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In this reflection I share my experience of designing and implementing an assessment for a level three midwifery module. By sharing my experience I hope to give others an insight into the process, including the challenge of ensuring that any examination is robust enough to meet the needs of the assessment. Designing a robust assessment is crucial as ultimately any assessment on a midwifery pathway is influential in developing safe and competent midwives.

Creativity is widely accepted as being an important outcome of schooling. Yet there are many different views about what it is, how best it can be cultivated in young people and whether or how it should be assessed. And in many national curricula creativity is only implicitly acknowledged and seldom precisely defined. This paper offers a five dimensional definition of creativity which has been trialed by teachers in two field trials in schools in England. The paper suggests a theoretical underpinning for defining and assessing creativity along with a number of practical suggestions as to how creativity can be developed and tracked in schools. Two clear benefits of assessing progress in the development of creativity are identified: 1) teachers are able to be more precise and confident in developing young people's creativity, and 2) learners are better able to understand what it is to be creative (and to use this understanding to record evidence of their progress). The result would seem to be a greater likelihood that learners can display the full range of their creative dispositions in a wide variety of contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an innovative approach for teaching creativity in Design and Technology education based on the notions of authentic learning. Working with secondary schools in England and Ireland, the research team has been developing an intervention known as ‘Designing Our Tomorrow’ (DOT) which introduced students to the important principles of Inclusive Design (also known as Universal Design). Through interview and survey data, the team gained insights into students’ responses to the DOT intervention and they found that students’ creativity and empathy were enhanced following their engagement with the intervention materials. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: School change is always local and dependent on the kinds of resources that are available. In this paper we explore the notion that knowledge is an important resources for vernacular educational reform. In order to explore this contention, we use the lens of cross-curricular changes undertaken by English schools in receipt of funding from Creative Partnerships. Our research identified three dominant change patterns – themes and topics in primary and secondary schools and skills-based subjects in secondary. Our study also showed that in making these changes schools had little recourse to their own collective histories or to international examples. We argue that, while policy was a significant delimiting factor on innovation, the problem-posing and solution-generating activities undertaken by schools may well have developed differently if a wider range of intellectual resources was available to them. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article is a critical review of recent literature comparing pedagogical influences in primary schools in England and Poland. It identifies curriculum, assessment, leadership, teacher perceptions and personal fears as immense influences on pedagogy and considers how these factors influence pedagogy. Comparison of England's prescriptive approach with the child-directed methods operating in Poland suggests how teachers can take ownership of the curriculum and its delivery for the benefit of their pupils. The literature shows teachers need empowerment and some measure of autonomy to be sensitive to the needs of children and be able to change their practice so that effective learning can occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within this paper, a conceptualised triadic schema is hypothesised for locating emotion within a creative, learning and product orientated Design and Technology experience. The research is based upon an extensive literature review that has been synthesised and juxtaposed with the broad aspirational aims of the subject. The schema, based upon abductive reasoning and grounded theory, ultimately conceptualises the overarching theme of emotion within a creative, learning and product orientated Design and Technology experience within the Primary and Secondary stages of England’s education system. The triadic schema offers an additional opportunity in meta-theorising how the broad aspirational aims of the subject, as outlined in the English national curriculum statement of importance for Design and Technology, can be achieved through recognising the powerful overarching concept of emotion within three emerging domains: Person, Process and Product. The central tenet of this paper is the recognition of emotion within a triadic schema for meta-theorising the place of emotion within a creative, learning and product orientated Design and Technology experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies five influences on design & technology education in England—the government agency, the curriculum developer, the teacher, the pupil and the researcher. Using developments in school design & technology education and examples from England the paper describes a range of activities involving one or more influences noting the implications each has for creativity in school design & technology education. In conclusion the paper summarises the impact of the influences and suggests an approach to support further productive collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is written in response to the article published in issue 39.3 of this journal, in November 2005, on the nature of the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum reading tests: ‘Examining England's National Curriculum assessments: an analysis of the KS2 reading test questions’ by Anne Kispal of the National Foundation for Educational Research. It argues that, far from providing a valid and rewarding assessment experience for pupils as Kispal suggests, the primary English tests at the end of KS2 are invalid as a measuring instrument and are having a damaging effect on pedagogy. The tests and the information on them provided by the Qualifications and Curriculum Agency are based on a misleading unidimensional conception of reading literacy attainment. Because the test assessment simply adds together marks achieved for very different cognitive skills, it propagates a dysfunctional model of literacy pedagogy that conflates and confuses two separate developmental trajectories – word reading and text comprehension. The article goes on to argue that the unidimensionality of the national tests and their pedagogic apparatus has constricted the primary English curriculum in ways that are damaging for young pupils and for the national need for creativity and enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thirty-six per cent of 18–19-year-old sixth-form and further education college leavers in the UK currently go on to university. A majority of the remaining 64% apparently go into work or work-related training. Yet, for this latter group, as with the former, 16–19 education was supposed by the Department for Education and Employment to equip them with the skills applicable in the workplace, where a student’s ability to apply skills and knowledge in a variety of contexts—i.e. creativity—is as important as having a qualification. Creative skills, according to the Construction Industry Training Board, are key requisite skills in the workplace and also key to job and business success. This paper examines the extent to which assessment objectives in the 16–19 education curriculum in England require students to demonstrate creative skills in their work, be it class assessment or external examinations. It finds that all but two subject specifications and syllabuses (in one discipline) explicitly state creativity as an assessment objective, although a few other subject specifications (in other disciplines) required candidates to demonstrate some creative skills in their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]