Reshaping teaching in higher education through a mandala of creative pedagogies

ABSTRACT

Enhancing creativity skills and dispositions is one of the many student capabilities academics in higher education are required to promote. Although there are several issues that can hamper academics’ engagement with creativity including demands of performance indicators and limited freedom to experiment with teaching. In this article, we consider the findings from a research project with a group of tertiary academics who explored the complexities and opportunities related to teaching for creativity, creative learning, and teaching creatively. From the academics’ dynamic interaction with and between creativity and their traditional and academic cultures, we were able to extend on an existing framework to give a more nuanced understanding about how creativity can be incorporated into teaching in higher education. We present a mandala of creative pedagogies as an analysis framework and a teaching tool that can accelerate a range of skills acquisition for graduates, including connecting with global and local knowledges.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative pedagogies
• higher education teaching
• Indigenous pedagogies
• community of practice

Introduction

Amongst the many changes affecting higher education, universities continue to place a greater emphasis on quality and innovative teaching to prepare graduates to thrive in an uncertain world, that was well established even prior to the COVID era. Increased accountability, global competitiveness, and mobilisation of students are just some factors informing universities’ commitment to cultivate a skilled workforce (Harrison et al. 2022; Dondi et al. 2021). Along with providing discipline-based knowledge, many higher education settings also prioritise ‘deep learning’ by equipping students with particular capabilities, skills, and dispositions. These have become new goals for healthy and holistic human beings (Fullan and Langworthy 2014), and include sustainability leadership (Cook 2022), creative thinking (Livingston 2010), complex decision making (Oliver et al. 2011), global citizenship (Bagnall and Moore 2020), self-reliance (Burke et al. 2016), and effective collaboration (Ellis, Bliuc, and Han 2021). Education sectors in many parts of the world are also broadening curriculum to include culturally responsive practices and leadership regarding Indigenous knowledge and culture (AITSL 2022). These shifts in both curriculum and developing students’ skills, capabilities, and dispositions (such as creativity), can pose challenges for those who teach within these institutions to extend beyond their discipline boundaries and accustomed practices.

The new conditions to which academics must adapt involves enacting a broader repertoire of teaching practices and pedagogical approaches. While teaching quality across the higher education sector is often evaluated through applied reflective cycles (Chalmers and Hunt 2016; Hubball and Clarke 2011; Thomas et al. 2014), there is limited discussion regarding the contribution of academics’ own praxis to sustain quality teaching (Arnold and Mundy 2020). Praxis in an educational context is often about actions (practice) informed by critical and reflective thinking. According to Kemmis and Smith (2008), praxis involves examining practice for uncovering ‘educational ideas and ideals that have developed and are encoded in the traditions of the education profession’ (28), which provide a lens for academics to inquire into excellence in teaching in the present and what it might consist in the future (Kemmis and Smith 2008, 28). However, there is rare opportunity offered to teaching academics, as bearers of these educator traditions, to develop deeper understanding of their professional ‘sayings’, ‘doings’, and ‘relatings’ and their alignment with university moral obligations in recent times (Kemmis and Smith 2008).

In this article, we draw upon a study undertaken in a Balinese university, where a critical participatory action research project was implemented with a group of university teachers, to consider how to enhance creativity in teaching and learning as a capability that is now prioritised by the university. We share how this group of academics interrogated their understandings about creativity and their approaches to teaching utilising Lin’s (2011) 3-part model of creative pedagogies (teaching for creativity, creative teaching, and creative learning) as a basis for the inquiry. A more granular multifaceted engagement with creative pedagogies emerged through the inquiry which we (creatively) represent as a mandala framework. We outline the educators’ nuanced engagement with creative pedagogies and present the more detailed mandala of creative pedagogies they revealed to highlight a range of features related to sustainability leadership and traditional knowledges, creative thinking, complex decision making, and collaboration. We argue that the mandala we have developed has the potential to enhance and support higher education teachers’ capacities to engage with creative pedagogies, take risks and reposition their agency by broadening the remit for creativity in the areas in which they teach while also encompassing diverse knowledge systems.

Teaching in higher education

The expanding nature of teaching in higher education has positioned academics in unfamiliar territories, where they are required to venture beyond traditional disciplinary teaching, which necessitates risk-taking when they make pedagogical decisions. According to Kromydas (2017, 3), ‘higher education institutions operate under a very fluid and unpredictable environment’ and thus academics require adaptability and flexibility in addressing the demand for quality learning. For academics working in non-Western cultures, they are often expected to deliver learning that follows the Western university standard regardless of the apparent differences in culture, social, and economic systems (Kromydas 2017). Such demands on teaching academics encourage practice self-evaluations and change, which according to Brookfield (2017) stimulates more informed actions in responding to uncertain situations within their teaching practices.

