Creativity and curricula in higher education: academics’ perspectives, Margaret Edwards et al

How do practising higher education teachers define ‘creativity’? How do they see it as fitting into their curricula and their roles as teachers and academics? What strategies do they use to make teaching and learning more ‘creative’? What obstacles do they face?

Between 2002 and 2004, Margaret Edwards, Chris McGoldrick and Martin Oliver conducted deep-searching interviews with 32 members of academic staff from UCL and Liverpool John Moores University. Their results are summarized in this most useful paper¹ published as a chapter in Developing Creativity in Higher Education².

The chapter is packed with significant findings and interpretations of views from teachers actively engaged with higher education’s most challenging issues (notably assessment, feedback, key skills and employability). My research concerns examining how such ‘creative practices’ may help us to address these issues, and how new concepts of ‘space’ and ‘design’ can make creativity work in the HE context. I will also be talking upon the subject of learning space and technology at a couple of forthcoming conferences. In this article I will select from the many interesting points made in the chapter, reporting upon things that are particularly relevant to my work. However, there’s much more to it than this – so I recommend reading the full chapter (indeed the whole book).

A dissonance between ‘creativity’ (as perceived) and the demands of HE teaching

Definitions of creativity vary widely and contain conflicting and sometimes paradoxical elements, as should be expected for such a molar concept. However, there is a common belief that ‘creative’ practices introduce a degree of unpredictability, if not chaos, especially in cases where “the lived curriculum arose dynamically out of interactions with the students.” p.60

One respondent stated:

“You’ve got to improvise – it’s like a performance in a way.” p.60

This poses the potential for a conflict between analytical, objective driven learning design approaches and creative work. How can creativity ever provide SMART (specific, measurable, assessable, realizable, time-related) objectives? p.62

I argue that the conflict can be resolved through design thinking practises. For example, in their influential Harvard Business Review article of 1977, Eileen Morley and Andrew Silver described how professional film-making is a well structured, well understood formal management process that accomadates risk-taking and dynamic emergence of un-anticipated outputs (it is in that sense highly creative and controlled).³

A mismatch between feedback regimes and creative relationships

“Institutional arrangements for student feedback were not felt to be particularly effective in either university. Students could regard them as ‘an annoying routine’, and academics rarely found this type of feedback helpful (‘because … they just tick the numbers, and the numbers are arbitrary anyway – what does plus two mean?’). Student representatives on Boards of Study and informal feedback were found to be much more helpful. Generally, however, students tended to concentrate on details and ‘not to be all that insightful about the whole curriculum’.” p.63

I argue that creative practices, embedded within the curriculum, may actually improve the quality of feedback (helping to establish and maintain a mutual understanding and clarity of communication). However, success may be dependent upon establishing good creative practices and appropriate creative spaces (physical and online).

The necessity for appropriate creative spaces

“Creating spaces - several participants noted how ‘crammed’ curricula tends to be, attempting to cover an ambitious range of topics. A recurrent theme in interviews was the need to replace some content with ‘creative space’ – areas of the curriculum where teacher and student felt able to try things out and negotiate what should be done, and how to do it. Such spaces created opportunities for ‘more relaxed pedagogy and … discussion, workshop, individual feedback – you need this for deeper understandings’. Important features of such ‘creative space’ were that it should be enjoyable (‘I’d want to make it fun!’), part of the course, but not so tightly assessed that risk-taking and the exploitation of ideas were inhibited. Moreover, it was felt that the ‘space’ was not boundless. As a curriculum designer, ‘your creative act is in trying to build in these spaces … in a way … which will still allow students to feel secure that there is a curriculum and that they aren’t just in a free for all.’ “ p.64

My aim is to show how we can understand the role of different types of space in creative learning activities, and how we can build effective teaching and learning around such spaces. A ‘design patterns’ approach is an essential tool in achieving this. With such an approach, practises and curricula may be developed to harness the power of creative practices without resulting in chaos and over-complex requirements.

Some good practices

Teaching for Creativity – ‘… techniques that teachers associated with technology …’ p.64-65

•    Developing critical thinking.
•    Encouraging lateral thinking and problem-working.
•    Move between the university and ‘outside.’ Get students outside of classrooms.
•    Give space for group work.
•    Increase student confidence (in staff and student colleagues).
•    Have fun!

Assessment is an obstacle challenge

"Assessment appeared central to the whole issue of designing creative curricula. As one participant commented, ‘If the assessment process is right, you can cope: creativity is encouraged’." p.66

Creative approaches to assessment

"In Arts disciplines, exhibitions, portfolios and performances were used for assessment, and would be viewed by internal and external assessors. ‘Mini-vivas’ would give undergraduates an opportunity to comment upon their work and would be taped in final-year modules for external examiners. Outside Arts disciplines, more than one assessor would comment upon assessments that were specifically designed to incorporate creative work; these included oral presentations, poster demonstrations and role play." p.67

Creative spaces are important for…

Designing problem-based, research-based tasks for first-years, aiming to help them with the transition from school.

Designing final-year courses: “The idea of creative space … was felt to be particularly important here.” p.68

Creative practices and spaces help with student-teacher relations, help to get final-year students to be more active and challenging.

The traditional module structure hinders creative work

"A very considerable discouragement to creative curricular design and student learning was felt to be the university’s ‘insistence on [semester-long] modules … there is no space, there is assessment crowding in and reduced opportunity for formative assessment…" p.70

Do less better!

"Given the central role of creativity, one starting point might be to consider whether there is an over-teaching of content coupled with too little ‘high gain [student] and low pain [academic] assessment’ (Knight and Yorke, 2003)." p.73

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¹ Developing Creativity in Higher Education: An Imaginative Curriculum, Norman Jackson, Martin Oliver, Malcolm Shaw and James Wisdom, Routledge 2006
² Creativity and curricula in higher education: academics’ perspectives, Margaret Edwards, Chris McGoldrick and Martin Oliver, in Jackson et al 2006, p.60-73
³ A Film Director's Approach to Managing Creativity, Eileen Morley and Andrew Silver, in Harvard Business Review March 1977

Robert O'Toole : 14 Oct 2009 14:24 |  Tags: Academic Book Chapter Creative Spaces Creativity Inspiration |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem