Firstly, the course needs to address ‘the Creativity Challenge’ in contemporary education. What does a pedagogy of creativity entail, and the social and economic costs of stifling creativity at a young age.

Secondly it needs to be based around an integrated and coherent framework for using technology in education. In Kadenze’s case we have called this framework TECL, short for Technology Enabled Creative Learning (TECL). The principles of such a framework need to be made explicit, for it is by applying those principles that teachers will grow their artful teaching practice.

The third quality needed is a comprehensive and balanced approach to setting goals and outcomes for learning. In an educational world obsessed with measurement, predictable behavioural objectives have become the norm. The creative challenge is to deploy Expressive Outcomes (from Eliot Eisner), alongside Behavioural objectives and Problem-solving objectives.

Quality number four addresses how learning pathways can be curated within a spectrum of expressivity so as to sidestep dull routine and repetition and build adventure and alliance into courses.

The next requisite quality of courses addressing a pedagogy of creativity flows directly from our post-COVID educational environments and challenges all educators to consider how ‘hyflexing’ can be effective when it comes to orchestrating live, synchronous and asynchronous modes of delivery.

Quality number six is the requirement to make learning personal and significant for each learner. There are a number of strategies to position students as authentic partners in their learning and in our course we work with seven of them. This opens up learning to cater for diversity; encompassing diverse learning styles, non-Western knowledge systems and motivations particular to each learner. Of course, to do that meaningfully, it is necessary to elevate student priorities over rigid course structures.

The final and seventh quality ensures that the first qualities, which are potentially radical for many, are embedded into the planning processes and practice of teachers. This means using retrieval practise to ensure teachers have adequately secured all six qualities to memory, thereby enabling them to develop the prowess to judge value and efficacy in whole-of-course design, and connoisseurship in course evaluation and critique.

The authors who planned and fabricated this course know where they stand as educators. The experience of ‘Joy’ needs to be present in all learning, not necessarily in ecstatic measure all the time, but distinctly felt, and so add pleasure and incentive to the stretch all of us must make to ‘know’ topics of high challenge and high worth. Consequently, joy needs to sit alongside curiosity, inventiveness, imagination, and feelings of independence, respect, partnering well, high challenge and tolerance of ambiguity. We designed the course knowing that ‘there is no such thing as good teaching, only teaching that is good for certain purposes or outcomes’. We have drawn on the learning sciences when proven and useful, as well as longstanding traditions in the philosophy of education and aesthetics (these days understood as the ‘user experience’). We understand teachers are experiencing the pressures of work intensification like never before and urgently need time-saving and workable approaches to learning design.

Boredom in the classroom is noxious. Program 1: Your Joyful 21st Century Learning Framework gives both teachers and learners the oxygen they need to experience joy in learning and, at times, wonder at the world and their place in it.

Brad Haseman, for the team of authors of Your Joyful 21st Century Learning Framework

Photo by Alex Alvarez on Unsplash

Michael Anderson, Professor of Arts and Creativity Education, The University of Sydney, Australia and Co-Founder of 4C Transformative Learning.  

As I look over the posts in this Kadenze series on the ‘new normal’ post-COVID education, it seems that many are exploring (sometimes using different names) what might be called a ‘pedagogy of creativity’. There has been a long running and extensive discussion about the place of creativity in education (Hernández-Torrano & Ibrayeva, 2020) but perhaps we are now inching closer to what we might call a pedagogy of creativity. This is probably unsurprising because there is a history of a pedagogy of creativity hiding in plain sight.

 Things seem to be on the move.

Many educational pioneers provide the foundations for this educational priority. In 1929  John Dewey argued in the Quest for Certainty “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.” and provided clear insights into how the imagination drives progress, and that such progress is not exclusively associated with the arts. Many have built on this powerful proposal. Louis Arnaud Reid, L.S.Vygotsky, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Edward de Bono, Dorothy Heathcote, Nancy C. Andreasen, Sir Ken Robinson and the book series edited by Ron Beghetto and Bharath Sriraman.

 What are the Features of a ‘Pedagogy of Creativity’?

To imagine a pedagogy of creativity we need first to imagine its features. Here are some from my research and practice to help define a pedagogy of creativity. They are:

–          Based in a range of evidence

–          Collaborative

–         Not focused on the body or the mind separately but engage both for the most part simultaneously

–          Not obsessed with teaching and testing only the ‘known’

–          Classroom and schools ready

–          Both disciplinary and interdisciplinary

–          Supportive of iterative development and lay the foundation for innovation.

Global support for developing a Pedagogy of Creativity

So propositions to inform a pedagogy of creativity have been with us for quite some time, but who is leading its form and application today?  What is happening globally to indicate what creativity might look like in teaching, learning and assessment? Is a global infrastructure emerging to ensure the complex and interrelated needs of students, schools, teachers, educational leaders, business and other systems, governments and societies are being met?

Certainly organizations are coalescing around this task; and although we could not yet say they are anything as grandiose as global infrastructure for a pedagogy of creativity, they are providing promising signs of something evolving; something collaborative, integrated, substantive and global. I would like to briefly identify some of the drivers of change that I can see internationally and then look to some models that I have had personal connection with to illustrate how these changes are occurring. Here is my summary of the initiatives of influence shaping a global network focussed on creativity in pedagogy, schooling and education.

 PISA Creative Thinking Assessment

In 2022 PISA introduced a Creative Thinking Assessment that measured students’ ability to think creatively and solve problems. The test is a series of open-ended tasks (Grey and Morris, 2022) that require students to use their imagination, to think divergently, and to use their problem-solving skills. Some of the tasks included in the test are:

·         Idea generation: Students are presented with a problem or challenge and are asked to come up with as many ideas as possible to solve it.

·         Pattern recognition: Students are given a series of images or shapes and are asked to identify the pattern that connects them.

·         Problem-solving: Students are presented with a complex problem and are asked to come up with a solution by considering multiple perspectives and using a systematic approach.

The performance of students in the PISA creative thinking test is evaluated on criteria such as the originality and flexibility of their ideas, the appropriateness of their solutions, and the quality of their reasoning and communication.

There is substantial debate about the usefulness of these kinds of tests and some researchers have critiqued the narrowness of the skills being tested (Grey and Morris, 2022). These concerns are well founded for all testing regimes but they apply especially in the exploration of capacity as broad and divergent as creativity. What the PISA test does signal, however, is the perceived significance of creativity in schooling (backed by the OECD), and the need for it to be embedded in classrooms internationally. This has created a demand for reliable and high-quality professional resources and The Global Institute for Creative Thinking (GIoCT) is beginning to tackle this challenge.

The Global Institute of Creative Thinking

The GIoCT is a London based institute that advocates for creativity and creative thinking in education. It runs international conferences, develops case studies, delivers professional learning and generates resources for teachers, school and system leaders around the world. While the institute is emerging, its conference in London and Paris in 2022, delivered in partnership with the OECD, provided clear directions for growth. The challenge, however, is to create resources that satisfy the growing hunger for classroom ready approaches to creative teaching, learning and assessment. In the last decade guidance for educators has emerged with British Creativity educator Bill Lucas’ Five Dimensional Model of Creativity (2019). Lucas has detailed these and other emerging models in a recent report, commissioned by the Global Institute of Creative Thinking (Lucas, 2022).  

 4C Transformative Learning

Building on the work of these pioneers and others, my colleague Miranda Jefferson and I have identified four capacities that teachers need to build in themselves and their students to explore creativity across the curriculum in their framework we have called the Creativity Cascade. This involves teachers and learners.

4C Transformative Learning uses a school-based transformation model to support educators through professional learning and leadership development in long term partnerships with more than 80 schools internationally. We work with schools directly to embed Creativity, Collaboration, Communication and Critical Reflection into school policies, practices and processes. Based in Sydney, Australia this group uses an ‘evolution not revolution’ approach to catalyse creative change in individual schools to generate deep and engaging learning for students, teachers and school leaders.

In addition, the resourcing landscape for creativity learning has flourished in the last few  years and one online course provider is Kadenze Inc. Kadenze is a US based, niche learning platform that offers courses in the creative arts, design, and creativity technologies through creativity and arts-led learning. Courses are produced with world leading universities, colleges and industry partners and focus on how creativity can be infused in learning. Kadenze is  currently finalizing The Joy of Learning the Kadenze Way, an online course introducing their Learning Design Framework to ensure that physical and virtual classrooms become places of adventure and alliance.