Many activities of the contemporary university revolve around performance indicators, which Barnett (2020) argues have a dampening effect on academics’ creativity. Opportunities for academics to practice the habit of creativity are limited as they are restricted with extensive accountability measures (Cremin 2015), which can create a tension with academics’ aspirations towards freedom and creativity in teaching (Jarvis 2019). Yet creativity, identified as an attribute of resilient-engagement (McKay 2021) and self-directed learning, is an essential capacity for navigating future uncertainties and an identified graduate capability to be nurtured in many universities (Sale 2020).

Heath and Leiman (2017) claim many teaching academics are actively choosing to change their pedagogies and course design to better support learning, demonstrating their enthusiasm to channel their creativity, often at the cost of an overburdened workload (Hemer 2014). Teaching in higher education is focused more on learning outcomes (Wit 2020) that can offer little room for academics to creatively immerse students in the exploration of knowing (Gibbs, Angelides, and Michaelides 2004). The production of knowledge in higher education is often identified as ‘an objective systematic activity rather than a creative activity that combines, in imaginative ways, objective and more intuitive forms of thinking’ (Jackson 2006, 3). With a shift from knowledge acquisition to skills acquisition for graduates, a new appreciation of creativity is emerging within academic communities – an understanding that encompasses creativity as a way of thinking as well as inventing, with recognition of the vital importance of creativity within higher education teaching and learning. Accordingly, there is a need for academics to explore creativity with/in their teaching.

Barnett (2020, 12) challenges academics to redirect their pedagogical focus from skills acquisition into deep engagement with ‘worthwhile forms of knowledge and understanding’. Barnett’s challenge implies a need to reconceptualise pedagogies as ‘spaces for the cyclical and reciprocal reformation of knowledge’ which bring together disciplinary knowledge with heterogenous knowledge from groups that have less representation in higher education curricula (Burke, Gill, and Lauren 2017, 34). The concept of learning is repositioned as a process of change, indicating an emergent desire to design pedagogical experience that guides students to processes of becoming rather than merely knowledge mastery. In relation to this expanding concept of learning, Sterling (2009, 115) proposes higher-order learning in the areas of perception (affective dimension), conception (cognitive dimension), and practice (intentional dimension) through movements toward ‘respons-ibility’ (an expanded and ethical sense of engagement); ‘co-rrespondence’ (a closer knowledge match with the real world); and ‘respons-ability’ (the ability to take integrative and wise action in context). Sterling’s proposition implies that a typical lecture hall, where teaching academics are accountable for the flow of information towards students, is replaceable. Creative thinking has been valued as significant as critical thinking, where both encourage the practice of pedagogies that can develop social relationships, participation, and independence in learning (Adams et al. 2021). In the Western higher education landscape, significant investment in quality training for teaching and learning has been offered to academics, although Burke, Gill, and Lauren (2017) argue a strong focus on practical issues outweigh ‘a more nuanced orientation that examines the complexities of pedagogical relations, identities and experiences in higher education’ (26). In addressing such a gap, pedagogies can be engaged with methodologies in a praxis-based model that foregrounds critical reflexivity in teaching and learning. Barnett’s (2020) challenge to extend beyond a disciplinary focus also reinforces the need for academics to take risks with pedagogies, and even engage further in a collegial dialogue that may help them discover hidden aspects of their teaching practices.

Pedagogical development in higher education relies on reflexive practice to critique how educators are facilitating learning for their students and also how they are enabling themselves to experience learning (Ryan and Murphy 2018). As individual pedagogy is shaped by assumptions and context, four specific lenses can be utilised by academics to sustain the intentional process of critical reflexivity: students’ eyes, colleagues’ perceptions, personal experience, and literature (Brookfield 2017). Since academics are faced with imperatives to reconfigure their teaching practices to fit into the changing nature of universities, Kemmis (2012) suggests examining praxis from within a practice tradition. This means academics can enhance their teaching practice individually as well as advancing ideas of teaching with colleagues who view themselves as part of this tradition. By researching individual praxis, academics embrace a reflective inquiry to reorient themselves in the teaching practice; to reshape their understanding of their teaching practice in a contemporary context, and to (re)evaluate the conditions under which their practice is carried out. Extending to collective participation in praxis creates a social space that assists academics to (1) explore how their ideas (‘sayings’, in the cultural-discursive dimension, in semantic space) about their work are formed by contemporary ideas about universities; (2) discover how actions (‘doings’, in the material-economic dimension, in physical space–time) are built and rebuilt by changing times and circumstances; and (3) understand how academics relate differently (‘relatings’, in the social-political dimension, in social space) to their colleagues, students and wider society when exploring new and critical development within their practice (Kemmis 2012). For example, when an academic focuses on explanations of problem solving using scientific-style, cause–effect language, this reveals a reliance on a scientific mindset and reinforces for students that this is the way of thinking for problem solving. When the academic invites students to use their smart phones for an interactive class ‘vote’ on options, this highlights the academic's preference for technology ‘doings’ to engage students. Similarly, academics’ physical positioning within the learning space – e.g. as the expert at the front or the collaborator amongst small groups – indicates relational teacher-student role expectations. Employing such praxis frameworks can support academics to explore positioning and possibilities of creativity (and other foci) in their teaching.

