Pedagogy
My approach to teaching is shaped by my experience across creative practice, higher education and research. I'm particularly interested in how students develop as independent creative practitioners - not only through acquiring technical skills, but through questioning, experimentation, reflection and learning from the creative process itself.
My pedagogic interests include reflective practice, experiential and practice-based learning, inclusive approaches to teaching, creative technologies and the changing role of AI within education.
Across my teaching, I'm interested in creating environments where students can explore ideas, take creative risks and develop the confidence to understand and articulate their own practice.
The work below explores one strand of this wider pedagogic practice: the role of reflection within creative arts education and how we might move beyond traditional reflective journals towards approaches that are more meaningful to creative students.
Enhancing Reflective Practice for Undergraduate Creative Arts Students
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As an educator in the ever-evolving realm of creative disciplines, I am dedicated to refining my teaching methods to better equip my students for the dynamic world of creative practice. Central to this endeavour is the development of a reflective framework designed to deepen students' understanding of their creative processes and decision-making. This approach fosters critical self-analysis, encouraging them to become not only skilled practitioners but also thoughtful, introspective creators.
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Creative arts students are expected to develop technical skills while also learning to question, evaluate and articulate their creative decisions. As digital technologies continue to change creative practice, there is a risk that the focus on learning tools and software can leave less space for students to reflect meaningfully on the creative process itself.
This project explores how reflective practice might be better integrated into creative arts education. It considers the limitations of traditional visual journals as a reflective tool and proposes a framework that brings together structured experiences, critical incidents, visual reflection and peer-to-peer discussion.
The aim is to encourage reflection as an active part of creative practice rather than something students complete retrospectively as an academic requirement.
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Reflective practice is particularly important within creative education, where learning often happens through experimentation, problem-solving and making. Yet students can become understandably focused on developing technical skills and producing a polished final outcome, leaving less attention for examining the decisions, challenges and discoveries that happen during the creative process.
Visual journals have traditionally been used to encourage this reflection, but they don't always lead to meaningful engagement. Students may complete them retrospectively, make superficial entries or see reflection as something required for assessment rather than something that contributes to their creative development.
This led me to consider how reflection could become a more active and useful part of the learning experience, and how different approaches might encourage students to question, discuss and make sense of their practice as it develops.
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TThe project proposes a framework designed to make reflection a more active and meaningful part of creative learning. Rather than relying on the visual journal alone, it brings together four complementary approaches:
Structured Experiences
Creating opportunities for students to pause, examine and make sense of particular experiences within their creative development, rather than leaving reflection until the end of a project.Critical Incidents
Encouraging students to identify significant moments, challenges or decisions within the creative process and consider what happened, how they responded and what they might take from the experience.Rethinking the Visual Journal
Using visual journals in a more structured and purposeful way, encouraging students to document ideas, decisions, experimentation and changes in thinking as their work develops.Peer-to-Peer Reflection
Creating opportunities for students to discuss their work with others, exchange perspectives and use dialogue and feedback as part of the reflective process.Proposed Model
The proposed model brings these elements together as an ongoing cycle of experience, reflection, discussion and development, embedding reflection within the creative process rather than treating it as a separate activity.
“The most casual notice of the activities of a young child reveals a ceaseless display of exploring and testing activity… they are experimented with till they cease to yield new qualities.”
— John Dewey
Dewey's description of curiosity resonates strongly with creative education. Creative practice is inherently exploratory: ideas are tested, things don't always work as expected, decisions are reconsidered and new possibilities emerge through making.
Reflective practice creates space for students to make sense of this process. Rather than focusing solely on the finished outcome, it encourages them to consider what they tried, what changed, what they discovered and how those experiences might shape what they do next.
For me, this relationship between curiosity, experimentation and reflection sits at the heart of creative learning.
The diagrams below explore how reflection can be embedded within the often messy and iterative nature of the creative design process.
