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High Educ (2008) 56:633643 DOI 10.1007/s10734-008-9115-7
Erica McWilliam Shane Dawson
Published online: 14 February 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract This article explores the pedagogical signicance of recent shifts in scholarly attention away from rst generation and towards second generation understandings of creativity. First generation or big C creativity locates the creative enterprise as a complex set of behaviours and ideas exhibited by an individual, while second generation or small c creativity locates the creative enterprise in the processes and products of collaborative and purposeful activity. Second generation creativity is gaining importance for a number of reasons: its acknowledged signicance as a driver in the new or digital economy; recent clarication of the notion of creative capital; the stated commitment of a growing number of universities to more creativity as part of their declared vision for their staff and students; and, the recognition that the creative arts does not have a monopoly on creative capability. We argue that this shift allows more space for engaging with creativity as an outcome of pedagogical work in higher education. The article builds on the project of connecting creative capital and university pedagogy that is already underway, assembling a number of principles from a wide range of scholarship, from computer modelling to social and cultural theorising. In doing so, it provides a framework for systematically orchestrating a creativity-enhancing learning environment in higher education.
Keywords Creativity Pedagogy Higher education Graduate attributes
Learning
Introduction
Of all the attributes that university academics might want to claim for their graduates, creative capability is perhaps the most elusive. How would we know if the learning
E. McWilliam (&) S. Dawson
Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, QLD 4059, Australiae-mail: [email protected]
S. Dawsone-mail: [email protected]
Teaching for creativity: towards sustainable and replicable pedagogical practice
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experiences of students in a particular degree program were responsible for those students being more creative than they were when they entered the program? While it is one thing to be able to prove, through performance testing, that a student is more knowledgeable about accounting or physics or statistics, it is quite another to assert that a student has more creative capacity as a direct result of their program of study. It...