CAP Workshop - Surprising Spaces: Arts Enriched Reflection

Tuesday 7th October, 2014
10:15-12:15


This workshop offers participants the opportunity to experience and evaluate arts-enriched reflection : active engagement with creative ways of prompting deep thinking about teaching practice and teacher identity. In this way we reassert the value of open-ended, exploratory development activities and directly address the relevance of the arts and humanities to professional education.


What is meant by arts-enriched reflection for university lecturers?
Active engagement with collage, poetry, photography and other creative ways of prompting deep thinking about teaching practice and teacher identity.


Why does it matter?
Increasingly, university lecturers are required to demonstrate that they are reflective practitioners (eg HEA, 2011) and often need help in initiating and sustaining meaningful reflection.


How does the practice of arts–enriched reflection contribute to current debates?
By reasserting the value of open-ended, exploratory development activities. It has been claimed that there is a lack of reflective spaces in our universities (Savin-Baden, 2008) and that development is at risk of being squeezed out by performativity – “narrow conceptions of usefulness that are articulated in terms of measurable performances.” (Rowland, 2007, p.10.) Active engagement in arts-enriched reflective activities can offer an alternative to this depressing instrumentalism. It also directly addresses the question of the relevance of the arts and humanities to professional development, in this case for university lecturers.


What evidence do we have that it makes any difference?

Arts-enriched reflection has been used to promote the professional development of physicians (Rabow, 2003), inter-professional groups of health workers (Williams, 2002) nurses (Seymour, 1995; Marshall, 2003) and school teachers (Black, 2002). Working with university lecturers, Loads (2009; 2010) found that professional development workshops involving artwork and reflection provide a restorative space that allows for discovery and surprise, where lecturers can find meaning in their teaching practice. Upitis et al. (2008) showed that these processes provide more than temporary reprieve from the pressures of work. Through art making and reflection lecturers were able to transcend their everyday tasks, take care of themselves, deepen and equalise their relationships with colleagues, manage difficult experiences and have a positive impact on their workplace.




For more information, contact Dr. Iddo Oberski 
Registration: Contact CapAdmin (or through the staff online booking system - CAP Intranet site)