Performing Creative Leadership: Co-Designing Leadership Change in Teacher Education and Research

• In Event: Design-Based Approaches for Creativity Education and Research: Case Studies From Six Universities in Canada and Australia

Abstract

Objective/Purpose:
In this paper we performatively present a co-design program of creative ecological transformation in three Australian universities' Schools of Education. Working with the Senior Leadership Group of each university’s School of Education, we explore in three unique ways the goal of changing perceptions of what creativity is and how to ‘do’ it, by developing a whole school ecology of learning in which creativity is placed at the center of all teaching, learning and research. As a result of this creative ecological renewal, we strive to develop the creative agency of all staff and consequently all initial teacher education (ITE) students at these universities, regardless of discipline, and in doing so create a new generation of creative teachers equipped to educate students for success in an increasingly globalised world.

Theoretical framework:
Harris’ (2016; 2022) Creative Ecologies framework builds on not only foundational Western creativity studies research that advances understandings of creativity as relational, emergent and collaborative (e.g. Amabile, 1995; Lucas, 2001; Vygotsky, 1984), but also Chen’s Asia as Method (2010), which challenges creative/analytic, ‘Asia’/‘West’ binaries and celebrates historical, cultural, and political interconnectedness. Harris’ framework directs attention to new materialist and affective experiences of research encounter, encourages transdisciplinary and transcultural dialogue, and highlights the value of the arts in ‘rewilding’ creativity in academic research.

Methods and data:
This paper focuses on three Australian research sites in Melbourne, Brisbane and Southern Queensland. In each location, members of the School of Education senior leadership groups were engaged in an emergent, iterative co-design approach to enhancing creativity across the whole school ecology. The co-authors share the views of this leadership team who grapple through diverse lenses with the need for more creative capacity-building in education training. Interviews with members of the leadership group, and co-design consultation sessions offer diverse data that shows how creative capacitation needs to be both schematised/standardised and in part unique to each diverse context. We demonstrate how a creative ecological audit approach to increasing creative capacity across the five domains of the Harris Creative Ecology framework (policies, partnerships, place, products, and processes) bears productive results in each unique school.

Results and significance:
By changing the Schools of Education into creative hubs of research, teaching and learning, using a co-design approach, this presentation suggests that the true potential of creativity in higher education is to transform not only the learning experiences of hundreds of initial teacher education students, but also the creative capacity of thousands of primary and high school students by extension. This offers a significant step towards realizing national and international calls for educating for a changing, unstandardised, flexible and agile world and workforce. This study also highlights the importance of taking a site-specific approach to initiating institutional change, such that the resultant action is tailored to the unique needs, challenges, and opportunities of each specific socio-cultural site and community.

Authors

• Daniel X. Harris, RMIT University

• John Saunders, Australian Catholic University

• Peter James Cook, University of Southern Queensland