Reflective Essay: Co-Researching Co-Creation of the Curriculum

Last year, I shared on this blog some of my reflections on co-researching co-creation of the curriculum and my experiences of working with students as partners as part of my PhD research in this area. After this time, I was thrilled that Hermina Simoni wanted to carry on this partnership work by writing a reflective essay about our experiences of using arts-based methods together, and that she shared with me about co-production in her subject area of health care. I learnt a lot throughout this collaborative work, and I'm thrilled to now share our work in our new publication.

Co-researching co-creation of the curriculum: Reflections on arts-based methods in education and connections to healthcare co-production
International Journal of Students as Partners

Summary of our reflective essay:
Our research explores how students and staff can both benefit from participating actively in partnerships in higher education. Through qualitative research employing focus group discussions with students and then with staff, participants suggest a plethora of practices of co-creation of curriculum whilst also reflecting on benefits and challenges. The inclusion of two student consultants as co-researchers added another layer to this research project by engaging students as partners in learning and bringing multiple voices to the research collection, analysis, and dissemination processes. The inclusion of undergraduate student co-researchers’ perspectives offers a mirror in which we can observe what is needed to foster effective co-creation of the curriculum in higher education. This reflective essay illustrates perspectives about our experiences of engaging in this collaborative research using deliberative democratic methodology. The scope of this paper is to provide an informative picture about our experiences, draw connections with co-creation of healthcare, and encourage similar partnerships in education and beyond.

I hope you enjoy reading the full reflective essay via the IJSaP website.

ECER 2018 - Educational Inclusion

The European Conference of Educational Research (ECER) was hosted this year in the beautiful town of Bolzano, Italy in the Dolomites at the crossroads between Italian, Austrian, and Swiss borders. The Free University of Bozen-Bolzano hosted us, and I was fascinated to learn that their degree programmes are all trilingual. This set the stage for gathering education researchers from all over the world.

At such a big conference with 33 parallel sessions running at the same time, of course each participant navigates their own course through the conference proceedings and events. In this post, I attempt to summarise some of the take-aways throughout my conference journey this week.

Space to Reflect, Learn, and Make New Connections

I enjoyed attending the presentation by Labake Fakunle and Joceline Alla-Mensah sharing Universas21-funded work looking at the benefits and barriers of doctoral students’ engagement at networking events and conferences. Their participants cited financial barriers and time constraints as challenges, but they also saw great value in networking at conferences. This was certainly the case for me in attending ECER and, thanks to the Moray House Graduate School’s financial support and my ability to take a week of annual leave from my work, I was supported to attend ECER. As with the AERA and JURE conferences, I found great benefits to taking the time to learn about a wide variety of educational research, reflect on and share my own work, and connect with individuals researching similar topics. This was particularly the case at the Universitas21 FINE networking event (which I will write about separately soon) and the ECER networking events in the town plaza and at the Mareccio Castle which was a fabulous experience.

Inclusion through Sharing Values

There were some fascinating keynote talks and symposia that highlighted and problematised the conference theme of inclusion. Brahm Norwich emphasised how inclusion is respectful to all participants or partners by valuing the contributions of all, but he also noted that inclusion has become a popularised term in the current society. For example, co-researching has become a popular method to include participants’ voices more actively in research design and direction. Kyriaki Messiou provided some rich examples of including children’s voices actively in school improvement projects and research when they draw ‘power maps’ of where decision-makers are located within the school, take photos of where they do and do not feel safe to improve the learning environment, and write a ‘message in a bottle’ to share their wish list of other improvements. Messiou shared how inclusive research that challenges traditional power dynamics can empower all participants, and I similarly found the experience extremely valuable when co-researching with undergraduate students. 

Both Messiou and, in his keynote, Thomas Popkewitz, highlighted that inclusion represents our values. Although power dynamics are always present, they are made more transparent in some ways by showing how decisions are made and creating spaces for shared ownership (as in benefits of co-creation of the curriculum). At the same time, though, including sometimes may mean excluding others who don’t share our values and we need to be attentive to this exclusion. This made me reflect on how whether co-creation practitioners may exclude traditionalists when challenging the status quo of the traditional university hierarchies, processes, and structures.