Creativity in higher education

Creativity is a broadly defined construct and often perceived as a set of cognitive processes which enable the production of new and useful ideas (Beaty et al. 2016). The habit of creativity according to Jackson (2019) can be introduced by a framework of pedagogy which affords collaboration and collegiality to accelerate change. There is a history of research into creative pedagogies in school settings for understanding the possibilities of promoting new knowledge in formal schooling (Dezuanni and Jetnikoff 2011; Craft 2005; Harris and de Bruin 2018; Thomson 2011). Dezuanni and Jetnikoff (2011) define creative pedagogies as ‘both the imaginative and innovative arrangement of curricula and teaching strategies in school classrooms and the development of students’ creative capacities’ (264). Creative pedagogies are viewed as a third space for connecting cultures (Lin 2014), enabling transformation (Tasler and Dale 2021), and facilitating collegial discussion (Selkrig and Keamy 2017). While investigations about pedagogy and creativity are broadly designed to enhance school students’ engagement (Craft 2015), Lin’s (2011) triad framework of creative pedagogy (Figure 1) indicates the need to consider three interconnected components of creative teaching, teaching for creativity and creative learning. We also argue that Lin’s creative pedagogies framework provides a structure for academics to practice autonomous and collaborative interpretations in developing a new understanding of what constitutes creativity within teaching in higher education and how creativity can be incorporated into academic professional learning. As such pedagogy in Lin’s framework is perceived as three interrelated components: (1) academics’ imaginative and innovative approaches in developing a lesson (Creative Teaching); (2) academics’ endeavours in stimulating students’ creative capacities and learning motivation (Teaching for Creativity); and (3) academics and students’ active and creative learning ventures (Creative Learning).

Figure 1. The 3-element creative pedagogy framework (Lin 2011, 152).

As Lin’s framework recognises the social context of learning, it offers an environment for academics to research, develop, and create their own practice in unique and personal ways. Campbell (2018) maintains that this kind of praxis environment positions academics within their identities as creative professionals who can transform learning through inventive and imaginative use of available resources and opportunities (in effect a bricoleur, innovating and creating from resources) instead of merely complying with tried and tested teaching approaches (i.e. positioned more as a technician implementing to a formula). Thus, Lin’s framework has potential to focus academics’ involvement towards creative construction of knowledge that they deem important in the entangled practices of teaching and learning.

Lin’s framework also enables a co-production of knowledge through collaborative creative activities that Jackson (2006) suggests combines imaginative and intuitive forms of thinking with objectivity to construct possibilities and alternatives within classrooms. By positioning both teachers and students as creative learners, Lin’s framework can assist in building a safe environment that encourages academics to explore ideas, strategies and ways of working outside their comfort zones, to take risks and embrace uncertainties. Risk-taking enterprises, according to Cunningham-Bryant (2019), are often one-sided as teachers advise students into the unknown while teachers rarely take risks themselves. Hong, Part, and Rowell (2017) contend academics’ risky explorations of creative pedagogies rarely happen due to the limited availability of professional learning, materials, and guidelines for practical applications of incorporating creativity into higher education teaching. Hong et al.’s perspective highlights the need to establish a generative space for academics to practise their creativity, and engage in collegial praxis inquiry dialogue, to enhance creativity outputs from higher education teaching and learning.

Selkrig et al.’s (2020) model of collaborative professional learning to encourage insightful praxis informed our exploration with participant academics about creative pedagogies in higher education teaching practices. In combination with Kemmis, McTaggart, and Nixon’s (2014) practice architecture focus on sayings, doings, and relatings that are achievable by varied arrangements of cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements, Selkrig et al.’s model added an emphasis on ecology of practice where academics can observe, identify, and analyse relationships of mutual interdependence between teaching and learning in higher education. In our praxis inquiry research, creative pedagogies as the shared conceptual focus intersected with collegial group activities that promoted respectful dialogue to promote insights into creative pedagogies and practices.

Collegial creative pedagogies praxis inquiry in Bali: about our study

In this article, we draw from a research project where we employed Lin’s creative pedagogy framework with a participant group of Balinese academics to explore the research question: How do creative pedagogies support the establishment of transformative environmental learning in an Indonesian teacher education programme?

