FETRCs Francesca Lorenzi presents at ECER 2017

Dr Lorenzi from FETRC presents a paper with colleague Irene White at ECER.

Outside of her interred in V/FET Francesca conducts research in the area off creativity and learning. Their paper is entitled: Meeting in Liminal Spaces: Educational Encounters, Creativity, and Possibility in Post-Primary Education The paper questions whether spaces of genuine encounter between students and teacher can occur in a climate of standardisation and quantification in education. The paper suggests that such encounters are likely to happen in liminal spaces. This has led to the question what enables the creation of such liminal spaces. Furthermore, the authors explore whether arts provide the key for entering such liminal spaces by opening a world of possibility and opportunity where the unexpected and the unplanned are both enabled by and enable creativity. Objectives. The purpose of this paper is threefold. Firstly, it aims to establish whether room for creativity can be found in the general context of performance-driven, standardised post-primary education. Secondly, it contemplates the concept of a liminal space and the opportunities that such a space offers for possibility, encounter and creativity within a structured curriculum. In particular, it appraises the role of the teacher, the significance of teacher disposition and the site of teacher-student relations as enabling factors in the creation of such spaces. Finally, it considers whether the arts (another liminal space) and arts-based approaches to teaching and learning are especially well positioned to support transitions from the formal curriculum to liminal spaces.