Working in an aligned but different technology space is C&T (for Computers & Theatre) that stands for new ways of fusing drama and digital technologies. Their signature online utility, called Prospero, enables anyone to mix and blend drama, kinaesthetic learning and digital technologies.

Of course some major foundations have been discussing creativity for many years (such as Lego) and interesting models are emerging that offer direct support for schools who would like to develop creative education in their curriculum.

 Building Momentum

There are many other organizations, especially from the arts, the arts and education and teaching artistry, who are contributing mightily to grow a pedagogy of creativity at regional  and national levels. This is extremely exciting and a great start, but next steps are crucial for creativity to become a reality in the life of every young person. 

To achieve a pedagogy of creativity, educators require more comprehensive and effective professional learning, resources and case studies to make creativity in learning a standard expectation for students everywhere. That step change will require a global infrastructure for creative education that builds the research and advocacy for Creativity in Education seen in the work of figures such as Sir Ken Robinson, to robust approaches that integrate and sometimes challenge established classroom practice. A pedagogy of creativity, with its embodied collaborative and imaginative practices, provides something unique and exciting to education. If we invest our time and effort into making this great start a sustainable educational reality, our students will be the beneficiaries of more dynamic, hopeful, and engaging learning. 

Subscribe to the Kadenze blog and stay up to date with Kadenze’s insights into the emerging ‘new normal’ for education.

By Michael Anderson, Professor of Arts and Creativity Education, The University of Sydney, Australia, Co-Founder of 4C Transformative Learning and Vice Chair of the GIoCT Advisory Committee

Photo by Lucas Kapla on Unsplash

In this post the author, Linda Naiman, introduces herself and outlines the science of flourishing and how to use art as a safe and playful way of self-exploration.

Creative Resilience: How to flourish in the face of life’s challenges by Linda Naiman.

I began my career over 30 years ago as an artist and designer during a recession when no jobs were to be found. It was sink or swim and I learned to swim. I found great clients and was successful, winning a number of awards from my professional organization. But I lost my passion for design. Not only did I suffer from a creative block, but I also suffered a crisis of meaning.

This led me to study creativity as a process, to explore the connection between art, creativity, and leadership, and then to reinvent myself as a corporate alchemist, pioneering arts-based learning in business. I currently help executives and their teams develop skills in creativity, innovation, and collaborative leadership. Over the years, I’ve worked internationally with organizations such as Cisco, Dell, The UN and the US Navy.

It is not always an easy journey and I’ve had plenty of setbacks and failures as well as triumphs. Along the way, I developed the mindsets and skills to be creatively resilient and that’s what I want to teach you. I’ll be sharing my own lived experience plus the science behind creativity, resilience and wellbeing.

One thing I know for sure is that to be creative is to be resilient and vice versa. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity and when you apply creativity to resilience, you will not only bounce back, you will emerge wiser, stronger and more resourceful. To be creatively resilient is to be comfortable with uncertainty.

The connection between art, creativity and resilience

Art-making takes us into alpha frequencies, otherwise known as flow states, which quiet the critical analytical mind, induce feelings of calm, reduce stress and enhance our ability to access inspiration and gain new insights. Flow states put us in a positive state of mind, of being open and receptive to new possibilities.

When we enter the flow states of complete absorption in a creative process, we open our awareness to new perceptions and new perspectives. Creative expression has the power to heal emotions and nurture the soul. When you take time out to create, you shift your field of attention into something generative and life affirming.

Creativity produces positive emotions that can unlock inner resources for dealing with stress and uncertainty.  It is possible to learn creative techniques to reframe obstacles into opportunities (a good way to turn pessimism into optimism) as well as techniques for improvising and generating new ideas about any challenge you are facing.

Resilient people face difficult situations realistically, and find ways to be optimistic. Studies indicate optimists live longer, have better relationships, and achieve more success in life. Optimists are not magical thinkers, unable to see the dark side; rather, they accept reality, and put things in perspective.

Can you learn to be creatively resilient?

The course introduces you to five building blocks that promote creative resilience, based on the science of human flourishing. These are Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning (and purpose) and Accomplishment — as defined by Dr Martin Seligman, one of the founders of Positive Psychology. (Positive Psychology examines what makes life worth living so we can flourish.)

I have curated a set of activities to help you develop the mindsets and skill sets you need to not only be creative and resilient but to flourish. That is, to create a life that is meaningful, purposeful, fulfilling, and engaging.

You will have the opportunity to explore art with an appreciative eye, as well as how to use it as a pathway for self-exploration. I’ll be introducing you to activities using painting and drawing in this course, not so you will become an artist — although you might —but also so you can learn to immerse yourself in artistic expression that goes beyond words.

Other activities include photography, poetry, walkabouts and storytelling. Many of these can be enjoyed with friends, and even children — providing engaging ways to cultivate the five building blocks of creative resilience.

How will you benefit from Creative Resilience?

1. Discover your top 5 signature character strengths and how they can help you increase your confidence and build resilience

2. Develop the 5 building blocks of resilience for mental, physical and spiritual well-being

3. Experiment with science-backed tools and techniques from Positive Psychology to help you flourish

4. Learn techniques from neuroscience to regulate fear or stress and calm down

5. Engage in art-making and appreciation to explore emotion, practice mindfulness, increase self-awareness, well-being and cultivate creativity

6. Finding your authentic self, core values, meaning and purpose

7. Create a blueprint for making your life a work of art and map out your pathway to taking action

8. How to find meaning and purpose even in terrible times

9. How to find the silver lining in obstacles and reframe problems into opportunities.

If you are wondering if this course is for you, consider these 3 questions:

• Who do you need to be to flourish in a world of disruptive change and uncertainty?
• What are the ingredients that give you the strength to withstand stressors, to survive and thrive?
• What new habits do you need to embrace setbacks and move forward?

Upon completion of the course, you will have a practical evidence-based toolkit of trainable skills to enhance creative resilience. Are you excited to get started? Click here to find out more and enrol.

Bonus: Sign up now for the inaugural course by March 1, 2023 and participate in 4 live monthly calls to meet and greet each other and ask me questions.

Image is an original work by Linda Naiman

A key finding emerging from this investigation is the demonstrable need to develop impact assessment models and approaches to evaluation of arts, culture and creative engagement that is people-centered, and has flexibility to be shaped by end-user defined outcomes. Using evaluation approaches to understand the value and impact that go beyond the orthodox reporting priorities about audience numbers, subsidy and economic multipliers can, we argue, build a more comprehensive picture of the transformative potentials of arts and culture for individuals and communities. Taking a people-centered approach would ensure impact and change is not only articulated through the goals of funders or delivery organizations but is understood by the people participating in arts and culture.

Donna and I believe that the people-centered approach to evaluation has application to arts education pedagogies, particularly in our assessment practices. Gert Biesta supports this, noting that education is currently “locked into an endless cycle of measurement and competition” and trying to find a way out, or maybe just looking for a way forward is something educators must turn their attention to. The people-centered framing for evaluating outcomes arising from arts and cultural engagement presents opportunities for learning design in arts engagement and provokes us to think about how we might put our learners at the center of assessment, rather than centering the task.

Educational theorist Elliot Eisner in his text The Kind of Schools We Need: Personal Essays (1998) challenged educators to rethink the role of assessment noting that, “assessment is more an aspiration than a concept with a socially confirmed technical meaning” (p.132). Eisner argues for assessment practices to be flexible, complex and more closely aligned with life, a clear call for making assessment people-centered, or in this case learner-centered.  However, Maxine Greene, arts educator and philosopher, noted that “the chief obstacles of any experience lies in the perpetuation of stereotyped, routine and conventional ways of teaching and, that to encourage more progressive pedagogical methods does not mean that a subversion of the preestablished order of knowledge be undertaken”. Taking the challenge from Eisner and Greene we can see current approaches to assessment of engagement are dominated by an increased focus on standardization, league tables, and competitive rankings. Gert Biesta urges arts educators to return assessment practice back to “encountering the doing of art”. Taking such an approach would value-add to the assessment task by maintaining the ‘fidelity of the immediacy of the cultural experience’‘.

