How might you use LEGO® to help transform your teaching?
In this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast, hosts Dr. Matthew Worwood and Dr. Cyndi Burnett are joined by the innovative A-level psychology teacher, Shafina Vohra, to explore the transformative power of creativity in the classroom. Vohra shares her personal journey into teaching, driven by passion following a life-altering car crash, and her subsequent development of a widely acclaimed LEGO® innovation program. This program serves not just as a teaching tool but as an inspiring catalyst for creativity across multiple subjects.
The episode dives deep into the myriad ways teachers can foster a creativity-rich environment, from leveraging LEGO® for teaching fractions in math to enhancing engagement in history lessons. Vohra emphasizes the critical balance between research and practice in education, advocating for teachers to take risks, collaborate outside their silos, and stay in tune with the latest educational research to inform and refine their teaching practices.
If I give a bag of lego to each student, you will never have a single pair of students with the same pieces, or the same way of explaining their answer, but they will all be correct, and that's where the creativity comes in.
Featured Guest
Shafina Vohra is an A-level psychology teacher in London, where she teaches in an inner city college and is currently doing a PhD in Design Engineering at the Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College. Her focus is creativity in the curriculum, and to this end, she has designed and developed a LEGO® Innovation Programme that is student-led, comprising industry projects, teacher training, and play, with a focus on creating workshops for primary schools around solutions for real-world issues. This is now a flagship, free community programme, and the work that she has done earned her spot in the top 10 finalists for the 2023, for the Global Teacher Prize!
