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Creative pedagogy: a case for teachers’ creative

learning being at the centre

Mark Selkrig & (Ron) Kim Keamy

To cite this article: Mark Selkrig & (Ron) Kim Keamy (2017): Creative pedagogy: a
case for teachers’ creative learning being at the centre, Teaching Education, DOI:
10.1080/10476210.2017.1296829

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Teaching Education, 2017
[Link]

Creative pedagogy: a case for teachers’ creative learning

being at the centre
Mark Selkrig and (Ron) Kim Keamy
College of Arts and Education, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

While educators in many parts of the world grapple with what creativity Received 13 June 2016
means in practice, discussions about creative pedagogy usually Accepted 12 January 2017
include the elements of creative teaching, teaching for creativity
KEYWORDS
and creative learning. This article stems from a research project that Professional learning;
occurred at a Preparatory to Year 9 school in Australia where we creativity; pedagogy; creative
worked with staff to explore their understandings of creativity and pedagogy; creative learning;
creative learning in the Arts. We found that while students’ creative teachers
learning is a fundamental element in a creative pedagogy framework,
the notion of creative learning of teachers is largely overlooked in
discourses of teachers’ professional learning. Given the important role
teachers play in student learning, we argue that teachers need to be
informed not only about how to teach creatively and for creativity, but
also how to consider possibilities and understand things in new ways,
thereby making a case that a teacher’s own creative learning is crucial.

Introduction
How teachers go about promoting creativity and use creative approaches in their teaching
has been a steadily increasing area of scholarship and research, though less is known about
how teachers themselves learn about creativity. Teachers’ professional learning in the area
of creativity is the focus of this article as we draw on a case study to explore theoretical
possibilities about how teachers might learn more about their own creative capacities.
Although specific discipline areas and content knowledge remain important in various
education systems across the globe, there is also a recognition that young people and com-
munities will require certain capacities or dispositions to navigate and manage living in an
increasingly fluid (Bauman, 2014) globalised world. Suto (2013) describes these as ‘ways of
thinking and ways of working’ and they have been labelled as General Capabilities (Australian
Curriculum Assessment & Reporting Authority, 2011), enabling skills (Lisbon Council, 2007)
or the 4Cs of critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration; and
­creativity and innovation (P21 Partnership for 21st Century Learning, 2002). The argument
is that these enabling skills need to be fused with the distinct ways of knowing subject areas
if education is to be relevant and effective in the exciting and uncertain twenty-first
century.

CONTACT Mark Selkrig [Link]@[Link]

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2  M. SELKRIG AND R. K. KEAMY

Craft (2001, 2005) argues that the discourses of creativity have become pedagogically
and politically commodified with a shift away from education and aesthetic concerns to
focus on economic interests. Simlarly, Harris (2014) states that ‘Creativity as innovation is
increasingly present in educational discourses, inexorably linked to notions of productivity,
while creativity for its own sake is more vilified than ever’ (p. 18). This is a contested space in
which the notion of ‘creativity’ remains unstable, and where no widely accepted definitons
exist. Banaji, Burn, and Buckingham (2010), for instance, identify nine different (rhetorics) of
creativity used across political, policy, economic, social and cultural discourse. Cropley (1999)
also maintains that creativity is more than ‘a matter of cognitive processes such as knowing,
thinking, recognising, remembering or puzzling out, but [that it] also involves factors such
as motivation, personal properties and feelings’ (Cropley, 1999, p. 517), which are a combi-
nation of psychological and emotional states, as will be revisited later in this paper.
Traditionally, there was an assumption that creativity is associated, understood and more
frequently spoken about in the Arts learning domain (Heilmann & Korte, 2010), thus the use
of the term ‘creative arts’. Recent findings challenge long-held beliefs such as this, seeing
them as ‘commonly held misconceptions that creativity is connected only to participation
in the arts and that it is confined to particular individuals, a competence of a few specially
gifted children’ (Cremin, quoted in Burnard & Murphy, 2013, p. viii). But not only is there still
poor knowledge in some places of what constitutes creativity within the arts learning domain
as well as across the curriculum, ‘Creativity and creative skills appear to be complex concepts
that students, teachers and arts professionals find difficult to discuss’ (Imms, Jeanneret, &
Stevens-Ballenger, 2011, p. 46). Further to this difficulty, there is the additional ‘interference’
in understanding in that ‘Although we think we speak the same language, we don’t always
share the same meaning’ (Artists in Creative Education, 2011, p. 21). With this unpacking of
long-held myths and uncertainties of language, there are concerns that ‘teachers are unlikely
to imitate and sustain [creative] approaches over the longer term’ (Galton, 2008, p. 77).
For some time it has been recognised that creativity extends across all domains of learn-
ing, such as Science and Maths (Fisher & Williams, 2004; P21 Partnership for 21st Century
Learning, 2002; Victorian Curriculum & Assessment Authority, 2014). Nevertheless, many
educators continue to grapple with understandings of creativity and what it means for their
practice in their discipline, which is a significant concern, given the major role and impact
teachers have on influencing students’ learning outcomes (Hattie, 2009).
With the identified issues related to creativity and learning outlined above in mind, we
engaged in a research project with a school recommended to us by our university colleagues
on the basis of its reputation for its approach to creativity in the Arts. The purpose of the
research was to consider ways in which teachers – both specialist Arts teachers and generalist
teachers responsible for teaching the Arts – and the leadership team at the school described
and understood creativity, creative learning and Arts learning. The research design was
exploratory in nature as we were also curious to explore what assisted or inhibited creative
learning.
Our research project occurred in a Preparatory Year to Year 9 (P-9) government school
that had been operating for six years in the outer northern suburbs of Melbourne. The
research team had some prior knowledge about the school and its reputation for teaching
the Arts. Approximately 1000 students were enrolled across both the Early Years and Middle
Years campus of the school. Within the student cohort, 40% had a language background
other than English and 2% identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Of the 80 full-time
 TEACHING EDUCATION  3

