“Conline” Teaching: Creative pedagogy as a conduit to EAP practitioners’ agency

Whilst an important 21st century graduate attribute, creativity is difficult to define because of its multi-dimensional nature and variety of epistemological perspectives adopted in scholarly discussions. Some have focused on the subjectivity behind the output as demonstrated in expressivist writing pedagogies (Elbow, 1991), while others have explored collaborative knowledge production and its social context (Montuori, 2006; Goldsmith, 2011; Hafner, 2015). When it comes to EAP, scholarship on how creativity is understood and deployed is fragmented, with studies exploring the use of specific techniques such as gaming, creative arts or object handling for the development of individual competencies (e.g., Saliés, 2002; Carson&Murphy, 2012; Bond, 2018; Richards&Pilcher, 2020), the focus largely remaining text-oriented (Hyland, 2018) and delimited by the “pragmatic” nature of EAP.

In this presentation, we will provide an overview of an ongoing multi-methods arts-informed inquiry into EAP practitioners’ creative voices through a snapshot analysis of the findings from one pilot dataset. We will focus on the prominence of the theme of collaboration and co-construction as fundamental to creative practices in EAP, but also consider the extent to which creative pedagogy as a paradigm opens up a fuzzy yet enabling “third space” (Bhabha, 1994) for the enactment of EAP practitioners’ agency.

References:

Bhabha, H. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.

Bond, M. 2018. Teaching referencing and plagiarism awareness Using LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®. International Journal of Management and Applied Research. 5 (4), pp. 232–37.

Carson, L. and Murphy, D. 2012. Design and implementation of dramatic tasks in an English for Academic Purposes programme. Language Learning in Higher Education. 1 (1), pp.127–42.

Elbow, P. 1991. Some thoughts on “expressive discourse”: A review essay. Journal of Advanced Composition. 11 (1), pp.83–93.

Goldsmith, K. 2011. Uncreative Writing. New York: Columbia University Press.

Hafner, C. A. 2015. Remix Culture and English Language Teaching: The Expression of Learner Voice in Digital Multimodal Compositions. TESOL Quarterly. 49 (3), pp.486–509.

Montuori, A. 2006. The quest for a new education: From oppositional identities to creative inquiry. ReVision. 28(3), pp.4–20.

Richards, K. and Pilcher, N. 2020. Using physical objects as a portal to reveal academic subject identity and thought. The Qualitative Report. 25(1), pp.127–44.

Saliés, T. G. 2002. Simulation/Gaming in the EAP Writing Class: Benefits and Drawbacks. Simulation & Gaming. 33(3), pp.316–29.