Abstract
This chapter explores how teachers in three secondary schools construct creativity, individually and within the context of shared practice in their own institutions. The particular focus is on how constructions of creativity are shaped by national frameworks of curriculum, assessment and accountability, and how these vary from school to school. This is situated in a period of political transition in the English school curriculum (2010–2015), during which the National Curriculum (which had previously contained ‘creativity’ as one of its four key concepts) was replaced by a curriculum that made no mention of creativity. The chapter examines the role of policy in the construction of creativity in classrooms, analysing how teachers might resist official policy in the interests of their vision for their subject, and questioning the role policy can play in the implementation of ‘exhortative’ policies about difficult to measure concepts such as creativity, compared to ‘imperative’ policies that relate directly to accountability in schools. The chapter constructs creativity itself as a material resource central to the teaching of language and literature, with its relative levels of distribution within different schools and to different students a matter of social justice and equity.
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Notes
- 1.
‘English’ here refers to school subject English as practised in secondary schools in England. This encompasses the study of both English Language and English Literature.
- 2.
Pseudonyms are used for all three schools; all attempts have been made to keep the identity of the schools anonymous.
- 3.
The high level of fees at many private schools in England automatically excludes the majority of children from attending. The fees at Windhover are currently about three times as high as the average funding per pupil in secondary state schools (£19,000 per pupil per annum, compared to £6300 per pupil per annum).
- 4.
The original chapter in the Black Papers printed the word in full, with no consideration for its offensive nature.
- 5.
Literacy here refers to the development of a set of language skills integral to competency in reading and writing. They are part of school subject English, though by no means inclusive of all that the subject offers. The use of ‘literacy’ rather than ‘English’ by policy makers is indicative of the wider discourse of placing limitations on the subject (and on creativity) explored in this chapter as a whole. For a full discussion of the relationship between English and literacy see Green 2006.
- 6.
PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment, is an international study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils’ scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading.
- 7.
While the report was published during the period of the Coalition administration, schools were still following New Labour policies at the time of the report.
- 8.
Pseudonyms are used for all teachers who took part in the study. Capital letter refers to school, number to the teacher’s years of teaching experience.
- 9.
GCSE: General Certificate of Education, nationally administered examinations taken by 16-year-olds in England.
- 10.
A Levels: nationally administered subject examinations taken by 18-year-olds in England.
- 11.
Public examination syllabuses for English have some limited opportunities for students to demonstrate their critical understanding of a text by offering a ‘recreative’ or ‘transformative’ response.
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McCallum, A. (2021). Who gets to be creative in class? Creativity as a matter of social justice in secondary English lessons. In: Ross, A. (eds) Educational Research for Social Justice . Education Science, Evidence, and the Public Good, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62572-6_4
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