Inclusion through Creativity and Play

In some cases, inclusion can mean inviting other individuals into existing spaces to contribute to decision-making. For example, Manuela Raposo-Rivas and Kyriaki Messiou each showed in different research in the UK and Spain how children can be invited into adult spaces to contribute to decision-making and the learning of both new and experienced teachers. Furthermore, Demet Lukuslu showed in the Partispace project how youth were invited into adult-led spaces in youth councils in Turkey. While these forms of inclusion are positive, they are operating within existing structures.

Because of my interest in creativity and play in teaching outside the box, I enjoyed learning about other examples at ECER of creating new, creative spaces for inclusion. For example, Bernadette Mercieca showed how the framework of well-known children’s literature such as Alice in Wonderland, the Wizard of Oz, or Little Red Riding Hood could be used as metaphors in a doctoral thesis to make concepts more accessible or understood in different ways as they resonate with readers. I was fascinated by this idea! In a session on gamification, Lina Higueras-Rodriguez and Esra Demiray each shared interesting presentations about gamification of learning to promote new spaces for engagement. These presentations led to a fascinating discussion about how ‘game’ and ‘play’ are two distinct concepts in English but, in Spanish, one word is used for both. We discussed the distinctions, and what we felt were playful methodologies versus traditional methodologies which that promote engagement. There are interesting connections to be made between play, gamification, and engagement in learning.

Inclusion through Teaching Excellence

I enjoyed hearing a number of papers on teaching excellence. For example, Sofia Chanda-Gool presented on university teachers in England fostering learning environments that promote a wellbeing framework; she found that these inclusive environments increase students’ sense of belonging, as well as their confidence to engage in groupwork and take risks in learning. Similarly, Mercedes Inda-Caro presented on Spanish teachers’ ‘activating teaching’ methods that develop learning environments that foster student engagement. Salvador Reyes-de Cozar also presented on the importance of counselling and student support, and the need for teachers to recognise students who are struggling and to provide support. Each of these three research presentations had similar findings to my own research into student perceptions of excellence in teaching and student support.

Thinking back on Thomas Popkewitz’s fascinating keynote presentation, he suggested that curriculum outcomes reflect individuals’ hopes and what we want students to become in our society. He argued that educational work and research are based on these aims and values, even when purporting to be objective. I reflected on the many different stakeholders in education and their various perceptions of teaching excellence. 

However, throughout the massive conference programme of 3,000 presentations centred around the theme of inclusion, it was striking that seeing students as partners and/or working with them to co-create the curriculum within secondary and higher education was almost non-existent. For me, this speaks to the need for university teachers and researchers to not only listen to students’ feedback and use their data in research, but to become more inclusive by working with students as collaborators. After all, if partnerships with children are successful, secondary and undergraduate students are more than capable! Perhaps the bigger question is whether academics are willing? Hopefully we can have some blue-sky thinking.

Creating Spaces: Embracing Risk and Partnership in Higher Education

My latest publication was co-written with Juliet Hancock, with whom I work in the Professional Learning team at Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh. In this essay, we reflect on risk in partnerships in learning in higher education, including initial teacher education and teachers’ continued lifelong professional learning.

In the essay Creating Spaces: Embracing Risk and Partnership in Higher Education, we explore risk and expand on challenges within the themes of:

• the ethos and values of partnership; 
• sustaining our commitments;
• vulnerabilities in trying new things; 
• negotiation of learning; and 
• rapport and relationships

We are both passionate about learner voice and exploring ways of creating opportunities for deep and meaningful partnerships. This includes considering ways of overcoming potential risks that working in partnership with learners may surface for all concerned in learning and teaching, including challenges arising from trying new things by teaching outside the box. The essay also considers how best to model and enact the ethos and values of partnership work that others might wish to take forward and further develop in their own practice.

We hope you enjoy reading the full essay as well as others in Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education.

Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching: The Benefits of Co-Creation of the Curriculum

I'm delighted that my newest research article, Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching: The Benefits of Co-Creation of the Curriculum, has been published in the International Journal for Students as Partners. This work builds on my previous work looking at the benefits (and challenges) of co-creation while extending new arguments about how co-creation helps students and staff to develop self-authorship that help them deal with challenges in the supercomplex world we live in.

See the abstract below:

This research explores the benefits of co-creation of the curriculum, which is seen as one form of student-staff partnership in learning and teaching in which each partner has a voice and a stake in curriculum development. This qualitative research analyses participants’ perceptions of co-creation of the curriculum in the Scottish higher-education sector. Initial findings show that some staff and students participating in co-creation of the curriculum perceive it to benefit them by (a) fostering the development of shared responsibility, respect, and trust; (b) creating the conditions for partners to learn from each other within a collaborative learning community; and (c) enhancing individuals’ satisfaction and personal development within higher education. Using Barnett’s conceptualisation of supercomplexity and Baxter Magolda’s three-pronged view of self-authorship, the author suggests that critical and democratic engagement in co-creation of the curriculum can develop the self-authorship of both students and staff members, including their cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal abilities which help them adapt to an ever-changing, supercomplex world.

Read the full article.

Forum for International Networking in Education (FINE)

It was a fantastic experience to attend the Forum for International Networking in Education (FINE) meeting and events around the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference in New York a few weeks ago, representing Moray House School of Education at the University of Edinburgh. I attended the FINE Forum as well as their networking events and some of their events in partnership with the AERA Graduate Student Council such as the Human Library Panel Session: Conversations on Global and Local Educational Topics. It was an extremely valuable experience for networking, hearing interesting talks, and also gaining helpful tips to enhance the PhD experience.

Several themes emerged throughout the FINE discussions, including the following tips which were shared with me which I hope to pass on to you here!

Depth, breadth, and interdisciplinarity

It was highly recommended by more senior academics that early career researchers should have not just breadth but also depth in your work and, specifically, 'programmatic research' that builds coherently and extends on previous work. Furthermore, reading outside of your subject area, engaging in interdisciplinary work, and taking risks by being open to different opportunities and interdisciplinary work was highly emphasised. For instance, Associate Professor Susan Bridges (Assistant Dean for Curriculum Innovation, University of Hong Kong) spoke about the value of making career choices based on what opportunities are most exciting or fun, and she described how sometimes unexpected experiences or roles can have a massive, positive impact on your career and satisfaction of working in academia. Go on – be bold and creative even if it may seem like a non-traditional choice or a risk. (My previous post on teaching outside of the box seems relevant here, as well as the Fearless Girl statue facing the bull at Wall Street which I saw during my visit.)

Although the AERA conference is focused on current American educational research and an overwhelmingly American audience, it was refreshing that the FINE meetings connected colleagues from around the world based at Universitas21 institutions. The FINE sessions emphasised seeing internationalisation as an opportunity and not an imposition, as well as seeing the power of interdisciplinary work across borders. Especially for those of us who are engaging in research on more controversial topics that unpick power dynamics (I'm thinking here about my work on challenging the status quo to embed partnership), the mentors at the FINE meetings encouraged early career researchers to be true to why we joined the academy. In this sense, networking and building relationships with colleagues was seen as a powerful way to humanise us and so that others may be more receptive to the controversial aspects of our work.

Networking and collegiality: draw from the power of groups

The FINE events, jointly run conference sessions with the AERA Graduate Students’ Council, and the breakfast and reception events were great opportunities for networking with other PhD students from around the world as well as more experienced colleagues. I really enjoyed making new connections with others from the University of Auckland, University of British Columbia, University of Connecticut, and Nottingham University as well as reconnecting with a colleague from Hong Kong University who I previously met at the JURE EARLI conference last summer (see a photo of us at AERA below)!

