Creative pedagogies and the contemporary school classroom

This chapter explores the ‘creative pedagogies’ of imaginative teaching and learning and the development of creative capacities in formal schooling. It considers how educational policies enable and constrain creative thinking as students learn through play and experimentation. The chapter outlines two classroom based case studies involving creative media technologies in Queensland, Australia. It argues that Queensland’s ‘open’ system of curriculum development enabled the two schools to implement transdisciplinary ‘rich tasks’ for the students. However, there are constraints related to the social mediation of creativity and the influence of high stakes testing in foregrounding ‘value’ and ‘purpose’ in learning.

Digital storytelling, podcasts, blogs and vlogs : exploring a range of new media texts and forms in English

Curriculum initiatives in Australia emphasise the use of technologies and new media in classrooms. Some English teachers might fear this deployment of technologies because we are not all ‘digital natives’ like our students. If we embrace new media forms such as podcasts, blogs, vodcasts, and digital stories, a whole new world of possibilities open up for literary response and recreative texts, with new audiences and publication spaces. This article encourages English teachers to embrace these new digital forms and how shows we can go about it.

Reimagining Creativity : Critically, Ethically, and Practically

True creativity sits in stark contrast with global trends to standardise education systems. It is, though, an attractive semantic and conjures up all sorts of positives. However none of the positive potentials of the creativity push are likely to materialise while process-oriented bureaucratic understandings of creativity dominate curriculum policy and development. Creativity requires pedagogy to forego substantial levels of control. It also requires ethical content because “creative” is an empty epithet, applying equally to the creation of beautiful music as it does to the creation of a nuclear weapon. In responding to Kapitzke and Hay, this chapter outlines the stark contradictions embedded in the creativity push.

First Literacies: Art, Creativity, Play, Constructive Meaning-Making

In this chapter art and play are considered children’s ‘first languages’, and therefore are placed at the centre of a curriculum for young children. Through art and play, children represent thought and action, which underpins their later understanding of the ‘second languages’ of reading, writing and numbering. Key issues such as image-making, graphic action, imagination, narrative, empathetic engagement and internalised thought are analysed as evidence of children’s construction of knowledge through art and play. Symbol making is the essence of being human. In children’s art and play, their symbol use captures their sensory modes in emotional and embodied ways, as children know their worlds and their place. The chapter addresses how children’s creation, manipulation and meaning making through engaged interaction with art materials are precursors to learning to read and write and, as first languages, should not be discarded nor replaced. The notion of creativity is explored in relation to pedagogical approaches. In a climate of testing regimes that emphasise ‘academic’ achievements, teachers are encouraged to not lose sight of imagination, pretence, constructive meaning making, holistic teaching and being a co-player and co-artist.

Creative rap assisted pedagogies

Creativity is an important graduate capability which needs to be cultivated in engineering students. The evidence suggests that to develop creativity and innovation in students it is necessary to give them significant practice is divergent thinking. This kind of practice is particularly important in disciplines such as the physical sciences and engineering which have traditionally had a heavy emphasis on convergent (rather than divergent) thinking. Accordingly, this paper presents a novel strategy for engendering divergent thinking in engineering students. It is an unconventional approach in which students compose and perform contemporary raps which help them to summarise and reflect on material covered in lectures.

Pedagogies of industry partnership

This chapter discusses the experiences of doctoral students who work across traditional disciplinary and university-industry boundaries. These new contexts for doctoral education are shaping how students are experiencing and responding to requirements for changing knowledge relationships. Drawing on Bernstein's discussion of pedagogic practice as being socially constructed, and his conceptual framework outlining the social implications of the weaker boundaries required for these knowledge relationships, we discuss students' descriptions of their topics, processes and challenges and show their strategies for performing scholarly research across these boundaries as key elements in the nature and achievement of “industry readiness”. In particular, we identify two key elements in the pedagogy of industry partnership: students’ understandings and management of the knowledge relationships involved in this work, and the dispositions they bring to bear in negotiating research and careers across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries.

