School of Education Lecture Series

Monday 15 July 2024, 0930  - 1130 hrs

Online - Zoom

Professor Daniel X. Harris
The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT)

Creativity, direct instruction and artificial intelligence: What can education learn from transgender scholarship?

As noted by Bilton in 2010, in defining the culturally constituted turn in policy and socioeconomic definitions of creativity since the 1990s, ‘the consensus in scientific and academic studies of creativity has shifted definitions of creativity from an individual trait to a collective social process’ (p. 231). That’s 13 years ago. Globally, creative education has made little headway as a collective social process, and even the new PISA Creative Thinking test seems to refer back to traditional individual cognitive psychological tests like the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. In Australia today, we are moving back into a nationally-mandated focus on literacy and numeracy, at a time when predictive AI systems promise to automate most or all patterned tasks like rote learning data reproduction. Against this backdrop, this talk explores some ways in which advances in synthetic subjectivity prevalent in the transgender community might offer teachers, students and teacher-educators a creative way forward in creative ecological ways that recognise the interconnected, interdependent, and non-binary nature of all social relations, including learning and teaching.

Daniel X. Harris (they/them) is a Research Professor in the School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, and Co-Director of Creative Agency research centre: www.creativeresearchhub.com . Harris is editor of the book series Creativity, Education and the Arts (Palgrave), and has authored, co-authored or edited 22 books and over 150 books and articles as well as plays, films and spoken word performances. Their research focuses on creativity, diversity, and social change.

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This lecture will delivered online on Zoom only, university colleagues, students and associates are warmly invited and encouraged to attend the lecture and participate in the Q&A following the talk.

For University staff and students the online link will be made available on the SoE Events SharePoint, and external attendees should contact the event organiser.