Developing Creative Teaching Skills in Pre-Service Teachers: The Design and Testing of a Professional Development Programme

Abstract

Teaching is a dynamic interaction between teachers and students. Increasingly, teachers are required to respond to changing priorities in education and diverse needs of learners. Providing teachers with the opportunity to develop creative teaching as a competence, and recognise its value within their teacher identities, may enable them to respond to such challenges and thrive in current education systems.
This project investigated the optimal design of a creative teaching training package. Using an iterative Educational Design Research approach, the project focused on the design, implementation, evaluation and re-design of the creative teaching package, completed by three successive cohorts of primary education pre-service teachers, as part of a teacher training programme.
A phemonenographical research approach enabled an initial in-depth exploration of current understandings and practice of creative teaching (Phase 1 of the project). The resulting five categories of creative teaching were applied to the design of a creative teaching package (Phase 2 of the project), which was informed by a theoretical framework of transformative learning theory. The influence of the creative teaching package on professional developments was investigated through a mixed-methods analysis of pre-service teachers’ responses and outcomes (Phase 3 of the project). Outcomes were applied to improve subsequent iterations of the creative teaching package. The potential sustainability of the creative teaching package’s influence, beyond the training programme, was also explored.
The project’s outcomes suggested that the creative teaching package influenced positively the professional developments of the pre-service teachers, regarding their developments of creative teaching skills and values. There were indications that these positive gains continued into the first year of teaching, and the competence of creative teaching had the potential to become embedded in teacher identities. Evidence also suggested that the training package improved as the iterations progressed. Ways forward for the project’s theoretical framework and practical outputs were proposed.