Contemplative Pedagogy in Higher Education: Growing Confidence, Creativity and Community

In September 2023, The Contemplative Pedagogy Network (CPN) is hosting a symposium in Devon, UK. This international event reflects the growing interest in the field of Contemplative Pedagogy, and is the latest in a series of conversations hosted by the CPN. The network aims to inspire, inform and connect people interested in developing more contemplative …

Care as choreographed: what is the role of care in higher education teaching?

In this article I offer a small-scale review of literature surrounding the topic of care in higher education, which I undertook as part of my PGCert in Creative Education at University for the Creative Arts. This article seeks to investigate the role of ‘care’ in the increasingly marketized university, which has seen further turbulence in …

The medium is the message: Decolonising the curriculum through textiles

Asked to reflect on issues around decolonising the curriculum, PGCert student and lecturer Nicola Truman began to explore her ideas through the creation of a textile piece that recognised the multicultural influences on western textile development and, more immediately, recognised the different cultures in her classroom – unifying them. She is at once reflecting on …

Communities of bad practice: resisting the ‘toxic’ university

"The language of crisis dominates the literature on the corporate university, urging us to act before it is too late. We are more optimistic, believing that resistance is alive and well" (The Slow Professor, 2016). With this comment in mind, Ray Martin confronts some facts around the breakdown of campus communities and offers suggestions for …

Call for papers: Learning Design in Creative Education

Although teachers in higher education have always designed learning experiences, most would not refer to themselves as ‘learning designers’. But while a core aspect of an academic’s role is to design learning experiences for students, the design work that university teachers undertake is poorly understood (Bennett, Agostino & Lockyear, 2017).  Although interest in learning design …

Exploring Education for Sustainable Development in creative disciplines

This article reviews literature to investigate the importance and wide benefits of fully integrating sustainability throughout Higher Education in creative disciplines. It looks at some ways that Education for Sustainable Development is proposed or already incorporated in creative education. It looks at how ESD can be integrated, particularly on Fashion Business courses, supported by Discovery …

How do international students learn critical theory best: through the traditional lecture approach, or through a “little and often” approach facilitated through short group discussions on given topics?

This paper aims to review the effectiveness of a learning intervention I designed for MA Illustration students, the majority international, by which they were introduced to bites sized chucks of critical theory which we would discuss as a group. The purpose was for these, which I called ‘the quotation of the day’, to be part …

What pandemic pedagogies teach us about the value of studio practice in illustration education

This article looks at the impact of COVID-19 on art and design education, the role of the studio and its relevance to illustration education in particular. Recent research papers are reviewed to identify issues arising from the sudden move to online teaching. Rhizomatic Theory is used to identify connectivity, collaborations and communities as being of …

How will the teaching of drama and acting in HE develop post pandemic?

In the article I look at hybrid/blended learning and discuss how it relates to the teaching of acting in Higher Education since the pandemic forced most teaching in HE online from March 2020. The article draws on five different case studies sourced from pedagogic literature that bring forth findings and examples of blended and online …