Reshaping Doctoral Education : International Approaches and Pedagogies

The number of doctorates being awarded around the world has almost doubled over the last ten years, propelling it from a small elite enterprise into a large and ever growing international market. Within the context of increasing numbers of doctoral students this book examines the new doctorate environment and the challenges it is starting to face. Drawing on research from around the world the individual authors contribute to a previously under-represented focus of theorising the emerging practices of doctoral education and the shape of change in this arena. Key aspects, expertly discussed by contributors from the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, China, South Africa, Sweden and Denmark include: -the changing nature of doctoral education -the need for systematic and principled accounts of doctoral pedagogies -the importance of disciplinary specificity -the relationship between pedagogy and knowledge generation -issues of transdisciplinarity. Reshaping Doctoral Education provides rich accounts of traditional and more innovative pedagogical practices within a range of doctoral systems in different disciplines, professional fields and geographical locations, providing the reader with a trustworthy and scholarly platform from which to design the doctoral experience. It will prove an essential resource for anyone involved in doctorate studies, whether as students, supervisors, researchers, administrators, teachers or mentors.

Designing relational pedagogies with jam2jamXO

This paper examines the affordances of the philosophy and practice of open source and the application of it in developing music education software. In particular I will examine the parallels inherent in the ‘openness’ of pragmatist philosophy in education (Dewey 1916, 1989) such as group or collaborative learning, discovery learning (Bruner 1966) and learning through creative activity with computers (Papert 1980, 1994). Primarily I am interested in ‘relational pedagogies’ (Ruthmann and Dillon In Press) which is in a real sense about the ethics of the transaction between student and teacher in an ecology where technology plays a more significant role. In these contexts relational pedagogies refers to how the music teacher manages their relationships with students and evaluates the affordances of open source technology in that process. It is concerned directly with how the relationship between student and teacher is affected by the technological tools, as is the capacity for music making and learning. In particular technologies that have agency present the opportunity for a partnership between user and technology that enhances the capacity for expressive music making, productive social interaction and learning. In this instance technologies with agency are defined as ones that enhance the capacity to be expressive and perform tasks with virtuosity and complexity where the technology translates simple commands and gestures into complex outcomes. The technology enacts a partnership with the user that becomes both a cognitive and performative amplifier. Specifically we have used this term to describe interactions with generative technologies that use procedural invention as a creative technique to produce music and visual media.

Digital reflections on learning : a monograph by students of Digital Pedagogies, Semester 2, 2011

Learning a digital tool is often a hidden process. We tend to learn new tools in a bewildering range of ways. Formal, informal, structured, random, conscious, unconscious, individual, group strategies, may all play a part, but are often lost to us in the complex and demanding processes of learning. But when we reflect carefully on the experience, some patterns and surprising techniques emerge. This monograph presents the thinking of four students in MDN642, Digital Pedagogies, where they have deliberately reflected on the mental processes at work as they learnt a digital technology of their choice.

The enterprising artist and the arts entrepreneur : Emergent pedagogies for new disciplinary habits of mind

Traditional pedagogies in the arts in higher education focus largely on the studio experience in which a novice artist studies under one or more master teachers (e.g., Don, Garvey, & Sadeghpour, 2009). In more recent times, however, a shift in higher education curriculum and pedagogy in the arts has expanded this traditional conservatory model of training to include, among other components, career self-management and enterprise creation—in a word, entrepreneurship.This chapter examines the developing field of arts enterprise and arts entrepreneurship in higher education in a multinational context. The field is contextualized within the broader landscape of the creative industries and the consequential development of knowledge, skills, and the habits of mind necessary for artistic venture creation, sustainability, and success. Whereas the discourse about learning and teaching for business entrepreneurship is well established (e.g., Fiet, 2001), equivalent conversations about arts enterprise and entrepreneurship have only recently begun (Beckman, 2007, 2011; Essig, 2009). This chapter will address the contested definitions of key terms and concepts and also the question of how arts educators, although mindful of the pedagogic traditions of the arts school, are also drawing on the pedagogies of business entrepreneurship and cognitive theories of entrepreneurship to create innovative new transdisciplinary signature pedagogies for creative enterprise and entrepreneurship education in the arts.

