teacher creativity

Reconceptualizing Teachers' Roles
for Canada's Creative Economy

2016-2021

Primary Investigator: Dr. Sean Wiebe

Co-Investigators:
Pauline Sameshima, Mindy Carter, Peter Gouzouasis,
Patrick Howard, Kathryn Ricketts, Mitch McLarnon

Research Assistant & Artists
Layal Shuman, Matthew O'Reilly,
Emilee De Sommer-Dennis, Tashya Orasi

Funded by
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Problem: In designing a creative and critical experience for their students, many teachers have difficulty seeing interconnections, thinking across literacy domains, and assessing complex skills holistically (Digital Economy Research Team, 2011-2014). This lack of leads to an undervaluing of the creative outcomes that are possible in schools, and is why we propose to reconceptualize teachers' roles through a/r/tography, a form of arts-based research that braids artmaking, researching, and teaching (a/r/t).

In a comparative case study across six Canadian sites, data will be gathered on teachers' lived experiences of becoming a/r/tographers as they develop creative practices.

We seek to understand:
(1) how creative pedagogies develop through the multiple interconnections among (a) artmaking, (b) research and (c) design thinking; and,
(2) how developing an ethos to position teachers within society as a/r/tographers can establish more measurable and immediate pathways for teacher and student contributions to the Creative Economy.

Snapshot into part of the research process at Lakehead. . .

Using the Parallaxic Praxis Model, the researchers each develop an artefact series from a defined section of the collected data. In a facilitated creativity propulsion activity, the artefacts are used in a layer of knowledge generation through a dialogic analysis called the Cathechization Process.

Art by Lakehead Team: T. Orasi, P. Sameshima & E. De Sommer-Dennis

As part of this research project, the collaborative virtual works included in this video were made using Google Tilt Brush software. Engaging with the possibilities of this software has allowed the Lakehead team the opportunity to both imagine and inhabit the space where new understandings of the data have been created.

Expanding the literacy of creativity across disciplines and into virtual realms, the modality of these virtual paintings represents a new way of thinking, being and entering the research.

Using the data from the Teacher Creativity project and Parallaxic Praxis as a methodology to inform our making and questioning of the data, the themes explored in this series of virtual makings include:

- The industrialization of education and the inherent tensions between efficiency and creativity;
- Path dependency and the redirecting of life trajectories that form selfhood;
- Playing/tinkering and ephemerality;
- Permission for creativity and the growing of agency in new ways through the creative process;
- The “celebrations of leaving” in education, which extend to the lives lives of teachers, students, and in ways of thinking about
creativity and education;
- Trace as part of creative journeys; and;
- The social value of creativity.

The team would like to express their sincere thanks to Valerie Gibbons and Garth Galvin (Lakehead University Chancellor Patterson Library Staff) for their gracious support and assistance with the use of 3D modeling and Google Tilt Brush platforms.