Creative Teaching and Learning Toolkit

Brin Best is an education consultant, writer and trainer. He is the director of the training and consultancy company Innovation for Education Ltd. Will Thomas is a training consultant and performance coach. He is the director of the training company Vision 4 Learning Ltd.

This book is timely and refreshingly engaging. Forget your preconceptions of collage and mime; this book looks at 360º creativity, from the perspectives of pupils, teachers and school systems. This book is about real change, not just about new teaching initiatives. In the introduction it identifies creativity as the principle factor that binds together all effective teachers; and states loudly and clearly that effective teaching enables better learning. Having acknowledged this, the book becomes a blueprint for teachers who wish to push themselves and the system to create significantly better opportunities and outcomes for children and young people. At one level it provides practical pedagogic approaches to exploit and enhance pupils' creativity; such as encouraging pupils to generate and share analogies and metaphors relevant to them when they learn new concepts and processes. At another level it outlines creative approaches which can be employed to change the climate for learning by translating values into action, for example with respect to the ways that teachers communicate with pupils. Attention is also paid to teachers' learning; promoting an understanding of the qualities of effective teachers, and highlighting the value of creative and reflective thinking in individual and school development. The book concludes with a valuable self-evaluation tool (also found on the CDRom accompanying the book), and a glossary of buzz-words.

• Foreword; Introduction; Chapter 1: Creativity, teaching and learning; Chapter 2: Vision; Chapter 3: Climate; Chapter 4: Teaching and learning strategies; Chapter 5: Reflection; Chapter 6: Professional competence; Chapter 7: Teacher's personal domain; Chapter 8: Self-evaluation tools. Glossary; Acknowledgements; Author details; Bibliography; Other resources and information (internet, contact addresses etc.); Indexes CD.