Envisioning the Future: Working toward Sustainability in Fine Art Education

Fine art education provides students with opportunities to acquire knowledge and skills to respond creatively to their experience of society and culture. Fostering creative ways of knowing, thinking and doing requires studio learning conditions that promote the exploration of embodied perceptions, material sensibilities and conceptual ideas that are provisional, socially constructed and ever changing. Traditionally, art schools provided these conditions unchallenged because they were autonomous. Since the 1980s, however, art schools have been integrated into the academy, and face increasing pressure to meet the institutional demands of being in a university. Some argue this changed status means the academy, with its research and pedagogic traditions, is actually straitjacketing creativity. Furthermore, contemporary art practice has changed as artists are increasingly experimenting with interdisciplinary modes of working. This article discusses a two‐year major change initiative, undertaken within an urban Australian art school, designed to respond to this complex set of changed circumstances. It considers ways to address institutional compliance and viability demands while maintaining deeply held values about how to foster creativity in undergraduate students. The outcome is a new organising structure and renewed curriculum for the largest programme offering in the school: the fine art undergraduate degree. Educational renewal is conceptualised as a creative process and the approach to change is thus adapted from creative research methodologies. By treating pedagogy and curriculum design as a creative process, this change initiative, rather than straitjacketing creativity, has re‐envisioned an epistemological framework for undergraduate fine art that will sustain creativity education into the future.     

An empirical study of the construct validity of social creativity

Creativity can be broadly defined as a combination of interacting individual and environmental resources leading to the production of valuable solutions. This paper concentrates on the type of creativity that can be expressed in solving social problems. After reviewing the potentially relevant psychological and contextual variables intervening in social creativity, leading to individual differences in this capacity, we present results of a study testing the nomological validity of social creativity in a group of 70 pre-adolescents. The findings indicate that social creativity performance is linked with socially relevant variables such as social competencies, popularity, and parenting style. Finally, we discuss the relevance of a creativity approach in social domains such as violence prevention programs and education.     

Creativity: A social approach

Early thinking in the modern era often regarded creativity as a somewhat asocial means of individual expression, self‐realization, and self‐fulfillment. However, it also is a socially influenced phenomenon that serves society. A social approach offers the opportunity of distinguishing between large and small amounts of novelty, as well as between “orthodox” and “radical” novelty. Disciplines, teachers, and students differ from one another on these dimensions. This explains some differences among teachers in the way they see creativity and creative students. The social approach also emphasizes the importance of groups, role models and mentors, and classroom climate, all of which teachers can influence. A social analysis suggests guidelines for instruction and assessment that differ from those derived from cognitive or personal approaches.     

Leadership and Learning Landscapes: the Struggle for the Idea of the University

This paper focuses on the academic involvement in the design and delivery of new teaching and learning spaces in higher education. The findings are based on research conducted at 12 universities within the United Kingdom. The paper examines the nature of academic involvement in the design and decision‐making process of pedagogic space design, revealing some of the complexities and the tensions within this area of academic leadership. The research found that innovation and creativity on particular projects is often restricted by the project management decision‐making processes and that broader institutional aims are often underplayed once the design process goes into project mode. The paper concludes by calling for greater academic involvement in the design process in ways that allow for critical reflexivity based on discussions around the concept of ‘the idea of the university’.     

Creative Knowledge: The Centrality of Creativity in Teachers’ Conceptions of Subject English

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the notion of creativity as a core concept in English teachers’ knowledge and valuing of their subject. It draws on research from a broader investigation into teachers as writers and discusses one of the key findings of the study: that creativity is not only crucial to how teachers approach their pedagogy and subject content, but that contexts in which creativity is minimised in English teachers’ lives results in struggle or even a departure from the profession. The paper concludes with a call for teachers and bureaucrats to affirm creative knowledge as foundational to English teachers and their profession, and the ability of teacher narratives to offer a powerful contribution to debates in English teaching.     

Developing Design through a Creative Problem‐Solving Process: A Group Community Art Project

For the past few years, creativity has gradually become an important element in the national cultivation of talent in Taiwan. Although traditionally art education is closely linked with creativity, the academic research on general art education is very insufficient. Therefore, the goal of this research is to investigate how creativity could be cultivated in curriculum planning for general art education at technology universities as well as what students’ learning process was when they participated in a course's creative activity. The research applied the theory and steps of creative problem‐solving (CPS) on a general art course to design a group practical activity combining with the local community. This involved converting the steps of creative problem‐solving into different stages of group design activities with the goal of constructing a design process equivalent to the process of problem‐solving. The main research results revealed that students could experience the problem‐solving process through group design activities and develop their divergent and convergent thinking at the same time. Moreover, the cooperative learning model is the most appropriate teaching strategy for students from non‐art‐related departments when cultivating their creativity.     

