Early years education in England and little c creativity: the third wave?

This paper explores ordinary creativity as characterised in two significant curriculum landmarks applicable to young children. The first of these was the 1967 Plowden Report, its recommenda- tions and influence, on child-centred approaches to teaching and learning. Although not specifically about creativity, the Plowden Report spawned changes in ways in which pedagogy and learning were conceived of and resourced. Creative pursuits formed an important part of the conceptualising of the curriculum. The second major set of influences examined in this article involves three policy initiatives rooted in the 1990s; the Early Learning Goals for 3 - 5 year olds (2000), the report of the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education: ‘All Our Futures’, or the NACCCE report (1999), on the place of creativity in the pre-school and school curriculum - and the National Curriculum, for children aged 5 - 16. In this article, I propose a distinct notion of creativity which belongs to neither of these two eras, but which grows from them. It is a notion of ‘personal effectiveness’, or ‘little c creativity’ as way of concep- tualising creativity. I suggest that it represents a ‘third way’ or ‘third wave’ of understanding the meaning and potential of creativity in the early years of education. The core of the Third Wave, I argue involves creativity as the capacity to route-find, across and through life. In this sense it is practical and involves both skill and disposition. It involves using imagination, intelligence, self-creation and self-expression, and does not necessarily involve a product-outcome