How should we understand children’s creativity?
This fascinating collection of international research offers fresh perspectives on children’s creative processes and the expression of their creative imagination through dramatic play, stories, artwork, dance, music and conversation.
Drawing on a range of research evidence from innovative educational initiatives in a wide variety of countries, Exploring Children’s Creative Narratives develops new theoretical and practical insights that challenge traditional thinking about children’s creativity. The chapters, written by well-respected international contributors:
- offer new conceptual and interpretive frameworks for understanding children’s creativity
- contest conventional discourses about the origins and nature of creativity
- challenge the view that young children’s creativity can only be judged in terms of their creative output
- explore the significance children themselves attribute to their creative activity
- argue the need for a radical reappraisal of the influence of the sociocultural context on children’s creative expression
- discuss the implications of this research in relation to teacher education and curriculum design.
This broad yet coherent compilation of research on creativity in childhood is essential reading for students, researchers and policy makers in early childhood as well as for Early Years professionals with a particular interest in creativity.
Table of Contents
Foreword List of Contributors 1. Exploring Children’s Creative Narratives: Some Theoretical, Methodological and Applied Perspectives 2. Improvisation and Narrative 3. Thinking Creatively in an Early Years Classroom 4. Chidren's Creative Collaboration - A View of Narrativity 5. The Subjects and Meanings of Young Children's Drawings 6. Painting Dinosaurs: How a Reception Class Context Shapes Children's Opportunities for Creative Expression 7. Diversifying Discourse: The Influence of Visual Culture on Children’s Perception and Creation of Art 8. Meaning, Mediation & Mythology 9. Children's Creativity with Time, Space and Intensity: Foundations for the Temporal Arts 10. A Generative Framework for Creativity: Encouraging Creative Collaboration in Children's Music Composition 11. Inside – Outside: Exploring Learning and Creativity in Early Years Dance Education 12. Epilogue
Dorothy Faulkner is a member of the Centre for Childhood, Development and Learning and Director of the Psychology undergraduate honours degree at the Open University, UK.
Elizabeth Coates is Director of the Early Childhood Studies undergraduate degrees programme at the Institute of Education, University of Warwick, UK.