Texas Tech University
College of Education
Department of Curriculum & Instruction


Creativity in Higher Education Curriculum: A Qualitative Case Study of Pedagogical Processes and Practices


Dissertation Defense
Erin Justyna, M.A.
December 10, 2015

Presentation Outline

• Introduction
• Review of the Literature
• Methodology
• Findings
• Conclusions, Implications & Recommendations

Introduction

PROBLEM

Students in higher education are not being prepared to thrive in professional and social environments that require quick problem solving and ingenuity to resolve undetermined challenges.

Discover which pedagogical processes and practices foster the creative capacities of students in higher education courses.

Research Questions

• How is creativity defined in the context of teaching and learning in higher education?
• What pedagogical processes and practices foster creative capacities in higher education?
• How might higher education instructors be prepared and supported to teach for creativity?

Assumptions

• Creativity is an essential component to a quality education, career, and life was assumed
• All individuals have creative capacity
• Educators have the power to transform curriculum design and consequently the way we teach and learn.

Limitations & Delimitations

• Limited focus on five university instructors from a large, public, four-year university in the Southwest
• Purposeful sampling & participant self-selection.
• Data from other key members of the higher education community, such as students, instructional designers/consultants, or administrators not included

Review

conceptions of creativity

• Product - Creative if it is both a novel and appropriate, useful, correct or valuable response to the task at hand, & is heuristic rather than algorithmic (Amabile, 1996, p. 35).
• Process - "The process of having original ideas that have value” (Robinson, 2011, p. 151).
• System - Creativity happens "in the interaction between a person's thoughts & a sociocultural context" (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 23).

Creativity in Higher education

• Educational environment
• Physical
• Social
• Academic

Constructive alignment

• Defining the desired learning outcomes (DLOs)
• Choosing teaching/learning activities likely to lead to the DLOs
• Assessing students’ actual learning outcomes to see how well they match what was intended
• Arriving at a final grade (Biggs, 2003, p. 14)

Teaching for Creativity

• “Forms of teaching that are intended to develop young people’s own creative thinking or behaviour” (NACCCE (1999, p. 103).
• Involves teaching creatively, but is more concerned with development of student potential: encouraging creative self-concept, identifying creative capacity, & fostering behaviors and skills that may enhance creative development (NACCCE, 1999).

Social constructivism

• Knowledge is dynamic and socially constructed (Noddings, 2012).
• Roots traced to the cognitive development theory of Jean Piaget and the social development theory of Lev Vygotsky, however, John Dewey’s pragmatic views on education also contributed to contemporary ideas of constructivism (Noddings, 2012).

Methodology

research design

• Qualitative case study - Employed due to its unique ability to investigate “complex social units consisting of multiple variables of potential importance in understanding the phenomenon” (Merriam, 1998, p. 41).
• Interpretive lens of pragmatism

data collection

• Spring 2015 - Fall 2015
• Data sources: in depth interviews, classroom observations, course documents/artifact

Data analysis

• Preparation of data
• Initial open coding by hand
• Dedoose
• Thematic analysis - constant comparative method and classical content analysis

Trustworthiness

• Credibility
• Transferability
• Dependability
• Confirmability

Findings

Participants

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Research question 1

• Nascent Conceptions of Creativity

Research question 2

• Relationships between instructor and students
• Foundation of knowledge
• Student Engagement
• Real World Relevance

research question 3

• Lack of Formalized Training
• Misalignment
• Desire to Improve Teaching

Summary of Findings

• Defining and describing creativity in the context of teaching and learning proved difficult.
• Teaching for creativity: provide students with opportunities to construct a foundation of knowledge that builds upon their past and current experiences, engage in meaningful ways with course content, the instructor, and one another, and situate their learning in real world contexts.

Summary, continued

• Classroom instruction and student learning can be enhanced when instructors participate in training and development opportunities related to creative teaching and learning.
• Participants did not receive adequate training on curriculum design or pedagogical methods.
• Classroom instruction and student learning was enhanced when instructors participated in training and development opportunities related to creative teaching and learning.

discussion

Conclusions

• It is what students do (and therefore what teachers ask/enable them to do) that they learn - not what the teacher does (or says).
• Constructive alignment provides an operative framework for faculty members to incorporate creativity into the desired learning outcomes within their courses.

implications for the field

• Need for improved dialogue related to creativity in higher education
• Courses must be designed and delivered in such a way that activities and assessments develop creative capactities
• Need for increased training and development opportunities for instructors of all experience levels across disciplines

Future Research

• Include more instructors, from within and beyond the institution
• Expand into in-depth mixed method study
• Include other stakeholders of higher education

questions,

references

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