Learning and developing as an active participant in today´s multicultural societies requires teaching and learning environments that provide versatile spaces and approaches. Arts and crafts education can offer students ways of experiencing and interacting in the world in creative and different ways than traditional book learning. In Iceland creativity was set as one of six fundamental issues in education in 2011 and was meant to interact with the other five issues (literacy, sustainability, health and welfare, democracy and human rights, and equality) in order to provide a holistic and inclusive education (Ministry of Education, 2011). 

The concept creativity has been found difficult to define but can be described in fairly simple terms. Sternberg & Lubart (1999) and Sternberg, Pretz & Kaufman (2003) define creativity as the ability to flexibly produce work that is novel, high in quality and useful. In the last two decades a wider definition of the concept creativity has been presented, from seeing it as the capacity of a few geniuses to see it as a capacity of all that can be nurtured (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2010; Craft, 2006; NACCCE, 1999). Craft (2000) claims that the core of creativity is possibility thinking. She also identifies little-c creativity as the capacity we all have that guide choices we make every day (Craft, 2000). Creativity can be seen as being about agency, the ability and capacity to act in order to produce ideas or outcomes that are original and innovative in their specific context (Jeffrey, 2005). Creativity requires people having agency over their environment and actions and being able to actualise their choices (Craft, 2000).

This paper presents a collaborative action research of eight arts and crafts teachers on three school levels, compulsory, upper secondary and university level, led by the first author. The purpose of the research was to enhance and strengthen creative capacities in the learners of the teachers. The goal was to investigate how each teacher supported creativity in their students´ learning, to elicit a deeper understanding of creativity in teaching and learning and for the group to learn from each other. 

Analysing our data we used concepts from Bernstein’s (2000) theories, mainly classification and framing to understand how power and power relations emerge. Classification is used to categorise forming of social spaces such as school subjects or roles such as teachers and learners or home and school (Bernstein, 2000). Power is always embedded within a defined category, strongly or weakly classified. Control establishes valid forms of communication between categories.

Framing refers to where control is located. In strong framing the transmitter (e.g. teacher) has explicit control but in weak framing the acquirer (e.g. learner) has more apparent control (Bernstein, 2000). Strong framing suggests that control is located in a category that has power, for example, a teacher or a school subject, and weak framing indicates that control is shared between categories. Issues concerning freedom and structure have been shown to be influential in supporting creativity in lessons (Jónsdóttir, 2017) and we look into what these entail in the communication between teachers and learners.

Action research conducted by teachers is a research methodology for scrutinizing own practice in order to improve it (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; McNiff, 2016). Action research has been promoted as an effective method to develop pedagogy and empower teachers (McNiff & Whitehead, 2011; Kjartansdóttir, 2007). Action research gives teachers the opportunity to control the development of the research and requires them to be active participants in the process (Guðjónsdóttir, 2004; Guðjónsson, 2008). The participants were five compulsory schoolteachers (textiles, woodwork and technology, arts), two upper secondary teachers (arts) and one teacher on university level (drama). The group was led by the first author a teacher in teacher education and supported by the second author, first as a critical friend and gradually as a co-researcher. The teachers were simultaneously the researchers and the researched, focusing on their work and ideas about teaching and creativity. Data was collected over two years from 2016 to 2018 and consisted of: individual journals for each researcher, reflective notes, teaching plans, photographs, artistic collages, intra group interviews and recordings of research group meetings. Meetings of the research group were held approximately once a month for two hours. At the meetings the teachers shared stories and progress from their teaching, and they were recorded and transcribed. Challenges and successes in teaching were identified and discussed. Different analytical exercises were conducted at the meetings one was using Bernstein´s concepts of framing and classification to better understand what kind of pedagogy was applied in their lessons. The teachers also interviewed each other about their teaching. They recorded, transcribed the interviews and analyzed main characteristics of their own teaching. Near the end of the two-year research each teacher created a collage that represented their professional working theory and explained it verbally. Early on the first author leading the research group decided she needed an outsider, a critical friend, to discuss and reflect on the progress of the research and got the second author to take on that role. That relationship developed into collaboration on teasing out the overall research findings. Building on all the data gathered, four main themes were identified. Findings were elicited through qualitative methods and presented as narratives (Kim, 2015). Sub-themes and issues emerged under four overarching themes and narrative examples provide insight into the arts and crafts teachers work focusing on creativity.

The immediate benefits for the teachers in the research were throughout the two-year process as they took part in the research, gathered data and reflected on their work. They had the opportunity to reflect deeply on their practice and adjust it in accordance with what they discovered. By critically reflecting on their work and collegial dialogue contributed to making explicit their professional identities as they made their professional working theories explicit (Dalmau & Guðjónsdóttir, 2017). The teacher researchers became more aware of the framing they applied in their teaching and elicited what kind of teachers they aspire to be. They showed professionalism as arts and crafts teachers in identifying and deliberately adjusting framing through their action research throughout the process. The data they collected and discussing with colleagues supported them to make decisions to adjust their teaching towards what and how they wanted it to be. The research process also gave them a deeper understanding of creativity, how it can be supported, when they needed to stand back and when to push and steer. Using artistic methods in the research process such as making the collage was especially relevant for this group of arts and crafts teacher researchers but is also useful for others. It is a way to make new and different (artistic) connections to the experiences of people and to make visual expressions that symbolize interpretation that offers other possibilities than with words (Pithouse-Morgan, Pillay & Mitchell). The artistic ways can offer an additional space, a third space for exploring and expressing the world. The teachers´ stories, experiences and ways they work can inspire other teachers in arts and crafts and remind others of challenges of teaching arts and crafts and of the gains of learning through artistic and creative methods.

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