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Dr Lisa Stephenson in the Carnegie School of Education is leading a new three-year research project alongside eight international university partners.
The project is funded by Arts Council Wales and the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) Wales.
The project will design, embed, and evaluate creative teaching practices in teacher education. It will focus on strengthening social-emotional skills, professional agency, and ethical activism in future teachers.
Education systems are facing rapid change due to social, ecological, and technological shifts. Global organisations such as OECD and UNESCO stress the importance of creativity, responsibility, and critical thinking in preparing young people for positive futures.
At the same time, there is a rise in mental health concerns among young people. This highlights the need for schools to place greater emphasis on relationships and life skills.
In most countries, the current government designed teacher education curriculum lack a focus on developing creative identity, social-emotional competencies, and responsive pedagogical practices. This contributes to challenges with teacher identity, recruitment, and retention worldwide.
Research shows that creative pedagogies and the arts can support social-emotional learning and teacher identity, but access to these approaches is unequal. This project will address these issues and gaps in research directly.
The study will examine how creative pedagogies can support student teachers' identity, self-worth, agency and professional growth.
In year two the approach will be embedded across all three pre-service teachers programmes in Wales and wider partnership.
This research is urgently needed to empower pre-service teachers with creative and responsive pedagogical practices which are underpinned by social-emotional literacy. By bringing international expertise together, this project will help drive meaningful change in teacher education.
We are thrilled to be co-funding this pilot year of international action research. We need to be driving change at a national policy level to ensure creativity is cultivated across the curriculum; from initial teacher education to professional learning and leadership development.
The project is led by:
Dr Lisa Stephenson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education. Her teaching and research specialism is creative (drama) learning. She is founder and director of Story Makers Company, a practice-based research centre which champions creative pedagogies and relational learning.
The co-investigators all leading areas of pre-service teaching, bring extensive expertise in critical literacy, creative and anti-racist pedagogies, critical thinking, education for democracy and as sustainability:
The consortium also includes policy makers from Wales, OECD, and the Chartered College.
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