Professional capabilities for twenty-first century creative careers : lessons from outstandingly successful Australian artists and designers

Artists and designers are positioned at the centre of the 21st century creative economy. In order to recognise and make the most of the opportunities afforded by this new era, artists and designers still require the creativity, disciplinary depth of knowledge, and technical skills traditionally possessed by professionals in these fields – skills which are a core strength of higher and further art and design education. However, they may also require a range of other, ‘21st century’ creative capabilities which are harder to define, teach for and assess, and are not the focus of traditional art and design pedagogies. This article draws upon the findings of nine in-depth interviews with award-winning Australian artists and designers about their careers and working practices, along with recent international research about the characteristics of the 21st century creative career, in order to highlight the importance of certain professional capabilities for art and design. It discusses the implications of these findings for art and design educators in universities, and curricular and pedagogic considerations associated with embedding these capabilities into undergraduate courses.

Putting the cart before the horse? Driving student engagement through first year career identity development in a large multidisciplinary creative industries cohort

It is now widely accepted that first year students benefit from pedagogies which mediate and support their transitions to university, and assist them to develop an adaptive student identity. We present an initiative which takes an alternative and additional approach to this way of viewing the first year experience. Based on research into creative industries career trajectories, this initiative focuses on the establishment of nascent career identity and professional self-concept amongst 600 first semester Bachelor of Creative Industries (BCI) students at QUT. The BCI is offered as a three year undergraduate program involving self-selection of majors, minors and electives, and also as a four year double degree with Business and Law faculties. Students engage in a scaffolded process of initial career visioning and reflective course planning, based on their own industry and careers research, guided by industry-active academic and careers staff, and drawing upon the experiences of final year students.

First year industrial design studio-based teaching pedagogies and students’ engagement

Student engagement tends to be viewed as a reflection of learning processes, and in the context of first year university studies, it is a crucial means of an educational process that establishes the foundations for successful later year studies (Krausse and Coates, 2008). In the context of first year design studio teaching in higher education, fostering students’ positive engagement poses challenges to design educators as current trends set these design studios to be large size classes that makes difficult to manage and follow up students’ individual learning experiences. At QUT’s first year industrial design studio classes we engage in a variety of teaching pedagogies from which we identify two of them as instrumental vehicles to foster positive student engagement. Concept bombs and the field trip experience provide such platform as shown in student responses through a learning experience survey.

Teaching creatively, teaching for creativity : QUT’s Creative Industries Faculty Showcase Panel

In this panel, we showcase approaches to teaching for creativity in disciplines of the Media, Entertainment and Creative Arts School and the School of Design within the Creative Industries Faculty (CIF) at QUT. The Faculty is enormously diverse, with 4,000 students enrolled across a total of 20 disciplines. Creativity is a unifying concept in CIF, both as a graduate attribute, and as a key pedagogic principle. We take as our point of departure the assertion that it is not sufficient to assume that students of tertiary courses in creative disciplines are ‘naturally’ creative. Rather, teachers in higher education must embrace their roles as facilitators of development and learning for the creative workforce, including working to build creative capacity (Howkins, 2009). In so doing, we move away from Renaissance notions of creativity as an individual genius, a disposition or attribute which cannot be learned, towards a 21st century conceptualisation of creativity as highly collaborative, rhizomatic, and able to be developed through educational experiences (see, for instance, Robinson, 2006; Craft; 2001; McWilliam & Dawson, 2008). It has always been important for practitioners of the arts and design to be creative. Under the national innovation agenda (Bradley et al, 2008) and creative industries policy (e.g., Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2008; Office for the Arts, 2011), creativity has been identified as a key determinant of economic growth, and thus developing students’ creativity has now become core higher education business across all fields. Even within the arts and design, professionals are challenged to be creative in new ways, for new purposes, in different contexts, and using new digital tools and platforms. Teachers in creative disciplines may have much to offer to the rest of the higher education sector, in terms of designing and modelling innovative and best practice pedagogies for the development of student creative capability. Information and Communication Technologies such as mobile learning, game-based learning, collaborative online learning tools and immersive learning environments offer new avenues for creative learning, although analogue approaches may also have much to offer, and should not be discarded out of hand. Each panelist will present a case study of their own approach to teaching for creativity, and will address the following questions with respect to their case: 1. What conceptual view of creativity does the case reflect? 2. What pedagogical approaches are used, and why were these chosen? What are the roles of innovative learning approaches, including ICTs, if any? 3. How is creativity measured or assessed? How do students demonstrate creativity? We seek to identify commonalities and contrasts between and among the pedagogic case studies, and to answer the question: what can we learn about teaching creatively and teaching for creativity from CIF best practice?