THE CREATIVITY AND RESILIENCE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT (CRDP) TO INVESTIGATE LEARNING PRACTICE IN THE USE OF ICT

Abstract

Much research has demonstrated that students' cognitive characteristics as general mental ability or prior level of achievement do explain a substantial proportion of the variance in subsequent achievement, but only more recently has research focused on relationships between cognitive characteristics of students and the process variables of classroom behaviour. In conceptualizations of teaching-learning situations, cognitive characteristics of students are seen as one cluster of determinants of the interactive and learning processes established in the classroom. The researchers suggest that flexibility is central to creative adaptation. The centrality of flexibility to creative adaptation and to creative performance can be linked to the original definition of resilience as the capacity to bounce back to average or above-average functioning. The Creativity and Resilience Development Project (CRDP) involved 287 undergraduate students in a Sicilian University. They participated in the project to investigate their classroom practice in the use of ICT to promote creativity in making digital videos, and to reflect upon the development of their pedagogy with ICT in primary classrooms. This paper maps out the different perspectives on creativity, and the teaching and learning of creativity. It is a rich resource of examples of the way that technology is currently used to support creativity through encouraging learners to make connections, develop ideas, collaborate and communicate. This paper presents the first phase of a study in teacher education, which explored how a conceptual framework for creativity with information and communication technology (ICT) might be developed and expressed in professional development for primary education pre-service and newly qualified teachers. The analysis focuses on the student teachers’ experience of engaging in creative activities to prepare, teach and evaluate a school-based project, and personal experience of creativity, the contribution of ICT, and their reflections on professional development. This analysis raises the issue of designing learning experiences, which promote and support creativity with ICT in the context of teacher learning. A conceptual framework to describe creative practices with ICT in teacher education was developed from the study. Resilience refers to the ability to abide and true to main purpose and personality while engaging with irregularity and adapting with integrity in response to changing conditions. Within a classroom setting, individual students differ substantially in attention and task engagement, level of participation in classroom activities, and the extent to which they initiate contacts with the teacher and fellow students or participate more passively in response to opportunities afforded by the teacher. Some researchers have sought to explore the presence of relationships between such cognitive characteristics of students as intelligence, prior achievement level and classroom behaviour. Such relationships, however, are unlikely to be direct and generalizable in view of the range of interacting variables contributing to the establishment of patterns of classroom behaviour. Results showed that the more the students experienced high levels of resilience, the more they felt themselves able to cope with novelty in scholastic context. Significant correlations were noted between generalized resilience, self- efficacy and creativity styles.