Teacher and Pupil Responses to a Creative Pedagogy - Case studies of two primary sixth-grade classes in Taiwan

Keen efforts have been put by Taiwanese government into creative education projects; however, possible paradoxes resulting from adopting the ethos behind the Western theories and practices have not been considered. Questions of how creativity and creative education should be defined in the Taiwanese educational context, how compatible the Taiwanese school cultures are with the objective of enhancing creativity, or how teachers and pupils cherish creativity, have not been asked. Within the reformed curriculum and creative education projects, there is no clear picture of what kind of creative capacity should be developed through education, nor guidelines of what pedagogical strategies to adopt for promoting creativity. In this research the responses of pupils and teachers are investigated through designing and teaching a series of drama lessons based on the school curricula in the two cases under study. The approaches to teaching drama are linked with a framework of creative pedagogy informed by theories of fostering creativity in educational settings. A descriptive case study approach was employed to capture the dynamics, modes of involvements, and subtle relationships of the participants, whose accounts were collected concerning their views of the lessons, the evaluation of the ways of teaching and learning, and the ethos behind the pedagogy. Key issues in adopting creative pedagogy in Taiwan context are discussed, and implications for contextualizing creative pedagogy are proposed. Suggestions for future research in creative pedagogy are also provided.