Keynote: The Potential for Creative Learning and Teaching

Dr. Susan Keller-Mathers recently had the pleasure of both attending the Canadian Society for Teaching and Learning in High Education (STLHE) conference "Creative Teaching and Learning: Exploring. Shaping. Knowing" in Toronto and presenting the closing keynote “Potential for Creative Learning and Teaching” (video of keynote).

It was wonderful to reconnect with our long time Canadian colleague and ICSC alumni Gretchen Bingham as well as having the opportunity to engage with a community of scholars who teach in all disciplines across the academy. She had many rich conversations regarding what Alex Osborn considered central to the growth of the field of creativity “bring a more creative trend to education” and attended many very good sessions where she was engaged and challenged to continue to think about the ways we engage in the higher education classroom (see opening keynote video for example)

As a result, she also had the opportunity to submit an article for publication in the Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching (CELT) titled “Building Passion and Potential for Creative Learning in Higher Education”. Here’s the abstract:
“Building passion and potential for creative learning in higher education involves deliberately seeking to understand, appreciate and teach for creativity. The recognition of the urgent need for creativity and problem solving skills, the understanding that you must embrace creative learning for yourself first and that creativity cannot be left to chance is central. Developments in the field of creativity, both with regard to defining aspects of creativity and providing frameworks for integrating creative learning into higher education practices are discussed”

The Collected Essays will be published in time for the next year’s conference hosted by the University of Saskatchewan. Prior CELT collected essays can be downloaded at: http://www.stlhe.ca/en/publications/celt.php