equivalent staff, which include a mix of full time and part time who teach at the school, 23
staff were in their first 2 years of teaching; approximately 50 staff had been teaching between
3 and 10 years; and another 21 staff members had more than 10 years of school teaching
experience.
As the research progressed, it became clear to the researchers and the school leadership
team that our project was also providing a professional learning opportunity for many of
the staff participating in the project. Throughout the paper, we focus on professional learning
and acknowledge the differentiation between the terms ‘professional learning’ and ‘profes-
sional development’. As O’Brien and Jones (2014) state:
This is more than semantics. There is a significant difference between the systematic career
progression associated with professional development and the broader, more critically reflec-
tive and less performative approach to professional learning. It is argued that developments in
education are not linear, so a degree of flexibility is required if professionals are to look critically
and constructively at change – and the term professional learning is a better way to epitomise
the key characteristics of reflective practice, critical evaluation and continuing learning. (p. 684)
Similarly, Mockler (2013), while questioning the murkiness between the two terms, argues
the benefits of viewing professional learning through the lens of professional identity:
… it becomes about ‘formation’, the ongoing ‘becoming’ of teachers, and thus necessarily tran-
scends the technical-rational conceptualisations of teachers’ lives and work embedded in the
teacher quality agenda and embodied in standards regimes. (p. 42)
To this mix of multiple understandings of creativity, professional learning and identity, we
add the imprecise and contested concept of ‘creative pedagogies’. According to Dezuanni
and Jetnikoff (2011, p. 264), creative pedagogies are seen as ‘both the imaginative and inno-
vative arrangement of curricula and teaching strategies in school classrooms and the devel-
opment of students’ creative capacities’. Specifically, we consider creative pedagogies
according to a framework provided by Lin (2011), in which three aspects are considered:
creative teaching, teaching for creativity and creative learning. In Lin’s framework, creative
learning is presented from the perspective of the students. In this paper, we reconceptualise
that framework, presenting an argument for the creative learning of teachers to be consid-
ered as an important aspect of their professional learning and identity. Furthermore, we
argue that it is necessary to introduce frequent and purposeful disjunctures into teachers’
professional learning in order to bolster their own creative learning capacities.

Creativity, learning and pedagogies

Attempting to characterise what is meant by the term creativity – let alone creative peda-
gogies – is no easy task. The complexities involved in grappling with this term move beyond
the simple binary categorisations of Big/High C and little/democratic c creativity (Banaji et
al., 2010; Craft, 2001; Kozbelt, Beghetto, & Runco, 2010; National Advisory Committee on
Creative & Cultural Education, 1999). Recent thinking about creativity considers the term in
relation to a continuum or range of categories that extend between the two poles of Big C
‘extreme forms of originality’ and little c forms of “everyday creativity” [original emphasis]’
(Fasko, 2006; Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009). Along with these broadened ways to think about
creativity, Csikszentmihalyi (1990, p. 198) also suggests ‘it is impossible to define creativity
independently of judgements based on criteria that change from domain to domain and
across time’. This implies that creativity is socially constructed and relational, and can only
4  M. SELKRIG AND R. K. KEAMY

