Creativity and Innovation in Social Care (CISC) is a voluntary educational body committed to the advancement of creativity and innovation in social care education and practice in Ireland in an effort to enhance the learning experience for students and improve the delivery of social care. The network invites

professional educators, from any discipline, who either teach social care creatively and/or teach creativity and arts modules on social care programmes or have an interest in progressing creative and innovative knowledge (creation and dissemination) in a social care context. Focused on creating a community of practice and contributing to discourse and knowledge (Lave & Wenger, 1991) on creative and innovative ways of knowing, being and working in social care, the

community supports research and sharing of resources and ideas for teaching and learning(via a members’ only website: see https://dmacgiollari.wixsite.com/creativesocialcare ), as well as identifying professional development opportunities arising from educators’ interests.

To this end the aims of the group are:

(a)To promote a culture of interdisciplinary collaboration, innovation and creativity in social care education and practice.

(b)To develop a network and community of creative practitioners and educators that fosters a co-collaborative learning approach, knowledge sharing and creation between academia and social care communities.

(c)To offer CPD opportunities to advance knowledge and skills by developing new and innovative approaches in teaching and learning and research to enhance creative professional practice

Teaching and learning will be enhanced by the exploration of the potential of portfolios in supporting the development of social care educators’ creative teaching practice and the sharing of best practice in creative learning among all members, as well as identifying opportunities for further professional development. We will use an ePortfolio specific platform in the provision of ePortfolio to improve reflective learning and creative thinking skills. Creative social care educators often work in isolation from other institutes resulting in a lack of strategic thinking on embedding creativity systematically within social care. The proposed initiative attends to this need for greater collaboration by engaging educators in conversation about approaches to creative pedagogy within and across institutions, generating digital resources for teaching, learning and assessment for use among social care educators. In so doing, collaboration ensures students undertaking social care programmes nationwide have an enhanced learning experience including developed creative capacities as the network formalises, shares and constructs bespoke creative T&L solutions where none may have existed.

The challenge of moving to online teaching has resulted in the need to re-orientate teaching practice and identified an area of development in terms of seeking collective solutions to teaching creatively in a virtual environment. The adoption of ePortfolios for professional development will afford educators the opportunity to think creatively and reflectively about their teaching practice such as adapting face-to-face approaches to fostering students’ creativity to suit online delivery, underpinned by evidence-based creative teaching strategies

The proposed project includes all colleges who offer social care programmes. The network currently has representation from IT Carlow, Athlone IT, Dundalk IT, Waterford IT, TU Dublin, MTU, Sligo IT, GMIT, Carlow College and the Open Training College. It hopes to involve more colleges as it progresses further.

The project is linked to aims within the Leading Enhancement and Innovation in Teaching and Learning Strategy 2019-2021 that seeks to enhance teaching and learning within and across disciplines by promoting the value of interdisciplinary to enable sharing of innovation and good practice across disciplinary boundaries. The focus on creative pedagogy and the use of digital tools to critically reflect on professional creative practice is supported by the Hunt (2011) report which prioritises creativity and critical thinking skills and the development of these capacities in the Irish higher education system to drive the new economy. Developing social care educators’ knowledge and skills in creative teaching across and between subject areas pave the way for strengthening interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary learning and supports the development of students’ creative capacity at various institutions across Ireland. A further consideration of this project is the design of learning objectives that explicitly reference fostering students’creativity through the arts, humanities and social sciences. This fits with the emphasis on building deeper and broader disciplinary foundations within the National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030, and will inform future programme development.

The CISC is a community of practice (COPs) based on Wenger et al.(2002) definition as ‘groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis’ (Wenger, McDermott, A., & Snyder, 2002, pp.4). By using publically available ePortfolios and formulising CISC as an open public group it avoids some of the criticism levelled at COPs such as withholding of knowledge and closed group formation (Blankenship & Ruona, 2007).The Standards of Proficiency for Social Care Workers by the Registration Board (SCWRB, 2017) identified creative and recreational interventions as a professional knowledge and skill, for use in social care work to meet the needs of the service user in a variety of contexts. Apart from the creative studies textbook (Lyons, 2010; Mac Giolla Ri, 2010), there is a scarcity of publications (MacGiollaRí, 2020) addressing the unique and particular requirements of creative teaching and creativity in social care. The CISC seeks to use educator created ePortfolios as a resource, including digital multimodal artefacts, as a means to support professional development. In support of the development of the ePortfolio resource, research by Hoekstra et al. (2015) found educator ePortfolios increased ‘professional learning activities including goal setting, documenting growth, discussions with peers, and reflection’ (Hoekstra & Crocker, 2015, pp.1). However, Farrell (2018) expressed disappointment regarding ePortfolios uptake in the Irish context and called for more funding to develop understanding and pedagogical use. Research also suggest ePortfolios are complex and require technical support to achieve the desired outcomes (Joyes, Gray, & Hartnell-Young, 2009). The CISC is well positioned to advance the use of ePortfolios, with technical support, as a resource tool to support professional development within a collaborative community.

The National Forum Professional Development Framework (2016) resource and its implementation guide the design of the proposed professional development project. It serves as a pathway for meaningful engagement in dialogue on creative pedagogy (in the absence of such conversations) among social care educators as well as supporting ePortfolio skills development as means of planning, reflecting on and contributing to the development of evidence-based creative teaching approaches and activities across and within institutions. Recognising that many members of the network have experience of working creatively in diverse environments, the use of ePortfolios to capture professional learning is a good fit as ‘the real potential for ePortfolios is in the widening contexts in which learning is taking place-or is recognized to be taking place-and in their ability to bring together personal learning gained in multiple settings’ (Donnelly & O’Keeffe, 2013, p. 3). Individual members will direct their learning in one or all three of the following domains: Personal Development – ‘The Self’ in Teaching and Learning, Professional Knowledge and Skills and Personal and Professional Digital Capacity in Teaching and Learning (National Forum, 2016). It is the belief of the network that these domains align with the professional development needs proposed and outlined in this application. The work of the pilot study groups will inform the development of the professional practice of network members in terms of the possible application of the PD framework. However, there is no study to-date that addresses the development of creative teaching practice in a social care context.

The impacts of this proposal include (1) enhanced teaching and learning by stimulating pedagogical synergies informed by similarities and differences in approach, (2) develop new or advance creative pedagogical approaches and opportunities for future research across social care programmes, (3) solution focused support related to issues concerning teaching and learning ‘on the ground’ and (4) learn to engage with ePortfoliosas a learning technology to achieve the aims of the project. All ePortfolios created as part of this project will be accessible to site visitors to the CISC website.This will allow for wider use of these digital resources beyond that of network members.