TY  - UNPB
N2  - Abstract
The future prospects of higher education are increasingly seen as linked to the future
prospects of creativity. However, much prevailing discourse on creativity and higher
education sees both in narrowly instrumental terms. The literary critic and
educationalist F. R. Leavis (1895-1978) provides a searching critique of this discourse.
This critique reflects a world-view rooted in Leavis's exposure to the conditions of
technologised warfare while serving as a nursing orderly in the First World War. This
world-view is later given shape by the cultural programme of Cambridge English and
finally expressed at its most adventurous during his association with York University.
Leavis's critique can be analysed using a framework of creativity as 'person, process
and purpose', devised from existing models of creativity and organisational research.
Viewed through this systemic framework, Leavis offers a set of conceptual tools
relating to the creative self ('selfhood', 'identity'), the dynamics of creativity (Almung,
'nisus') and creative purpose (telos, 'telic'). These tools have various literary and
philosophical sources but all share the basic assumption that creativity is a capacity
over which humanity cannot exert complete transmuting control. The belief to the
contrary, Leavis contends, stultifies our capacity for creativity and adaptive learning.
However, Leavis falls short of pursuing certain of his own insights to their logical
conclusions. These are appropriately supplemented by additional concepts drawn
from other systemic perspectives.
How can higher education foster creativity? Answers proliferate but tend to address
matters of function rather than purpose. Leavis's concepts deepen our understanding
of the key questions of creativity, including those relating to academic self-identity,
pedagogy and institutional purpose. Leavis's thought and practice encourage us to
make sense of creativity in more systemic, imaginative ways and to advance the notion
that re-conceiving creativity is one of higher education's most pressing commitments.
PB  - Institute of Education, University of London
A1  - Cranfield, Steven
Y1  - 2006///
M1  - Doctoral
ID  - discovery10007366
N1  - Thesis restricted at request of the author.
EP  - 349
AV  - restricted
UR  - http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.428767
TI  - Re-conceiving creativity : F. R. Leavis and higher education
ER  -