The Historical and Cultural Perspectives of Creativity: A Qualitative Study of Thai Early Childhood Curriculum
Keywords:
Early childhood curriculum, Early childhood in Thailand, Creativity and educationAbstract
This article analyzed creativity in Early Childhood Curriculum in Thailand. Since, creativity appears in several disciplines and has had a major role in childhood education for decades. The paper includes the main points of the overview of creativity in early childhood curriculum in Thailand for the past decades, then focuses on the perspectives of creativity in the school curriculum and discusses
the perspective of creativity and cultural context in the curriculum. This article analyzes the aspects of creativity in Thailand’s school curriculum based on the cultural perspectives stated by Anoumou and Formella (2016). The qualitative analysis conducted through document analysis was set as follows; the challenge of early childhood curriculum during the 1970s-2003, the promotion of children’s
creativity in the classroom after curriculum reform 2003-2010, and the Early Childhood Curriculum (2017). Overall, the main themes of prior research were seen in three perspectives including the view of creativity in the curriculum, instructional methods and teaching media, and subject domains towards creativity. The view of creativity was linked to several activities such as play, arts, and
sciences. This agrees with several authors who proposed that children can use their imagination to theorize and develop skills and knowledge to improve creativity through those activities (Innamorato, 1998; Isenberg Jalongo, 2001; Craft McConnon & Matthews, 2012). It is important to note that the perspective of creativity depends upon the cultural context. Lastly, the research findings recommend that cross-curricular activities are essential for children’s creativity and that the curriculum should enable pupils to think creatively. Creativity should be set as the central pedagogy concept in every domain of learning rather than separated.
Furthermore, it can be suggested that the real factors such as school context, adult role, or cultural perspective should be investigated for future research.
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