Module Catalogue 2024/25

Pre Requisite Comment

N/A

Co Requisite Comment

N/A

Aims

The module aims to explore what creativity is, its socio-cultural context, how to develop and use creativity, how to support the creativity of other learners and the implications for ‘voice’ and agency of supporting or restricting creativity. Art-based experiences of making, interpretation and reflection, with observation of creative processes in the arts are used as a vehicle for the exploration of these ideas. As an outcome, students produce and present a portfolio including a piece of conceptual artwork, accompanied by a theoretical rationale, which relates to their personal creativity.
• Students will develop an understanding of creativity as a cognitive and metacognitive process.
• Students will be able to define and recognise the creative process and the thinking skills encompassed within this.
• Students will develop an understanding of the socio-cultural and economic significance of creativity as a C21 skill.
• Students will gain an understanding of historic and current perspectives of creativity.
• Students will develop an understanding of how to support creativity in other learners using art-based approaches and pedagogies.
• Students will enhance their creative capacity in order to be more equipped to deal with sustained and rapid change in educational and socio-economic contexts.
• Students will experience the creative process, first-hand and through observation of creative practice in creative environments.
• Students will develop an understanding of how personal creativity relates to concepts of personal and civic agency.

Outline Of Syllabus

PART ONE: (semester one) SUPPORTING THEORY, taught via lecture, discussion and arts-based pedagogies.
• Perspectives of creativity: how creativity has been conceptualised historically and currently and how it relates to contemporary, moral, social and political agendas.
• Creativity and imagination as cognition and metacognition: creativity as a range of thinking skills which constitute processes of thinking leading to originality and transformation.
• Art as experience: Dewey’s conceptualisation of art as experience, Efland and Eisner’s cognitive perspectives of art and the translation of these theories to enquiry-based and artistic learning approaches which support creativity. Gallery based.

PART TWO: (semester two) EXPERIENCE, REFLECTION, APPLICATION, taught by artist/s, lecture, discussion and arts-based pedagogies.
• Creative perspectives: exploring artist’s experiences of creative process.
• Nurturing creativity: looking at the conditions necessary for developing creativity.
• Developing personal creativity: investigating personal creativity via the process of making art and then reflecting on this process: intensive, studio-based practice.
• Creativity, voice and civic agency: exploring the role of creativity in developing ‘voice’ which can enable civic agency and looking at how art and creativity do or do not influence society.

Intended Knowledge Outcomes

• Students will be able to describe creativity as a cognitive and metacognitive process.
• Students will be able to describe how to nurture creativity through art in education, with reference to relevant literature.
• Students will be able to identify and describe pedagogies and evaluation techniques for supporting creative learning in specific contexts.
• Students will be able to recall and recount historical and philosophical perspectives of creativity.
• Students will demonstrate insight into the application of artistic techniques to realise and express creative ideas.
• Students will express and present a concept of their own creativity.
• Students will demonstrate reflective insight into conceptions of creativity and art-based learning.
• Students will debate issues related to creativity and arts-based experience.
• Students will be able to describe the creative practice and processes undertaken by professional ‘creatives’.

Intended Skill Outcomes

• Students will demonstrate their cognitive skills for personal creativity: imagination, (possibility thinking, syncretistic thought, originality) analysis, evaluation, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, summarising, reflecting.
• It is expected that students will be able to compare, contrast and critique historical and philosophical understandings of creativity.
• Students will be able to identify, select and experiment with creative and artistic processes.
• Students will develop reflective skills and techniques in relation to education practices focused on art and creativity.
• It is expected that students will expand their ‘voice’ (self-awareness and self-expression) and therefore their potential for agency in future professions.
• It is expected that students will be able to identify and select appropriate pedagogies to support creative learning in a range of settings.
• It is expected that students will develop communication, interpersonal and organisational skills relevant to professional contexts.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

The module aims to model practices used by creative professionals within its teaching methods. This will be reflected in enquiry-based approaches and the use of studio-like practice and artistic methods. Artists will play a part in teaching the sessions so that students have first-hand experience of professional creativity. Art-based pedagogies such as ‘Art and SOLE’ and art-infused P4C will support discussion and illuminate creative process. Students will cohere, express and reflect on their learning by making pieces of art, again, modelling creative practices.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The assessment is designed to support student creativity and to encourage reflective, process-based ways of working which the module is concerned with, thereby the assessment complements and reinforces coursework within the module by providing experiences of the cognitive and technical processes which are being taught. The assessment methods are largely ‘catalytic’ in that they enable students to reflect on and express their learning (thereby exercising and developing their creativity) while simultaneously demonstrating what they have learned to the assessor. A ‘portfolio’ approach including numerous elements also models a form of assessment often used in creative and arts-based organisations and industry.

General Notes

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