What if we reframe assessment from a mere demonstration of content acquisition to an active mode of judgment of value and quality for our learners? What if we expanded the notion of assessment to include the learner’s lived experience and acknowledge that arts engagement and assessment has a subjective dimension? What if we encouraged our learners to respond to our assessment tasks through their prisms of place and connection with community? Taking this approach does not mean that ‘learner-centered’ should be misinterpreted as solely ‘learner-liked’. We don’t have all the answers. But our research has shown us that there is an urgency to reconfigure the articulation of value and impact arising from engagement in arts, culture and creativity. We argue that the same thinking is equally applicable to our assessment practices by returning the focus back to the field of human experience; the direct experience of an art work or art-making, alongside knowledge of the contexts, traditional and/or contemporary which are at play in that making.

 As we move forward in our post-pandemic reality, the impetus to reframe the way we engage in and reflect on our choices is still strong. In the height of the pandemic Arundhati Roy wrote an essay titled The Pandemic is a Portal. In this treatise, Roy implores us to think into our future by saying, “We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers, our smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it”. It seems the time is right for arts educators to jettison the carcasses of imposed assessment prejudice and fight for stronger learner-centered assessment of value and judgment.

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By Sandra Gattenhof, Professor and Director of Research Training,
School of Creative Practice, Queensland University of Technology
and
Donna Hancox, Professor and Academic Lead Research, School of Creative
Practice, Queensland University of Technology

First Nations Australian Dancer in smoking ceremony, Australian Performing Arts Market.
Photo credit: Rob McColl

 Nancy Andreason, the influential neuroscientist and researcher of human creativity, provides a framework for this discussion. From her longitudinal study of high achieving creative artists and scientists she sets out the creative process in four stages. Most interestingly for our purposes, she identifies the Incubation stage as crucial, arguing that during this phase the association cortex of the brain takes the many ideas in flux and forms them into new stable combinations. She observes such connections are made most “often at a relaxed time, often unconsciously”. How then can educators ensure their students have the time and circumstances they need for Incubation; for ideas, intuitions and feelings to come together to produce novel outcomes, objects and products?

To help design your courses, or revisit existing designs, here are some subject-neutral ways you might use to infuse more imaginative thinking and aesthetic engagement into your practice. 

 1.    Lead students to ask “What if…?” questions.

It’s always valuable to pose questions to students, but it is equally, if not more important, to build in opportunities for your students to pose questions themselves and then explore or investigate them. 

‘What if…?” questions are among the most catalytic for they shift perspectives and open up new possibilities. They are propositional by nature and almost always set up opportunities to investigative through hands-on action.  When students ask “What if…?”, they are motivated to discover, test, and experiment. 

At the same time, “What if….?”  is also the gateway to imaginative play. For example, what would you do if you were given an instrument you’d never seen before and asked to make something of it? You’d probably start with “what can this do?” and then, to really know it’s creative potential, you’d try something else…and then something else.  You’d be asking “What else might I try? What else can this do?”

2.    Let students build a box… to get outside of the box.

How might play enable creative productivity in the classroom? How can you infuse this artistic dynamic into your course? 

 Game design scholar Katie Salen succinctly defines play as free movement within a structure and distinguishes between rule bound play (“Ludus”) and free form play (“Paida”).  Free form play is most relevant for through it the actions of the play alter the structures that give the play shape. Enabling such free movement of play, driven by curiosity and the impulse to experiment, is substantively different from the astroturfed fields with parents shouting from the sidelines (p.284). 

Similarly, artists place self-imposed limits on their own expressive explorations in order to play within and often go beyond those limits. Belgian painter Nel Alerts expresses it this way “I try to set boundaries in order to create space”(p.8). Teachers need to be alert to when, where and how they can enable learners to set structures or boundaries themselves, in order to play within and then venture beyond them.

 3.    Provide time for Free-Form Play

One of the most powerful ways to bring artistic rigor into your teaching is also one of the most simple – provide time to play. 

To truly understand the expressive potential of anything you have to push past the point where you think you’ve tried it all; past the point where you think you’ve exhausted all possibilities or seen everything there is to see. The strength of the artist is the strength to linger in play past boredom. Post-pandemic learning works to build a stamina for play. 

4.    Model playfulness by suspending critical judgment.

As well as setting aside and protecting time for play, teachers need to offer the prompts and protocols that encourage students to suspend their judgment during that time. Judgment has its critical place; options must be sorted and solutions distinguished…eventually.  But when premature judgment is imposed during incubation, and the ‘variously meaningful’ restricted, then the most novel, inventive and often effective solutions are less likely to emerge. Suspending judgment for a time leaves room for “what else…?”.

Finally, allow some exemplars to be ridiculous. This lets students know that there is space for the playful and provides the freedom to risk following “what else?” in order to see where it takes them.

Calling for learning design that activates more aesthetic, imaginative, and creative muscle is not the isolated plea of a few arts educators. The Russian psychologist L.S. Vygotsky describes the impact this way: In play, a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behaviour; in play, it is as though he were a head taller than himself” (p.371). Drawing on anthropological evidence, Rutger Bregman asserts human beings, it turns out, are ultrasocial learning machines. We are born to learn, to bond and to play.” (p.71) And, as Andreasen’s research demonstrates, when we ultrasocial learning machines have open time, our brains fire the creative, associative cortices. The evidence from psychiatry, anthropology, and neuroscience is coming together; we educators in the age of the ‘new normal’ ignore it at our peril.

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By
Professor Emeritus Brad Haseman, EVP, Kadenze, Inc.
and
John Holyoke, Associate Director, Lincoln Center Education, New York.

Photo by Edu Lauton on Unsplash

By
Professor Emeritus Brad Haseman, EVP, Kadenze, Inc.
and
John Holyoke, Associate Director, Lincoln Center Education, New York.

Photo credit: Paolo Bendandi on Unsplash

At 16 I came across Descartes’s dictum ‘Cogito, ergo sum’.
I took it at once to old Les who used to help us examine such things.
‘I think therefore I am,’ I announced. There was a pause.
‘I feel therefore I am’, he replied quietly.
I knew then that here was a beginning to the matter.

A very different beginning to the matter was put this way by the Tongan poet Konai Helu Thaman in her poem Thinking.

you say that you think
therefore you are
but thinking belongs
in the depths of the earth
we simply borrow
what we need to know

From different sides of the planet, Witkin and Thaman are drawing attention to the same problem; that Western education privileges knowledge systems which deal principally with compartmentalised conceptual content, presented as universal and generalizable. Systematic, empirically based observation is at the heart of such knowledge creation and transfer. While our senses capture the experience of the world as it is lived, it is the brain which interprets those sensory impressions to create thoughts and concepts. Thinking takes place in the depths of the brain and not, as Thaman poetically suggests, ‘in the depths of the earth’.

However, the richness of her metaphor to describe thinking flows easily and with greater intellectual coherence for Pacific Island cultures where knowledge and value systems are ‘more holistic, interconnected, experiential, and context specific.’ (p4.) As the world comes to terms with the legacies of colonialism and racism, Indigenous knowledge systems are no longer being seen as inferior or ‘pre-logical and magical’. Increasingly ethno-biological studies are uncovering “the encyclopaedic depths of Indigenous people’s knowledges of their environments, from agriculture, medicine, fisheries, navigation, to climate and weather.”(p15.)

Curiously, this European belief in a hierarchy of knowledge systems also snubbed one of its own inventions; the aesthetic dimension of human consciousness.  The field of aesthetics is a knowledge system produced by the European enlightenment itself, with an unbroken 200-year line of thought from Immanuel Kant through to recent philosopher/educators like Suzanne Langer, Maxine Greene, Peter Abbs and Ken Robinson.

