Category Archives: Research

Education News, Partnerships, Research

School Improvement Partnership Programme

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The School Improvement Partnership Programme (SIPP) is a solution-focused approach to Scotland’s attainment issues with a focus on innovating to tackle educational inequality. It draws on the wealth of international educational research and practice demonstrating that the most effective school improvements are locally owned and led by teachers and school leaders working in partnership and collaboration with like-minded professionals.

There are currently nine different kinds of partnerships developing within and across education authorities. The programme aims to encourage staff to learn from each other, experiment with their practice and monitor and evaluate change. A key feature of the SIPP is the evaluation support being provided by researchers from The Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change. For more information click on the following link:  The School Improvement Partnership Programme

or contact enquiries@educationscotland.gov.uk

Assessment, Research

Assessing Creativity – OECD working paper

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The OECD has published an interesting working paper on research to establish the viability of creating an assessment framework for tracking the development of young people’s creativity in schools:
The Centre for Real-World Learning (CRL) at the University of Winchester was commissioned to undertake this research by Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) in partnership with the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI).
The paper includes:
  • Why assessing creativity in schools matters
  • The pros and cons of assessing creativity
  • Guiding principles used for the research
  • The development, testing and refinement of a prototype tool
  • Conclusions and next steps
It is interesting to compare the five creative dispositions identified for the study, with the five creative attributes we are looking at in Scotland. This research model explores the following five core dispositions of the creative mind:
  • Inquisitive
  • Persistent
  • Imaginative
  • Collaborative
  • Disciplined
The Education Scotland Creativity Review has identified the following five core creative attributes:
  • Inquisitive;
  • Open-minded;
  • Imaginative;
  • Able to identify and solve problems;
  • Confident in their right and ability to influence change
Research, Self Evaluation

OECD International Review of Evaluation and Assessment in Education

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You might be interested to read the executive summary of the OECD report Synergies for Better Learning which provides a comparative analysis on how evaluation and assessment can be embedded to improve the quality and efficiency of school education.

As well as analysing strengths and weaknesses of different approaches from 28 countries, the report provides recommendations for improvement including how results should be incorporated into policy and practice.

The report looks at why there is a growing focus on evaluation and assessment internationally; what the main challenges and trends are and how policy can be implemented successfully.

Download the report here: Synergies for Better Learning

Assessment, CPD, Events, Research

The Festival of Dangerous Ideas

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13 – 21 June 2013 at various venues across Scotland


The Festival of Dangerous Ideas aims to re-establish the importance of dangerous ideas as agents of change in education – to shift the axis of what is possible!

You might be interested in the following events:

Dangerous Assessment

This conference will address the following questions:

  • how do we assess a diverse range of evidence?
  • how do we assess creative thinking?
  • do we trust our own professional judgements?

http://events.collegedevelopmentnetwork.ac.uk/events/show/4685

Thinking Dangerously in teacher education: Walking, drawing and extending sites for learning

The University of the West of Scotland will share initial findings from its Creative Scotland funded research project which responds to the Donaldson Report, ‘Teaching Scotland’s Future’.
http://events.collegedevelopmentnetwork.ac.uk/events/show/4671

Click here for full details of The Festival of Dangerous Ideas Programme

CfE, Dundee, Research, Teachers

V&A at Dundee Teachers’ Survey

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The V&A at Dundee invites primary and secondary school teachers from across Scotland to take part in a survey which will help them shape their education programme for the organisation.

V&A at Dundee’s aim is to offer a programme which will encourage interdisciplinary practice and learning, covering a wide range of Curriculum for Excellence areas.  For example, a session looking at Hollywood Costume might discuss the use of costume design to represent particular faiths and debate issues of potential stereotyping, or how people of different faiths are represented in film genres. A session looking at Green Design would explore moral issues about climate change and sustainability.

If you’d like to participate through the online survey, please click on the following link: http://www.snapsurveys.com/swh/surveylogin.asp?k=136327212796&SCE=3

If clicking on the link does not work, please copy and paste the address into your browser.

Research

Artworks research findings published

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As part of the ArtWorks Scotland Programme, Creative Scotland has commissioned a research project into the skills, knowledge and experience that artists (across all artforms) need to develop, to work to a high standard in participatory settings, such as schools, prisons or communities. The research will directly impact on and inform the direction and content of the ArtWorks Scotland Programme as well as developments taken forward beyond the life of ArtWorks to support artists to work with groups of people in Scotland.

The research findings can be downloaded from Creative Scotland’s website here: Artworks Commissioned Research

Research

Assessing Creativity

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In Spring 2011, Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE) commissioned the Centre for Real-World Learning (CRL) at The University of Winchester to undertake research to establish the viability of creating an assessment framework for tracking the development of young people’s creativity in schools.

After reviewing the literature on creativity and its assessment, and consulting expert practitioners, CRL created a framework for developing creativity in schools, and derived an assessment tool to trial in schools.

This tool comprised of 5 habits and 15 sub-habits of creativity:

  1. Inquisitive (wondering and questioning, exploring and investigating, challenging assumptions)
  2. Persistent (sticking with difficulty, daring to be different, tolerating uncertainty)
  3. Imaginative (playing with possibilities, making connections, using intuition)
  4. Collaborative (sharing the product, giving and sharing feedback, cooperating appropriately)
  5. Disciplined (developing techniques, reflecting critically, crafting and improving)

Through two separate field trials the research suggested that the framework was sufficiently distinct from existing approaches to creativity to be useful and that from a teacher point of view, the framework was both rigorous and plausible.

The principal findings were that:

  1. The concept of an assessment framework for creativity in schools is valid and relevant. There was a strong sense among teachers that our framework encompassed a learnable set of dispositions. There are strong grounds for now seeking to develop a more sophisticated prototype, of use to teachers and learners, to track the development of creativity in schools.
  2. The framework should initially focus on the 5-14 age range, although some practitioners may find it useful with younger and older pupils.
  3. The evidence suggests that the primary use of any assessment framework will be formative, supporting pupils to harness more of their creativity and helping teachers more effectively to cultivate creative dispositions in the young people they teach.

To find out more and to download the full report click here:

http://www.creativitycultureeducation.org/progression-in-creativity-developing-new-forms-of-assessment