be understood by people who share the same sorts of experience and culture and ascribe
it with a similar value.
The current discourses concerning creativity and education, according to Craft (2001),
relate to ‘the role of creativity in the Western world at the turn of the millennium; reconcep-
tualizations of the nature of creativity; and the reconstruction of appropriate pedagogies to
meet a reprioritization of educational aims and objectives’ (p. 5). As a consequence of these
discourses, the relational dimensions of creativity are being redefined and are now central
and thriving in the field of education, although as Harris and Ammerman (2016) suggest ‘it
may be creativity of an increasingly narrow kind’ (p. 109).
As our understandings about creativity evolve, so too do the ways in which we consider
learning, as learning is also a contested and complex concept. Along with learning being
seen as ‘finding something out’, Jarvis (2006) also argues another basic tenet of learning is
that all learning is experiential, but in instances when the notion of learning is reduced to
supposedly objective and scientific measures – the human experience of learning has been
removed.
Kalantzis and Cope (2012) maintain that we must continue to move away from constricted
behaviourist perspectives of teaching and learning and develop models to embrace aspects
of constructivist, humanist and social learning theories; models they refer to as ‘New Learning’.
The ‘integrative learning paradigm’ described by Clough (2010) also reverberates with many
of the ideas central to New Learning in the way it embraces notions of enacting dialogues,
creativity and holism; where personal learning and communication occur from actions and
learning occurs within networks, thereby linking to the perspectives of professional learning
advanced by O’Brien and Jones (2014) and the idea that ‘lively learning communities must
be mindful, meaningful learning communities, open to conceptual expansion of creativities
enabled by diverse and multifaceted ways of engaging’ (Burnard & Fautley, 2015, p. 254).

Creative pedagogy/ies
Creative pedagogies can be seen as a meeting place (Thomson, Hall, Jones, & Sefton-Green,
2012) where hybrid pedagogies are developed and default pedagogies are challenged.
Jeffrey and Craft (2004, p. 84) also stress the importance of the interrelationship between
creative teaching, or teaching creatively, to use their term, and teaching for creativity, as they
see ‘The former is inherent in the latter and the former often leads directly to the latter’
(p. 84). They explain how the interaction between the two is contextually driven and may
happen iteratively and even spontaneously, as learners model their responses on how their
teachers teach.
Lin (2011) advances a model of ‘creative pedagogy’, comprised of three interconnected
elements: creative teaching, teaching for creativity and creative learning, as shown in Figure
1. Lin’s (2011) model of creative pedagogy is employed in this article as the conceptual
framework for our discussion.

The elements: creative teaching, teaching for creativity, creative learning

When teaching young people, educators around the world are regularly encouraged to
provide situations that ensure engagement, curiosity and creativity in their teaching
 TEACHING EDUCATION  5

Figure 1. The three elements of creative pedagogy (Lin, 2011, p. 152).

approaches (Department of Education & Early Childhood Development, 2011; National

Advisory Committee on Creative & Cultural Education, 1999). Current school curriculum and
learning documents in Australia (such as those developed by the Victorian Curriculum &
Assessment Authority, 2014) and the General Capabilities identified in the emerging
Australian National Curriculum (Australian Curriculum Assessment & Reporting Authority,
2011) explicitly state the need for creative teaching. Worldwide, similar expectations are
evident (such as Education Scotland, 2015; Ministry of Education Singapore, 2015), and are
also the focus of scholarly articles, such as the recent publication by Fullan and Langworthy
(2014) in which creativity is considered as a fundamental aspect of ‘new pedagogies’ for
teachers.
Creative teaching places the focus on teacher practice ‘using imaginative approaches to
make learning more interesting and effective’ (National Advisory Committee on Creative &
Cultural Education, 1999, p. 89). Similarly, Craft (2011) states that creative teaching has a
focus on ‘exciting, innovative, engaging and often memorable pedagogy’ (p. 129). Teaching
for creativity, with its focus on the agency of the learner (Craft, 2005), include strategies that
enable students to explore new possibilities by arousing curiosity and motivation for learning
(Lin, 2011).
Much of the discussion about creative teaching and teaching for creativity, according to
Lin (2011, p. 152), neglects children’s creative learning through their own curiosity and will-
ingness to explore – traits of being human, which she sees as including experimenting,
playfulness, autonomy, spontaneity, collaboration, imagination and possibility thinking.
Jeffrey and Craft (2006) describe creative learning as the ‘middle ground’ between creative
teaching and teaching for creativity while Sefton-Green, Parker, and Ruthra-Rajan (2008)
suggest it is an imprecise term – a term in search of a meaning:
Whilst it may be an imprecise term, it does stand for a set of values focused around developing
individual potential and with an emphasis on authentic ‘deep’ educational experiences. (p. 12)
6  M. SELKRIG AND R. K. KEAMY

