Creativity and learning events

This paper reports on my attempt to complement dominant ideas about creativity in education.

Working from the perspective of teacher education, a central tenet of my argument is that creativity must engage with chaotic forces and complex models of emergence to reflect complex learning Events. This, I suggest, involves a radical challenge to some commonly-held views of creativity by critiquing a reliance on individualism, productivity and contingent values. These represent conceptual barriers to creativity in the complex ecology of lifelong learning, which I define as an open system.

However, it also draws constructively on ideas from anthropologist Tim Ingold and philosopher Gilles Deleuze to sketch a processual model of creativity in learning. Briefly stated, I argue that top-down “product” models of creativity can be complemented by a bottom–up “process” model on condition that practices which engage with the material forces of chaos can be identified and used in learning situations. The position is derived from a form of relational materialism which identifies creativity as an operator of new connections rather than as a producer of useful objects.

To do this, I look to practices in aesthetics to identify the deployment of improvisation, chance and error as the micro skills of a material engagement with chaos. The identification of these micro skills, I suggest, allows us to define ways in which everyday practices of pedagogy (e.g. inquiry / problem-based pedagogy) and research (e.g. creative / collaborative writing) can benefit from this creative engagement with chaos and complexity.