Sustainable Development Goals

The Creative City is now a classic and has been republished many times. It is an ambitious book and a clarion call for imaginative action in running urban life. It seeks to inspire people to think, plan and act imaginatively in the city and to get an ideas factory going that turns urban innovations into reality. Its aim is to make readers feel: ‘I can do that too’ and to spread confidence that creative and innovative solutions to urban problems are feasible however bad they may seem at first sight.

The creative city: A toolkit for urban innovators

It can be said that we inhabit a post-human world—an existence characterised by smartphones and social media, genetically modified food and IVF babies, life-extending technologies and prosthetic enhancements. In The Posthuman (2013), Rosi Braidotti offers a roadmap for navigating the global effects of this post-human predicament—one in which clear distinctions between the human and the non-human no longer hold, the nature–culture divide is destabilised, and man’s privileged status is under attack. The situation we find ourselves in, Braidotti argues, is neither dystopian technological nightmare nor futuristic fantasy but one that requires complex and nuanced critical responses to issues of subjectivity, ethics and politics. In the four chapters comprising The Posthuman, Braidotti outlines her vision of the post-human future based on an affirmative politics, which ‘combines critique with creativity in the pursuit of alternative visions and projects’ (54). As a feminist antihumanist, Braidotti expresses little nostalgia for the concept of ‘Man’ and its associated individualism, Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism. Chapter 1 ‘Post-Humanism: Life Beyond the Self’ charts the Humanist/anti-humanist debates to draw attention to the crisis of the human and the opportunity it affords to imagine alternative subjectivities grounded in relationality and the interconnection between the self and others (49). Methodologically, Braidotti adopts a feminist politics of location in her critique of various Humanist traditions. There is a profound reflexivity to her writing as she guides the reader through the intellectual trajectory that has resulted in her nomadic, affirmative politics. It is a legacy that incorporates social movements of the 1960s/1970s, as well as the continental feminism of Irigaray and Kristeva. Spinoza and Deleuze and Guattari also feature as philosophical touchstones from which she advances her vision for the posthuman as a ‘relational subject constituted in and by multiplicity, that is to say a subject that works across differences and is also internally differentiated, but still grounded and accountable’ (49). By framing her argument within the narrative of her own intellectual story, the book conveys an immediacy and intimacy not often found in academic prose. Stylistically, it is as though we are inside her head—a post-human experience, indeed. Her writing is as expansive and impressive as you would expect—a swarm of ideas assuredly curated into a compelling argument for generating new forms of subjectivity and ethical relations to confront the challenges of a post-human existence. Consistent with existing feminist appraisals of the post-human (Halberstam and Livingston 1995; Hayles 1999; Toffoletti 2007), Braidotti acknowledges the complexity of the post-human predicament, seeking alternative frameworks to think about post-human subjectivity in non-dualistic ways. What Braidotti brings to these debates is an emphasis on materialism by way of Spinozist monism. In championing the relational, embodied and embedded qualities of post-human existence, Braidotti reprises the concept of zoe—a generative and vitalist force that allows for connections and affinities to be made across

Book review : the posthuman

Thinking in Education

Two speakers describe various methods to encourage creativity in the music classroom, also providing examples of creative activities that can be provided to students. The major contribution of an imaginative, skilled and trained music teacher in developing creativity in the classroom is highlighted.

Creativity in the Classroom

University student's evaluation of creative education in universities and their impact on their learning

The effect of a teacher professional development in facilitating students creativity

 Abstract—This paper addresses creativity as an educational approach, reviews the related theories and patterns of creative learning, and deals with teaching creativity to teachers generally, and Iranian teachers specifically. This idea has been proposed and studied by the researcher. The main focus of this program is the pattern of creativity development, in which five basic aspects of teacher performance have been dealt with: contextual-social, affective-cognitive, mental, educational, and physical aspects. A part of this study deals with the effect of the program and the pattern of creativity development on teachers' skills. Data analysis by T-test for this quasi-experimental research indicated the positive effect of the program and led to the confirmation of the research hypothesis. Feedback from the teachers regarding their change of performance in the classroom, in spite of the passing of several years, indicates that they made positive use the pattern. All the teachers participating in the course stated that attending the course helped them to move away from teacher-centered toward learner-centered classes, which has made their students very enthusiastic. Index Terms—Creativity, education, teachers' skills,

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The Effect of Creativity Model for Creativity Development in Teachers

This article is an up-dated version of Gordon Brown's ontological approach to education. It tests the hypothesis that Roy Bhaskar's critical realism can successfully underpin education by applying ...

An examination of Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism as a basis for educational practice

This article will investigate the philosophy of science of Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014) as a coherent basis for environmental education. The work of Bhaskar serves as an in-depth approach to understanding how to apply critical realism (the critical and the realist) to matters such as environmental education, because he concretely theorises the connections between science, social change and metaphysics. By mobilising key Bhaskarian motifs — that is, the primacy of ontology over epistemology, the laminated system as a means to understand reality, the ways in which inquiry may be organised through the real, actual and the empirical, and the positive application of dialectics — this article constructs a new approach to environmental education and positions it in the field of environmental education by comparing it to posthumanism and the new materialisms. This article contains inquiry-based study outlines for enhanced thinking around: (1) climate change and social justice; (2) movements towards a carbon-free economy; (3) water, food and population; and (4) the future of human habitation.

Afzal Sadat Hosseini

Papers

University student's evaluation of creative education in universities and their impact on their learning

The effect of a teacher professional development in facilitating students creativity

The Effect of Creativity Model for Creativity Development in Teachers

An examination of Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism as a basis for educational practice

The application of critical realism as a basis for agency in environmental education: The case of Roy Bhaskar