Methodology and design

The investigation that is being reported here emerged from a research project that was
based on a hybridised approach adopting aspects of constructivist and pragmatic paradigms
as described by Mertens (2005), along with elements of the ‘paradigm of complexity theory’
(Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2011), where relationships, holism, interactivity in context and
networks are considered. ‘A central understanding in complexity is emergence, the idea that
in (complex adaptive) systems, phenomena, events and actors are mutually dependant,
mutually constitutive, and actually emerge together in dynamic structures’ (Fenwick, Edwards,
& Sawchuk, 2011, p. 21).
We utilised a mixed methods case study research design informed by the work of Creswell
(2007), and drew upon approaches characterised in phenomenological studies. The principal
research question was: In what ways do teachers and the leadership team describe and
understand creativity, creative learning and arts learning in this P-9 school?
Staff who taught Arts (either as specialist teachers or generalist primary classroom teach-
ers) and the leadership team (the main principal, two campus principals and an assistant
principal) of a six-year-old Prep to Year 9 dual campus school in the northern suburbs of
Melbourne were invited to participate in the project. Twenty-three of the school’s teachers
participated in this study and data were gathered through questionnaires completed by
teachers and the school’s leadership team, focus group discussions and the use of journaling
and email prompts over a six-week period. The initial paper-based questionnaire allowed
each participant to provide us with individual responses about their qualifications, teaching
experience and personal understandings of creativity and learning. In this instance, partic-
ipants provided responses to sentence stems that began with the words: ‘Students learning
creatively in an Arts Education class looks/sounds/feels like …’.
Following the questionnaire, a series of multi-stage discussion groups occurred with the
school’s leadership team, teaching specialists from a range of arts disciplines and generalist
primary classroom teachers who taught the Arts. Four discussion groups, varying in numbers
of between 6 and 10 teachers, were initially conducted to explore deeper thinking about
creativity and its relationship to learning and teaching. The number of discussion groups
was largely determined by the school’s timetable and occasions on which groups of teachers
would be available to participate. Artists’ sketch books (with unlined cartridge paper) were
provided to all the participants at the end of these initial discussions. They were invited to
treat these as scrapbooks or journals where they could record their thoughts about creativity,
creative learning and teaching in whatever way suited them over a six week period. On four
occasions during the six-week period, participants were sent an email with prompts and
focus statements to stimulate their thinking about creativity (refer to Table 1).
This approach had been discussed with the participants, who agreed that regular email
prompts would act as a reminder for them and would also help to focus their thinking about
creativity. At the end of the six-week period, another round of focus group discussions was
conducted with teaching staff. The purpose of this final round of data gathering was for
participants to share their learning amongst each other with a particular focus on the jour-
naling that had occurred in the preceding weeks. During this second round of focus group
discussions (which became professional conversations), a summary of the major findings
from the first round of discussions with staff and principals was also disseminated to the
participants, thereby reinforcing that they had been heard and that the activity was
 TEACHING EDUCATION  7

Table 1. Summary of the prompts that were circulated via email during the six-week period of
the research.
Email 1 (Week 1)
The first lot of prompts you might like to ask yourself and consider for your scrapbook/journal are:
• Ways in which I teach creatively
• An example/s of teaching creatively I have used

Email 2 (Week 2)
The second lot of prompts you might like to ask yourself and consider for your scrapbook/journal are:
• Where I get my ideas for my teaching
• Where I get my ideas for creative learning in the arts
• The resources I draw on to teach creatively

Email 3 (Week 4)
The third lot of prompts you might like to ask yourself and consider for your scrapbook/ journal are:
• Examples of student work that demonstrates/requires a creative response from students in an arts class or when the
arts are used for learning
• Ways that students blend creativity with developing their arts knowledge
• Ways that students blend creativity with developing their arts skills

