ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the development of teachers and teaching assistants as human beings with agency, with the capacity to deepen awareness of themselves, can lead to richer, more wholesome school communities. It argues that teachers and teaching assistants are better equipped to navigate the emotional, intellectual and social complexity that is involved in teaching in primary schools. In most of the developed world, it is widely accepted that creative learning is an important skill for twenty-first-century learners: as political aspiration, economic driver, manifesto for school reform, in policy pronouncements and academic research. Creative learning is a contested concept. In fact, Professor Pam Burnard has pluralised the concept of creativity to indicate the multiplicity of practices and meanings. It is important for educators to have an opportunity to experience creative learning, so that they remain open to learning about themselves and others and from a therapy position, to enhance mental health.