While attending conferences, presenting, and publishing your work, it was highly recommended to contribute to and learn from the collegiality of academia. This includes valuing the feedback from peer reviewers and colleagues to help you improve your work. I have found the peer review process immensely helpful for my own work. This also includes engaging in and drawing on the communities within our departments. While it was helpful hearing about how other PhD students work with their supervisors on research, have active communities where senior academics and also early career researchers mentor PhD students, it made me think that Moray House was missing a trick here and could do much more to promote a sense of community which appears to occur in other education schools. For example, some schools hold 'PhD Days' where all in a cohort would present a poster or a three-minute-thesis-style talk to their colleagues and receive feedback. I think this would be an extremely valuable exercise which would help our community be more inclusive and supportive while letting us get to know others' research and any synergies with our own.

Crafting your teaching identity

During the FINE sessions, Gladis Kersaint (Dean of Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut) emphasised the importance of teaching in a scholar’s career. She noted that the focus tends to be on one’s research identity rather than teaching (which was a theme re-emerging throughout FINE events and my own research which I hope to write about more in the future). However, it is important to gain teaching experience (even if guest lecturing or creatively teaching in other areas) and to reflect on your teaching identity. 

Later in the FINE meetings we learnt more from Alison Milner and Jennifer Tatebe (FINE Leadership Team Members) about how to articulate our teaching philosophy well to potential employers. They emphasised that this is a self-reflective portrait of teaching beliefs that demonstrates your key teaching experience and shows a strong understanding of your students, and can draw on Chism's (1998) five components of the teaching philosophy. It is not only important for recruiters but also for your own professional development. It should illustrate a few key teaching moments that illustrate your teaching philosophy, show synergies with your research, and – especially if being submitted with a job application – draw out synergies with the institution’s values and priorities.

Research for meaningful impact

Everyone focused on the importance of publishing to advance your career in academia and share your work. However, it is also important to have meaningful impact by sharing research beyond academia by informing the public of your research and its implications. This includes sharing your work on Twitter, blogs such as this one, or newspapers. An example was that, for every journal article you publish, you should either write a blog post or opinion editorial piece to share your work more broadly.

Ways to ‘do it all’ – co-creation of research

Both Marc Beauchamp (Associate Dean of Research, University of British Columbia ) and Andy Noyes (Head of School of Education, University of Nottingham) shared insightful reflections about engaging in co-creation of research with students. Marc spoke about ‘teaching like a rockstar’, by which he meant excellent student-centred teaching where faculty and tutors can work in partnership with undergraduate students to mentor them and involve them in their research (this sounds like other great examples that I saw in my research on student perceptions of teaching excellence). 

Andy also emphasised ‘teaching like a troublemaker’ and not just focusing on efficient, ‘what works’ teaching methods since it is important to develop students’ criticality. He also suggested that one way of doing this is to not see a teaching/research dichotomy but to do your research through your teaching by involving students (see my reflections on doing that through co-researching co-creation of the curriculum). 

We also discussed how there has been so little resolution in the teaching/research dichotomy in the last few generations. Perhaps co-creation of the curriculum is a solution by involving students more in our teaching decision-making and in our research? Rowena Arshad (Head of Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh) spoke powerfully about the importance of knowing and trusting our students, and the opportunities that co-creation of the curriculum can present.

Concluding remarks

The FINE forum and events surrounding the AERA conference provided valuable panel discussions, networking opportunities, and food for thought. It was great, too, to be part of the FINE collaborations with the AREA Graduate Students’ Council and to have the opportunity to attend such a wide range of other conference sessions at AERA (more to come on this soon on my blog). I really enjoyed hearing tips from senior academics, and it is good to end on their wise suggestion to own the privilege but also the responsibilities that come from being part of academia, and to enjoy the journey as an early career researcher by exploring and maintaining the feelings of excitement resonating with why we originally started our PhDs.

Our Moray House School of Education team at FINE 2018

3-Minute Thesis

Yesterday I participated in the University of Edinburgh's college-level three-minute thesis competition for the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. This is an initiative to challenge PhD students to condense their vast work into one PowerPoint slide (no transitions, props, etc.) and a three-minute speech. Today's competition really showed the great breadth of PhD research across our College, and it was great to meet other researchers from across the University.