Email 4 (Week 6)
The fourth and final lot of prompts you might like to ask yourself and consider for your scrapbook/journal are:
• Creative learning that occurred for the student in making the work/s
• Creative learning that occurred for me during the class/es
• Some methods I use to record/monitor creative learning

genuinely iterative in nature. At the end of the project, a report was provided to the school
and the principal invited us to make a 30 min presentation to all who attended the school’s
weekly staff meeting, which again reinforced messages to the participants that their views
were important and they were being listened to.
No definitions of creativity were offered to the participants at any point in the research
project. Instead we reassured the participants that we were not concerned with making
judgements about predetermined definitions of creativity; we were interested in the ways
the participants utilised the term in their narratives of practice and the dialogue that would
emerge from our discussions.

Findings
Data from the various groups of participants were analysed and interpreted using two main
approaches. The first involved the analytic technique developed by Minichiello, Aroni,
Timewell, and Alexander (1995), which enabled us to generate a number of coding categories
based on the comments made by the participants in focus group discussions. In the second
approach, we categorised the questionnaire responses from each of the participant groups
into four themes:

• Action-oriented responses;
• Emotion-oriented responses;
• Skill- or outcome-oriented responses; and
• Thinking-oriented responses.

Considered thus, we drew a number of conclusions for each participant group:

8  M. SELKRIG AND R. K. KEAMY

• Principals: One of the clear messages in how creativity is used in the schools is not
accidental; it is purposeful and it is considered;
• Specialist Arts Teachers: There is a sense of mutuality of responsibility: on one hand,
creative learning occurs when teachers provide challenging, safe and collaborative
opportunities for learning; on the other, it is also up to the students to grasp these
opportunities and to take some risks, try new ideas and skills, and to work with others
in the process;
• Generalist Teachers Who Teach Arts: Creativity happens across many parts of the curric-
ulum and involves thinking, risk-taking and expression when opportunities exist for this
to happen. Creativity sometimes occurs with other students and sometimes individually.
Data arising from this case study were then interpreted using the categories of Lin’s (2011)
model of creative pedagogy: teaching for creativity; creative teaching and creative learning.
As mentioned previously, in this paper we do not intend to focus on the entire data gathered,
as this will be reported elsewhere. Suffice to say, the staff were able to articulate aspects of
their work that align with Lin’s creative pedagogy model and each of the elements: Teaching
for Creativity, Creative Teaching and Creative Learning. The approach to team teaching in
the school and the focus groups we established for the study provided opportunities for
peers to confirm, question, clarify and expand on the responses provided by the teachers,
acting as a form of member checking. However, the research design for this study did not
include teacher observations so we are not in a position to clarify or confirm if what the
teachers articulated actually occurred in their practice.
The European Union’s (EU) definition of creative learning, particularly the last sentence
in which creative learning is also described by what it is not, resonates with what the teachers
said, either in focus group discussions or in their responses to the questionnaire:
Creative learning is … any learning which involves understanding and new awareness, which
allows the learner to go beyond notional acquisition, and focuses on thinking skills. It is based
on learner empowerment and centeredness. The creative experience is seen as opposite to the
reproductive experience [emphasis added]. (Cachia, Ferrari, Ala-Mutka, & Punie, 2010, p. 19)
It is also clear in their report that creative learning to which they are referring relates to the
creative learning of students. What we now query, however, is the place of creative learning
for teachers, as we advocate the above definitions should apply equally for teachers as they
do for students.

Considering teachers’ creative learning

Teachers have been encouraged for a long time to engage in reflective practice as a form of
professional learning (O’Brien & Jones, 2014), even though there are multiple understandings
of the nature of reflection (for instance Brazeau, 2005; Brookfield, 1995; Cruickshank, 1987;
Schön, 1987; Selkrig & Keamy, 2015; van Manen, 1995). Engaging in reflective practice is
espoused as a strategy to assist teachers to analyse the impact of their own teaching practice
on learner achievement. Assessing learner achievement was something that the principals
in the study spoke at length about, particularly in relation to the use of data in professional
learning teams within the school:
In their professional learning teams they will bring the sense of a student to the group …. They
will work together with the data to build a sense of the kid and the direction they need to take
the child, and from that, they will generalise across ‘who else has kids with that sort of issue?’ and
 TEACHING EDUCATION  9

then build that as well. What that has done has got rid of that knee-jerk reaction to anything.
So they base all their changes on the data, rather than seeing a kid do something and say ‘Oh
that’s got to be fixed’ because that might just be a one-off. This gives a sense of those deeper
purposes and the deeper areas that will support their learning. (Principal 3)

