Conclusion

In reflection, I am shocked by the information that I have discovered in relation to education and creativity. How can the national education system, which is meant to teach the bright minds of our next generation to think for themselves have such limited resources, when it comes to creative thinking within education. The 21^st century is filled with technology allowing us to gain all of the knowledge in the world, but in my opinion, this is impossible without nurturing our creative minds.

Creative thinking is what develops us as individuals, the ability to think and take chances allows us to invent and create a better society.  Creativity should be included throughout the curriculum, including the core subjects, which can easily be implemented with a few simple changes to the curriculum.

Creativity encourages independent thinkers, which I don’t believe society wants, as creativity tends to spark questions. But In order to become a stronger society, these questions need to be asked and answered. It is clear to me that the most benefiting educational approaches require creativity to be the main aspect of the curriculum. The Leonardo Effect and the Mantle of the Expert are both successful educational approaches, which focus on creativity within the classroom. I believe if the national curriculum would focus more on creativity and encourage children to ‘think outside the box’ instead emphasising literacy and the importance of league tables, the government would see an overall improvement in regards to the children’s attainment level.

Techniquest

Yesterday my friend and I went for a day out in Cardiff Bay to visit Techniquest, an educational exhibit targeting children as young as those in Foundation Phase to post 16 college pupils. Professor John Beetlestone and colleagues founded Techniquest in 1985. Since then, it has moved to a larger facility where it is situated today, which is in the center of Cardiff Bay. It is largely funded by the Welsh Government particularly to support schools, and their educational programmes (Techniquest, 2014). The unique experience provided by Techniquest emphasizes a child-centerd learning, through hands on investigation.  Every activity had both clear Welsh and English instructions, which I believe is crucial in an educational exhibition situated in a bilingual country. The English was written in red and the Welsh was written in green. It gives the opportunity for both Welsh and English medium schools to enjoy the educational experience provided in Techniquest.

Here is a picture of one of my favorite hands on educational activities in Techniquest named ‘Light work`. The aim is to turn the silver handle and press the green button, in order to create enough power to light the left, power saving bulb. I preferred this activity as it was hands on and it showed how electricity is created. Electricity is used to power nearly everything in the 21^st century, therefore, in my opinion, teaching children how electricity works and where it comes from is crucial. The bulb on the right is not a power saving bulb. Personally I couldn’t light it, this showed how much energy it takes to light. It stated on the activity that the bulb on the right produces a lot more heat than it does light. This teaches children that it is better for the environment to use a low wattage, energy saving, bulb than the filament bulb.

This was not my first visit to Techniquest. I have been countless times over the years with school and on family outings. The treasure chest was one of my favorite activities in the whole of Techniquest. The aim is to open the chest and discover the treasure that lies within. Until yesterday, I had not been to Techniquest in at least 9 years. Once I saw this activity, I remembered how frustrated I used to become when I was younger, not being able to open it.  I had no trouble this time in remembering exactly how to access it, which shows me that you do tend to remember memorable, hands on educational experiences, which are provided at Techniquest.

Re-visiting Techniquest at this age has opened my eyes to how much these experiences affect a child and the importance of hands on experiences and learning outside the classroom. Personally, the treasure chest activity above, was my most memorable memory of Techniquest, and it shows that conquering the challenge of opening the chest when I was younger has very much influenced my determination to never give up.

References 

Techniquest (2014) Retrieved 10^th of May from http://www.techniquest.org/20120315131/about-us/about-techniquest.html

The Leonardo Effect

The Leonardo effect is based loosely on the work of Leonardo Da Vinci, hence the name ‘Leonardo Effect’. Da Vinci possessed the same curiosity as a child; he questioned everything. First hand experiences and the use of all senses are what Da Vinci thought were essential to the development of his ideas.

The Leonardo effect is an educational approach, which combines both science and art in order to help children live up to their full educational potential. A key aspect of this methodology is involving the children in the planning and the decision making of their education.  

(Hickey and Robson, 2012).

  I believe that Sir Ken Robinsons animation video captures accurately what the Leonardo effect stands for. The Leonardo effect allows children to develop their ideas and knowledge through creative methods. By allowing children the freedom to investigate through artistic and scientific methods and enabling teachers to be flexible with facilitating the pupils within the classroom, the children exceed others expectations which are set by the traditional education approaches. This is successful through allowing the children the ability to set their own goals and aspirations (Leonardo effect, 2011).

