Coventry University Six Pillars – Education Strategy 2015-2021
- Research Inspired Teaching
- Embedded Employability
- Creativity and Enterprise
- Intercultural and International Engagement
- Community Contribution and Responsibility
- Innovation and Digital Fluency
Transformative learning seems to be about presenting and developing new ideas which may challenge existing beliefs and assumptions or previously fixed ways of doing things. This process of engaging with new and different ideas is designed to encourage more critical thinking. The six pillars present a framework or starting point for developing the strategy.
This is my understanding of how the six pillars link to transformative learning and can influence teaching and learning practice:
Research promotes independent learning and discovery; Employability links study with career readiness; Creativity encourages experimentation and original approaches which may differ from standardised methods; Intercultural and International engagement encourages diversity and opens a world of opportunities to learn and share ideas with a global mindset; Community responsibility aims to encourage reflection on how opportunities may present themselves to forge links within the local environment; Innovation and Digital fluency involves embedding technology which keeps up to date with a continually changing media / teaching and learning landscape.
Research sits nicely with my (cognitive) belief in discovery learning. I think embedding understanding of how the learning will be beneficial in ‘real world’ scenarios helps to support the importance of employability and this is a focus of much of my teaching (especially with technical skills). As you know from your background, experienced practitioners within creative arts environments should, ideally, already naturally be embedding creativity and innovation. I am really excited to now be working in such an international and culturally diverse environment and I look forward to learning from the experience and different backgrounds of others and discovering how I can benefit from such diversity within my lesson planning and the resources I develop
