Purpose of education

Welcome back bloggers, we have made it to year two! My first blog of this year will be outlining my pedagogical beliefs and my views on the purpose of primary education.

Professor Graham Donaldson defines pedagogy as not just a focus of teaching but a method of teaching that should be broad and not narrow-minded. When promoting effective teaching, teachers should demonstrate and encourage the use of both theoretical and practical skills. (Donaldson, 2015, p.63)

This post will begin with a discussion of the purpose of education then leading into my pedagogical beliefs. Both are related closely to Donaldson’s views.

Throughout England and Wales in the early twenty-first century, the next decade was described as the creative decade. The creative decade began in 1999 with NACCCE. The National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education, chaired by Ken Robinson encouraged creativity and arts for all. The NACCE report resulted in the next decade is full of policies. The policies which were created encouraged creative teaching strategies and a creativity of cross-curriculum teaching. Although many have argued that creativity is not used enough throughout primary education and higher education. (NAACE, 1999)

I believe that the primary education system should prioritise the development of autonomous and creative thinkers. This view resonates with Freire (1985) he believes that when children are being taught to both read and write, it should be an artistic event. Freire believes that this artistic event of creativity rarely takes place within classrooms with teacher’s methods of teaching being very repetitive, they are avoiding a creative manner due to using a didactic approach. Using my own experience within a university lecture this is rapidly changing with a more socractic approach being used, creativity is becoming more apparent in the classrooms using imagination through English literature. Stories are being created by children and then developed in depth after a storyline is discussed.

Vygotsky (1971) has a contrasting point to Freire. Vygotsky believes creativity can not be taught, the teacher should have the responsibility to assist the students to organise the conscious process so it generates itself into a sub conscious way of thought. So instead of teachers teaching in a creative way students are already creative without thinking.

However, a didactic approach is still used throughout primary schools and there are many limitations to this. The use of a didactic approach raises numerous constraints which involve note learning, learning by only taking notes of what is being discussed. The issue with this is that the one view being discussed is not challenged by anyone within the classroom, if the teacher was challenged this would firstly spark interest in the classroom and make learners become critical thinkers. Note taking also over time becomes boring as the approach limits student participation and reflection. (Banning, 2005)  In my own experience in university note taking in lectures is extremely boring but when a lecturer decides to question learners this increases student participation and makes everyone in the lecture hall concentrate because they could be challenged at any time. Link with Donaldson (Creativity)

Similar to Banning (2005) Donaldson built upon creativity being used within the classroom. Donaldson’s Successful Futures recommendation has several points discussing the importance of creativity. The major point which I found had most importance within the review is that although creativity is used for arts it should be placed with greater importance within numeracy and literacy. Donaldson’s recommendations are in place to be implemented by the year 2022 (Donaldson, 2016)

Similar to Donaldson, Ken Robinson (2016) believed that education should help children discover and understand their talents while socialising them into the culture which surrounds them. Similar to Freire’s views which were discussed earlier in the blog, Robinson also believes that education should be personalised and not standardised. Building on this he also believes that a learner’s creative aspect is being diminished due to the vast amount of tests children have to take while at school. To ensure children are creative thinkers and these essential tests are still undertaken Robinson’s solution is to find out how children learn best along with what specifically interests them. Robinson encourages collaboration and partnership to find ways to make children more creative.

In a review conducted by Davies, et al. (2013) found that context and school culture was key the development of creative primary schools. Within the review, three main areas were outlined in the improvement of creativity and are; physical environment, pedagogical environment and partnership beyond school. In support of Davies, et al. (2013) In both 2006 and 2010 OFSTED published evidence of both learning in primary schools and creative teaching, within this evidence OFSTED highlighted how creativity and creative partnership raise aspirations and standards. (Craft, et al. 2014)

In summary, the purpose of education is different to everyone but since the start of the 21^st century, creativity has been placed at the forefront for change being implemented and discussed throughout various publications and by the various theorist. Creativity should be enhanced by teachers using a vary of pedagogical methods.

The next blog is going to specifically look at creativity. Thank you for reading see you soon.

Reference List

Anna Craft, Teresa Cremin, Penny Hay & James Clack (2014) Creative

primary schools: developing and maintaining pedagogy for creativity, Ethnography and Education, 9:1, 16-34, DOI: 10.1080/17457823.2013.828474

Education (2015) Successful Futures. Cardiff: Crown Copyright Available at: http://gov.wales/docs/dcells/publications/150225-successful-futures-en.pdf (Accessed: 27 October 2017).

Banning, M (2005) 'Approaches to teaching: current opinions and related research'

, Nurse Education Today, 25 (7), pp.502-508. Doi: 10.1016/j.nedt.2005.03.007  

Freire and Macedo (1987) Reading the Word and World. London: Routledge.

National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education. (1999). All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education. London: DFEE

Robinson, K. (2016) Revolutionising Education From The Ground Up. London: Penguin

Vygotsky, L.S. (1971) The Psychology of Art. Cambridge MIA: MIT Preso