Innovating Teaching and Learning Practices: Key Elements for Developing Creative Classrooms in Europe

This paper looks at how to innovate teaching and learning practices at system level. It describes the vision for 'Creative Classrooms' and makes a consolidated proposal for their implementation, clarifying their holistic and systemic nature, their intended learning outcomes, and their pedagogical, technological, and organisational dimensions for innovation. 'Creative Classrooms' (CCR) are conceptualized as innovative learning environments that fully embed the potential of ICT to innovate learning and teaching practices in formal, non-formal and informal settings. The proposed multi-dimensional concept for CCR consists of eight encompassing and interconnected key dimensions and a set of 28 reference parameters ('building blocks'). At the heart of the CCR concept lie innovative pedagogical practices that emerge when teachers use ICT in their efforts to organize newer and improved forms of open-ended, collaborative, and meaningful learning activities, rather than simply to enhance traditional pedagogies, such as expository lessons and task-based learning. A preliminary analysis of two existing cases of ICT-enabled innovation for learning is presented in order to show (i) how the proposed key dimensions and reference parameters are implemented in real-life settings to configure profoundly diverse types of CCR; and (ii) to depict the systemic approach needed for the sustainable implementation and progressive up-scaling of Creative Classrooms across Europe.