Our intention was to leverage Lin’s framework as a third space to encourage dialogue and action about values, ways of teaching and learning, and identify the enjoyment and barriers in the academics’ creativity practices. The research occurred at a Balinese university as a convenience case study, as one of the authors is Balinese and had worked inside the Balinese and Indonesian higher education system and with a particular interest in the pedagogical approaches utilised to teach about environmental learning. Upon receiving ethics approval from Victoria University Human Research Ethics Committee (VUHREC) [Approval ID: HRE18-246], the author utilised her existing networks to identify and engage three academics (identified here via pseudonyms: Aya, Reka, and Ryan) from a small Biology teacher education department to become involved in the study that followed a critical participatory action research (CPAR) methodology to prompt the academics’ insightful praxis. The flexible self-reflective cycles (plan, act and observe, and reflect) of CPAR were presented to the participants through engagement with our shared conceptual foci of creative pedagogies and collegial group professional learning activities to create a space for social action and critical conversation (Nixon 2016; Coles-Ritchie, Eggington, and Valdez 2019; Brookfield 2017). Engaging with this methodology for our praxis inquiry is substantiated by Kemmis et al.’s claim that CPAR brings ‘a practice changing practice’ that draws broad social analysis, collective self-studies, and transformational actions together (2014, 26).

As one of the researchers/authors is a Balinese who spent considerable time with the participants, there is a strength to this research through an element of what Herr and Anderson (2005), describe as researchers with a reciprocal collaboration (insider-outsider status in the research team). As the key researcher in our project, and as an insider-outsider in the research, the author facilitated co-constructions of new understandings (co-learning) about teaching and learning practices in higher education with participants Aya, Reka, and Ryan. With the CPAR phases of the research extending over a semester, and by working with a small number of participants, it was possible to conduct a deep, sustained inquiry using Kemmis et al.’s practice architectures to interrogate and think about creative pedagogy practices, from both inside and outside perspectives, to generate an expansion of Lin’s framework.

To commence the inquiry, the author led an introductory workshop at the Balinese host institution on creative pedagogies, where the participating academics and researcher discussed their practice of creative teaching (sayings) using specialised terms (cultural-discursive arrangements). The structured workshop activity continued with modelling of creative pedagogies – what Kemmis (2012) terms ‘cultural-discursive dimension’ (898). The research participants shared over the three-month semester of the CPAR activities these creative pedagogy ‘doings’ in and from their varied units/courses of teaching. Observations, reflections, and textual artefacts (e.g. teaching plans and presentation handouts) facilitated co-participants’ shared understandings of creative pedagogies into action (‘doings’) within their teaching units. During the semester period, intensive classroom observations of all the participants’ teaching occurred, where further textual artefacts (e.g. students’ essays and feedback forms), as well as audio-visual records of the academics’ activities to nurture affordances to support students’ participation in creative pedagogy activities (e.g. dialogue between our participating academics and their students regarding peer-group presentations), were collected. Throughout and after the semester, the Balinese research team (researcher on site and participants) held collegial meetings to continue to reflect and interrogate the creative pedagogy sayings, doings and relatings evident in their teaching and the students’ learning, with meeting records adding to the wealth of data collected in the project.

Analysis of the primarily qualitative data was undertaken by the lead researcher. Initial thematic trends informed the collegial meetings in Bali and enabled member checking of trends. Intensive two-cycle coding continued in analysing the data by the lead researcher, and this was informed by progressive member checks. The two cycles of coding (initial and splitting coding) of the data are necessary according to Merriam (2014) and Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña (2014) to understand how components of our findings interconnect. From the coding cycles a conceptually clustered matrix of themes was developed and checked by the three members of the research team. From the matrix we were able to identify a number of subcategories, or what we refer to as creative pedagogy features, to deepen and extend on each component of Lin’s model (Figure 1). We have listed and exemplified many of these features in Table 1 in conjunction with the Kemmis, McTaggart, and Nixon’s (2014) model of practice architectures and the interrelated aspects of sayings, doings, and relatings that contribute to a socially established cooperative human activity. The table demonstrates how the data from the three participants Reka, Aya, and Ryan, aligns with both our identified features that extend on Lin’s model and Kemmis’ theoretical framework of practice architectures which we use to describe, illustrate and interrogate further in the next section.

Table 1. Exemplar mapping of participants’ sayings, doings and relatings to identified features within creative pedagogies.