I found this experience to be extremely beneficial, especially whilst in the midst of wading through what seems like almost endless quantities of data that I have collected and trying to analyse it and write up my results. It was helpful to condense my work into such a short piece, explaining what I have researched, my findings, and why they are important. I would recommend this as an exercise to any PhD student!

So what did I write? I'm happy to share my very condensed version of my work below to help others learn about my work, and potentially help those thinking about how to structure such a short summary talk about their work. Many thanks go to Mason Robbins for his insights and support in sharing this structure with me.

INTRODUCTION:

What’s the point of higher education? Transforming students from ducklings to competitive foxes or curious cats? Or helping them defy the odds to fly like mythical creatures?

A high-quality undergraduate curriculum that is engaging and relevant to learners’ interests and the needs of today’s society is vitally important, so why do academics often create curricula in isolation?  Why don’t they involve students in curriculum design?

LITERATURE REVIEW:

Co-creation of the curriculum is one form of student engagement where students and staff work in partnership to design aspects of higher education curricula.

There are different grassroots models of co-creation including staff working with past, current, or future students who are selected or democratically involved as a whole class.

But all models are based on respect, reciprocity, and shared responsibility.

THESIS:

In my research, I look at how students and staff advance their aims of higher education through co-creation of the curriculum.

METHODOLOGY:

I identified rare instances of co-creation and interviewed students and staff across 10 subject areas at five Scottish universities.

These co-creators had developed educational resources, grading criteria, or exam questions together and student consultants supported staff to improve their courses.

I also used arts-based methods (including images such as these) in four focus group discussions with students and staff who were not familiar with co-creation.

FINDINGS:

I have found that co-creation of the curriculum brings together students’ and staff members’ different forms of knowledge, expertise, and skills. Sharing ownership over the curriculum increases empathy and respect while also promoting student and staff engagement, creativity, and enjoyment of learning.

Beyond advancing the personal and professional development of students, co-creation also helps staff improve their teaching practices. By modelling democratic engagement in the classroom, students and staff are gaining skills together to deal with uncertainty and tackle the world's most complex problems.

CONTRIBUTION / CONCLUSION

Co-creation of the curriculum helps challenge consumerist hierarchies and humanise the education experience through inclusive partnerships between students and staff.

It’s not without its challenges and risks but, for those who do engage, there are many benefits that make higher education more meaningful and relevant to their aims.

It helps support duckling students to be creative, curious, and competitive job applicants while also helping them fly beyond what they think is possible.

Student perceptions of teaching excellence: an analysis of student-led teaching award nomination data

I am thrilled that my co-authored paper on student perceptions of teaching excellence was published in the journal Teaching in Higher Education. This research article culminates several years' work of supporting student-led teaching awards at Edinburgh University Students' Association, sharing the research previously via presentations and an internally produced report (see my previous blog post), and now engaging in this article with scholarly literature and theories of teaching excellence.

I'm able to provide access for the first 50 individuals to receive free online copies of the article via this link, and see the abstract below:

This research explores student voice and student perceptions of teaching excellence in higher education, and authors suggest implications for student engagement and student/staff partnerships in teaching and learning. Edinburgh University Students’ Association facilitates the longest-running student-led teaching awards in the UK, receiving 2000–3000 open-ended student nominations annually which raise the profile of teaching and reward strong teachers. These extensive qualitative data were analysed using aspects of a grounded theory approach to investigate student perceptions of teaching excellence. This research identified four key themes of teaching excellence: (1) concerted, visible effort; (2) commitment to engaging students; (3) breaking down student-teacher barriers; (4) stability of support. This paper explores these themes with respect to theoretical work on teaching excellence and suggests that students’ perceptions of excellence in teaching and student support advance notions of ‘critical excellence’ and ‘moral excellence’.

Read the full article.

Teaching Outside the Box

Last week I participated in a workshop led by the Institute for Academic Development on ‘teaching outside the box’. I really enjoyed the first half of the session when we worked collaboratively in groups to define ‘creativity’ and then to define ‘teaching’ separately, followed by the development and critique of our own definitions of ‘creative teaching’.

