The challenge of teaching creativity

Questions about the nature of creativity in design education tend to draw attention to a multiplicity of concerns, including terminology, pedagogy and assessment. The two issues mentioned in Chapter 1 - the naturalised relationship between creativity and design, and the concern for objective and transparent assessment - incorporate these and represent two broad categories that may be analysed at a more detailed level. The former category, for example, reflects the need to carefully consider what creativity means in the context of design, identify where and how creativity occurs in the design process, and consider how creativity may best be promoted, encouraged and fostered as part of design education. The latter dimension emphasises the issue of assessment and poses questions as to what should be assessed and how it should be assessed. The data collected for this project reveals that these two broad categories underpin academics' reflections of what represents the greatest challenge to teaching creativity, though the academics interviewed for the project tend to emphasise more pragmatic and concrete concerns. The analysis of the primary data reveals six key challenges facing design academics when teaching creative design courses: terminology, subjectivity and marking, culture and context, personalities, resources, and pedagogical approach. These concerns are interrelated to such an extent that they can also readily be divided into the two main categories discussed previously. However, individually they do illustrate particular themes that require consideration in their own right. Hence, in the analysis that follows, we will consider each challenge independently and as they are portrayed by the participants in the study