Risks, reflection, rewards, and resistance: Academic perspectives on creative pedagogies for active learning

Abstract

In recent decades there has been a paradigmatic shift in higher education towards active learning, requiring educators to adopt student-centred approaches to teaching to promote deep learning and the development of essential graduate attributes. A ‘Creative pedagogies for active learning’ course was designed to offer academic staff an opportunity to take risks in developing innovative student-centred teaching approaches. While participants encountered ‘dissonance’ during the early stages of the creative pedagogies course, the course leads were able to support participants through this period of uncertainty and risk-taking towards successfully disrupting their own teaching practice.
 This reflective analysis paper outlines the course and showcases several case studies of practice by participants. We also reflect on their experiences through a subsequent roundtable discussion. This revealed that the course had made a longer-term impact on some participants in terms of their teaching and assessment practice and showcasing this to other educators. However, resistance to change in some departments was noted, making it difficult for staff to implement creative pedagogies more widely in practice. Suggestions for overcoming resistance are presented, and the paper concludes with future directions for taking this work forward.