Through them we have come to recognise that ‘Aesthetic’ refers to a distinct category of human understanding.  For Suzanne Langer, our need for symbolization is the essential act of human thought, and she proposed different, but equally important, symbolic orders of meaning making for us. She acknowledged the cognitive operations of mind most commonly found in propositional and linear knowledge systems like Mathematics, Language, Engineering and Business in addition to the operation of Presentational knowledge systems embodied in Religion, Ritual and the Arts. For Peter Abbs it is in the Presentational that the aesthetic is experienced, denoting “a mode of sensuous knowing essential for the life and development of consciousness; aesthetic response is inevitably, through its sensory and physical operations, cognitive in nature (p.53).” It is our experiences in the aesthetic field, with their distinctive non-linear and non-literal symbol mongering power, which expands human expressivity, even allowing us to “express what words can never express”. In the 1982 report by the Gulbenkian Foundation The Arts in Schools, Ken Robinson (later Sir Ken Robinson) who wrote the final draft, asserted the centrality of the aesthetic and creative in education, and concluded that denying children opportunities for aesthetic development “is simply to fail to educate them as fully developed, intelligent and feeling human beings”(p.20).  

However, just as long-standing Indigenous knowledge systems were for too long passed off as magical and unreliable, so too was aesthetic understanding. Particularly recently. As politicians direct educators to deliver jobs, skills, growth and economic futures, so we have seen a diminution of the place of aesthetic dimension in learning and the subsequent loss of imaginative and creative force and resourcefulness in teaching and learning. This slide cannot continue as we build Education’s New Normal.

Subscribe to the Kadenze blog and stay up to date with Kadenze’s insights into the emerging ‘new normal’ for education.

By
Professor Emeritus Brad Haseman, EVP, Kadenze, Inc.
and
John Holyoke, Associate Director, Lincoln Centre Education, New York.

Credit for Image: Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

However, have school administrators and educational researchers paid adequate attention to the ‘emotional’ dimensions of each learner’s life, especially after two years of COVID? Much prominent research is of the measurement and scaling kind, urgently trying to explain changing patterns of student engagement through school average test scores, growth percentiles, mean scores, and distributions of change.

Yet for all the value of this muscle-bound research there is a sense that it is somewhat incomplete; failing to capture the actual granular details of the emotional lives of individuals as they seek to build a post-pandemic future. Often, at Kadenze, our conversations with teachers take a different turn. As teachers of the arts and design, the “creative and emotional” dynamics of their students are a reliable and recurring starting point for learning. Consequently, some Kadenze partners across the planet are bemused, foxed and even thrown by what they are encountering. For instance we are hearing (in most unscientific ways of reporting) that increasing numbers of students: 

• are more concerned with their place in the group than dealing with the artistic ideas of others. As a result ideas are often dismissed too early and too easily, hampering meaningful collaboration.
• appear to have little interest in appreciating and learning from live performances in their community.  
• prefer not to engage with other students’ work with commitment and generosity.
• struggle to deliver group work-in-progress, even when back in live classrooms.
• prefer not to engage in established protocols for classroom organization and management. For example one basic organizational move in a drama classroom is for students to gather in a circle. More than one teacher, commenting from different parts of the world, noted how difficult such a grouping is now, with an Australian teacher referring to her classroom as being made up “of circles of one”.
• are reassured by mask wearing, not only for virus protection, but as a comfort system. It seems mask wearing for some can create a kind of emotional safety zone prompting a Canadian colleague to note  “Our high-school dance team – we had to pry their masks from them!”

The point of listing these gritty observations is not whether they are ‘true’ for learners across the globe, nor is it to argue the case for more qualitative research into these issues, but to note the direct relationship that exists between the emotional circumstances of students and the influence it has on their engagement with the curriculum, their teachers and their fellow students.

Understanding the potency of a learner’s emotional life on their learning was penetratingly demonstrated by Robert Witkin in his groundbreaking argument for the creative arts. In his The Intelligence of Feeling (1974) Witkin notes

There is a world that exists beyond the individual, a world that exists whether or not he (sic) exists. The child needs to know about this world to move in it and manage in it. ….it is a world of facts, of public space and ‘objects’. (p.1)

All educators, extending from parents to politicians, know this world, for its objects stand as the content of the formal curriculum. Learners encounter it everywhere, in the disciplines they must study, the classrooms (real and virtual) they must sit in, and the assessments they must take.

Witkin continues.

There is another world, however, a world that exists only because the individual exists. It is the world of their own sensations and feelings. It is the world of private space and of the solitary object.(p.1)

This recognition, that as sentient beings, each learner and all learners must navigate these two worlds, prefigures Craft’s insistence that we must foreground the ‘creative and emotional’ alongside empowerment, if engagement is to be deep, rich and personally significant. Failure to do so will have dire consequences, and make education’s new normal unaffordable. Unaffordable in Witkin’s terms; for

If the price of finding oneself in the world is that of losing the world in oneself, then the price is more than anyone can afford. (p.1)

Subscribe to the Kadenze blog and stay up to date with Kadenze’s insights into the emerging ‘new normal’ for education.

By,
Brad Haseman, Professor Emeritus and Executive Vice President, Kadenze, Inc.

Composing a collective product.
Peer engagement is most rewarding when everyone feels connected, and at its best it inadvertently nurtures relationships, develops contracts, and creates safe spaces for dialogue. These benefits are amplified when peers co-create a poetic or artistic output together. This could mean co-devising a performance, a visual artifact, a case study, an imagined world, or a collective artwork. Co-creating a poem of possibility thinking (shifting from “what is” to “what might be”), featured in a recent online artwork created by women leaders in Papua New Guinea (p.iv). It served the learners well, enabling them to share their ideas and poetic choices with some anonymity and overcome any shyness about engaging with their peers.

Reflecting back to see what lies ahead
A life free of violence
There is hope
A dream coming true
To be told and achieved

By Jackie Kauli (Ph.D.) from Papua New Guinea. She has worked as a senior research fellow, academic and teaching artist for over two decades developing and curating collaborative works. She uses arts-based methodologies for transformative impact. Her collaborations are with Universities, Indigenous communities throughout the Pacific, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and major UN agencies. Email: jackie.kauli@gmail.com

with

Brad Haseman, Professor Emeritus and Executive Vice President, Kadenze, Inc.

Credit for Image: Elias Alex, Goroka, Papua New Guinea, Peer engagement workshop, 2021

What ingredients make for a worrisome arts education sausage? In our experience fickle recognition of the value of arts education too often results in shifting government and legislative priorities. Golden periods of policy support and innovative thinking frequently slide into times of decline and the momentum generated fades, for decades sometimes. Such periods of pause always come along with a big chill; underfunding, dismantling of infrastructure and attacks on the value of the arts generally.

External events also play their part. Recently COVID-19, the move to remote learning, and the challenge of writing policy in the age of algorithms are unsettling predictable policy pathways.

Lamentably, not all major arts and cultural organizations place a high value on arts education or community engagement programs, nominating the sharing and celebrating of virtuosic talent as their principal KPI.  The participatory artistry of arts educators and teaching artists is recognized but can sit to the side of the main capital ‘A’ arts game. There are many exceptions to this approach of course, especially as diverse communities are now demanding stronger representation in publicly funded galleries, museums and performing arts centers.

Yet extraordinary things in arts policy have been achieved and it is possible to identify four principles of exemplary arts-in-education policy making.

1. The principle of global alignment 

One approach to realizing a unified policy strategy across nation states is to activate the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959) that enshrined the right to access, and participation in culture for all children and young people. Across three Articles (13, 17, 31) the right to culture and arts engagement is laid out. Article 31:2 is strident by saying, “States Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity”. Such a statement is the basis of national and local policy development for equitable provision of arts, culture, and creativity for all children and young people across the globe. A local inflection of the UN Declaration can be seen in policy from Creative Scotland. This cultural enabler endorsed the recommendations made by the Children & Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland in their COVID-19 Independent Children’s Rights Impact Assessment. Resulting was action to “maximize all opportunities for children to enjoy their rights to rest, leisure, recreation and cultural and artistic activities and address structural inequalities that constrain these rights” (p.2). This statement by Creative Scotland is similar in outlook to that espoused in the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child.

2. The principle of ‘best in class’ quality

There is no mystery about how ‘best in class’ quality can be identified and developed through good arts education policy. Work by philosophers in aesthetics first provided the foundation of many research studies and twelve years ago, the landmark The qualities of quality: understanding excellence in arts education was published. It proposes that “the hallmark of high quality arts education is that the experiences offered are rich and complex for all learners, engaging them on many levels, and helping them learn and grow in a variety of ways”. Globally there are many innovative programs that deliver this, including potent preservice and professional learning for arts educators and artists. The Norwegian Arts Council Artist Assistant Scheme is just one example of the way a 2017 innovation can be mainstreamed if well-funded and given time to mature. Finally ‘best in class’ quality not only refers to arts pedagogy and design. It includes the quality of the art making materials students have access to and the appropriateness and worth of the artworks they experience and engage with.

