Creativity, Culture and Learning

EQ102

Year 1

Core Module BA Education Studies

Term 2

10 weeks

3 Hours

15 CATS

1x 2000 word assignment

Outside Students Request Module

What is this module about?

The word creativity is often used promisculously and uncritically in educational policy and practice. Rather than simply advocating the creative agenda, this module invites you to take a critical and reflective view on what creativity, creative teaching and creative learning are. As part of this we explore how these concepts can be seen to have evolved within contrasting educational, political and economic frameworks. This exploration of creativity will be juxtaposed with critical analysis of the concept of culture in which you will be encouraged to identify the ways in which cultural identity, values and beliefs impact on personal and collective attitudes on what 'being creative' is.

By the end of the module you should be able to identify a range of definitions of creativity, understand key issues that arise when the concepts of creativity and culture are promoted as essential components of 'education' and 'learning', and articulate how different forms of creative thinking, behaviour and learning can be encouraged via the use of contrasting forms of creative pedagogy.

Sample reading list:

You will be given readings ahead of each lecture. This course is interdisciplinary, so the readings will draw from a number of different fields. You may, however, find the following particularly useful for a general background to the course.

From the “creativity movement”:

Anna Craft (2005) Creativity in Schools: Tensions and Dilemmas Routledge
Ken Robinson (2001) Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative, Capstone

Critical literature on creativity:

Raymond Williams (1983) Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Fourth Estate. (Look up the entries on "Aesthetic"; “Creative”; "Culture" and "Genius").
Terry Eagleton’s entry on “Creation” in Fowler R (ed). (1987). Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms. Methuen.
Guat and Livingston (eds) (2003). The Creation of Art. Cambridge University Press. (A helpful collection of essays on creativity in aesthetics).