A present absence: undergraduate course outlines and the development of student creativity across disciplines

ABSTRACT

While recent scholarship has suggested that colleges and universities have an obligation to help cultivate students’ creativity, existing evidence suggests that this priority is infrequently and imperfectly realized in practice. In order to further examine the potential prevalence of this gap, the present study conducted a qualitative analysis of all publicly available undergraduate course outlines from one Canadian university for the 2013–2014 academic year. Using a modified version of an existing analytical tool, we scrutinized syllabi from across academic disciplines for explicit and implicit references to student creativity, understanding these texts as significant locations at which meanings about teaching and learning are enacted. Based on this analysis, we argue that creativity occupies a relatively circumscribed position in many ways – particularly in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics disciplines, but may nonetheless be fostered through the deployment of relevant activities. Implications for the development of student creativity are considered.

KEYWORDS:

• Creativity
• course outlines
• disciplinary differences
• constructive alignment
• learning outcomes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Stephanie Bertolo, Joshua Feldman, Leah Pantich, and Christine Ung who made significant contributions to the initial stages of the work reported here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCiD

Elizabeth Marquis http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7362-678X

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning, McMaster University, funds to involve students in pedagogical scholarship.