innovation, co-ordination of team efforts, prevention of a threatening disaster. Another probable lens is the foundation laid by previous practice. This lens allows the researching practitioner not only to compare elements of their progress with that of others but also to draw on the insights others have gained in identifying opportunities and challenges, and on the creative strategies others have used. A further probable lens is the reaction of other participants, verbal or embodied. This instigates engagement with the others who arc involved in the project (students, colleagues, families or community) and allows the practitioner to adjust initiatives to make them more effective in prompting imagination and innovation, motivating sustained effort, re-examining an issue, changing direction or reaching consensus.
Another lens could be a theoretical framework: what, for example, does Freire’s unpacking of critical pedagogy (Freire, 1972) have to say about the freedom to question and is this work supporting that freedom, or what does Spivak have to say about the power of the centre and the way it manipulates those at the margins (Spivak, 1979) and’ this work reinforcing hegemonic thinking or is it encouraging curiosity and criticality ? Because the approach is a holistic one and seeks to examine and report the work in complexity of its progression, particular lens will be adopted as they are relevant emerging direction and the kind of change intended.
Participatory action research tends to be a focus by a group of stakeholders on the way they collectively strategise towards change. Once again, the scope of the change varies from project to project, and it is probable that an action research project with have a big and perhaps somewhat idealistic goal (such as involving teachers in a school in distributive leadership, fully integrating students with disabilities, eliminating bullying or developing critical thinking in a class), as well as series of smaller short term goals (such as a change in awareness of students’ skills, recognition of an existing problem, or willingness to ask questions).
One way of looking at participatory action research is that the participants in it are a community of reflective practitioners. They work collaboratively in the cycles of creatively envisioning change, taking initiatives, critically reflecting on the imp reconsidering their goals and creating new initiatives. The figure below (Figure 3) offers simplified model of the process. And with those cycles of collaborative action reflection, the individual members of the group will develop their own cycles of action and critical reflection and bring their discoveries and their problems back into the group to energise the collective project.
Essentially the research involved in participatory action research and reflective practice is creative: there can be no pre-determined recipe to follow. The research is about mapping the facilitation of change: and for that change to take place it is probable that old moulds of thinking and acting need to be broken and new ones explored.
Implications for future research
Changes in education in Bangladesh are being undertaken on a big scale, reflecting a wide- ranging vision and an enormous commitment to creating improved teaching and improved positives for learning. At the national level evaluations of progress can also be large scale, and that inclines them towards being quantitative in nature and concerned with generalisation rather than fine detail.
However, while national impact can be measured on a large scale, deliberate acts of teaching and flows of learning take place in specific localised situations. There is a need, therefore, for research that examines school development and learning and teaching at the local and situated level to accompany the large scale research that occurs at national level. Case study focuses on the specific and is concerned with the fine detail of what isexplored. Such small scale studies will not only provide rich and insightful detail about what happens at particular local levels, but may also reveal how nationally planned change takes place (or is frustrated) at the local level.
While case studies can be of many kinds, there is a particular need for those that can capture detail of how schools, teachers and students undertake the sometimes small but always important creative initiatives that could lead to change, and how they critically reflect on their initiatives in order to refine their vision and increase their effectiveness. This discussion hopes to provoke more situated case studies that involve reflective practice and participator investigation.
Quite a large part of the research reported in this book highlights current shortcomings in practice, gaps in teacher’s knowledge and shortage of resources. Such findings are part of the reality and so need to be recognised. What is needed now, I suggest, is research that explores the creative strategies practitioners, individual or collective, engage in to work through the shortcomings and to achieve small, and sometimes significantly bigger, elements of change. Perhaps the most exciting of our collective future findings may be that creativity is something that evolves with practice and the changes that come through creativity coupled with critical reflection are incremental and germinate more creativity and more change.
(Concluded)
University of Canterbury
(From previous issue)
The story book is itself a creative initiative. The visual images and the words of text combine to tell a story that is rich in subtext and provocative undertones of possibility. Where the boy came from and what happened to him is not explained. We are left to speculate and imagine. The play on the sound of the words asylum and silence is also just slipped in unobtrusively, but that subtle twist invites further exploration: about the need for different kinds of asylum, about the resonances between political persecution and industrial congestion, about the plight of forced silence and about the quest for inner quietness. It is a book with very adult ideas offered in a layering of images and story that are easily accessible to young people.
The key to the work with creative processes is to target some of the latent possibilities within the story and make them sites of new creative exploration. Some of the agendas develop in a way that might be seen as spontaneous, but the setting up of contexts and activities that would allow spontaneity are the result of strategic planning and targeted critical reflection.
In work such as this, as suggested in the narrative, the process of critical reflection occurs at a number of levels. It is the teacher’s task to reflect analytically on the needs of the students, the expectations of the curriculum and on the wider life skills that could be involved in the work. It is also the teacher’s task to reflect on progress and possibilities at each stage of the work and adapt it accordingly. A simplified model of the teacher’s reflection is suggested in the figure below (Figure 2).
Figure 2:Teacher’s critical reflection
Students also need to reflect critically because that is what changes the experience from entertainment or even robotic activity to active learning. The lenses for their reflection would be similar to those in the model, but coached in terms that arc meaningful to them. They need to be guided in how to do this, so it is the teacher’s task to structure short reflections incrementally during the work, processed through strategies that are short, clearly targeted and carry the work on to its next stages, as in the example I described above. And of course at the end of the work, and when the teacher thinks it would be useful during the work, the teacher and the students can reflect more formally together.
