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Creativity in Early Years Science Education
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 30, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Creativity and innovation are recognised as important in European education policy in the last years, and their strengthening in and through education as one of the main objectives of the EU strategic framework for education and training 2020. I Creativity holds a strong position in early childhood and primary education, while it appears to be under greater pressure in the more formal educational environment of secondary education. It is therefore necessary to exploit, support and sustain the creative potential that is found in young children. Science education features highly in European education policy. Major EU reports urge countries to ensure that science education engages students before the age of 14 with science and scientific phenomena, through extended investigative work and ‘hands-on’ experimentation. The adoption of inquiry-based activities in science education is viewed as the only way forward (Rocard et al., 2007), as it is widely accepted that effective science education based on inquiry can lead to wonderment, and is fuelled by curiosity. School in Europe today would benefit considerably from acknowledging and fostering the link between science education, and creativity. Science education could (and should) be more creative. In the teaching and learning of science, a more creative approach based on curiosity and inquiry would be beneficial, involving, for instance, a move away from the pedagogy of the ‘correct answers’, which makes pupils believe that it is wrong to be wrong, and become progressively less willing and able to take risk and to unlock their creativity. Further, in a more creativity oriented science education, new modes of interactions within the classroom could be developed to stimulate self-expression – which, if nurtured, could manifest itself subsequently in later years in terms of an ability to create and innovate. Such a major shift towards more creativity in science education, though, both in terms of fostering creativity in science and teaching science creatively, would require a profound change in educational practices and cultures, demanding the development not only of new curricula, but most importantly of appropriate teacher training and professional development. The CEYS project is a timely response to the aforementioned needs, at the European level, aiming at the development of a teacher development course and accompanying materials to be used in European professional development to promote the use of creative approaches in teaching science in preschool and early primary education, in the frame of inquiry-based educational environments. The CEYS project brings together a consortium of five distinguished partners from four countries across Europe. More specifically, the project brings together three internationally recognised universities (AUC, IOE, OU), a science education centre in a leading science research institute (INFLPR), and a distinguished educational research department operating within a school (EA) and thus providing close interaction with teachers, students and classrooms. This consortium has all the characteristics necessary to guarantee the successful and efficient realisation of the project activities. The overall aim of the CEYS project is to adapt, test, implement and disseminate a new training framework (including an appropriate curriculum, training activities that include good in-school practices, as well as a variety of supporting material) that will support the training of teachers to use creativity and inquiry-based approaches in the teaching of science. CEYS will work on expanding the existing state of the art in early years and early primary inquiry-based science education and creativity, as this has been explored and described by the FP7 research project Creative Little Scientists. CEYS will enhance early years and primary teachers’ capacity to teach science effectively using inquiry-based approaches and focusing on the development of children’s creativity. This will make goals of inquiry-based science learning more likely to be realized and achieve meaningful impact for a critical mass of teachers, and consequently students, across the EU. The project aims to improve the in-service training of school teachers on topics related to teaching early years science through inquiry-based teaching methodology and the inclusion of creative approaches.
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