English Teaching: Practice and Critique
Volume 5, Number 2 (September 2006): Focus: Reclaiming the 'creative' in the English/literacy classroom
Co-editors: Ray Misson (Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne) and Dennis Sumara (University of British Columbia)
Rationale: Many of the current debates around English/literacy tend to focus on the
tension between the functional and the socio-critical elements in the subject's
construction. Little attention is paid to English as one of the creative arts
(except, at times, in the narrow terms of what kinds of texts should be
dealt with in English/literacy classrooms), and yet creativity is fundamental
to the subject. As well as functional and critical capacities, a central aim
of English/literacy is to develop creative capacities.
The lack of attention to creativity is particularly surprising when talk
about creativity is everywhere in other fields. Creativity is now considered
one of the significant generic skills education is concerned to foster; creativity
is seen as a basic currency of a flexible responsive economy in the global
marketplace. Given this emphasis, a certain degree of reclamation of the term
is necessary, defining creativity in ways that are particularly productive
in English/literacy classrooms. Such a task does not involve a return to earlier versions
of the subject, nor will it be in conflict with the functional or critical
elements.
The range of articles in this special issue address this task of
reclamation, from a variety of perspectives: poets, poet-educators,
teacher-educators, researchers and teachers. There are three major
themes running through this collection of articles: the first is about
creativity as problem-solving, the second is about creativity as making
connections, the third is about creativity as intuitive and
non-rational. The three things shade into each other ' the
problems are solved by making connections that are frequently intuitive
' and most of the articles at some point touch on all three elements,
although they may be concentrating on one or the other.