 3. The principle of First Nations first 

For First Nations peoples, connecting and reconnecting artists and communities to living knowledges, story and languages is an inherent value of arts and culture. The engagement of Indigenous perspectives center the value of connection to land or country, the importance of community, and embedding culture (e.g. dance, song and language) in all programs to build intergenerational strength, empowerment, and a positive future. A First Nations arts approach requires foregrounding a self-determination strategy that results in direct engagement with, and participation by, First Nations peoples to determine engagement approaches, arts practices and resources appropriate to place. Australian-based Aboriginal organization Inala Wangarra lead programs which connect First Nations children to their culture. The Gift of Gallang – the Jagera word for ‘healing’- was launched in local primary schools in Inala four years ago, following a rise in the number of attempted youth suicides. This program uses strengths-based workshops engaging culture, country and community run by Aboriginal facilitators to remind participants that they matter. The interconnection between Indigenous arts practices and self-determination are hallmarks of the program.

4.    The principle of cultural justice 

Recently there have been powerful arguments for arts education policy not to be contained within the silos of either ‘the arts’ or ‘education’. Some argue that our work must be located within the larger field of cultural rights, which stand as a human right.

Australian artist, commentator and scholar Scott Rankin asserts “Every one of us should have the right to participate, be represented in and consume their country’s culture, to have a voice in the cultural discussion, to be visible in the narration; because it is our cultural right”(pp.8-9). For those denied these opportunities it becomes a matter of cultural justice. His Cultural Justice and the Right to Thrive is a powerful and timely tale for now. For Rankin, arts education policy is asserting each individual’s cultural rights and therefore requires our policy developers to use the language of justice, “to argue with the pervasive force of international law” (p.60).

 Where in the world are our policy writers who are up for this challenge? Please stand, we need you now.

By Sandra Gattenhof, Professor and Director of Research Training,
School of Creative Practice, Queensland University of Technology

and

Brad Haseman, Professor Emeritus and Executive Vice President, Kadenze, Inc.

Credit for Image: Jason Leung on Unsplash

 The global community of teaching artists knows how to design and deliver arts engagement programs of merit and substance, including those addressing conflict resolution and peace outcomes. In fact, creating safe spaces in which difference can be identified and interrogated underpins all high-quality community engagement programs with aesthetic significance.  Contemporary approaches used by teaching artists see them restlessly experimenting with digital means to strengthen the work. Four of the key design principles underpinning the safe spaces within which communities can begin to resolve difference, argument and conflict are understood to include:

The Principle of Possibility Thinking

 Creativity theorist Anna Craft developed possibility thinking; a way of approaching everyday challenges in life with a “what if” mindset, transforming “what is” to “what might be”. Also known as horizon thinking, the most effective programs are playful, embrace risk taking and in the words of the influential arts educator Maxine Greene “opens windows in the actual, discloses new perspectives, [and] sheds new light (p.36)”.

 The ‘what if’ mindset is fundamental to digital creativity where we draw on “mathematical principles behind our physical world to create digital worlds”, according to Daniel Shiffman in his Kadenze course The Nature of Code.  Over the past two decades, new and imaginative worlds have opened for us to play out other lives in digital, online environments, from cinema to video games, from virtual reality and augmented reality platforms to hybrid theatrical experiences (drawing on live and digital media).”

The Principle of Place

Creative placemaking, which values the specificities of place (geography, demographics, environment) and the assets of their communities (knowledge, resilience, lived experience, culture and creativity), lies at the heart of effective program design and service delivery in the pursuit of conflict resolution. To dig further, The Places of Teaching Artistry, presented by the Sydney Opera House on kadenze.com shows how place and places serve as an enabling driver of creative projects.

The Principle of Duration

 Points of irritation and difference between communities seldom present as quick fixes. The likelihood of success increases markedly when teaching artists plan and fund long-term engagement and embed arts partnerships within communities, schools and local arts agencies .  The short-termism which accompanies a “fly-in/fly-out mentality” for arts provision makes it difficult for First Nations practitioners especially to broker changed relationships that redress years of colonial thinking to create locally relevant, impactful work. A fine illustration of this principle in action involves Indigenous young people in Roebourne, Western Australia who co-create learning materials with their teachers and then share them online with students at other schools. Designed and delivered by Big hART, this is Neolearning, an initiative built on longevity and duration. 

The Principle of Impact

 Teaching artists know that the impact of their work requires truth telling. The lived experience of individuals, families and communities needs to be told, shared and felt with aesthetic force. Programs need to evidence a comprehensive picture of the “alterations in the quality of life (p.617)” and capture an attribution of both individual and collective impacts across the social, economic, environmental, and cultural dimensions of the circumstances of life in this place, on this planet. 

 Kadenze is collaborating with the International Teaching Artist Collaborative (ITAC) to produce ITAC IMPACT: Climate projects in 2021 and 2022. This work, available soon on kadenze.com, features digital archives of climate case studies and the professional development course Teaching Artistry for Social Impact by Eric Booth and Gowri Savoor.

 The Arts constitute one of the major areas of human endeavour and achievement. They are firmly rooted in the aesthetic, representing a form of knowing which is pre-eminently to do with sensory awareness. A worthwhile arts education, and engagement with teaching artists, needs to be rigorous and demanding as well as creatively satisfying and enjoyable. The COVID-19 pandemic and post-truth culture has exposed a great deal about our societies, our collective wellbeing, and how urgent the policy choices we make now are for our futures.

 To celebrate UNESCO International Arts Education Week, Kadenze, Inc. has a special offer for all arts educators and teaching artists. Study the program The Basics of Teaching Artistry for only $US20 (regular price $US390). This includes one month free Premium Membership (normally $US20) giving free access to selected courses from Kadenze’s extensive course catalog.

To take advantage of this offer, go to The Basics of Teaching Artistry. 

This offer is available from 23 to 29 May 2022.

By Sandra Gattenhof, Professor and Director of Research Training,
School of Creative Practice, Queensland University of Technology

and

Brad Haseman, Professor Emeritus and Executive Vice President, Kadenze, Inc.

Credit for Image: Sunguk Kim on Unsplash

 This is easier said than done of course, especially early in a career, but many innovative educational organizations are now using the heft and scope of their network to bring students’ work to the world. The dynamics of effective partnering are informing the infrastructure build, policies and processes of many education schools who recognize the value of partnering with their current students and alumni. Globally, there are many great examples of online showcases of student work. 

·         LASALLE College of the Arts (Singapore) partners with students to present art in the annual LASALLE Show live and online including music performances from the School of Contemporary Music streamed live via YouTube.

·         The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland also live streams performances in partnership with students: RCS At Home

·         The National Institute of Dramatic Art (Australia) created the Digital Theatre Festival in 2020, comprised of six world premieres, specifically for the online space, with students collaborating with teachers and practitioners.

·         The New School (USA) involves students, alumni and faculty in Research and Creative Practice, including The New School Collaboratory, a university-wide initiative to co-produce knowledge with students and communities through a digital hub.

 There are two aspects to these partnering initiatives to note. Firstly, they are acts of generosity. A generosity of creative endeavor and resources by current students, the institution, staff, alumni, prospective students, and industry bodies. Also, these gestures of generosity serve to establish and enliven the relationships between the known parties, such as current students and alumni, and between the world’s many unknown parties (with an internet connection). This opening up of generosity to drive relationships stands as part of education’s ‘new normal’. The relative simplicity of a closed classroom with a small number of students is being replaced by the daunting complexity of a new normal which embraces numbers at scale, layered stakeholder relationships and above all, generosity.

By

Dr Amanda Morris, Director, Higher Education Engagement, Kadenze, Inc.

Credit for Image: Clay Banks on Unsplash

 For example Trinity College Dublin grasped the power of such an approach – “revolutionising student engagement through embedding a culture of collaboration and partnership” as detailed in Students as Partners: a model to promote student engagement in post-COVID-19 teaching and learning.

