Preparing teachers to create education with young people—not only for them

Education is changing rapidly in response to social, ecological and technological pressures. Future teachers need more than strategies: they need the creative identity, relational awareness and professional agency to respond thoughtfully to diverse learners and complex contexts.

Led by Dr Lisa Stephenson at Leeds Beckett University, the partnership brings together eight universities across seven countries, alongside young people, creative practitioners, policy partners and funders. It asks how youth-informed, collective creative pedagogies can strengthen creative identity, social-emotional learning, inclusion, professional agency and ethical action.

• Leeds Beckett University — England
• Swansea University — Wales
• University of Strathclyde — Scotland
• Queen’s University Belfast — Northern Ireland
• University College Dublin — Republic of Ireland
• Curtin University — Australia
• University of Iceland — Iceland

Teacher education is shaped by different policy frameworks, professional standards, curriculum expectations and institutional constraints. Comparative research identifies where creative identity, youth voice, social-emotional dispositions and responsive pedagogy are supported—and where important gaps remain.

Year 1 is co-funded by Arts Council of Wales and the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), Welsh Government. The partnership connects international research with Wales’s commitment to creativity across initial teacher education, professional learning and educational leadership, and will contribute to OECD case studies on rethinking teacher education.

• Youth voice initiates the research and shapes action.
• Young people’s themes become Catalysts for Action, not findings left in a report.
• Creative practitioners and teacher educators translate catalysts into embodied pedagogical experiences.
• Pre-service teachers learn through participation, reflection, rehearsal and curriculum co-design.
• Universities embed and evaluate the work within ITE programmes.
• Seven national contexts create a shared inquiry while retaining local difference.
• Research examines impact alongside the conditions, tensions and support needed for sustained change.
• The work addresses gaps in evidence on collective creativity and social-emotional learning in ITE.

• Empower pre-service teachers as creative, reflective and ethically responsive professionals.
• Strengthen social-emotional learning, wellbeing, belonging and relational practice.
• Advance inclusive, anti-racist, democratic and culturally responsive pedagogies.
• Connect youth voice with meaningful curriculum and pedagogical co-design.
• Build international evidence, resources and policy learning for sustained change in ITE.

Longitudinal research with children, teachers and schools connects collective creativity, social-emotional wellbeing and ethical action. The Eight Dispositions provide a way to recognise complex relational learning without turning it into a checklist.