Creative Teaching Features
Selected Features	Academics	Sayings	Doings	Relatings
Opening communication spaces	Reka	‘Creativity is an interaction between communication and collaboration to enable students’ generative thinking’.	Introduced a new group discussion strategy and refined its format through weekly evaluation with students (co-design)	Stimulated students’ capacities for collaborative higher order leaning through dialogue
Introducing new teaching ideas & risk-taking actions	Aya	‘I view creativity as one’s capability of creating art products’.	Presented in PechaKucha format	Together with students explored PechaKucha and shared the joy and challenges of delivering it
Posing cases	Ryan	‘Creativity is a thinking method and a part of human cognition’.	Presented imaginary case studies through creative micromoments	Expanded learning experiences for enhancing pro-environmental perspective
Teaching for Creativity Features
Selected Features	Academics	Sayings	Doings	Relatings
Promoting synthesis	Reka	‘ … creativity is shaped by complex relationship among students, teachers, and society. Environment frames creativity’.	Presented games to introduce Indigenous knowledge and culture	Widened students’ perspectives and moved students beyond classroom theory by reconnecting with nature and Indigenous knowledge
Building confidence and persistence	Ryan	‘ … engage students with interpersonal strategies’.	Used certainty of response rating tool	Enabled students’ ecology self-awareness by identifying their scale of certainties
Stimulating creativity	Aya	‘Creative ideas open new door of opportunities for students’ livelihood’.	Assigned students to repurpose waste into pop-up books	Focused students’ awareness of their environment
Creative Learning Features
Selected Features	Academics	Sayings	Doings	Relatings
Providing students space for owning and controlling their learning	Aya	‘I guess time is the greatest challenge for our students … .'	Invited students to watch recorded-tutorials by their seniors or connect with seniors	Encouraged students to voice their choices
Providing learning activities from a variety of sources	Ryan	‘ … how could we ensure no one is left behind? I provide more than five learning resources for students’.	Developed independent interactive digital resources	Built supportive context where students practised making reasoned evaluations to arrive at personal informed decisions
Building co-rrespondence	Reka	‘ … while learning about environment is viewed by Western through Ecology, in our context environment it is closely related to our Indigenous philosophy’.	Linked theory and practice through place-based learning	Reoriented learning ecologies to connect students with nature, communities, and places, for shared untangling of issues about environment, and discuss ethical practices

Moving to a mandala of creative pedagogies to provide more nuanced and detailed understandings.

Having uncovered a range of additional ‘features’ that contribute to each component of creative teaching, creative learning and teaching for creativity, described by Lin, it became apparent that a more nuanced form of representation of creative pedagogies than Lin’s model was warranted. As a result, we have developed a ‘mandala of creative pedagogies’ to illustrate our enhancement of Lin’s model, consisting of three key elements (based on Lin’s components) and additional and interconnected fine-grain ‘features’. Prior to presenting the complete mandala toward the end of this article, in this section we consider each of the three main elements and the particular set of complex, interconnected features we have identified as belonging to each of the elements and how we arrived at these categorisations as a consequence of engaging with our Balinese participants in CPAR. We also utilise the cultural-discursive (sayings), material-economic (doings), and social-political (relatings) arrangements that underpin practice architectures as described by Kemmis (2012) to interrogate the practices, understandings of creativity, and approaches to teaching of the participants who were involved.

Creative teaching: sayings, doings and relatings

The first element of the creative pedagogy mandala, Creative Teaching, focuses on the common lens of academics’ creative approaches in teaching. Within this particular element of the mandala we identified nine features that link with Creative Teaching (Figure 2). Four of these features are related to changes in material-economic arrangements (adjusting timetables and class layouts, opening communication spaces, rebalancing assessment, and performing risk-taking actions); two are about social-political arrangements for promoting higher order thinking and analysis (posing cases and designing divergent thinking exercises); and the remaining three are about changes to the academics’ cultural-discursive arrangements (introducing new teaching ideas, tolerating ambiguity, and delivering motivation). These features have the potential to support academics in developing an understanding of the varied circumstances which enable and constrain their capacities within what Jackson refers to as a ‘learning ecology’ (Jackson 2019) to teach creatively. These features also broaden opportunities for academics to instil confidence in enacting creative teaching, which according to Barnett (2020), Cremin (2015), and Jarvis (2019) has been limited due to performance and accountability measures. By considering these nine features, and the interconnections between them, academics can regulate specific material-economic, social-political, and cultural-discursive arrangements in a way that supports their commitment to creative teaching. For example, material-economic arrangements, such as space and time, are valuable aspects to consider by academics in (re)structuring student pedagogical experiences and supporting student engagement with a strong focus on flexibility and adaptability (Burke, Gill, and Lauren 2017).

Figure 2. Creative Teaching features we identified.