 Kadenze partner institutions have also been experimenting with ways of engaging students as partners in the online learning environment in the following five ways.

1.      Offering choices for students in the learning design of curricula – choice of pace, timing, sequence, and mode with options to specialise in content areas.

2.      Collaborating with students as critical friends to shape learning design, test online learning journeys, review assessments and give feedback for improvement.

3.      Focussing explicitly on digital literacy by deliberately using proven technologies to share and learn from each other in partnership.

4.      Building learning communities with their students. The online environment supports networking, giving teachers opportunities to collaborate with students on projects; to debate ideas through online discussion and critique forums; to mentor students to become ambassadors for courses.

5.      Showcasing creative work in public showings online and promoting student work to the industry (through digital portfolios) via online platforms and social media.

 These strategies transform what it means to be a ‘student’. An exciting element of the ‘new normal’ is that students grow to become co-creators and co-teachers. Teachers and institutions enable students to become active, independent learners, following their interests, learning at their own pace and collaborating to enrich the learning of others. In this ‘new normal’, educators recognise that students play an important role as partners in their education – its design, implementation, and review – no matter what the delivery mode.

Subscribe to the Kadenze blog and stay up to date with Kadenze’s insights into the emerging ‘new normal’ for education.

By

Dr Amanda Morris, Director, Higher Education Engagement, Kadenze, Inc.

Credit for Image: Shane Rounce on Unsplash

This has convinced us that teaching frameworks today require comfort, competence and fluency across all three modes of delivery: live, online synchronous and asynchronous. This will be a feature of the ‘new normal’; an integration of delivery modes which insists that each mode is used to do what it does best.

Many teachers will need to step back a little from their belief that the best teaching can only take place in a live classroom. We need to unlearn our fondness for the ways of old, remembering that many learners did not, and do not, prosper inside the four walls of the classroom. We have known this for a while now. In 1789 William Blake pitied ‘the school boy’ with:

But to go to school in a summer morn,

O it drives all joy away!

Under a cruel eye outworn,

The little ones spend the day

In sighing and dismay.

Our times demand that Blake’s ‘outworn eye’ is replaced by a more dynamic ‘new normal’ in education, both within and beyond the four walls which have contained learning for too long.   

Subscribe to the Kadenze blog and stay updated.

By

Brad Haseman, Executive Vice President, Kadenze, Inc. & Professor Emeritus, QUT

Credit for Image: Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

Salah-Eddine Kandri, Global Head of Education, IFC, in a contribution to the World Economic Forum, noted that “COVID-19 is causing us to challenge deep-rooted notions of when, where, and how we deliver education, of the role of colleges and universities, the importance of lifelong learning, and the distinction we draw between traditional and non-traditional learners.” He acknowledges “As painful and stressful a time as this is, it may fashion a long overdue and welcome rebirth of our education systems.” Such a rebirth will midwife a ‘new normal’ for education globally.

Really? Didn’t the old ways work well for a long time? Surely, sooner or later, we will end up back there, back to the known and reassuring. Well, not for educational pioneer Sugata Mitra who argues “we can never go ‘back’ to anything. Even if we could – to what ‘normal’ shall we return? Going back to normal doesn’t mean anything at all.”

As we grasp for the ‘new normal’ there are portents of what will matter most. Kadenze, Inc. for instance, a longstanding online learning platform committed solely to the creative arts and design, has hard won expertise in online program design to share, especially with teachers and creatives wanting to heighten engagement with their learners. 

Through April Kadenze will publish a series of predictive posts which take readers into Education’s new normal. Subscribe to the Kadenze blog and hold your breath for Modes of Delivery and the ‘new normal’, coming early next week.

By

Brad Haseman, Executive Vice President, Kadenze, Inc. & Professor Emeritus, QUT

Credit for Image: Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

Psychology courses typically use lectures and tutorials to focus on key concepts, the history of psychology and the scientific methods used in psychological research. This course takes a different approach. It harnesses the creative and collaborative power of project-based learning using a series of digital projects which are scaffolded to create a coherent understanding of this important field of study. As a result, this course demonstrates a creative approach to teaching a traditional subject online.

A radical feature of this approach is Digital-Intro

Lisa Dierker, Professor of Psychology at Wesleyan University, curated the online course Introduction to Psychology for the Kadenze platform. The course is delivered through a series of projects using, what Professor Dierker calls, Digital-Intro, to explain and frame the work students undertake alone or in small groups. By actively making and reflecting throughout the course, students find the learning engaging and develop transferable digital skills. Professor Dierker is driving the development of and promoting the use of Digital-Intro as a distinctive pedagogical strategy.

Why are digital skills relevant for contemporary education and critical to diversity, equity and inclusion? 

Most of the top 25 highest paying, in-demand jobs (e.g., database administrator, project marketing manager, UX designer, business development manager, solutions architect, etc.) require diverse digital skills. This enduring trend threatens to further increase current social and economic disparities given the continued under-representation of both women and individuals from racial minority groups across all technology-oriented industries. At the same time, students, particularly women and those from under-represented groups, continue to overwhelmingly pursue undergraduate degrees in social science and related fields (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017) with their first two years of college largely consumed by general education courses that rarely introduce students to technology. General education currently represents an untapped opportunity to achieve greater equality and inclusion in the U.S. workforce. 

Enter, Digital-Intro where Professor Dierker and her team are working to transform general education courses into active, project-based experiences. Projects are aimed at exposing students to a wide range of digital skills as they learn traditional disciplinary content. 

How does Digital-Intro enhance the Introduction to Psychology online course?

Within our digital Introduction to Psychology course now available on kadenze.com, students explore concepts and content in the field of psychology through video storytelling, programming, data visualization, experimentation, design and more. This novel curriculum solidifies new content knowledge, exposes students to modern digital tools and provides the opportunity to create tangible learning artifacts. The goal is learning through the creation of “stunning acts of communication”, an idea that is both aspirational and we believe, wholly achievable. Even more than introducing students to a discipline, Digital-Intro creates opportunities to learn leading digital tools and software platforms that empower students to enter the expanding digital workforce.

Within our newly launched Introduction to Psychology courses (Introduction to Psychology Part 1 and Introduction to Psychology Part 2) students can learn about the foundations of human behavior including contributions of the brain, sensation and perception, emotions, development, learning, mental health, memory, our social world and more. Lessons are delivered through a series of video presentations aimed at teaching about the field of psychology and preparing students conceptually for approaching a series of digital projects. These projects allow students to engage with the course concepts by investigating for insight, designing for change, advocating for influence, teaching to learn, and making learning stick.

The following diagram illustrates the knowledge flows and transfers which are enabled by the Digital-Intro approach to this course.

Distinctive contribution to creative education 

The underpinning pedagogy of these courses marks a distinctive and significant contribution to the field of creative education. Kadenze is proud to bring this course to students and creative educators across the globe. The course embeds digital literacy studies and practice within the study of Psychology, ensuring that the two areas of knowledge enrich each other and the students who undertake the course. Educators can learn from this innovative pedagogy and see how they too might apply Digital-Intro to their discipline and transform their classes into highly interactive, creative, and engaging sites with real-world impact in digital literacy. This vision aligns with Kadenze’s aims to offer high-quality courses in creative fields from top universities, such as Wesleyan University; to support and celebrate creative and innovative pedagogy; and to take action in areas of social justice, diversity and inclusion.

Digital-Intro for all students’ general education

The Digital-Intro initiative is 100% committed to Open Educational Resources both in the content created and in the contributions that Digital-Intro classrooms and communities will make in expanding this resource. Open Educational Resources are open to everyone and can be used, revised, re-mixed, improved and redistributed freely to create expanded access, equity, and inclusion. Open Educational Resources made by new learners serve as an empowering resource for newer learners!

Right now, Digital-Intro is in its infancy. Lisa Dierker and her colleagues at Wesleyan are excited about the vast possibilities and warmly welcome everyone to get involved. For more information, see their website at https://digitalintro.wescreates.wesleyan.edu/ and feel free to reach out. Lisa Dierker: ldierker@wesleyan.edu

Credit for Image: University of Michigan Health Lab published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

We’re excited to announce the launch of three new Micro-courses in Music:

• Computer-Assisted Music in Python, presented by Marc Evanstein, USA
• Exploring North Indian Classical Music: Part 1 Acquaintance, presented by RagaSphere, India
• Exploring North Indian Classical Music: Part 2 Appreciation, presented by RagaSphere, India

Marc Evanstein is a composer and pianist whose music takes inspiration from mathematics, physics and the natural world. His new Micro-course, Computer-Assisted Music in Python introduces students to the exciting world of algorithmic and computer-assisted composition using Python.

