The collective creative process as a strategy for social pedagogy: from John Dewey to Elizabeth Ellsworth

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. Until the 20th century, the way of thinking and constructing knowledge in the West was mostly linear, logical, unidirectional and closed. This meant a limitation in learning that was centred on the construction of individual and reproductive knowledge of what was received from the instances possessing knowledge. The plurality of the 21st century invites us to think in a networked, subjective, multidirectional, open and critical way. These characteristics are typical of the arts, which approach creation as a multidimensional process to understand a problem, intervene in it and provide a solution. In the creative process, which relates perception and observation, the manipulative and the experimental, the subject is taken out of passive reproduction and pushed towards the creation of new knowledge. In this way, a time of transition is built between what one has been and what one can become. METHOD. This article makes a philosophical approach to the relationship between the creative process and the social learning process with the aim of describing the elements of the creative process that contribute today to a more inclusive and democratic social pedagogy. In order to do so, we relate two authors from different periods, J. Dewey and E. Ellsworth, who have a common interest in an inclusive and collaborative society. RESULTS. The reflection seeks to facilitate the implementation in educational environments of the creative process in such a way that it favours learning that respects diversity and is capable of assuming social pedagogies as proper political practices to the contemporary plural paradigm. DISCUSSION. The presence of community creative processes in the educational setting offers an intermediate space of freedom to students, where critical thinking is incorporated that collectively invites the construction of social alternatives that are the heritage of every human being.