#LTHEChat 288 – Imagination in HE learning and teaching
Imagine if mutual flourishing was central to a regenerative education system - human flourishing in the more than human world. Imagine if learning was transdisciplinary, and intergenerational, in a community with each other and nature - imaginative and …
Imagine if mutual flourishing was central to a regenerative education system - human flourishing in the more than human world. Imagine if learning was transdisciplinary, and intergenerational, in a community with each other and nature - imaginative and beautiful learning that prioritises learner agency, creativity, critical thinking, complex problem solving and ethical decision making.
How do we integrate imaginative learning and teaching into our daily work? As educators, we have a shared purpose to co-design a creative and imaginative approach to learning and teaching based on a clear set of values. As role models in teaching and learning, we can invite imaginative, creative, and playful pedagogies by manifesting these habits of mind each day. Cultivating the conditions for curiosity, imagination, and creativity is vital in nurturing these dispositions in our students and staff. At Bath Spa University we want to develop learners who are curious, creative, and confident to learn imaginatively alongside others in the community and in the natural world.
At Bath Spa University we are researching experimental sites for pedagogical innovation (Hay 2021a). Forest of Imagination is a long-term research project that invites everyone to have a conversation about the importance of our collective imagination and our connection to the natural world. As part of our university mission as a creative social enterprise, we emphasise social value, social impact, and the importance of social and environmental justice. Our creative methodology drives our ambition to be professionally creative, making creativity visible. We engage students, educators, and cultural and creative partners in creative and reflective practice that places curiosity, creativity, and confidence at the heart of a creative pedagogy.
An imaginative approach to teaching and learning celebrates differences and diversity in expression between students and staff. As tutors we can actively value the concept of playful learning, using our collective imagination and creativity to seek creative solutions to complex problems and contexts. These spaces of possibility and dialogue open up our imaginative learning potential as co-learners.
Nurturing curiosity and creativity develops confidence in both learning and teaching and, in collaboration with colleagues, is enhanced through supportive learning communities. Prioritising curiosity, imagination and creativity encourages us all to explore, experiment, and reflect through transdisciplinary experiences, and through opportunities for active learning and authentic multi-modal assessment. Staff and students engage in collaborative activities through the co-creation of learning and research.
Students aspire to their future careers through developing their academic and employability skills, and their creative confidence. Students are challenged at the forefront of their disciplines through the connection of curricula with research, professional practice, and knowledge exchange activities, including environmental sustainability through the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Our curriculum, learning resources and activities are diverse, inclusive, and accessible, enabling a sense of belonging, opportunity, and creative ambition.
Thinking about the conditions for cultivating creativity, we can create opportunities for inviting authentic learner agency to develop these imaginative and creative skills, for both individual and collaborative learning. Valuing this space of pedagogic emergence and possibility is vital to co-create inquiry and learning in an intra-disciplinary space. Noticing and witnessing learners' engagement is also important in this process – how they are listening, exploring, creating, taking risks, being playful, curious, making connections, communicating ideas, reflecting, and constructing meaning.
We need to co-create learning spaces that are personal, connecting, trusting, inspirational, creative, open, and inclusive, to invite learning that is joyful and complex - transdisciplinary, intergenerational learning in a community for human flourishing in the more than human world. Learning is like a forest, everything is connected (Bateson 2023).
References and further reading
Bateson, N. (2023) Combining, Triarchy Press, Axminster
Benn M., Hay, P., Rigby, S., Sapsed, R., and Sayers, E. (2020) 'Creative Activism, Learning Everywhere with Children and Young People' Forum Volume 62, Number 1, 2020
Eisner, E.W. (2002) From episteme to phronesis to artistry in the study and improvement of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Educaton, 18, 375-385
Hay, P. (2021b) 'Spaces of Possibility: reimagining learning' International Journal of Art and Design Education. Volume 40, Issue 1
Hay, P. (2022) 'School Without Walls. Education 3-13 International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education. Volume 50, 2022. Pp 521-535
Hay, P. (2023) 'Children are Artists: supporting children's learning identity as artists.' Routledge, London
King, H. (2020) Future-ready Faculty: Developing the characteristics of expertise in teaching in higher education. Proceedings of the International Consortium for Educational Development conference, ICED2020
Dr. Penny Hay is an artist, educator and researcher, Professor of Imagination Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries, Reader in Creative Teaching and Learning, Bath Spa University and Founding Director House of Imagination. Signature projects include School Without Walls and Forest of Imagination. Penny's doctoral research focused on children's learning identity as artists. Penny is the strand leader for Creative Pedagogy in the Policy, Pedagogy and Practice Research Centre, Associate Director of TRACE at Bath Spa University, Chair of Imagination Research Space, and co-chair of the eARTh research group focusing on education, arts and the environment. She was recently the co-investigator on an Erasmus+ project Interstice in Europe researching the space between art, children and educators, and artist-researcher on the AHRC funded Rethinking Waste Compound13 Project in Mumbai. Penny was awarded an Honorary Fellowship at Arts University Plymouth and a Fellowship in Imagination at the Centre for Future Thinking; she is a National Teaching Fellow and Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching, with awards from Action for Children's Arts, Thornton Education Trust, Landscape Institute and Creative Bath.
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