Stavrou. Natassa E.

(2012) Fostering musical creativity in pre-service teacher

education: Challenges and possibilities, International Journal of Music Education, 31
(1). 35-52
This article talked about creativity and how it should be getting involved in
class rooms. Creativity is elusive, but everyone is able to be creative.
Students however arent getting taught in a way thatll help them encourage
creative thinking, because teachers are scared to teach that way. Creative
teaching is scary, and messes, so teachers are more likely to encourage their
students to seek textbook knowledge, instead of teaching them to think
outside the predictable. The second half of this article talks about an
experiment that happened with student teachers. For their final project they
had to create a skit that had to incorporate music and drama and whatever
else they wanted to add. After the groups performed their skits they got
evaluated on everything from pre-performance ideas to post-performance
through diaries and multiple choice surveys. The study found that each group
was able to use their team mates for the best of their abilities, for example
one group had a ballet dancer and they focused their skit on dancing. The
study also found that the majority of people were excited to start the project,
the only ones not excited were the ones that had no musical training.
Through this study, the student teachers learned how to properly collaborate
with one another, and how they can use this experience in their own
classrooms.
I didnt think this article was very insightful. It talked about how creativity
was very important to classrooms all over, but it didnt really have a solution
other than teachers need to be taught how to teach creatively. How can
teachers get the experience needed to think creatively? The study in the
article was very cool, and its awesome that those people got the experience
to be able to think creatively for their students, but I dont believe that
everyone will be able to get that experience, and not everyone is going to
take away the same information that the participants in the study got. I
believe that thinking creatively should be incorporated at a young age, and
be kept in school programs because its a skill that has to be nurtured. This
kind of goes back to school just teaching students how to memorize and
regurgitate information, so if schools can encourage people to think
creatively it will help students to think outside the box.