Since the end of the 1990s, creativity has become a growing area of interest once more within education and wider society. In England creativity is now named within the school curriculum and in the curriculum for children aged 3-5. There are numerous government and other initiatives to foster individual and collective creativity, some of this through partnership activity bringing together the arts, technology, science and the social sciences. As far as education is concerned, this growth in emphasis and value placed (...) on encouraging creativity can be seen as being in stark contrast with the government policy prevalent from the late 1980s onward. One of the underpinning themes and justifications for this re-kindling of interest in fostering creativity is that the individual and collective empowerment which is fostered by the development of creative skill is seen to be a good thing at the social and economic level in particular (Craft, 2002). These justifications have been discussed elsewhere (Jeffrey and Craft, 2001). But an important question to ask is, how desirable are the cultural norms of continual change and innovation in Western society? This paper examines some possible social, environmental, cultural and ethical limits to creativity, in the context of educating for creativity (NACCCE, 1999). It argues that the notion of creativity may be value- and culture-specific and that this poses the so-called liberal educator with various dilemmas of principle and pedagogy, which are explored. (shrink)

The distinction and relationship between teaching creatively and teaching for creativity identified in the report from the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE, 1999), is examined by focusing on empirical research from an early years school, known for its creative approach. The examination uses four characteristics of creativity and pedagogy identified by Peter Woods (1990): relevance, ownership, control and innovation, to show the interdependence of the NACCCE distinctions. We conclude that although the NACCCE distinction between teaching creatively (...) and teaching for creativity has been useful as an analytical tool, it may, at the same time, have dichotomised an integrated practice and we suggest that a more useful distinction for the study of creative pedagogies would be the relationship between teaching creatively and creative learning. (shrink)

This article uses a notorious incident within the computer program EVE Online to exemplify and facilitate discussion of the metaphysics of virtual worlds and the morality of user behavior. The first section examines various frameworks used to understand virtual worlds, and emphasizes those which recognize virtual worlds as legal contracts, as representational worlds, and as media for communication. The second section draws on these frameworks to analyze issues of virtual theft and virtual betrayal arising in the EVE incident. The article (...) concludes by arguing that, in the absence of countervailing contractual obligations, users of virtual worlds have the same de facto duties to each other as they do in mediated and real environments. (shrink)