Fwd: 7th Global Conference: Creative Engagements - Thinking with Children

7th Global Conference
Creative Engagements - Thinking with Children

Monday 4th July 2011 ? Wednesday 6th July 2011
Mansfield College, Oxford

Call for Papers
The seventh meeting of this global research
project shall explore the many facets of creative
engagement with children. Grounded in an
inter-disciplinary perspective and with reference
to historical and contemporary representations of
childhood, this project will examine the
complex issues which surround the notion and
practices of creative engagement in the context of
pedagogy and the curriculum, and in the
face of frequently instrumental institutional
imperatives. More generally, our work will also
address the role of creativity in social
interaction, with particular reference to
children's development of life skills, autonomy
and independence in an increasingly complex and
demanding world.

Papers, presentations, reports and workshops are
invited on any of the following five focus areas:

1. Creativity and Divergent Thinking
    * What are the origins of these forces and
forms of thinking?
    * What is the relationship between creativity
and divergent thinking?
    * How are these developed and nurtured?
    * How do various disciplines understand these
forms of thought?
    * What are the similarities/differences in
understanding between the related research
disciplines?
    * How can these be fostered in a world
dominated by measurement, outcomes and benchmarks?

2. Creativity, Engagement and Education
    * How do various disciplines define the
concept of engagement?
    * What is creativity in theory and practice?
What is creative education? Can creative
engagement be taught?
    * Engaging with, engagement for?
    * What does engagement mean for teachers and
for children?
    * Creative engagement in the areas of
planning, resourcing, organisation, management and
assessment
    * Good practice, classroom examples, and
effective strategies for promoting creativity
within and across curriculum subjects

3. Creativity, Pedagogy and Curriculum
    * Inter-disciplinary approaches to creative
engagement in teaching and curricula
    * Historical and contemporary representations
of childhood and adolescence: art, film and literature
    * The future role of text, the visual media
as form of critical appraisal, developing
creativity and children's engagement.
    * Children and television: visual literacy
    * Traditional literacies and creativity: what
are they and how do they fit in the visual age?
    * Assessing Cziksentmihaly's work, and in
particular, the notion of 'flow'; how this is
understood by different disciplines
    * The role and nature of multiple intelligences
(re: Howard Gardner ) in developing creativity
    * Are there more intelligences than Gardner's
7.5 ? eg spiritual/existential intelligence
    * Pedagogy, curricular and extra-curricula
approaches
    * Integrative case studies and examples of
team based teaching
    * Creativity in a crowded curriculum
    * Education, entertainment or edutainment?
    * Teachers, creativity and professional
development
    * How to analyse and describe creative practice
    * Institutions, education and designing
systems to develop children's learning in the 21st
century.

4. Critical and Cultural Thinking and Children
    * What is critical thinking? Is it the same
as critical literacy?
    * What is the nature of engagement with
critical thinking before school?
    * With what, who and when?
    * What is the role of the 'significant other'
in developing critical engagement at home and in
school?
    * What are the conditions that foster
critical thinking at home and then in the school
years?
    * The first world rise of the far right
Christian education movement and the effect on
critical thinking and engagement
    * Types of critical thinking
    * Cultural contexts of critical thinking

5. Engagement, Skills and Life Issues
    * Humour and its links to creativity
    * Engaging in intercultural and human
development education with children
    * The role of parents in developing or
fostering creativity and engagement with life and
learning
    * Engaging in intercultural and human
development education with children
    * The nature of school as an enabler or
inhibitor of creativity or engagement with
learning as a whole
    * The idea of moral, spiritual, education
    * The role of play (in all forms) and the
concept of creativity
    * Children creatively engaging each other:
communication and cooperation; problem solving;
play and social issues ? ethnicity, immigration etc.
    * Creatively engaging the disabled
    * Exploring children's needs, wants, wishes,
desires and hopes
    * The nature of natural learning
    * Developing antinomy and independence
    * Developing life skills, social issues and
education for citizenship

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the
submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers
will also be considered on any related theme.
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday
14th January 2011. If an abstract is accepted for
the conference, a full draft paper should be
submitted by Friday 27th May 2011. Abstracts
should be submitted simultaneously to both
Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following
information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d)
title of abstract, e) body of abstract
E-mails should be entitled: CE7 Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain
from using footnotes and any special formatting,
characters or emphasis (such as bold,
italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and
answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do
not receive a reply from us in a week you
should assume we did not receive your proposal; it
might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to
look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs
Phil Fitzsimmons
Faculty of Education
The University of Wollongong
Australia
Email: [email protected]

Dr Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Wroslyn Road,
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR
Email: [email protected]

The conference is part of the 'At the Interface'
series of research projects run by ID.Net. It aims
to bring together people from different
areas and interests to share ideas and explore
various discussions which are innovative and
challenging. All papers accepted for and presented
at this conference will be eligible for
publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers may
be invited to go forward for development into
20-25 page chapters for publication in a themed
dialogic ISBN hard copy volume.

For further details about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/education/creative-engagements-thinking-with-children/

For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/education/creative-engagements-thinking-with-children/call-for-papers/