It is stated that teachers find this educational approach empowering. They’ve discovered through experience that the children not only develop incredible creative skills but, through engaging with the classroom activities willingly, the children’s literacy and numeracy benefit greater than those children following the national curriculum approach.

There are four main stages to the Leonardo effect:-

Stage 1. Capture children’s imaginations:

The use of first- hand experiences, capture the children’s attention and helps generate questions. Curiosity is key in discovery based learning, as it creates the initiative to explore deeper into a subject, therefore producing a greater understanding for the pupil. 

Stage 2. Development:

If the children are excited by the happenings of inside the classroom for example through the use of kinesthetic, visual, auditory or any other learning styles, they generally create greater neural connections, which greater develops the pupil's understanding of the subject in question.

Stage 3. Creation:

In the Leonardo effect, the children are challenged to apply the knowledge they have gained through a creative context. The aim of this is to further the pupils understanding, which usually exceeds the national requirement. There are excessive studies regarding stage 3, which produce evidence of its success. 

Stage 4. Reflect and Communicate:

The aim of this stage is to allow children to evaluate and reflect on their work through communicating their work to a wider audience. This is to help children to communicate what they have learnt and teach others what they know, which is beneficial for their confidence and self esteem.

 (Leonardo Effect, 2011)

References

Hickey, I., Robson, D. (2012) The Leonardo Effect: Motivating Children To Achieve Through Interdisciplinary Learning, London: Routledge

Leonardo Effect (2011) Retrieved 1^st of May 2014 from http://www.leonardoeffect.com/connecting_learning_to_hard_to_reach_children.html

Leonardo Effect (2011) Retrieved 1^st of May 2014 from http://www.leonardoeffect.com

Mantle of the Expert

Mantle of the expert is considered a revolutionary approach to education.  A drama guru Dorothy Heathcote developed this approach for nearly half of a century, from the 1960’s onwards. Heathcote has had many careers from a university lecturer to a well- known author of how drama can be used to benefit and deepen the knowledge within the classroom.  

‘Classroom drama, at its simplest, harnesses our human ability to play together for curriculum purposes’ (Edmiston, n.d).

Why use it?

The mantle of expert technique can be used to explore topics across the curriculum by using creative methods like drama, which empowers the pupils by allowing them the opportunity to undertake specific roles which highlight responsible roles and decision making skills. Currently, many schools are adopting the Mantle of Expert approach to teaching.

Treating children as responsible experts within a field is one of the key aspects of the Mantle of the expert. Enabling children to initiate their own learning will increase their confidence and engagement with the activity. These ‘fields’ provide the children with the knowledge and skills that can be applied to their everyday lives. The mantle of Expert encourages the pupils to be creative, communicate, think critically and compromise.

 http://dramaresource.com/images/stories/videos/StepByStep.flv

The children will become a team of leading experts on a specific subject using imaginative role- play in order to explore the issues within their enterprise. The children will be involved in role- play type activities, research, discussions in which will lead to the success of the enterprise. It can lead to real outcomes of writing letters, selling products and creating leaflets or posters, which ensures that the children are still learning the three ‘R’s’; reading, writing and arithmetic. The role of the teacher is to guide the ‘drama’,delivering encouragement and positive feedback to the experts of the field (Farmer 2013).

The purpose of inquiry is seeing that the curriculum has more to explore and offer than to just deliver. Children are active agents in the curriculum process, they need to work together and explore with other children and adults in order to fully develop their knowledge skills and understanding. The didactic approach to teaching will never be enough to fully develop their minds. Drama for learning is about using theatre’s view and story to create a new and exciting way of learning in a classroom. Both pupils and teachers work in unison to invent scenarios that ‘give meaning’ to the curriculum. Using drama in learning allows the children to make up rules and invent what will happen next. Thirdly the mantel of expert is an approach of teaching and learning whrre the class create a scenario and adopt an expert point of view. The mantle is the different responsibilities, roles and duties which lie within the scenario, (Wordpress, 2014).

References 

Wordpress (2014) Retrieved 30th of April from http://www.imaginative-inquiry.co.uk/what-is-imaginative-inquiry/

David Farmer (2013) Retrieved april 30th from http://dramaresource.com/strategies/mantle-of-the-expert

Dr, Brian Edmiston, (n.d)

http://www.mantleoftheexpert.com/studying/articles/BE%20-%20The%20MoE%20Approach%20to%20Education.pdf