A journal article based on the material given during this workshop is available here.
I’m giving a workshop at Roehampton’s tenth annual Learning and Teaching Conference today. I’m going to be talking about what I call my search for a creative pedagogy, which is an answer to the question (or at least asks more questions!) about how one can teach creativity, specifically in relation to creative writing teaching. Here are some of the workshop activities we might do. My search involves research I have been doing since 2008, which has had two strands. Firstly I looked at my own creative practice and attempted to find out what it was I did when I claimed to ‘be creative.’ Crucially these ideas involved reflection my writing processes. This resulted in several different outcomes, some of which are ongoing, the most recent being an article I wrote for Creative Teaching and Learning Magazine called Small steps to creative learning: the toolkit approach to creativity. Secondly I looked (and am still looking at!) learning style theory, hypothesizing that I could use my discoveries and apply them as practical strategies for teaching creative writing, and specifically the ‘creative’ part of creative writing. One of the outcomes of this work is a journal article I am in the process of submitting to TEXT. There are several extra resources I want to provide for participants in the workshop, so am using this space to do so. Here is the beginnings of a list of strategies for use in the seminar room based on my research into creativity. This list also includes the references for today’s presentation. This list is a draft version of something I hope to turn into a much longer piece of work, so any feedback you can give (by email) would be much appreciated. Thank you. (Because it’s a draft version, you might find the ‘small steps’ article more useful!) Relevant blog posts include this one about creative learning and meanings of creativity and this one about using learning style theory to plan creative teaching, called How to Think Outside Your Lesson Plan.