The participating academics’ creative pedagogies were influenced by their views of creativity and it became evident during the introductory workshops with Aya, Reka, and Ryan through their discussions (sayings) that they each had different understandings of creativity. As the project evolved it also became evident that the academics’ creative pedagogies were personalised according to these understandings, as is demonstrated in the snippets of quotes and observations data shown in Table 1. When Aya spoke about creative attributes she indicated an expectation of generating an outcome or something tangible, as she stated that an end-product was an essential feature of creativity: ‘I view creativity as one’s capability of creating art products. Within my teaching subject, I have initiated a pop-up books project that I would love to improve this year’. For Reka, creativity encompassed an interaction between communication and collaboration to enable students’ generative thinking, implying a social exploration connection which is similarly highlighted by Gibbs, Angelides, and Michaelides (2004) and Jackson (2006) for creative co-construction of existing knowledge. Ryan, our third participant, expressed another view of creativity – that creativity was a thinking method as well as an important factor within human cognition. Ryan’s description of creativity resonates with Beaty et al.’s (2016) notion of cognitive processes as the means for production of original, practical, and workable ideas. These types of sayings by the three academics appear to have guided them when experimenting with new ideas about teaching to provide the most advantageous ‘learning ecosystem’ (quoting Reka) for their students to become creative. The participating academics’ sayings also reveal their different underlying understanding about what creativity is and what is important about creativity for their teaching, as can be seen through the different enactments of Creative Teaching in Table 1, exemplifying Kemmis and Smith’s (2008) contention that our sayings are evidence of self-understanding.

For the co-participants, the feature of ‘trying new teaching strategies’ occurred in tandem with another feature of ‘performing risk-taking’. University teachers can be portrayed as risk-averse and status-conscious individuals (Cunningham-Bryant 2019; Hong, Part, and Rowell 2017). However, as a result of engagement with the safe, generative space of this creative pedagogy research project, Aya presented learning content through a more creative format (a PechaKucha style presentation), although she struggled with the time constraints of presenting through this format. Reka indicated he was aware that conflicts may arise when he introduced a new group discussion strategy as part of his teaching – a tension that he considered and planned for, co-designing with students. As a result of taking this calculated risk and implementing the new group discussion strategy Reka observed a stimulation of students’ capacities for collaborative higher-order learning when refining the strategy together with the students. Ryan decided to extend the scope of learning within his subject about research methods into an exploration of his students’ pro-environmental views through an imaginary case and introduced the strategy of ‘creative micromoments’ or light bulb moments. Ryan’s creative micromoments successfully deepened the students’ thinking and broadened the learning focus within a limited time frame which Hong, Part, and Rowell (2017) report often becomes the biggest challenge of incorporating creativity into higher education teaching. Ryan extended exploration of new teaching strategies by adapting a teaching strategy called the ‘certainty of response index’ – the degree of certainty indicates students’ confidence in their knowledge and abilities when asked to respond to a question (Saleem, Diola, and Ella 1999). Combined with the popular six thinking hats (De Bono 2000), Ryan used these strategies to facilitate learning in the emotional dimension as students were encouraged to build a feeling of self-assurance that they were able to accomplish a task.

These sayings, doings, and relatings by Aya, Reka, and Ryan demonstrate the adaptability of academics when dealing with uncertainties while maintaining their teaching quality through practising risk-taking actions. Our co-participants’ adaptability, according to Kromydas (2017) is an important capacity that can assist them to address quality learning in an unpredictable higher education environment. Aya, Reka, and Ryan’s praxis also demonstrate them as pedagogic bricoleurs who value creative ideation in using available resources (Campbell 2018).

Teaching for creativity: sayings, doings, and relatings

There are nine features of Teaching for Creativity comprised in our mandala as shown in Figure 3. We identify within this element of the mandala features that support the process of the students’ being and becoming, namely: critical thinking, risk-taking, curiosity, self-confidence and persistence, autonomy, creativity, collaboration, innovation, and problem-solving – which are learning outcomes to promote when enacting teaching for creativity. These learning outcomes reflect skills and dispositions which universities prioritise for skilled workforces (Harrison et al. 2022; Cook 2022; Livingston 2010; Oliver et al. 2011; Burke et al. 2016; Ellis, Bliuc, and Han 2021). We illustrate selected exemplars of these features from our Balinese study in narrative format in Table 1.

Figure 3. Teaching for Creativity features we identified.

This second element of the creative pedagogy mandala, Teaching for Creativity (Figure 3), emerged with a crosscutting theme of enhancing resilience, with the academics in our study enacting their dual responsibility of being resilient themselves and building the students’ resilience. As resilience and engagement are intertwined (McKay 2021), the academics included activities in their teaching that could shift students’ capacity to manage barriers during and to learning, and as a result they were able to attain higher levels of learning involvement. Teaching for Creativity for the academics focused on developing learners as whole persons and immersing students in their creativity, which according to Gibbs, Angelides, and Michaelides (2004) is often forgotten within knowledge construction.