艾夫里尔情绪创造研究述评

20世纪90年代,艾夫里尔提出情绪创造概念,认为情绪自身就是创造的产品,为创造力和情绪研究提供了新的视角。情绪创造概念是情绪社会建构理论的直接拓展,新奇、有效和真诚是这种心理社会现象的显著特征。个体差异与文化演变研究的结果表明,情绪创造特征具有个体层面和文化层面上的差异性。情绪创造研究打破了情绪与创造研究的“关系”模式,将来还需要从概念表征层面上进一步探讨情绪创造的实现。     

Neoliberalism and the discursive construction of ‘creativity’

ABSTRACT

This paper resists normative definitions of ‘creativity’ to argue that the concept is constructed by neoliberal discourses in education policy. The analysis is firstly centred on the Australian context, and this is further informed and complimented by a global perspective. Focusing on two pivotal policies, The Melbourne Declaration of Educational Goals for Young Australians and PISA 2012 Results: Creative Problem Solving, the paper argues that universal versions of creativity, such as those that align the concept with problem-solving or design endeavour, are a product of market logic. Using Foucault’s concept of homo economius, it traces how creativity is subsumed into discourses of workplace readiness and rapidly changing environments, and proceeds to identify how select and partial discourses of the concept, such as creativity as instrumental and determinable are supported, while there is a silence around alternative conceptualisations. The paper concludes with a discussion on how the discursive positioning of creativity by neoliberal themes and formations brings about real effects: certain work practices are valued more than others and particular student and teacher subjectivities are endorsed or demoted ‘in the name of’ creativity.     

Art and Design Blogs: a Socially‐Wise Approach to Creativity

Many images of the ‘artist’ or ‘designer’ pervade the media and popular consciousness. Contemporary images of the artist and creativity that focus solely on the individual offer a very narrow depiction of the varying ways creativity occurs for artists and designers. These images do not capture the variety of creative processes and myriad ways artists and designers work. Young creatives in particular are choosing to work with a social approach to creativity. An example of this approach is the world of blogging, a form of social media where young creatives have a very active voice. This article explores how creative bloggers, that is, artists, designers and makers who blog about their practice, use a social approach to foster creativity with a sense of community, environmental and ethical awareness, a value framework that is in opposition to the market‐driven notion of liberal individualism. Is there a way to include participation in the broader art and design blogging world as part of art and design education? What can we learn from such a social approach to learning in higher education art and design programmes? This article explores these questions and shares findings of an ethnographic approach to an analysis of art and design blogs. In doing so it argues for a socially‐wise approach to creativity in art and design education as a means of promoting values other than those usually connected to the market.     

Reply to Professors Day and Qing Gu

Science education in the United Kingdom faces a dual challenge in the near future: that of addressing increasing disaffection from the subject by pupils as they enter adolescence coupled with the downturn in learning as they leave primary school behind. Both bridging work and teacher creativity have been identified as key ingredients in ensuring pupil engagement in learning, yet innovation requires both time and a broader vision than may be offered by a normative and centralized pedagogy. This paper proposes a four‐stage model for curriculum development to encourage creativity, based on the experiences of teachers as they designed bridging work for pupils in science. A grounded theory approach is utilized to generate four concept categories emerging from participants' comments during the study. These are described as uncertainty, visioning, realization and readiness, and this research demonstrates that ‘bottom–up’ is a very effective method of professional development promoting combinatorial thinking and creative science teaching.     

Making sense of stewardship: metaphorical thinking and the environment

This paper sketches the fundamental characteristics of metaphorical language which enable it to subserve not only the shaping of particular discourses, but also crucial aspects of our powers of enquiry and understanding. It argues that without metaphorical creativity we cannot make adequate sense of the more complex and open‐ended aspects of our experience. This is illustrated from the way in which we deploy the closely related key environmental metaphors of ‘stewardship’ and ‘natural capital’, including the more specific ‘real option’ sub‐version of the latter idea reported on by other contributions to this Special Issue. But a condition of making such thinking operational and socially productive is the development of a genuine learning society.     

The Creative Path: An Interview With Dean Keith Simonton

Creativity tests measure specific cognitive processes such as thinking divergently, making associations, constructing and combining broad categories, or working on many ideas simultaneously. They also measure noncognitive aspects of creativity such as motivation (e.g., impulse expression, desire for novelty, risk‐taking), and facilitatory personal properties like flexibility, tolerance for independence, or positive attitudes to differentness. Raters can score the various kinds of test with substantial levels of agreement, while scores are internally stable to an acceptable degree. The tests also correlate to a reasonable degree with various criteria of creativity such as teacher ratings, and are useful predictors of adult behavior. Thus, they are useful in both research and education. However, they are best thought of as measures of creative potential because creative achievement depends on additional factors not measured by creativity tests, such as technical skill, knowledge of a field, mental health, or even opportunity. However, the multidimensional creativity concept they define indicates that assessments should be based on several tests, rather than relying on a single score.     