Over the last two years we’ve worked really hard on shifting that thinking, of really how to analyse
the data, and how to use it to have the best impact on student learning and on programs. Based
on that data there are programs that have changed; inquiry units that have moved to different
year levels or activities that have really changed based on solid evidence …. People are starting
to talk a little more confidently. Even as young people they’re starting to feel more confident
around the usage of data. It’s the key area each time we do reviews where everyone says ‘I want
to keep working on that. I want to learn more. I still don’t get it’. (Principal 2)
Yet what persists in any discussion about data about students’ learning is the conundrum
associated with assessing students’ abilities when ‘… creativities are arguably the most dif-
ficult to assess’ (Burnard & Fautley, 2015, p. 255). Also challenging is how teachers, ‘become
reflective practitioners [by being] able to discern how a teaching method or activity can
stifle or trigger creativity in their students’ (Cachia et al., 2010, p. 50).
We had been led to believe by the school principals in the negotiations prior to our
research commencing, that the teachers – many of whom were relatively recent graduates
– were experienced in reflection and relished opportunities to do so (which was the main
reason for providing journals in which reflective thoughts and ideas could be captured). We
also knew from the principals that there was a strong culture of teachers’ professional learn-
ing in the school, with much of it occurring as a consequence of observing peers in action
and encouraging creative teaching:
Whilst we have a set of curriculum outlines and whilst we have a scope and sequence of what you
follow in any KLA [Key Learning Area] … we say to them: ‘There’s no specific direction here that
states this is how you present it and this is how you say it … Yes, this is what we need to do but
that opportunity for self-creativity and presentation … how are you going to do it? Other people
watch and say ‘What are you doing out there? How are you teaching out there …?’ Everyone’s
sharing their own creative approaches to things and not only does it empower those people
and gives a sense of self-esteem it also ‘give’ great opportunities for other people …. (Principal 1)
The preparedness of the staff to share and learn from each other’s teaching through the
skills of observation (Pollard et al., 2008) was not in doubt, although the following exchange
that occurred in one of the focus groups is an example that prompted us to wonder whether
the teachers’ ability to critically reflect upon what they were doing was somewhat limited:
Teacher 1: We’ve been approached with [the idea of sharing our experiences with other
teachers] before. I had groups of teachers who had been in the office and heard
me teach my Year 8s and 9s and say I should do PD [professional development]
.… They really liked the way we taught. We’ve been approached for it but we’ve
never taken advantage of it.

Researcher: Why do you think that’s the case?

Teacher 1: It’s a good idea but I’m still developing a lot of it. Like I don’t know what I do.
The guys go ‘That thing you do is really great’ …. I don’t know. I just do what I
do and apparently people take good ideas from it. I don’t go ‘I do Box 1, then
Box 2’ … Someone would have to watch me and tell me what I do, and then I
could pass it on.

Teacher 2: For me though, it’s the kids. If we were going to go out and do a PD, oh this
sentence is going to sound wrong, I’d feel naked without taking some of our
students along, because they’re the exponents of what we do.
10  M. SELKRIG AND R. K. KEAMY

