EDUC10260 Creative Pedagogies, Critical Thinking and Wellbeing in Education

Academic Year 2023/2024

Creativity has become increasingly important to enhance problem solving skills and to prepare students to be agile and reactive within an increasingly dynamic education system. The OECD (2019) emphasise the importance of creativity and critical thinking in education. While creativity “aims to create novel, appropriate ideas and products”, critical thinking “ aims to carefully evaluate and judge statements and theories relative to alternative explanations or solutions” (OECD, 2019). While both of these skills are often considered distinctive from each other, more recent research has emphasised the important potential education plays in nurturing creativity and critical thinking among young people. To be creative starts with individual wellbeing. The national framework on wellbeing in education states “schools are important settings for preparing children and young people to develop wellbeing and positive mental health, where emotional wellbeing may be understood as an educational end in and of itself” (DES, 2018). This module will place particular emphasis on wellbeing and wellbeing practices as the starting point from learning and engaging in creativity and critical thinking. It seeks to model practices which can then be replicated within the education system, creating a ripple impact for students both in the University and pupils in our post primary classrooms across the country. It will draw on psychological definitions of wellbeing and how this informs educational practices and approaches in the classroom.

This module will draw on the framework to design learning experiences that nurture creativity and critical thinking developed by the OECD (2010). The module will build student competency to engage in their own creativity as well as to foster creativity among students in their own classrooms. This module will explore creative pedagogies as an approach to fostering and nurturing creativity in the classroom. The experiential aspect of this module will model how creativity can be used as an effective pedagogical tool to enhancing teaching and learning in the classroom. The experiential aspects of the module will be underpinned with theoretical perspectives on creativity, critical thinking and wellbeing. It will explore creative pedagogies drawing on theories relating to co-construction, play based and inquiry based learning, while also presenting design thinking as an approach to problem solving (de Bono).