Engaging Imagination: creativity in critical reflection for staff and students

Brief description of session and activities

This workshop takes its ethos from the book co-authored by Alison James and Professor Stephen Brookfield, which argues for the importance of cross-disciplinary creative pedagogies for thinking about how we learn, in addition to making, doing and deepening subject knowledge.  While creativity is something that we see as inherent in our approaches to becoming arts, design and media specialists, the authors believe it is equally important for developing self-awareness, reflexivity and learning dispositions.  However the adoption of creative pedagogies can still be viewed with caution by both staff and students, even in the domain of arts and design, through fears that learning might be trivialised or that an individual lack of creativity might be exposed.

The authors draw on extensive existing literature from multiple domains to consider creative pedagogies from two distinct personal positions; Stephen’s as a teacher of critical social theory, interested in power relationships in the classroom and how we can become better teachers; Alison’s favouring multisensory lenses through which to view and shape our self-construction as humans and personal narratives as learners. In this session participants will encounter key principles from the book through hands-on use of  three-dimensional media and think about how non-textual approaches to reflection can engender diverse thinking, compared to the sole use of written journals. Participants will also explore how using creative approaches can  re-energise student engagement with personal and professional development, with all its lifewide, not just institutional, implications.

Will students be involved in the session? If so how?

The student view and experience will be present in the session through feedback on activities and in exemplars of student work, as well as references to case studies of innovations with students using three dimensional media for reflection on learning. (Possibly also through actual student representation).

What will participants take away from the session?

A range of ideas and new thinking as to ways of enabling student reflection more creatively as well as more critically