My example illustrates an approach to creativity that comes out of the practice that I have developed and feel particularly comfortable with. However, it is just one of many, many ways that teachers can be creative in their teaching and can encourage creativity in their students. I hope it may elicit other accounts of creative practice from teachers who work in other ways, perhaps in the physical or social sciences.
Critical reflection is not only important in teaching; it is also a key element in many research methodologies, and integral to investigations hat track how teachers and schools work to make changes in their practice involve. The following section examines two such research approaches.
Reflective practice and participatory action research
Reflective practice and participatory action research have a lot in common. They are both relatively new research paradigms that have gained an increasing degree of recognition in the formal academic arena. Their development comes out of the need to research professional practice in ways that go beyond, but do not necessary exclude, numerical analysis of particular outcomes, external observation and interview-based perceptions of participants. More flexible research strategies were called for, together with the opportunity to gather a rich and varied collation of data.
Both approaches are particularly concerned with change, in any of its forms, and with the processes of achieving it. Both recognise that people can effectively research their practice and that the insights they gain by doing so can be useful to other practitioners. And both recognise that it is not necessary to separate research from action: that in grounded practice research can immediately inform new action and that in turn will provide a shifting terrain for the research. The research report will seek to capture all the shifts in understanding, the fears and hesitations, the resolution of difficulties that arise during the journey towards change as well as the cumulative achievements that are made, Although at a textbook level these two approaches are described different scholarly literature acknowledges that they are strongly interrelated and that the choice of terms to describe various studies of cases might sometimes be interchangeable.
Reflective practice tends to be a focus by a particular practitioner on his or her own work and the way she or he strategises towards achievement of a set of goals or deals with challenges. :s the term suggests, the research is based on a continuing process of critical reflection by the practitioner, and usually a number of critical lenses will be utilised. One lens will probably be the specific practical outcomes that need to be achieved, be they learning outcomes, organisational innovation, co-ordination of team efforts, prevention of a threatening disaster. Another probable lens is the foundation laid by previous practice. This lens allows the researching practitioner not only to compare elements of their progress with that of others but also to draw on the insights others have gained in identifying opportunities and challenges, and on the creative strategies others have used. A further probable lens is the reaction of other participants, verbal or embodied. This instigates engagement with the others who arc involved in the project (students, colleagues, families or community) and allows the practitioner to adjust initiatives to make them more effective in prompting imagination and innovation, motivating sustained effort, re-examining an issue, changing direction or reaching consensus.
Another lens could be a theoretical framework: what, for example, does Freire’s unpacking of critical pedagogy (Freire, 1972) have to say about the freedom to question and is this work supporting that freedom, or what does Spivak have to say about the power of the centre and the way it manipulates those at the margins (Spivak, 1979) and’ this work reinforcing hegemonic thinking or is it encouraging curiosity and criticality ? Because the approach is a holistic one and seeks to examine and report the work in complexity of its progression, particular lens will be adopted as they are relevant emerging direction and the kind of change intended.
Participatory action research tends to be a focus by a group of stakeholders on the way they collectively strategise towards change. Once again, the scope of the change varies from project to project, and it is probable that an action research project with have a big and perhaps somewhat idealistic goal (such as involving teachers in a school in distributive leadership, fully integrating students with disabilities, eliminating bullying or developing critical thinking in a class), as well as series of smaller short term goals (such as a change in awareness of students’ skills, recognition of an existing problem, or willingness to ask questions).
One way of looking at participatory action research is that the participants in it are a community of reflective practitioners. They work collaboratively in the cycles of creatively envisioning change, taking initiatives, critically reflecting on the imp reconsidering their goals and creating new initiatives. The figure below (Figure 3) offers simplified model of the process. And with those cycles of collaborative action reflection, the individual members of the group will develop their own cycles of action and critical reflection and bring their discoveries and their problems back into the group to energise the collective project.
Essentially the research involved in participatory action research and reflective practice is creative: there can be no pre-determined recipe to follow. The research is about mapping the facilitation of change: and for that change to take place it is probable that old moulds of thinking and acting need to be broken and new ones explored.
Implications for future research
Changes in education in Bangladesh are being undertaken on a big scale, reflecting a wide- ranging vision and an enormous commitment to creating improved teaching and improved positives for learning. At the national level evaluations of progress can also be large scale, and that inclines them towards being quantitative in nature and concerned with generalisation rather than fine detail.
However, while national impact can be measured on a large scale, deliberate acts of teaching and flows of learning take place in specific localised situations. There is a need, therefore, for research that examines school development and learning and teaching at the local and situated level to accompany the large scale research that occurs at national level. Case study focuses on the specific and is concerned with the fine detail of what isexplored. Such small scale studies will not only provide rich and insightful detail about what happens at particular local levels, but may also reveal how nationally planned change takes place (or is frustrated) at the local level.
While case studies can be of many kinds, there is a particular need for those that can capture detail of how schools, teachers and students undertake the sometimes small but always important creative initiatives that could lead to change, and how they critically reflect on their initiatives in order to refine their vision and increase their effectiveness. This discussion hopes to provoke more situated case studies that involve reflective practice and participator investigation.
Quite a large part of the research reported in this book highlights current shortcomings in practice, gaps in teacher’s knowledge and shortage of resources. Such findings are part of the reality and so need to be recognised. What is needed now, I suggest, is research that explores the creative strategies practitioners, individual or collective, engage in to work through the shortcomings and to achieve small, and sometimes significantly bigger, elements of change. Perhaps the most exciting of our collective future findings may be that creativity is something that evolves with practice and the changes that come through creativity coupled with critical reflection are incremental and germinate more creativity and more change.
(Concluded)
