Dissertation

Constraints and Development of 'Everyday Creativity'

Spendlove, David

2008

Overview

The fostering of creativity within the school curriculum remains an aspiration of education; yet its development remains embryonic whilst it competes to be defined, recognised and developed within a highly constrained performance led school culture. The dual challenge of definition and implementation of creative practice has preoccupied academics, and increasingly government agencies, over the last two decades in what can be regarded as a resurgent wave of interest into the promotion of creativity; often in response to the apparent stifling effects of accountability, performativity and technicisation of education. The central tenet of this PhD by published work, a collection of thirteen publications, is the commitment to engage learners with creative processes during a creative, learning and product orientated experience, through the recognition of, and engagement with the originally conceived person, process and product emotional domains. Central to this is the examination and development of theory and practice related to creativity and creative learning and the identification of opportunities for nurturing creativity within primary, secondary and higher education. The priorities that have shaped the selection of publications for this thesis are twofold: 1) a corpus of materials related to the theme of creativity developments and constraints; 2) a selection of published materials which represent a combination of refereed national and international theoretical perspectives combined with a collection of practical level outcomes representing research informed contributions to practice. The collection of research papers draw upon primary and secondary sources of data through a predominantly qualitative research strategy. This is located within an interpretive paradigm and illustrates the examination of creativity from multiple and emerging perspectives over the period of the publications evidenced by the; synthesis, development, and contextualisation of the literature and theory related to creativity within design and technology pedagogy by drawing in new dimensions including gender, Information Communication Technology (ICT) and emotion. Central to this is development of practice through emphasis placed upon engaging with, rather than bypassing of, the creative process. This is represented through submitted publications: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12 and 13; synthesis of and contribution to the theory of creativity and creative learning, presenting a new working definition of creative learning which emphasises consensual assessment whilst connecting knowledge and imagination through engagement with a creative process. This is represented through submitted publications: 4, 6, 7, 11, 12 and 13; the original conceptualisation of emotion within a creative, learning and product orientated experience through the formulation of a triadic schema which locates emotion in three domains: person, process and product. Through the schema the location of emotion is prioritised as: a means to engage with risk and uncertainty (person), provide an emotional context to learning (process) and a recognition of emotional influence upon both the user and creator (product). This includes reconceiving the perceived conscious rationality in design decision making identifying that our emotions and feelings play a significant role in our creative, learning and product orientated experiences. This is represented through submitted publications: 1, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12 and 13. Early influence from this work has been extremely positive and three examples, in particular, frame the level of influence in relation to policy, practice and impact. Firstly (policy) as a result of the research presented 'emotion' has been added to the recently revised national curriculum statement of importance for design and technology; secondly (practice), the £150 million Creative Partnerships scheme has adopted the definition of creative learning formulated here and finally impact is recognised by an invitation to present the international research keynote address on the location of emotion in the creative, learning and product orientated experience at the D&TA international research conference 2007. These key outcomes are a direct result of the research activity into emotion, creativity and learning.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Education Policy / Pedagogy
• ISBN: 0438633512, 9780438633513