Thinking with Children

3rd Global Conference
Creative Engagements - Thinking with Children

Friday 9th February - Sunday 11th February 2007
Sydney, Australia


The third meeting of this global research project
shall explore the many facets of creative
engagement with children. Grounded in an
inter-disciplinary perspective and with reference
to historical and contemporary representations of
childhood, this project will examine the complex
issues which surround the notion and practices of
creative engagement in the context of pedagogy and
the curriculum, and in the face of frequently
instrumental institutional imperatives. More
generally, our work will also address the role of
creativity in social interaction, with particular
reference to children's development of
life skills, autonomy and independence in an
increasingly complex and demanding world.

Papers, presentations, reports and workshops are
invited on any of the following four focus areas:

1. Creativity, Engagement and Education

* How do various disciplines define the concept of
engagement?
* What is creativity in theory and practice? What
is creative education? Can creative engagement be
taught?
* Engaging with, engagement for?
* What does engagement mean for teachers and for
children?
* Creative engagement in the areas of planning,
resourcing, organisation, management and assessment
* Good practice, classroom examples, and effective
strategies for promoting creativity within and
across curriculum subjects

2. Creativity, Pedagogy and Curriculum

* Inter-disciplinary approaches to creative
engagement in teaching and curricula
* historical and contemporary representations of
childhood and adolescence: art, film and literature
* The future role of text, the visual media as
form of critical appraisal, developing creativity
and children's engagement.
* children and television: visual literacy
* traditional literacy's and creativity: what are
they and how do they fit in the visualage?
* Assessing Cziksentmihaly's work, and in
particular, the notion of 'flow'; how this is
understood by different disciplines
* The role and nature multiple intelligences (re:
Howard Gardner) in developing creativity
* Are there more intelligences than Gardner's 7.5
- eg spiritual/existential intelligence?
* Pedagogy, curricular and extra-curricula approaches
* Integrative case studies and examples of team
based teaching
* Creativity in a crowded curriculum
* Education, entertainment or edutainment?
* Teachers, creativity and professional development
* How to analyze and describe creative practice
* Institutions, education and designing systems to
develop children's learning in the 21st century.

3. Critical and Cultural Thinking and Children

* What is critical thinking? Is it the same as
critical literacy?
* What is the nature of engagement with critical
thinking before school?
* With what, who and when?
* What is the role of the 'significant other' in
developing critical engagement at home and in school?
* What are the conditions that foster critical
thinking at home and then in the school years?
* The first world rise of the far right Christian
education movement and the effect on critical
thinking and engagement
* Types of critical thinking
* cultural contexts of critical thinking

4. Engagement, Skills and Life Issues

* humour and its links to creativity
* Engaging in intercultural and human development
education with children
* the role of parents in developing or fostering
creativity and engagement with life and learning
* Engaging in intercultural and human development
education with children
* The nature of school as an enabler or inhibitor
of creativity or engagement with learning as a whole
* The idea of moral, spiritual, education
* The role of play (in all forms) and the concept
of creativity
* Children creatively engaging each other:
communication and cooperation; problem solving;
play and social issues - ethnicity,
immigration etc.
* Creatively engaging the disabled
* Exploring children's needs, wants, wishes,
desires and hopes
* The nature of natural learning
* Developing antinomy and independence
* Developing life skills, social issues and
education for citizenship

These are intended as illustrative themes and
proposals on related areas are encouraged. Panel
proposals, workshops and joint presentations are
also welcome.

Papers will be considered on any related theme.
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday
10th November 2006. If your paper is accepted for
presentation at the conference, an 8 page draft
paper should be submitted by Friday 19th January 2007.

All papers accepted for and presented at the
conference are eligible for publication in an ISBN
eBook. Selected papers accepted for and presented
at this conference will be published in a hard
copy themed volume.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to both the
Organising Joint Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, PDF or RTF formats.

Phil Fitzsimmons
Faculty of Education
The University of Woollongong
Australia
Email: philfitz@uow.edu.au

Dr Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road,
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR
Email: ce3@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is co-sponsored by
inter-Disciplinary.Net (United Kingdom), and
the Gavemer Foundation (Australia). The conference
aims to bring together people from different
areas, disciplines, professions and interests to
share ideas and explore various discussions which
are innovative and exciting.

For further details about the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/education/cp/pchome.htm

For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/education/cp/ce3/cfp.htm