AISWA Leadership Breakfasts - Creativity 1

Description

AISWA have planned eight early childhood leaders breakfast mornings over the year, each with a focussed topic of conversation and a guest speaker.  Our goal is to build awareness and facilitate discussion around key understandings relating to early childhood education.  

Our first breakfast will feature Associate Professor Dee O’Connor from Notre Dame University who will be sharing her knowledge on the importance of creativity in education.

Critical and creative thinking skills are very valuable. Together they are the essence of problem solving abilities. Problem solving is an inherently valuable human skill, it cannot be overestimated. It is the baseline of artistic expression, of social change, of political development, of economic progression, of scientific discovery, of innovation and entrepreneurship. It is highly important for societies and economies but it is also highly important for making people’s individual realities better. It develops throughout our lives. However, it is largely grounded in deeply personal and integrated traits such as curiosity, tenacity, confidence, judgement and risk-taking. These traits evolve largely in childhood and so it is that childhood education, by the centrality of the role it plays in children’s lives, becomes a key vehicle for the development of critical and creative abilities. Over the past two decades, the development of critical and creative thinking skills has been written into the educational policy framework of all developed countries, including Australia. 

This talk will centre on 'what works' in supporting children to develop highly tuned critical and creative capacities so that they grow into innovative people. Creativity theory together with  pedagogical and leadership strategies for Early Years, Primary Schools and High Schools will be introduced in what promises to be a stimulating start to our Leader's Breakfast Series.