Curriculum for Excellence - A Creative Curriculum
LTS and University of Strathclyde Joint Early Years Conference
This very successful two-day event was held on Friday 24 and Saturday 25 April 2009 in the Crawfurd Complex, University of Strathclyde.
It was both a celebration of interesting early years practice and an opportunity to learn new skills.
In the early years in Scotland practitioners are seizing the opportunity to make the early level of the new curriculum as creative, thoughtful and appropriately documented as possible in collaboration with our community, parents and children. Therefore this event included a variety of morning seminar presentations and afternoon practical workshops with artists, dancers, dramatists, storytellers, musicians and film-makers over the course of the two days.
There were two keynote lectures on each day and contributions from early years practitioners, the Strathclyde Early Years Team and the Learning and Teaching Scotland Early Years Team.
Keynote presentations
There were very interesting keynote presentations from:
Professor Carolyn Pope-Edwards – 'Documentation Diaries: A Creative Strategy for Early Years Practitioners'
Carolyn Pope-Edwards explored the fact that Italian educators have taught us much about the use of documentation diaries with infants and young children in early years settings. Carolyn referred to recent practice in the US where educators have responded by exploring the use of documentation diaries to promote literacy and other learning for young children of diverse backgrounds and children with special educational needs.
Bernadette Duffy – 'A Creative Curriculum – nurturing creativity and imagination at the Thomas Coram Children’s Centre'
This session explored the importance of creativity for children, being a creative practitioner, creating an environment that encourages creativity and working with artists and others to encourage a culture of creativity.
Harry Harbottle - 'Does Creativity lose out to fears about safety? Opportunity and Risk in Outdoor Environments'
This presentation reflected Harry’s commitment to promoting the opportunities for children to develop self-protecting behaviour through being allowed to explore the world in which they live within a framework of managed risk taking.
Helen Guldberg, Author and Lecturer, Open University – 'Reclaiming Childhood: what this means for early years education'
Helene Guldberg challenged us to think about the fact that adults should stop projecting their fears and uncertainties on to children, labelling them with the 'stressed' and 'depressed' tag, and instead allow children to grow and flourish with a balance of sensible adult guidance and some youthful independence.
The University of Strathclyde has published copies of the keynote speakers’ presentations along with the corresponding audio file recordings from the event.