First, it was striking that for our group and for the others, the words we associate with creativity (such as ‘play’, ‘originality’, ‘engaging’, ‘exciting’, ‘dynamic’, and ‘fun’) tend to be much more positive than the words associated with teaching (‘lecture’, ‘content’, ‘learning community’, ‘collaboration’, ‘boring’, ‘contained’, and ‘should be fun’). This was a bit depressing, especially when thinking about recapturing the excitement of lectures to be, as Cathy Bovill suggests, as exciting as an adventure in Legoland® or reflecting on how creative teaching such as co-creation the curriculum benefits both students and staff by developing increased engagement with and enjoyment of learning.

It was challenging to create a concise yet all-encompassing definition of ‘creative teaching’. Our group came up with: a flexible and fun process that actively engages students and teachers in a challenging, collaborative learning experience. We wanted to emphasise that creative teaching can and should be messy and challenging, but it can also be extremely rewarding, meaningful, and beneficial for both students as staff when they overcome challenges together (for example, see my previous post about my research article). I enjoyed seeing the other groups’ definitions of creative teaching, for example the one that emphasised the tools, concepts, actions, and aspects of reflection that are embedded in creative teaching. By using stickers, it was also helpful to see which concepts resonated most with the group.

This exercise and subsequent collaborative review and critique of various definitions of creativity were extremely interesting and also beneficial for my forthcoming article on creativity in co-creation of the curriculum, which draws on some of my recent research and a presentation on creativity in learner engagement. It was helpful to have the space to step back from day-to-day activities and reflect on these concepts through having meaningful conversations with colleagues.

The second half of the workshop consisted of unstructured exploration of five different types of creative teaching methods, but unfortunately the lack of structure or case studies of how these activities were used in the classroom made the activities fall a bit flat. For me, this emphasised how creativity and fun can be important aspects of teaching excellence, but they can’t be implemented superficially just for the sake of it and need to be incorporated alongside clear learning expectations to add to and enhance engagement with academic subject content. See my previous work on teaching excellence and my article addressing challenges of co-creation for more on this, and stay tuned for my research article on creativity.

Learner Engagement, Co-Creation, and Creativity Across Educational Contexts

Last week, I was delighted to facilitate the event ‘Learner Engagement… In Conversation with Peter Felten and Meredith Piatt’ which I coordinated with Juliet Hancock and Cathy Bovill. This event was the first time in my new job as Partnerships and Professional Learning Coordinator at Moray House School of Education where I was truly able to combine my work in the professional learning office with my PhD focusing on student engagement and co-creation of the curriculum. 

It was a fantastic synergy of ideas and colleagues coming together across education sectors and there’s so much to learn from those in the primary and secondary education sectors and how they are dealing with some of the same challenges and issues that we are in higher education. Furthermore, this event was especially meaningful since Cathy Bovill, Peter Felten, and Alison Cook-Sather’s book Engaging Students as Partners in Learning in Teaching is partly what inspired me to pursue my PhD, and I was excited to have both Cathy and Peter at the event as well as many other inspiring individuals who have contributed to my PhD research.

Excitement, Belonging, Community, and Resilience in Learner Engagement

During the first part of the event, I led a discussion in front of the audience with Peter Felten and his inspiring final-year undergraduate student Meredith Piatt on learner engagement. I really enjoyed this experience since it pulled together my experience in facilitation and interviewing as well as my knowledge of the subject, and I had the opportunity to delve into some fantastic topics of conversation with them both.

In particular, I was struck by what Meredith said about learner engagement as being a feeling of excitement for her while she makes connections between her learning and everyday life, and what Peter said about how learner engagement is about staff connecting to what students find meaningful in their studies. They also highlighted how it was important for staff to have high expectations of students, which often create the spaces for students to take responsibility to take up opportunities and meet or exceed these high expectations. This is a theme that has also emerged in my PhD research which I am looking forward to exploring more in the future.

