Expressing the personal and social by means of creative writing during a PSD lesson

Abstract

The main focus of this dissertation is on the infrequent use of creative writing during a PSD lesson. The design used for this experiment is a set of three lesson plans on the topic of Democratic Citizenship. Lessons were conducted by the researcher, under the observation of PSD teachers involved, and took place in a Boys Junior Lyceum and a Girls Junior Lyceum. This study starts off by giving a review on different forms of creative writing and on writing in PSD. It explores in much detail a very creative form of writing - the aphorism, which was developed by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Throughout these three lessons, students were introduced to the aphoristic style of writing and were encouraged to write in such way (and in other creative styles) themselves. Indepth interviews with teachers and students for further feedback on such experiment were used during the research. Creative written products and interviews were collected, analysed and discussed in more detail in this dissertation. Finally, the research found that such a try-out is highly appealing to students and this dissertation suggests ways on how this approach could be applied not only in PSD, but in other subjects as well.