Improving Teaching and Learning

Improving Teaching and Learning

(Module DHA 0320)

Seminar Paper

Creative Classroom Management and innovation

Abstract:

The main focus of my seminar paper is to highlight and focus on creativity within classroom management and innovation. We all rely on technology but unfortunately technology can let us down especially when we want to be creative within the classroom environment by introducing new IT resources for engaging a variety of students, especially when the equipment fails to work and we have to ensure we are creative Margaret Bowden out lined that there are two types of creativity but failed to include motivation.

"There are two broad types of creativity, improbabilist and impossibilist. Improbabilist creativity involves (positively valued) novel combinations of familiar ideas. A deeper type involves METCS: the mapping, exploration and transformation of conceptual spaces. It is impossibilist, in that ideas may be generated which - with respect to the particular conceptual space concerned - could not have been generated before. (They are made possible by some transformation of the space.) The more clearly conceptual spaces can be defined, the better we can identify creative ideas". (Boden, 1994; pp. 519-520)

Aspects of creativity

Theories of creativity (in particular investigating why some people are more creative than others) have focused on a variety of aspects. The most dominant are usually identified as the four "Ps" - process, product, person and place. A focus on process is shown in cognitive approaches that try to describe thought mechanisms and techniques for creative thinking. Theories invoking divergent rather than convergent thinking (such as Guilford),

My research investigation will focus on two main theorists, Malkolm Knowles and Bruce Wayne Tuckman, the reason why I am focusing on two particular theorists is because their theory's fit nicely with my class room behaviour management.

Looking at the types of students that I teach, range from 16 to 19 year olds and mature students. Knowles (1970) suggested that adult learning could be defined as androgogy self determined learning.

Knowles (1970, p7) defined self-directed learning as:

"The process in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes"

Within Education over a number of years the teacher was always at the centre deciding how the learner would engage during lessons this was know as pedagogy after researching Androgogy and Pedagogy I also discovered that their was in fact another theory called heutagogy.

Heuatagogy focuses on self determined learning.

"Renowned psychologist B. F. Skinner's theories of behaviour were highly influential on instructional theorists because their hypotheses can be tested fairly easily with the scientific process. It is more difficult to demonstrate cognitive learning results. Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed had a broad influence over a generation of American educators with his critique of various "banking" models of education and analysis of the teacher-student relationship"

viswiki.com/en/Instructional_theory 14/11/10 21.59

There are a lot of critiques of Malcolm Knowles and Tuckman but we are now in the twenty 1st century and moving forward, if we take a look at (Stephenson and Weil, 1992).who suggested that:

"Capable people have confidence in their ability to

* take effective and appropriate action,

* explain what they are about,

* live and work effectively with others and

* continue to learn from their experiences

"As individuals and in association with others, in a diverse and changing society."(Page1 Stephenson and Weil, 1992)

Stephenson and Weil describe a very important fact which I will link back to class room management, capable people have the ability and confidence to take effective appropriate action, looking at the differences between my two groups of students, my class room techniques will hardly be used on mature students, simply because they are all engaged and determined to complete their course self directed if needed. Malcolm Knowles theory lends itself nicely to this group of students. Tuckman describes

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