Marc’s course introduces you to SCAMP (Suite for Computer-Assisted Music in Python), Marc’s newly developed invention which makes it possible to create music with an ensemble of virtual instruments. Ultimately, SCAMP can be used both to create acoustic, notated music and to produce electronic music by communicating with external applications or sound synthesis languages like SuperCollider and Max/MSP. Future Micro-courses will explore this endless array of possibilities!

In this micro-course, once you become acquainted with SCAMP and with the fundamentals of Python programming (eg. variables, loops, functions), the emphasis shifts to exploring the potential of these concepts for musical creation. So, if you’re brand new to coding or to Python, you will have an opportunity to learn the basics. On the other hand, if you have a background in programming, this course will be an opportunity to focus on the musical potential of Python, and on getting to know the SCAMP framework.

Marc’s work has been featured in festivals and conferences throughout the USA and internationally. He studied Music and Music Technology at Stanford University and recently completed a Master’s in Media Arts and Technology and a PhD in Composition at UC Santa Barbara.

Our two new Micro-courses Exploring North Indian Classical Music are presented by RagaSphere, India; a team of musicians and music lovers with professional backgrounds in Engineering, Information Technology, and Media. RagaSphere uses technology and multimedia to help the curious and serious listener understand the basic concepts and finer nuances of Indian Classical Music. The author of these courses is Nitin Amin, a passionate music educator and co-founder of RagaSphere. First trained as an engineer, Nitin has a Master’s degree in Music and is a performing flautist in Hindustani Classical Music.

Exploring North Indian Classical Music: Part 1 Acquaintance introduces students to the scale and inter-relationship of musical notes as well as the concepts of the Raga which deals with the melodic element of music and the Tala which represents the rhythm. Understanding these abstract concepts is embodied for students through the experience of singing or playing an instrument along with a series of practice exercises.

Exploring North Indian Classical Music: Part 2 Appreciation shares with students what happens in a performance, revealing how the element of improvisation imbues North Indian Classical Music with mystical surprise. The Micro-course demonstrates how the Raga and Tala form the composition, which is then used as a tool to improvise and expand in performance. Examples of vocal and instrumental performances are explored.

While these Micro-courses will help listeners everywhere experience North Indian Classical Music better, they are designed also to help musicians of other genres of music enhance their performance skills. Together these two Micro-courses open up a rich world of music tradition and you will join RagaSphere’s worldwide community dedicated to the appreciation and enjoyment of a classical Indian music performance.

These new Micro-courses are the latest instances of Kadenze’s commitment to delivering exceptional online courses and Micro-courses across a range of music disciplines and technologies. So whether you are a student, a performer, or a listener curious to learn, come to Kadenze.com, your go-to partner for Music Courses, Programs and bite-sized Micro-courses.

To celebrate the launch, the Micro-course Computer-Assisted Music in Python is on sale for $USD30.00 – that’s $10 off the original price of $USD40.00. But only until October 1, 2021. Discover the Micro-course now and enrol to start learning!
LEARN MORE

To celebrate the launch, the Micro-course Exploring North Indian Classical Music: Part 1 Acquaintance is on sale for $USD25.00 – that’s $50 off the original price of $USD75.00. But only until October 1, 2021. Discover the Micro-course now and enrol to start learning!
LEARN MORE

By Brad Haseman, Executive Vice President, Kadenze, Inc. & Professor Emeritus, QUT
This blog post was first published by the National Advocates for Arts Education (NAAE) to mark UNESCO International Arts Education Week
May 24-30, 2021

International Arts Education week reminds the world that the arts and learning are tightly bound and have been for a very long time. We are reminded that, throughout the twentieth century, arts educators were a dynamic force to challenge and disrupt the Transmission Model of education, rebranded these days as Direct Instruction.

Here, in broad terms, learning encounters are structured and sequenced by the teacher, with content presented to students and directed at them. The most virulent version of this approach has learners sitting quietly in rows, passively listening to the teacher who pronounces the skills, wisdoms, and values they will need for life. And well, maybe that was all that was needed, for the 1800s!

But even then, this approach was never seen as sufficient. Back in the early 1800’s that great university builder Alexander von Humboldt stressed the importance of Collaborative Learning, “Collaboration operates through a process in which the successful intellectual achievements of one person arouse the intellectual passions and enthusiasms of others.” Humboldt’s notion was rebranded in the 1940’s by Morton Deutsch and later elaborated on by David and Roger Johnson influencing our understanding of Cooperative Learning today; “Cooperative learning… involves students working together to achieve common goals or complete group tasks – goals and tasks that they would be unable to complete by themselves”.

Then in 1934, John Dewey (Ahh who can forget ‘Art as Experience’?) set up his stall for Active Learning reminding everyone that “Education is not an affair of ‘telling’ and being told, but an active and constructive process.” This constructivist thread, whereby students determine the focus, content and direction of their learning, has been aligned with and amplified into Inquiry-based Learning, described as more than asking a student what he or she wants to know. It’s about triggering curiosity.

It was inevitable that, sooner or later, the term Experiential Learning would be used; one which pivots around reflecting on life’s concrete and direct experiences. Kolb defines Experiential Learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience.”

The most recent disruptive model to emerge is Creative Learning defined by John Spacey as “the process of acquiring knowledge and abilities using creative processes…as opposed to simply trying to memorize information.” In our age of innovation, the knowledge economy, software as a service, and the creative industries, commentators like Ken Robinson argue that “Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” It is a driver of comparative advantage for modern economies.

These are all species of pedagogy designed to disrupt the transmission model of teaching and learning. All are much needed, as the transmission model stubbornly holds sway, strengthened by regimes of national testing and standards of attainment to measure the performance of students and educational systems. Yet it is a curious thing; the proliferation of these positive pedagogies all have a common root, a DNA which remains broadly unacknowledged. They can all gather, in part, under the umbrella of Arts-led learning.

When a teacher, no matter the discipline, places the arts at the centre of the teaching and learning process, the following are unavoidable: passions and enthusiasms, collaboration, expressive inquiry, common goals, cooperative discovery, active construction of meaning, grasping and transforming experience, curiosity, student autonomy, concrete and direct experience with something that matters personally, open-ended inquiry, and engagement through all the sensory capabilities of knowledge making.

The ears and eyes are not the only sensory pathways to cognition. Indeed, the full sensory apparatus of the body activates cognition alongside the emotions, the imagination, the memory and the spiritual dimensions of consciousness.

Why is it the capabilities of the arts to lead learning remain un-recognized and under-valued? After all they have a philosophical and educational pedigree built on the work of Davis Hume, Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant.

Maybe best to leave it to a poet to explain why?

When Roger McGough, the satirical Liverpool poet, wrote this in 1978, he was speaking directly to teachers (the volume of poems was called In the Glassroom). Those of us fighting to secure the arts in education at that time smiled wryly recognising both the truth and swingeing irony in the metaphor. And the notion that there is something unreliable, untrustworthy even, about the arts in education remains sadly persistent, despite all the evidence. Take just one telling example.

Robyn Ewing’s comprehensive international report for the Australian Council for Educational Research is a commanding case in point as to why and how the “Arts can help transform learning processes and practices in schools to ensure that education is inclusive and meaningful for all” but has been set to one side by many educational policy makers and curriculum designers.

Celebrating International Arts Education week this year, 2021, cannot be the same as in previous years, with the old biases tolerated. For a new and promising opportunity awaits arts educators, and immediately. As the world slowly emerges from a global pandemic, educators everywhere are struggling to imagine what the lasting effects might be.

Certainly, the emergency shift to online education we saw in 2020 marks an opportunity for change and educational reinvention. Increasingly known as HyFlex courses (a crash-merge of Hybrid-Flexible), teachers are being required to build new educational orders by blending classroom, synchronous and asynchronous modes of delivery.