Peter highlighted how staff are teaching not just ‘heads’ but also ‘hearts’ and ‘bodies’, and this led to a really interesting discussion about the different emotions we feel in learning and teaching. Whilst many times we want these emotions to be positive and we want students to enjoy the fun of learning, it was also important that Peter pointed out that learning is not always fun. Learning is also about the challenging experiences that we have, which can sometimes be the most formative when we develop resilience through overcoming obstacles. However, there is a strong role that relationships and belonging play in student engagement to create spaces where these deep learning opportunities can occur in a constructive manner.

Learner Engagement at Scale

Following the discussion with Peter and Meredith, I enjoyed attending Mark Huxham’s discussion group on student engagement at scale. This was particularly interesting since working with large numbers of students is often seen as a barrier to both student engagement and co-creation of the curriculum. We had a very constructive discussion, ultimately focusing on how we need to find ways of ‘belonging at scale’ to help humanise learning and teaching in both large lectures and online distance learning. Others suggested examples of small-group break-out discussions within lectures or meetings outside of class with students then sitting with their group to create a sense of belonging. In the context of online distance learning, we discussed the importance of online discussions or other activities such as sharing photos of workspaces to build a sense of belonging amongst students whilst helping staff to learn about their students, and also how staff could record video introductions to sessions or develop audio feedback to ‘humanise’ online learning and, particularly, the experience of receiving constructive feedback.

Creative Engagement

In the last discussion group session, I led the group discussing creativity in student engagement. Each member of the group introduced him/herself by describing what creativity means to them. Examples included drawing connections across subject areas or contexts, lateral thinking, problem-solving, collective working and achievement that brings together individuals’ perspectives, thinking outside of the box, imagination, fun, and challenging the status quo. (I enjoyed hearing this last aspect of creativity since I saw a great connection with my previous blog post and research article on co-creation of the curriculum challenging the status quo!)

Participants’ statements are strikingly similar to definitions of creativity in the literature that suggest that creative pedagogy can encompass and further promote curiosity, imagination, play, exploration, ownership, innovation, and connection-making for both learners and teachers (Craft, Cremin, Hay, & Clack, 2014; Grainger, Barnes, & Scoffham, 2004; Jeffrey & Woods, 2009).

I then presented some of my initial findings in my research that benefits of co-creation of the curriculum include various aspects of creativity including:

•         creativity through learning from diverse individuals in the learning community
•          ownership and intrinsic motivation leading to creativity
•         trying new things despite risk of ‘failure’
•         values and empathy that promote creativity
•         fun and play in learning

In particular, we discussed how teaching and learning is a social practice, and often creativity can be seen through dialogue when we bring together diverse students and teachers in the classroom. We explored how it can be great to give students freedom and ownership, although this can pose risks. As one participant stated, ‘It’s okay to be stuck, but it’s important to know why you’re stuck and use that as a building block to become unstuck’.

This led us into a great discussion on how many participants felt that it is important to see learning as a process, rather than a product. We also returned to the idea from the initial session with Peter and Meredith that challenge is important, and by incorporating creativity into learning and teaching we help students to take ownership and challenge themselves, whilst they also develop important transferable skills and reflect on their work.

We concluded the discussion group by discussing some of the challenges to creativity, including the risks for both students and staff to experiment with new ideas and ways of teaching and learning. However, we left hoping that there are good education managers, policies, and processes in place that can allow us both as staff and learners to experiment and incorporate more creative practices into our learning and teaching.

Here, I will conclude by leaving you with some of the questions I posed to the discussion group, as well as some of our unanswered questions that may be helpful to reflect on:

•          What does creativity mean to you in your educational context, and how does it make you feel when you are creative?
•          In what ways do you give students ownership over their own learning, and do you have any examples of when you have been pleasantly surprised by students’ work?
•          Do creative practices help learners try new things and even fail within safe learning environments?
•          Do learners need to reach a certain level of understanding before they can play with ideas and concepts more creatively?
•          Within the context of high workloads and demands on both teachers and learners, do you feel there is there enough room for you to be creative in your context? How can we further facilitate creativity in our work?

Watch this space - I'm currently working on a research article exploring more of these themes of creativity in co-creation of the curriculum for a special issue on creativity in the Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal which should come out later this year.