Reka’s philosophical orientation toward the principles of education for sustainable development (his sayings) demonstrated how place-based learning can be linked with teaching for creativity and build students’ resilience through strengthening their place belonging (Morieson et al. 2013). Reka’s strategies to promote synthesis of what the students have learnt were based on local heritage site visits which sparked joy among students when relating with their world. This activity also kindled curiosity of his colleagues (relatings). Aya mentioned that she would like to apply a similar strategy to stimulate deep thinking and creativity in her classroom:

I saw how fun a deep learning activity designed by Reka on our students’ social media status. I believe this strategy will work for other units of teaching. I am keen to apply it although I will need to learn harder [on implementing it]. (Aya)

Reka’s sayings, doings, and relatings about deep learning are examples of how being an academic also involves a responsibility for interrogating and reflecting on practices through an exploration of educational ideas and ideals. This aligns with Kemmis and Smith (2008) and Arnold and Mundy (2020) who include, as praxis inquiry, exploration of what is considered as excellence in the teaching tradition and development of teaching practices that consist of what might be counted as excellence in the future. It was evident that Reka fulfilled an important ‘excellence’ role model as a colleague in modelling and sharing practices that allowed Aya to invigorate her sense of identity as an academic and to stimulate a deeper understanding about creativity for future exploration, based on Reka’s shared practice architecture. This example illustrates Kemmis and Smith’s (2008) notion that academics’ ‘actions are significantly oriented and influenced by others and that practice is socially constructed in our ‘sayings, doings and relatings’ in a variety of contexts’ (76), often thereby strengthening practices within the group (Kemmis 2022). These changes in practices further demonstrate the academics’ enthusiasm to nourish students’ learning quality through creativity (Heath and Leiman 2017; Hemer 2014).

As a result of our study the academics’ practices of Teaching for Creativity advanced the ecology of learning within their university department. Aya, Reka, and Ryan designed learning activities in which the students could open themselves to their peers, reflect upon their learning, and practise self-understanding, which aligns with Barnett’s (2018) notion of nurturing students’ own learning ecology. For example, Ryan’s use of the certainty of response rating index with level of confidence during classroom discussion stimulated the students’ learning ecology self-awareness. Aya, Reka, and Ryan further facilitated belonging to a learning community through student teamwork; despite difference of access to knowledge prior to higher education, all students had equal opportunity to learn and to be appreciated. Our participating academics’ teaching for creativity echoed Kemmis and Smith’s (2008) contention that teachers and students’ relationships are built and strengthened in and by practices of communication and social connection, as well as mediated in and by practices.

Creative learning: sayings, doings, and relatings

The last element of the creative pedagogy mandala, Creative Learning, encompasses the academics’ approaches to stimulate their own and the students’ creativity; deep and meaningful learning; contextual learning; and learning as becoming. The five features (Figure 4) we identified that relate to this element are: (1) providing students with meaningful learning for their immediate needs and interests, (2) providing students space for owning and controlling (self-initiating) their learning, (3) providing sequences of learning activities from a variety of sources and perspectives, (4) performing reflective action in the class, and (5) building co-rrespondence. We illustrate selected exemplars of these features from our Balinese study in narrative format (Table 1).

Figure 4. Creative Learning features we identified

For both academics and students, engaging with the Creative Learning element helped (re)shape a view of education as a lifelong pursuit by encompassing learning from various sources and perspectives. Throughout the research activities, the participants enacted and predicted learning engagement beyond just the tertiary curriculum. Such expanded learning outcomes (Wit 2020) we demonstrate in Table 1 and with the following glimpses into the participants’ creative learning articulations into lifelong learning.

From a professional development perspective, engagement with the research supported the academics’ professional learning. Ryan specifically identified this when he commented that he was not familiar with the framework of creative pedagogy and so engaged with various sources of learning to enhance his capacity to support nurturing students’ creativity in his classroom.

The participants’ explorations of Creative Learning also highlighted the importance of social, co-created learning experiences. Features in Creative Learning invite students to build capacity which Sale (2020) and Adams et al. (2021) maintain is essential, such as self-initiated learning. According to Reka, self-initiated learning is an important capacity to nurture in his pre-service teacher students as modern teachers are continuously faced with uncertainties and challenges that require them to discover pedagogical solutions and new teaching strategies for:

Teachers are constantly demanded to meet learning outcomes within a certain time frame. This challenge implies it is especially important to train our prospective teachers how to modify their teaching methods so that these methods can support the growth of students’ creativity while striving to meet the learning goals. (Reka)

Meanwhile, Aya expressed that her Creative Learning experience during the period of this action research has shown her how co-creating learning with the students also stimulated her own creative ideas. Aya’s statement gestures towards what Ryan and Murphy (2018) highlight as reflexive practice where academics immerse themselves in experiential learning. Reka and Aya’s sayings, doings, and relatings regarding reshaping learning into collaborative experiences with their students resonate with Burke et al.’s (2017, 35) view of ‘pedagogies as complex relations of difference in which power is dynamic, fluid and generative’. Our participating academics challenged the traditional power structure prevalent in their Balinese university by not only foregrounding more flattened teacher and learner relationalities, they also reconfigured their subjects as spaces for students to co-create and contextualise their learning experiences using different ways of knowing, including Indigenous knowledge.

