Wise Humanising Creativity: Changing How We Create in a Virtual Learning Environment

Introduction

In the last twenty years, there has been a growing shift in understanding creativity in education, from an individualised concept, to one which is collaborative or group based, and which is ‘everyday’ in its occurrence (Banaji, Burn & Buckingham, 2010; Craft, 2002; John Steiner, 2000; Sawyer, 2003). These shifts have provided the foundations for new arguments for creativity as a 21^st century ability which children, young people and citizens need to thrive together as a response to rapid change and constant uncertainty (Chappell & Craft with Rolfe & Jobbins, 2011; Craft, 2011; Robinson, 2015). Simultaneously, much has been written, especially in the United Kingdom, regarding the multiple rhetorics of creativity which place differing emphases on creativity’s social, cultural, democratic and personal dimensions and their influences on creativity in learning and teaching (Banaji, Burn & Buckingham, 2010; Sefton-Green, Thomson, Jones & Bresler, 2011). Developing within this shifting conceptual landscape are a collection of ideas that have emphasised the importance of co-creativity within education, the role of generative possibilities, the question of the ethical impact of creativity, and the related pedagogical dynamics. These ideas are Wise Humanising Creativity (WHC) (e.g. Chappell & Craft, with Rolfe & Jobbins, 2011; Chappell & Craft, 2011; Chappell & Swinford, in press; Craft 2013), Possibility Thinking (PT) (e.g. Burnard, Craft & Grainger, 2006; Craft 2002; Craft, 2014), and the ‘4Ps’ of creative engagement (Craft, 2011). They spotlight and challenge the dominance of Western-centric, marketised creativity, positing a more humanising ethically aware alternative which views children and young people as empowered creative contributors alongside adults.

Together and separately, these theories have been elaborated from empirical research in a variety of educational settings (e.g. Chappell & Jobbins, 2015; Chappell, Slade, Greenwood, Black & Craft, under review; Craft & Chappell, 2014; Cremin, Burnard & Craft, 2006; Cremin, Chappell & Craft, 2012). Together, they put forward a strong theoretical argument for better grasping the meaning of creativity as distributed between people, objects and ideas (e.g. Chappell with Craft, Rolfe & Jobbins, 2012; Craft, McConnon & Matthews, 2012) and for the need to engage with the consequences of creative activity as ethically laden (e.g. Chappell, 2008; Craft, 2013). Primarily, these ideas have been applied in formal education within a multitude of settings including within generic (e.g. Craft et al., 2012), arts-based (Chappell et al., 2011) and science-based learning contexts (Craft et al., 2014; Cremin, Glauert, Craft et al., 2015). Most recently, triggered by Craft (2011), this collection of ideas has been applied within explicitly digitally driven educational contexts (Chappell, Craft & Walsh; 2014; Walsh, Chappell & Craft, 2017; Walsh, Craft, Chappell & Kouloris, 2014; Walsh & Whitehouse, 2017). This has been with the aim of challenging more competitively, individually derived conceptions of creativity within digital learning (e.g. Edwards-Groves, 2011; Tapscott, 1996; Walsh, 2007) and of placing a stronger emphasis on collaboration and ethics.