A talk at the University of the Western Cape

Last month, I submitted my Masters by Research thesis at Leeds Beckett University. My topic was teacher identity and creativity and on Tuesday, I was delighted to be invited to speak on it at the University of the Western Cape. It was lovely to meet the staff from the Faculty of Education and I thank them for going easy on me with the questions! It was my first academic talk and I am glad it was in my home-from-home of Cape Town.

I'll spare you the full 15,000 words, but the research was into my identity as a teacher and how growing accountability is reshaping not only the role of teachers but also how they see themselves as trusted professionals. Although this autoethnographic research was into my own story as a teacher, exploring the experiences of others is something I am following up through my Facebook blog Teacher Talking Time.

The key aspect of this research was in the area of creativity in primary education. If the process of learning and working creativily involves risk taking, experimentation, and learning from failure, how can this be part of an education system that demands product over process and penalises teachers for failure to ensure progress? In view of literaxy, how can we develop children into writers who have the voice and verve of real authors if they are excluded from any say in the process?

This is just a brief summary of my ideas on this but if you'd like to talk about this further, I'd love to hear from you.

Keywords: creativity, teacher identity, University of the Western Cape, performativity, Kucharczyk, autoethnography, primary education, literacy, writing

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