Another highlight of the Creative Learning activities in the study was a connection with lifeworlds or co-rrespondence. Adopted from Sterling’s (2009) notion of building a closer knowledge match with the real world, this feature allowed Aya, Reka, and Ryan to creatively incorporate their Indigenous ways of knowing and practice into the learning activities to strengthen their students’ self-identity as evolving professionals (i.e. prospective teachers). Reka indicated his goals were to facilitate learning experiences that not only broadened the students’ knowing but also their being for life beyond classroom. Through a sequence of place-based activities Reka connected his students with their Indigenous ways that permeate the landscape, known as subak (a traditional farming and lifestyle system). As Reka had been making connections to local heritage in his teaching, even before his involvement with this action research, his teaching practices have created a co-rrespondence ripple effect within the university department. The impact of his sustained teaching practices that link to the local context was evident through 25% of the students electing to focus on Balinese knowledge within their research projects. Subak was also the theme of two pop-up books created by the students in Aya’s unit of teaching. These examples indicate the co-rrespondence feature of Creative Learning in our mandala has advanced the students’ learning experiences into an expanded, lifelong context of community and society, including exploring the learning space where their understanding about Indigenous knowledge was nourished (Bagnall and Moore 2020; AITSL 2022). In turn, the students also learnt how their strategic position as future teachers would influence the community and conservation of the local environment they live in. Co-rrespondence, as demonstrated by our participating academics, supports Burke et al.’s (2017) views on how pedagogies in higher education can include possibilities to develop capacities of empathy, as well as strengthen a sense of personhood, understanding of the places we live in, and relations to the world and others. Co-rrespondence in Creative Learning encompasses a complex relationality that is derived from a self-reflexive interrogation of our participating academics’ imaginative ways of being, doing, and thinking about their pedagogical practices.

Concluding and considering the possibilities of the mandala of creative pedagogies

Having outlined the features of each element that make up our proposed creative pedagogy mandala, we now present the ‘complete mandala’ of creative pedagogy (Figure 5) which surfaced through both an analytical and reflective process from our collegial group action research. The mandala illustrates our nuanced and detailed understanding of strategies that we, the research team together with the participating academics (Aya, Reka, and Ryan), have explored and inquired into for ways of shifting and adapting teaching approaches to promote creativity. The mandala is informed by the dynamic interactions between the traditional and academic cultures of the research setting and the possibilities of using practice architectures (sayings, doings, and relatings) to make and shift connections with creative pedagogies. The first element of the mandala, Creative Teaching, supported the academics in our study in risk-taking to explore new teaching ideas, albeit filtered through their personal conceptualisations of creativity. The academics’ engagement with Teaching for Creativity, the second main element of the mandala, broadened the ecology of learning (Barnett 2018), connected with Indigenous ways of knowing, and enhanced the resilience and capacities of academics and students. Creative Learning, the third segment of our mandala, reflects the creative initiating both academics, and students demonstrated in their meaning making processes, as well as the connections made with Balinese traditional knowledge and ways for lifelong learning. Although depicted as neat, separate, and equal components for ease of representation, we note that the reality is that the mandala features were not evenly distributed and many occurred simultaneously – where each feature integrated, interacted, and sequenced with other features.

Figure 5. Our mandala of creative pedagogy: both an analysis and exploration framework.

In creating this mandala from our study to identify a range of features that are connected to each creative pedagogy element, it became apparent that this more nuanced understanding of creative pedagogy has the potential to provide a range of tools, ideas and approaches which can readily to be used by academics across a range of fields. The mandala provides a framework for academics to reflect on their own practices and explore creative pedagogies to prepare their students with creativity capabilities, skills, and dispositions as identified future skills (Dondi et al. 2021). The mandala also offers academics a number of options when navigating pedagogical decisions for future unpredictable circumstances. For example, this mandala framework has potential to advance academics’ understandings of a range of creative features such as intuitive thinking, active learning, and resilience, and how they may be seen separately or as interconnected. Our narratives of the mandala in action through intersections with the practice architecture ‘sayings’, ‘doings’, and ‘relatings’, can provide guidance for academics to analyse and transform (Kemmis 2022) their own teaching practices. Given that this study occurred in a non-Western university the mandala also has the potential to transcend context and culture.

Compellingly, to our way of thinking, the mandala also accounts for and engages with different knowledge systems through the complex interconnections between the cultural and social aspects of life and the university learning ecosystem. By providing ways to facilitate creativity through collaboration, co-creation, interaction, and communication across and between academics, students, and their context, our mandala framework scopes a broadening participation for higher education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Australian Government, Department of Education (Research Training Program).