6 research outputs found

    Creative Learning for Challenging Times: The Promise and Peril of Risk

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    We are in an unprecedented time when it comes to the world’s complexity—never has the need been greater for students to be prepared to think for themselves and act creatively to solve perplexing problems. As an artist, faculty member and administrator in higher education, faculty developer, and researcher of creativity in college students, I am passionate about creating environments where students can exercise such skills. In the art culture, risk, experimentation, exploration, and even failure are expected routes that lead to finding one’s own style, voice, and signature statement. My awareness of these expectations first began to intensify as I advanced from student to instructor of art. Early in my career when I taught introductory courses in drawing and painting I watched bright students act unsure of their efforts on the first days of class. Students would frequently confess a lack of creativity before I would even have a chance to talk with them about their work. When a pattern of these perceptions started to emerge, I began to question how and why students sometimes do not consider themselves creative and what they must think creativity is to hold this view. Finding a dearth of empirical research on creativity in the college environment, I set out to better understand how students’ views of creativity influenced their sense of self and actions. The results of my qualitative study with students from a variety of majors convinced me that their creativity was often stifled by the time they reached college

    Understanding Early Faculty Experience: On Becoming Teachers, Scholars, and Community Members

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    This article focuses on findings from a qualitative study of the experiences of pretenured faculty within their first two years in the academy. The authors share narratives from faculty participants who are diverse in their disciplinary backgrounds and prior experiences, focusing on the expectations they had upon entering the profession, the challenges they encountered, and what they found helpful for meeting the many demands of faculty life. Their stories provide evidence of the enduring need for faculty learning communities. Implications of this work can inform the efforts of faculty developers, college and university administrators, and anyone with an interest in supporting tenure-track faculty

    Understanding the Complexities of Cognition and Creativity to Reform Higher Education Practice

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    This article focuses on the connections between the cognitive dimension of human meaning-making and creativity, using a metaphor from the artistic process of additive sculpture as a framework. The author weaves together various theoretical perspectives about cognition and creativity and shares the promise of recognizing the nexus of these notions for promoting students’ learning and development. Implications for human agency, teaching and learning in higher education, and future research are discussed to promote understanding of these complex ideas and inspire the reform of practice in postsecondary contexts. Evidenced daily in news headlines, political figures’ promises, corporate business plans, and technological advances, the challenges of a global, contemporary life are demanding more creative competency than ever before. Higher education is uniquely situated to prepare students to meet such challenges, but how? Consider this metaphor

    Creativity and Learning: Partners in Pedagogy

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    Student Moral Development

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    The Encyclopedia of Law and Higher Education is a compendium of information that tells the story of law and higher education from a variety of perspectives. Contributors have sought to place legal issues in perspective so that students of higher education and the law can inform policy makers and practitioners about the meaning and status of the law and also raise questions for future research as they seek to improve the quality of learning for all

    A Transformative Model for Designing Professional Development Activities

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    A new model for professional and organizational development is presented based on concepts derived from Wilber (2000) and Astin (2001). The model consists of an individual/public dimension and a reflection/performance dimension. Four quadrants that result from connecting these dimensions are formed: 1) individual reflection, 2) public reflection, 3) individual performance, and 4) public performance. We believe this model offers faculty developers a framework for designing thoughtful programs to aid faculty in meeting the wide range of internal and external demands that confront higher education institutions
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