We are entering a period where the experiential power of arts-led learning (together with all those species of learning that wish to claim part of the action) can transform contemporary classroom and online learning design. The uninformed sidelining of the arts in this must not linger. Instead, this is the moment for art and design educators, and organizations providing resource and learning design support, to assert the inclusive contribution of Arts-led learning in live and online settings. The quest for fuller engagement is not just ‘good’ for learners, but ‘good’ for the art and science of modern learning design itself.

Brad is the lead teacher and coordinator of a Kadenze team of teachers and researchers designing and delivering the Professional Development Program Renewing Learning Design through Creativity and Technology.

Photo by Petri Heiskanen on Unsplash

The digital learning designer Luis Alvarado concluded a blog post recently by proclaiming, “Online learning does not suck, but bad learning design does!”  At Kadenze, Inc. (“Kadenze”) we agree. On this blog, since April 2019, we have been wrestling regularly with the problems of established online learning design, especially its failure to adequately manage and respect the longstanding educational practices of the creative arts, design, and creative technologies. After years of scholarly engagement, the creation of hundreds of online courses, and strong reflexive partnerships with leading institutions on the planet, we have articulated our online learning framework called Technology Enabled Creative Learning (TECL). TECL has been a scholarly exercise in interdisciplinary knowledge building; spawned by educators from music, dance, drama, film and media, the visual arts, design, and the creative application of technology and computing power. As it stands the model is applicable to all disciplines and serves as a coherent and mature field of practice, not just some airy, arm-waving promising to inject more generic ‘creativity’ into classes.

This brings us back to Alvarado’s original observation; that many problems in online learning stem from learning designs which ‘suck’. There is a further aspect of this. While many learning designs are not fit for purpose and are dumbly cut to fit all sizes of learning at once, the Professional Development Programs meant to illuminate those learning frameworks are often quite poor. There are many reasons why this is so; all understandable, some forgivable, some not.

Firstly, many expert arts educators are wary about overly short courses claiming to ‘get them online’. Their pedagogic heartbeat is for experiential and active learning in a medium rich with symbolic potential, (such as clay, sound and silence, machine-led computation, moving images, the expressive body) so mediating learning through a screen can only seem to diminish and impoverish. This is not inevitably the case of course, but the caution is reasonable.

Then the pandemic blew in. Suddenly online learning had to happen, and across three weeks in early 2020 wariness was forced to give way to the demands of remote emergency teaching. Immediately necessity triumphed over reluctance, hardly a precondition for the warm embrace of technology in learning.

Thirdly, it is hardly the case too that prevailing learning design models are convincing for all disciplines. Many have been built on sandy scholarship, promulgated with a certainty of success which lacks critical interrogation, and are overclaimed, often with undeserving zeal. Many creative and expert educators, when encountering some of the online learning design approaches for the first time, quickly reach for the snake oil antidote.    

Finally, the need to move quickly, to ‘just do it’, has fuelled an over simplistic pragmatism for learning to teach online. The proliferation of easy templates and repetitive lists of tips and trickery (for fuller engagement for instance), masquerade as scholarship. For teachers genuinely attending to their overarching educational approach and how to realise it in the lives of their learners, these materials are half baked, half truths, with little purchase over the complexity of classrooms and the synchronous and asynchronous strategies they are being called on to deploy.

The question of substance in Professional Development Programs

Going forward the challenge for teachers producing Professional Development Programs is to build substance and consequence, consciously and demonstrably, into their offerings. In this I am not referring to the ‘substance’ found in many certificate courses hosted by universities (involving chunks of theory the learner must evidence in a project of some kind) nor the ‘substance’ found in many informal, short courses led by industry experts (involving the passing on of the ‘blood knowledge’, hard won from the acrobatics of ‘failing forward’).

Kadenze has found that courses delivering substance and effect have several recurring characteristics. Such courses:

• model the new pedagogies they advocate; maximising the value of the live and synchronous by their astute use of asynchronous activities
• are informed by Kadenze’s Technology Enabled Creative Learning (TECL)
• include real world activities, or powerful simulations of it
• structure opportunities for collaboration and co-creation 
• link with participants career expectations for advancement
• adopt phases of a curriculum development process for structural scaffolding
• ensure adequate time is allowed for exploration, experimentation, and reflection
• archive lifelong access to session recordings and resources for participants
• maintain a solutions orientation for practical engagement rather than abstract conceptual content only
• save learners’ time by blending serviceable theory with core principles of practice 
• provide fitting challenges, and support when challenges become confounding
• keep alive the learner’s ‘need to know’.

Embedding these characteristics in Professional Development Programs doesn’t happen by accident or whim. Course development takes time and thrives in a culture of open-minded critique in the knowledge that it is always a build between the science of learning and art of learning. We know this firsthand having spent months designing and resourcing our own Professional Development Program Renewing Learning Design through Creativity and Technology. This online program, incorporating our Technology Enabled Creative Learning (TECL) framework, commences on May 18 and will be conducted throughout May and June 2021.

In building our own course we have steadfastly refused to feature the snack food of cut-out tips, random thoughts and generic advice, holding instead to the belief that they can never fully nourish transformational professional learning. Such an approach just sucks…alongside bad learning design!  To learn more about Renewing Learning Design through Creativity and Technology or to register for the Program launch & information session click here.

Art is too important not to share

Photo by Peter F on Unsplash

When it comes to art and education, especially online education, there is one element of artful sharing that is often overlooked. All too often, when teachers and authors of creative courses, the content experts, decide to ‘go online’ they are bemused and then frustrated trying to work within models of learning design that are not fit for purpose; for creative purpose. Fit for developing analytical and linear cognitive capabilities may be, and as we are reminded repeatedly, capabilities that are essential to hold down a successful job and build a powerful economy.

At Kadenze, Inc. (‘Kadenze’), after seven years of working with teachers of the creative arts and design, we have needed to challenge those online learning design approaches which engender the cognitive operations of mind most commonly found in Mathematics, Chemistry, Language, Engineering and Business education. Increasingly we have found they fail to address neither the dynamics which motivate creative engagement nor serve a pedagogy needing to stimulate interpretation and judgment (such as informed disagreement), rather than correct or incorrect answers.

Kadenze has been wrestling with this for years now. Two years ago, to the day, on April 1, 2019, I wrote the first blog post on this concern. Before the pandemic, before education had to go remote, I framed the challenge this way:

But the question arises: do the precepts of arts education hold value for contemporary online pedagogy? Should we wait for virtual reality and the holodeck to become ubiquitous and real enough to replicate the studio before we engage the arts online?

Of course not. Indeed, there is plenty to suggest that many prevailing approaches to online learning design desperately need to be nourished by the arts-led tradition of education.

In the two years since, Kadenze has been undertaking a research and teaching investigation into this proposition. What have we done, what have we learned, and what can we now share?

Firstly, we have designed a mature and comprehensive framework for online creative education which, unsurprisingly, is “nourished by the arts-led tradition of education.” Called “Technology Enabled Creative Learning” (‘TECL’), this framework has grown from the conceptual foundations developed in the four blog posts (and accompanying vodcasts) published to this blog throughout April 2019. While TECL will be reassuring and aligned with the pedagogical heartbeat of arts and design educators, it will have traction with teachers from all disciplines wanting to creatively engage the modern learner.

Secondly, Kadenze will soon be presenting our TECL inspired insights in an online course “Renewing Learning Design through Creativity” and Technology. This course, to be conducted throughout May 2021, not only shares and applies TECL, but does so with an eye to the digitally integrated futures that educators see coming.

When you fully embrace Britto’s idea, that art is too important not to share, and fuse it with design, creative technologies and creative education, then you have the DNA for a company like Kadenze. Sharing is at the heart of everything we do; now sharing our expertise in online learning design for creative education.

Further announcements about how to access Kadenze’s “Technology Enabled Creative Learning” framework and the course “Renewing Learning Design through Creativity and Technology” will be made throughout April. We look forward to sharing our findings and proven practice with you.

You can access the 2019 blog posts which prefigure these developments (Part 1 posted April 1 2019) at: “How The 8 Effects of Arts Education Are Changing Online Pedagogy, Part 1 – Kadenze Blog“

You can register your interest in TECL and “Renewing Learning Design through Creativity and Technology” by contacting us at: tecl@kadenze.com