While his creative and effective teaching practices are acknowledged by his peers, in the
above exchange Teacher 1 seems to grapple with not being able to articulate what it is he
does, whilst Teacher 2 believes his only way of contributing to other teachers’ learning would
be by demonstrating his pedagogical approaches in the company of his students.
It was during the project where several exchanges occurred similar to the one we have
highlighted above, or where teachers mentioned that their time meeting together was usu-
ally focussed on prescribed outcomes, that made us wonder about the professional learning
of teachers and how the creative learning of teachers such as those involved in this study,
might be encouraged.
Notwithstanding the obvious limitations of generalising on the basis of our particular
research project, generating a different approach to those mentioned above in developing
teachers’ creative learning will necessitate some changes. Our insights into the way these
teachers process their understandings of creative learning are consistent with a study of
in-service and prospective teachers in Greece, even though the participants regarded cre-
ativity as being crucial for students’ personal and social well-being, the majority of the par-
ticipants felt under-informed about creativity in primary age children and felt ‘not
well-equipped to act as facilitators for students’ creativity’ (Kampylis, Berki, & Saariluoma,
2009, p. 26).
Kampylis et al. (2009) concur with a review of literature relating to creative environments
conducted by Learning and Teaching Scotland, particularly in the way that there is a call for
improved teacher skills and a willingness to act as role models when teaching for creativity,
as is apparent in the following:
The evidence … highlights the importance of school culture in supporting or impeding creative
practice; the need to elicit teachers’ prior conceptions of creativity in education; teachers taking
on the role of learners to develop their own creativity; working co-constructively with a mentor
or coach – which may be a creative professional from an outside agency; and the importance of
teachers undertaking action research and reflection on their own classroom practice. (Davies
et al., 2013, p. 88)
One major change that we recommend be considered and also explored in further research
is not necessarily coming up with a different regime for ‘creativity’, but instead, ensuring that
teachers’ creative learning is named and legitimised. A first step in doing this could be in the
way that it is conceptualised and theorised.
If we reimagine Lin’s (2011, p. 152) model of creative pedagogy by placing the element
of Teachers’ Creative Learning at the centre of the model (Figure 2), this then becomes a core
element to inform and shape everything else a teacher is involved with: it is not possible to
teach for creativity or to teach creatively unless teachers have an understanding of their own
creative learning, which they see as an asset in the classroom (Ferrari, Cachia, & Punie, 2009).
As a consequence of teachers welcoming this additional asset of their own creative learning
into their classroom, possibilities can emerge that may further promote and encourage the
creative learning of the students they teach.
With a realisation of the minimal – or even no – impact on educators’ practices of once-off
workshops and invited speakers (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos,
2009; Lieberman & Pointer Mace, 2008), there is an increasing recognition that the profes-
sional learning of teachers needs to be situated, dialogic, dynamic and complex (Cochran-
Smith & Lytle, 2009). Team-based approaches to professional learning in schools, such as
team planning, learning teams, teaching teams and mentoring, are increasingly common
 TEACHING EDUCATION  11

Figure 2. A reimagined view of creative pedagogy with teachers’ creative learning at the core.

as a means of building staff interaction and cooperation (Cole, 2012), although building a
strong professional learning culture in a school is far from being a straightforward
process.
The emerging age of ‘collegial professionalism’, as Hargreaves (2000) refers to it, is meant
to create a climate for teacher efficiency along with contributing to an evolving professional
learning culture. Popular professional learning approaches that occur in schools, such as the
team-based approaches mentioned above (Cole, 2012), point to the importance of social
learning (Wenger, 1998) in the process of continuing professional learning of teachers. The
so-called ‘mentalist’ or cognitive approaches of simply providing facts and information about
teaching and learning are no longer enough. It is during interactions with other teachers
when ideas, beliefs and feelings are made explicit, argue Hakkarainen, Palonen, Paavola, and
Lehtinen (2004), and it is during interpersonal interactions when knowledge is created.
Building on the process of social learning advanced by Wenger (1998), pursuing a
community of practice approach can function as ‘… powerful sites of transformation, where
the sum total of individual knowledge and experience is enhanced significantly through
collective endeavour’ (Krause, Bochner, Duchesne, & McMaugh, 2010, p. 346). Hunter, Baker,
and Nailon (2014) discuss the notion of ‘creative pedagogies for professional learning’ to
explore the impact of Artist in Schools Programs on teachers’ professional learning and
capacity to generate the ‘creative capital’ (Fisher, 2004) of teachers in the arts education field.
Many of the pedagogical elements they discuss echo points made by others above. While
some growth in teachers’ creative capital such as art skills and pedagogical resources was
identified, Hunter et al. also highlight both Hatcher’s (2011) argument that ‘professional
learning for creativity is not reducible to the transfer and acquisition of pre-programmed
knowledge’ (p. 404), and the ideas of Hall, Jones, and Thomson (2009) that teachers’
professional capacity to engage in intellectual work to translate – or even transform – their
learning experience is crucial.
12  M. SELKRIG AND R. K. KEAMY