Counter-conduct in creative university research: deliberations on freedom

This article describes how a political assemblage currently at work in higher education is re-articulating academic subjectivities. This assemblage draws together entrepreneurial and humanist concepts of creativity into an intellectual resource that can change national economies. Academics are urged to use their creativity to counteract the narrowing funding base of the university. The article first introduces a history of the concept of creativity and explains how governmental agendas for creative industry and creativity in education emerged. Second, it describes a practice-based research project that grapples with the difficulties of knowledge transfer between the ‘creative’ and ‘social science’ academic disciplines. This raises questions about creative knowledge and reveals some ethical tensions in the performance of academic research. The research project is then positioned as a ‘counter-conduct’, used to short-circuit the procedures implemented for the conduct of creative research in the creative, entrepreneurial university.     

CREATIVITY, KNOWLEDGE AND CURRICULUM IN FURTHER EDUCATION: A BERNSTEINIAN PERSPECTIVE

ABSTRACT:  This paper draws on the work of Basil Bernstein to offer a (re-) conceptualisation of creativity for the English further education (FE) sector. It begins by locating creativity within the political economy of FE and argues that teaching and learning is constrained by an instrumental remit for the sector, which prioritises perceived economic needs over broader conceptions of education and training. The paper goes on to analyse the FE curriculum, relating Bernstein's work on generic modes to critiques of competence. It proposes a central role for knowledge and broad conceptions of skill in FE in order to contest an instrumental approach to teaching and learning arising from official discourse on competitiveness. The paper uses Bernstein's typology of vertical and horizontal discourse to argue that creativity needs to be re-defined in a way that recognises the value of principled, conceptual knowledge in vocational education whilst acknowledging the socially constructed nature of creativity and knowledge.     

Creativity: An essential component for effective leadership in today's schools

One of the most contentious areas in creativity theory is the question of domain specificity. How we conceptualize creativity — as something that transcends content domains, or as something that varies depending on the domain in question — has important implications for both creativity research and creativity training programs. The Amusement Park Theoretical (APT) model of creativity is the first creativity theory to successfully bridge the gap between these contrasting views of creativity. The APT model uses the metaphor of an amusement park to explore creativity. There are four stages: Initial requirements, general thematic areas, domains, and micro‐domains. The first level (initial requirements) is very general, and each subsequent level gets more and more domain‐specific. The APT model can provide a powerful framework for creativity assessment, selection of students for gifted education programs, and the development of creativity training programs.     

研究生教育要突出创新能力培养

研究生教育必须突出“创新教育”观念 ,注重研究生创新意识和治学能力培养 ,强化科研指导队伍建设 ,为研究生参加科研创造良好环境。     

Towards Advocacy: post‐positivist directions for progressive teacher educators

This paper seeks to draw attention to the extent to which liberatory pedagogical intentions can function as part of a technology of surveillance unless, as socially critical educators, we actively work against our own tendency to totalising educational discourse. It notes a number of folkloric traditions in pre‐service teacher education that derive from discursive practices which position students either as inevitably acting out a well‐documented scenario or as ‘victims’ of the dominant technocratic model of teacher education. This paper suggests a way forward for teacher educators through the application of post‐positivist theorising to what has come to be understood as ‘proven’ by past and current educational research. This process is exemplified in the discussion by the application of post‐structuralist deconstructive techniques to avant garde educational text in order to bring forward for scrutiny the binary oppositions in our own ‘transformative’ educational discourse. The implications of ‘advocacy’ research are discussed and a plea made for pedagogy that intervenes in socially critical practices by making problematic our own ‘versions’ of student teacher needs.     

Structured creative processes in learning playwriting: invoking imaginative pedagogies

The concept of the ‘creative’ in creative writing has a vexed history. This article explores the myths surrounding creativity and how they have influenced the way teachers have approached playwriting pedagogy. It reports on research into the teaching and learning experiences of students and teachers in secondary schools, focusing on the participants’ understanding of creativity and the impact this had on the pedagogical process. The research found that a counterproductive idealist view of creativity persists in classrooms: the teachers and students were operating on a conception of creativity and creative practice that reflected a belief in a mystical and unknowable creative process. This article explores the experiences of creativity through systems theory and argues that this approach can inform teaching and learning for creative processes and products. The article concludes that the teaching and learning practices were unnecessarily tentative and that knowledge of creativity theory would improve the students’ development of both playwriting proficiency as well as creativity-relevant skills. It suggests that demystifying the creative process should result in greater student proficiency and improved teaching and learning experiences for teachers and students.     

Growing Awareness

I propose a theory of conceptual development in which concept possession consists in seeing the world aright. The capacity to see things aright is primitive; it is not explained in terms of grasp of a theory or in terms of assimilation of socially determined norms of word use. The educational task in promoting conceptual development is to train the forms of awareness by which the learner comes to see the world correctly. I sketch the consequences of this approach for understanding expertise by drawing upon ideas that inform an ongoing research project investigating the attention‐dependent knowledge bases of experienced classroom teachers. One of the distinctive features of the theory is the central role it gives the concept of judgement in the account of concept possession so that conceptual development is theorised as an apprenticeship in judgement.