This morning we had our PgCert introductory session. I met my cohort and our tutor Emily. We each shared slides about our teaching experience and professional practice and exchanged thoughts about areas of interest. Everyone comes from varied and fascinating artistic backgrounds and I’m looking forward to some interesting and fruitful discussions!
Before the session we were each asked to read an article related to pedagogy and the visual arts and share insights from it. I read a brilliant article on ‘Assessing Creativity’ (Cowdroy and Williams, 2006) from the University of Newcastle.
This is a subject that is particularly interesting to me as a lecturer who tries to foster and grow creativity in students.
The article asked: How do we break creativity down into its constituent parts and then teach and assess it?
Cowdroy and Williams had some interesting answers that I’ll be putting to use with my 3rd year seminar group.
There were several pages on the research the team did around what is creativity and how to teach it, going back to Beaux Arts and Bauhaus teaching styles and referencing sources from Plato to more contempory studies. (I’m paraphrasing enormously here!) Finally they came up with 3 concepts that together must be present to produce work that can be assessed as having the highest creative impact. Conceptualization + Schematization + Actualization.
Highest level: Conceptualization + Schematization + Actualization
Intermediate level: Schematization + Actualization
Lowest level: Actualization
This emphasis that all 3 stages are necessary to gain the highest level of attainment is something that we teach our students already but seeing it simplified in this form is incredibly useful. This is something that I stress a lot with my 3rd year students who are working on their year-long final major project – without evidence of conceptualization – involving visual and theoretical reserach and evidence of their own original thinking – they will be unable to achieve the highest grade. To see this spelt out in this article, along with the research behind was reassuring.
Update: Since writing this blog I have spoken to my 3rd year seminar group about this research, however its clear that not all students have an interest in research and are happy working on the intermediate and lowest level. I believe that my role is to support them through that process whilst suggesting references that can enhance their project.
Reference list:
Cowdroy, R and Williams, A (2006) “Assessing creativity in the creative arts’ Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, 5 (2), pp. 97-117. doi: 10.1386/adch.5.2.97/1.