Much of the ‘work’ of teachers’ creative learning will be as a consequence of learning

through experience. This, according to Jarvis (2006), entails a complex mix of an individual’s
existing biography and experience in ‘social situations, the perceived content of which is
then transformed cognitively, emotively or practically (or through any combination) and
integrated into the individual person’s biography resulting in a continually changing (more
experienced) person’ (Jarvis, 2006, p. 134). Learning occurs for individuals in these episodic
experiences when disjunctures occur that disrupt prior understandings and force us to ask
questions.
At a collective level, such as in learning communities, disjunctures can also occur when
liminal spaces emerge, where roles and expectations are uncertain and goals are momen-
tarily unclear. Liminality – the ‘in-between periods in status change’ (Jarvis, 2008, p. 19) allow
‘persons [to] elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locates states
and positions in cultural space. Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt
and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention and ceremonial’
(Turner, 1969, p. 95). Even though we cannot be taught to be creative, by removing barriers
or inhibitions that hinder our creativity (Jarvis, 2010, p. 122), liminal spaces offer ways for
adults to engage in creative learning by ‘giving permission’ for them to return to the state
of playfulness, imagination and possibility thinking – the very characteristics of being human
described by Lin (2011).
Our research project created such a liminal space, which encouraged ‘possibility thinking’
(Jeffrey & Craft, 2006). The generalist teachers involved in the study in the last round of focus
group discussions raised the need to have ‘creative planning time’ together, where they could
work in self-nominated teams to consider ideas about creativity and develop an increased
understanding about ‘where my [creative] ideas come from’. This, they believed, would mean
that their ideas about creativity and creative pedagogies could be explored in an environ-
ment that was not focused on outcomes alone.

Conclusion
Whether the development of creative learning of teachers would need to ‘look’ different to
existing professional learning approaches is something of a moot point. Kennedy’s (2014,
p. 347) observation that communities of teachers who adopt enquiry or curiosity (Hunter &
Emery, 2015) as their uniting characteristic, rather than concentrating on practice alone,
have the potential to be much more proactive and capable of leading to transformative
practice, is a useful reminder that improving outcomes for students is more than reproducing
the practices of the past.
Hatcher (2011) provides a possible way forward. As a consequence of research he con-
ducted in Creative Partnerships in schools in England, Hatcher considers that Workplace
Learning Theory, a melding of workplace learning theory and activity theory, enables a closer
focus on learning for creativity in schools. A Working as Learning Framework (Felstead, Fuller,
Jewson, & Unwin, 2011) challenges the idea that one-off interventions enhance productivity
and improve business performance, and maintains that organisations should change their
thinking and provide liberating opportunities for non-restrictive learning environments and
develop their own strategies for improving learning, skills and performance. Organisations,
such as schools, creating opportunities for employees with diverse skills and experience to
work together can lead to stimulated learning and opportunities for collaborative activity
 TEACHING EDUCATION  13

(Felstead et al., 2011). While schools are focussed on compliance aspects of teachers’ work,
we are advancing the view that they should also promote opportunities for liminal spaces
to exist. Spaces that disrupt conventional thinking and approaches are important for teach-
ers’ creative learning.
As Hunter et al. (2014, p. 86) argue, we need to consider other ways to ‘better prepare and
support teachers to deliver new curriculum outcomes and engage meaningfully with
Australian education’s creativity agenda’. The move towards thinking differently about teach-
ers’ professional learning, described by O’Brien and Jones (2014), Mockler (2013), and Cole
(2012), resonates with Kalantzis and Cope’s (2012) call for ‘New Learning’ and Jarvis’ (2006,
p. 75) contention that ‘our experience of whatever it is, is always socially constructed and
bodily mediated’, is a step in that direction. If teachers are increasingly expected to both
teach creativity and teach creatively, then as a consequence of this study, we advocate that,
just like their students, teachers should be encouraged to be curious; provided with oppor-
tunities to understand things in new ways; learn how to focus on their own thinking skills,
cultivate their own agency and creative capacities.
Above all, we need to ensure that ‘The creative experience is seen as opposite to the
reproductive experience’ (Cachia et al., 2010, p. 19) and the values of creative learning
described by Sefton-Green et al. (2008, p. 12) of developing individual potential with an
emphasis on authentic ‘deep’ educational experiences also apply to teachers. It is imperative
that teachers’ creative pedagogies are not reproductions of tired and ‘safe’ teaching
approaches, and instead, their professional identities and teaching capacities are moulded
through the characteristics of reflective practice, critical evaluation, and their own continuing
professional and creative learning.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Mark Selkrig is a senior lecturer, Creativity and the Arts, College of Arts and Education, Victoria
University, Australia. His academic and research interests focus on the intersection and possibilities
of: art, creativity, education, change making and learning to build capacity and agency of individuals
and communities.
(Ron) Kim Keamy is an associate professor in the College of Arts & Education at Victoria University,
having previously been the director of Learning and Teaching (Curriculum & Policy) in the College of
Education for four years at the same university. His research interests are in the areas of educational
leadership and professional learning.

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