The Pedagogy of Creativity: Understanding higher order capability development in design and arts education

This paper address the question of ‘…what pedagogies are required … to establish an education that is grounded in complexity, with an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary character… that contributes to sustainable human and societal development’ (Taylor, 2008 unpublished). The importance of human creativity is widely recognised as a catalyst for innovation, adaptability and survival in an increasingly unpredictable and rapidly changing world. However, surprisingly little educational attention is traditionally afforded to identifying, analysing and promoting teaching strategies that actively stimulate and nurture individual creativity in learners. This is perhaps most apparent in institutions and faculties that focus primarily on the efficient transmission of content information, mastery of academic or technical procedures and the relevance of accurate and timely application of existing knowledge within prescribed disciplinary, commercial, industrial, cultural or social contexts. Hence, understanding of and opportunities for generating new and unexpected insights about transdisciplinary knowledge tend to be neglected while support for the personal acquisition of a fully embodied understanding of how such hybrid knowledge may be productively used is often overtly discouraged – except in the arts where