Creativity or Conformity? Building Cultures of Creativity in Higher Education ...

Permission can be granted to reproduce replications of these works for purposes relevant to the above mentioned conference, provided that the author(s), source and copyright see are bundled with each replicate. For various other uses, including extended quotation, please get in touch with the author(s). Abstract Whatever else it may be, imagination is challenging; this view appears to be shared by the literature on the subject and by popular traditions. While there is definitely little agreement about the complete nature, processes and goods of creativity, there seems to certainly be a fascination both equally with its complexness and the absolute impossibility of providing obvious explanations for this.

This daily news does not attempt to generate just one more explanation, nevertheless instead gives a structure for checking out creativity in the context of teaching and teacher education. The size of creativity in teaching is often evidenced by its products: ground breaking curriculum design or unique students’ operate. The focus with this paper, however , is in developing chances for educators to understand, check out and share their details as creative practitioners. These types of opportunities can be obtained in the form of creative reflection, a framework of creative strategies for engaging teachers separately and each in identifying and broadening their creativity practices.

The idea of innovative reflection issues the action-reflection dichotomy of reflective practice and runs reflection beyond cognitive, retrospective models to encompass the exploration of probability through perform, image-making, writing, action strategies and storytelling. The paper offers samples of and glare on these kinds of methods in the author’s use of creative strategies in a instructor education system at Queen’s University Belfast. Creative Expression, Creative Practice: Expressing the Inexpressible The idea and procedures of creative reflection have been developed in a teacher education programme by Queen’s University or college Belfast to boost the type of reflective practice on which the programme is based.

Creative representation is a framework of creative methodologies whereby teachers explore their practice and the liminal spaces among action and reflection. This kind of work is known as a response to the necessity in tutor education intended for the development of more complex types of reflection, associated with purpose, which in turn take increased cognisance of existing expertise from other exercises, particularly these aspects of psychology concerned with intellectual processes which includes problem-finding, perception, wisdom, creativity Leitch and Day (2000: 186-187). Imagination itself can be an evasive concept; the literature about them incorporates a range of viewpoints and dichotomies, raising many questions.

Individuals pertinent to the paper incorporate: is creativity a cognitive procedure, or could it be socially created? is definitely creativity to do with outcomes, or with techniques and features such as fluency, imagination and originality? what are the conditions which support the development of creativity? what is the nature of creative imagination in education, and does it have a place in instructor education? Among the assumptions where this daily news is based is that teachers are creative; by extension, educator education should therefore give them opportunities to discover themselves as creative and to enhance their imagination.

Craft (2001: 48) suggests that teachers are really creative: Certainly some of the qualities of high makers (childlike features, feeling below siege, staying on the border, high energy and productivity) which will Gardner pinpoints in Creating Minds (1993), also emerged as a feature of ordinary’ educators in one of my personal research projects (Craft, 1996a; Craft and Lyons, 1996). Craft’s allusion to productivity is definitely complemented by Eisner’s hunt for the processes, the artistry and the craft involved with teaching (2002). Both facets of creativity, product and procedure, are incorporated into the platform for imaginative reflection.

Particulars follow regarding how individuals engage in method activities as well as in deliberation for the outcomes of the processes. The process of creativity, strange as it is, is definitely a method to obtain fascination and speculation. Helmholtz’s classical style, developed in 1826, involves the periods of saturation, exploration and incubation; Poincare added to these types of the part of verification (Balzac, 2006).

The four-phase model developed with this study includes and elaborates on these types of stages: Version for Imaginative Reflection Stage 1: Planning This facet of creative reflection recognises that the creative process involves uncertainness and probability and that individuals need planning to access that state of receptivity, or perhaps Keatsian Negative Capability, which in turn Keats specifies as when a man has the ability to of being in uncertainties, tricks, doubts, with no irritable reaching after reality and reason (Buxton Foreman, 1895). With this phase of creative expression, threshold activities are offered to improve possibility also to free the imagination.

One of the most successful of such threshold actions has been the invitation to individuals to select photos and quotations on a relevant theme: educating, learning or perhaps creativity by itself. This activity is based on the notion of stepping stones to a liminal associated with exploration, such as Progoff’s program for coming into the twilight world of process yoga (Progoff, 1980). While individuals are in the act of choosing pictures and estimates which engage them, music is played out in the background to enhance relaxation and stimulate intuitive rather than logical decision-making. The activity is carried out without discussion to encourage focus and a connection while using unconscious.

An additional threshold activity is that of visualisation: for example , individuals are asked to assume their learning about their practice as a journey and to state this by means of images or writing. The sharing with the results is definitely part of the procedure for synthesis defined in the last phase of the model. Tolerance activities happen to be directed at the group all together as well as at people: for example , individuals are asked to imagine an excellent space for teaching and learning and suggest consequently something which some may like to include in this space. Offerings cover anything from comfortable seats to the position of this space at the seaside and the existence of flowers and music centres.

This kind of activity produces ideas regarding inclusiveness and introduces in to the discussion metaphors and symbols which enhance the learning process. The idea of bringing an ideal circumstance or universe into the realms of possibility through group visualisation is dependent on the process of reflective meditation in psychosynthesis (Ferrucci, 1982; Assagioli, 1999). Stage 2: Enjoy This phase is based on the assumptions which a good deal of learning takes place through perform, that enjoy is an important aspect of ethnical development (Huizinga, 1970), and this a group can create which means, possibility and new ideas through the operations of perform.

