ECE316 Practitioner Enquiry and Learning – Teacher Suzanna has been working in the Small World childcare centre, Singapore

Assignment Details:

Answer ALL questions. (Total 100 marks)
Scenario
Teacher Suzanna has been working in the Small World childcare centre for five years. One of the core values of the centre is to foster children’s creativity. This year, the principal asked all the teachers to think of ways that can promote creativity throughout the curriculum. Suzanna is teaching 18 K2 children in her centre and she is wondering if she is doing enough to promote children’s creativity, and if she needs to rethink her own understanding of what it means to promote creativity in young children. Aren’t young children naturally creative anyway? What did the principal have in mind? During a recent art activity in her classroom, she encouraged her children to draw their experiences after going on a field trip to the zoo. The children then asked a lot of questions, “Teacher, can I draw the peacock that I saw at the zoo?” “Teacher, what colour is the zebra, white or black?” “Teacher I dunno how to draw elephant. Can you help me?” She felt a little tired from responding to so many children’s questions, on top of having to document the children’s art-making process and provide individualised support during the activity. She began to question herself if this kind of large group activity is meaningful for children’s learning and creativity, if there was a more effective way for her to engage and support the children’s drawing efforts. Then again, she began to wonder about the goal of such post-field trip drawing activities.

Yesterday, in the science area, she managed to observe Peter and Sallie during their learning centre time. On a small round table, she had placed several flashlights, sheets of coloured cellophane paper, and small mirrors. Peter and Sallie approached the table, and Peter picked up a flashlight, turned it on, and covered the end of it with red cellophane. “Wow,” Sallie said, “there’s red on your shirt!” She picked up a mirror, and Peter shined the flashlight through the red cellophane onto the mirror, as Sallie moved the mirror around until the light was reflected onto the table again. Peter and Sallie laughed and exclaimed as they moved the flashlight and the mirror around to reflect the red light onto different parts of the room. Teacher Suzanna was glad the children had fun but was wondering if they had learned anything as they engaged in this sort of play. She thought about how she could intervene (or not) to support Peter and Sallie’s exploration.

Part I: Research Focus (20 marks)
Based on the above scenario, imagine that you are Teacher Suzanna.
a) Identify TWO (2) potential problems related to children’s creativity that you may need to solve and discuss the possibilities and difficulties of solving these two problems. (10 marks)

b) From the two problems that you have identified in 1a), formulate TWO (2) research questions that would guide your classroom inquiry and explain how they align with the problems that Suzanna encountered. (10 marks)

Part II: Literature Review and Potential Classroom Solution (50 marks)
Based on ONE (1) of the inquiry questions you have formulated in Part I (b) above, you are going to search for relevant literature and propose a potential classroom intervention you would try out. Respond to the following questions:

a) Draft an operational definition of ‘creativity’ to frame your inquiry project. (10 marks)

b) Draft a literature search plan including the rationale given to the key words and terms used at this initial stage of literature search. Explain how the search results help you revise/ refine your research question. (10 marks)

c) Select TWELVE (12) articles from your literature search and draft a long table to include the bibliographies (in the APA format) and a synopsis for each of these 12 articles. (15 marks)

d) Based on the inquiry question and relevant literature, draft an intervention plan with no more than 400 words that include relevant objective(s), potential approaches to solving the problem and improvement strategies that might help achieve the inquiry objective. (15 marks)

Part III: Instrument Development for Data Collection (20 marks)
Employ observation and interview techniques to gather children’s data for your inquiry project. This should align with the intervention plan that you have in mind in Part II. To help promote ‘creativity’ across the curriculum, draft a child observation and interview guide to find out more about how your proposed intervention may be engaging and supporting children’s learning. Use the operational definition of ‘creativity’ that you have formulated in Part II (a) and look through the literature to decide on what to look out for when children are engaged in the learning process. This instrument should help you to understand how children make sense of creativity and what decisions they make in their creative process.

Here are a few questions to help you get organized to complete your task.
a) How would you explain the purpose of the child observation and interview guide?
b) How would you decide on what questions/ items to be in the child observation and interview guide? (Attach the guide in an appendix.)
c) With your first draft, ask two peers to review. What issues did you encounter when you involved two peers in reviewing the child observation and interview guide?
d) What changes would you make after you receiving feedback from your peers? (20 marks)

(Quality of Writing = 10 marks)
(Total = 100 marks)