An innovative in-service training event for teachers,
trainee teachers, educationalists and policy makers.
Venue: Institute for Waldorf-Pedagogy, Annener Berg 15, 58454 Witten, Germany
"Competences such as creative thinking and advanced problem-solving are as essential in economic and social as in
artistic fields."
"Without education as a core policy, innovation will remain unsupported. It must promote talent and creativity from
an early stage."
These statements can be found in the proposal of the European Commission concerning the European Year of Creativity
and Innovation 2009. This proposal furthermore states that this Year seeks to prioritise "awakening and reinforcing
creativity and innovation or developing innovative pedagogic approaches involving the creative arts and science in
schools".
But what is creativity? How does it emerge and why and for whom is it important that it emerges?
The effe would like - together with you - to address these questions, as strengthening creativity has been a major
objective of the organisation since its inception 20 years ago in 1989. To us, creativity and innovation in education
are strongly connected to effe's central priorities namely the freedom of self-development, the right to education
and the quality of teacher education.
In the conference program we hope to guide teachers, trainee teachers, teacher educators, educationalists and policy
makers to further develop their own creative capacities. At the same time we want to establish how best to cultivate
these capacities in teaching, in schools and in other learning environments.
We want to initiate a common dialogue and exchange. Five questions are central:
1. What is creativity? (Is it a talent, a technique, a skill?)
2. What does it take to become creative?
3. What encourages or restrains creativity?
4. What should schools or learning organisations do or provide?
5. What conditions or opportunities need to be available within teacher education?
The outcomes of our joint work and the experiences of participants will be put together in a recommendation to be
sent to relevant committees and political decision makers.
In preparation for the colloquium we invite teacher education institutes from across Europe to share their methods
for fostering creativity and innovative thinking in teacher education by contributing a brief paper of 2-3 pages. The
paper - in English and/or German should reach us by the middle of April 2009 and will be available as working
material at the conference.
Host and partner of this colloquium is the Institute for Steiner-Waldorf Pedagogy in Witten. This Institute is in the
middle of a transformation process and is developing a new curriculum to meet contemporary challenges. More
information about this teacher education institute as well as a location plan can be found at www.wittenannen.de
The languages of the colloquium are German and English.
Programme: 
Programme_effe.pdf (179,42 KB)
Call for papers: Call_for_papers_en.pdf (77,48 KB)