Play is likewise important since it has the probability of free individuals from external concerns so they really may your state of flow. In respect to Csikszentmihalyi (1991, 1997) this is an optimum state when the person can be fully targeted and submerged in what he or she is doing, generally with a good outcome. Those activities in this period are carried out quickly; their purpose is usually to generate strength, enjoyment of the group procedure and a range of new suggestions.

The processes included provide options for divergent thinking; they include brain mapping, creative work and thinking. The brainstorming methods from this model of the creative representation are up to date by Kelley and Littmann’s (2002) options for enhancing fluency of ideas and development within the context of team-building. Phase several: Exploration This kind of aspect of creative reflection is usually active, together with the purpose of building a product. Processes involved might include creative writing, storytelling, and also the use of artwork materials, or perhaps action methods based on psychodrama to concretize the experience (Moreno, 1994).

The exploration stage may be individual or group: it may take place in pairs or perhaps small groups. In one particular activity, an individual selects among his or her details as a tutor from a list; this kind of list includes the more apparent identities including mentor, assistant and instructor, as well as even more metaphorical ones as foot soldier, sower or link. The individual then simply elaborates this identity through writing and art, visualizing in detail, for example , what this kind of identity may possibly look like, its voice, its tools and just how it engages in relationship.

The below describes the process of search on the two individual and group levels. Participants, presented the task of expressing their understandings of themselves since reflective experts, arranged with each other the quotes, images and artefacts that they had chosen as visitors to express this notion.

The circle of people made from tissues paper was created as a communautaire piece intended for the final photo; this shows that the group product prolonged beyond those of a loose arrangement of individual ideas to a creative collaboration of knowledge and understanding. [pic] Phase some Synthesis Inside the final phase of imaginative reflection, which is akin to the verification tage of the Helmholtz/Poincare model, members present and reflect on their particular ideas, testimonies and group images. Through this phase, which can be adapted by McNiff’s procedure for dialoguing with all the image, members engage with and reflect on the artefact engendered by the innovative process (McNiff, 1992).

Through this process, the experience and learning are synthesised into new understandings, and also the identification of recent questions which might be raised about professional practice. The image listed below represents the field of reflective practice as created by a group of practitioners by making use of props. pic] Discussion about this picture revealed that each of the scarves, that are circumscribing and containing the world of reflective practice, represents a strength possessed by one of the practitioners, even though the Russian dolls and the teddy bear on the border of the group symbolise all those learners whom exclude themselves from learning.

The act of dialoguing with the picture engendered suggestions amongst the participants for participating those who are currently on the outside and who have not found an effective means of manifestation. In many ways, the process of writing this paper is a struggle to communicate that which is inexpressible; it truly is challenging to articulate the complexity in the spaces between reflection and practice, and also the complexity of creativity alone. It is expected that even more research is going to indicate perhaps the processes of creative expression can take satisfactory cognisance of those complexities to back up teachers in recognising and expressing all their creativity.

Recommendations Assagioli, R. (1999) The Act of Will: Helpful information for Self-Actualization and Self-Realization, Knaphill, David Platts Publishing Company Balzac, Farrenheit. (2006) Exploring the Brain’s Role in Creativity’, Neuropsychiatry Reviews, Volume. 7, number 5, Might 2006. http://www. neuropsychiatryreviews. com/may06/einstein. html Accessed 14/11/2006 Buxton Foreman, They would. (1895, Full revised edition) The Words of David Keats, London: Reeves & Turner Create, A. (2001)’ Little c Creativity’, Craft, A. Jeffrey, B, and Leibling, Meters. (eds. ), Creativity in Education, London and Ny, Continuum, pp 45-61 Craft, A. (1996a) Nourishing educator creativity: a holistic approach to CPD’, British Journal of In-Service Education, twenty two (3), 309-322.

Craft, A. and Lyons, T. (1996) Nourishing the Educator, Milton Keynes: The Open University or college Seminar Network Occasional Paper Series Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997) Creativity. Stream and the Psychology of Breakthrough and Advent. New York, HarperPerennial.

Csikszentmihalyi, Meters. (1991) Circulation: the psychology of optimal experience. New york city: HarperPerennial Eisner (2002) ‘From episteme to phronesis to artistry inside the study and improvement of teaching’, Instructing and Teacher Education, Quantity 18, Number 4, May possibly 2002, pp. 375-385 Ferrucci, P. 1982) What we may be: techniques for internal and religious growth.

New york city: Jeremy S. Tarcher/Putnam Gardner, H. (1997) Extraordinary brains: portraits of exceptional individuals and an examination of our extraordinariness New York: BasicBooks Huizinga, T. (1970) Homo Ludens: research of the enjoy element in lifestyle, London: Maurice Temple Smith Kelley, To and Littman, J. (2002) The Eight Faces of Innovation: Ideo’s Strategies for Beating the Devil’s Advocate & Driving Creative imagination Throughout Your Business London: Profile Leitch, L. and Day, C. (2000) Action research and refractive practice: towards a holistic view’, Educational Actions Research, Vol 8, you pp179-193. McNiff, S. (1992) Art as medicine: making a therapy of the imagination Boston, MA.: London, uk: Shambhala Moreno, J. M. (1994, Fourth Edition) Psychodrama and Group Psychotherapy, Mental Health Assets. Progoff, My spouse and i (1980) The Practice of Process Relaxation: The Extensive Journal Approach to Spiritual Experience, Ny: Dialogue Home Library.