Creative Expression And Wellbeing In Higher Education

This volume focuses on individual and collective practices of creativity, embodiment and movement as acts of self-care and wellbeing. Creative Expression and Wellbeing in Higher Education positions creative expression as an important act for professionals working in higher education, as a way to connect, communicate, practice activism or simply slow down. Through examples as diverse as movement through dance and exercise, expression through drawing, writing or singing and creating objects with one’s hands, the authors share how individual and collective acts of creativity and movement enhance, support and embrace wellbeing, offering guidance to the reader on how such creative expression can be adopted as self-care practice. This book highlights how connection to hand, body, voice and mind has been imperative in this process for expression, fl ow and engagement with self and wellbeing practices. Self-care and wellbeing are complex at the best of times. In higher education, these are actions that are constantly being grappled with personally, collectively and systematically. Designed to support readers working in higher education, this book will also be of great interest to professionals and researchers.

This book focuses on the lived experiences of higher education professionals working in the face of stress, pressure and the threat of burnout and how acts of self-care and wellbeing can support, develop and maintain a sense of self. In considering the place of self-care in higher education, we are challenged with the tension that exists when it comes to the valuing of self-care and our individual and collective wellbeing. In Reflections on Valuing Wellbeing in Higher Education, authors present and explore the ways in which they manage and reframe their wellbeing and self-care, through mindfulness, compassion, connection to breath, ref lection, demonstrating individual and collective embodiment and resistance to neoliberalism and environmental destruction. Covering various contexts of higher education, such as learning and teaching, research, leadership and engagement, this book offers practical strategies grounded in literature and evidence-based research. The self in self-care is relational. It is not just about self. We need others for inspiration, motivation and, indeed, the act. This book will be of great interest to professionals and researchers specifically interested in studies in higher education, wellbeing and/or identity as well as those navigating a career in higher education.

The workplace has significant influence over our sense of wellbeing. It is a place where many of us spend significant amounts of our time, where we find meaning, and often form a sense of identity. Creating a Place for Self-care and Wellbeing in Higher Education explores the notion of finding meaning across academia as a key part of self-care and wellbeing. In this edited collection, the authors navigate how they find meaning in their work in academia by sharing their own approaches to self-care and wellbeing. In the chapters, visual narratives intersect with lived experience and proactive strategies that reveal the stories, dilemmas, and tensions of those working in higher education. This book illuminates how academics and higher education professionals engage in constant reconstruction of their identity and work practices, placing self-care at the centre of the work they do, as well as revealing new ways of working to disrupt the current climate of dismissing self-care and wellbeing. Designed to inspire, support, and provoke the reader as they navigate a career in higher education, this book will be of great interest to professionals and researchers specifically interested in studies in higher education, wellbeing, and/or identity.

Presenting a collective international story, this book demonstrates the importance of compassion as an act of self-care in the face of change and disruption, providing guidance on how to cope under trying conditions in higher education settings. Practising Compassion in Higher Education presents an opportunity to learn through story and by taking proactive action for our wellbeing. It highlights the need to protect and maintain the wellbeing of staff and students, positioning the COVID-19 pandemic as a major catalyst of disruption. The chapters connect theory with lived experience, exploring self-compassion in work and research, compassion in teaching practice and within the personal/professional blur. The book’s contributors bring a range of theoretical and personal perspectives from various global contexts, sharing their own approaches to self-care and how compassion has become a central and crucial element of this practice. This book takes a unique approach to navigating and surviving the higher education environment and offers valuable lessons for the pandemic era and beyond. This will be an essential resource for students and professionals working in all areas of higher education.

Self-care involves taking action to support, protect or maintain wellbeing. Relationships have a significant influence on these acts of self-care and one’s sense of wellbeing. Relationships are fundamental to individual meaning-making and crucial to the world of academia. In this edited collection, authors navigate how they view relationships as a crucial part of their wellbeing and acts of self-care, exploring the "I", "We", and "Us" at the centre of self-care and wellbeing embodiment. Each chapter unpacks this idea in varying ways that demonstrate that relationships are a fundamental element of both work and personal life and how they intersect with wellbeing. The authors present critical discussion through visual narratives, lived experiences, and strategies that highlight how relationships, seeking social support, scaffolding opportunities to learn with and from each other, and changes in practise become acts of self-care individually and collectively. There has arguably never been a more important time to raise awareness of self-care and wellbeing as central to the nature of work in higher education. Healthy Relationships in Higher Education: Promoting Wellbeing Across Academia highlights new ways of working in higher education that disrupt current tensions that neglect wellbeing and will be of interest to anyone working in this environment.

Much has been written about the importance of creativity in learning and education over the last few decades. This unique book extends beyond the usual focus on implementing creative methods in learning, teaching and assessing within higher education, to an examination of creativity as central to a learning process which is transformational for the student. More specifically, Learning as a Creative and Developmental Process in Higher Education examines the importance of a facilitative tutor-student relationship and environment which contextualise this creative process of teaching and learning. Bringing together unique teaching and learning approaches developed by experienced academics, this book discusses a number of complex issues, including approaches to an understanding of the student’s self-concept as learner; the nature of the curriculum; the potential of metaphor and creativity; and a multi-modal approach to learning and teaching. Contributions to the book also examine some of the challenges and tensions of such an approach within the context of arts-based subjects in higher education institutions. Using a unique and coherent thematic structure that is based upon the student journey as a transformational process, this book provides a new way of understanding the student journey through higher education. Including an examination of the parallels between educational and arts education and arts therapies disciplines, this book will be of interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students involved in the arts and the arts therapies, as well as those studying creativity in teaching and learning in higher education. It should be of particular interest to those involved in the teaching and training of teachers and lecturers in higher education.

Through a lens of self-care and wellbeing, this book shares stories of struggle and success from a diverse range of women in academia. Each story highlights how these women mitigated and overcame various barriers as part of their academic trajectory and provides practical strategies for maintaining self-care and wellbeing. Taken from lived experience, the autoethnographic narrative approach provides a deeper, personal understanding of the obstacles faced by women throughout an academic career and guidance on how these might be navigated in a way that avoids self-sacrificing. This collection goes further to illustrate the ways that higher education institutions can be more accommodating of the needs of women.

Prioritizing wellbeing alongside academic development, this book provides practical advice to help students write well, and be well, during their PhD and throughout their career. In this unique book, Katherine Firth offers expert guidance on developing a writing practice and avoiding burnout, providing strategies and insights for developing a sustainable writing career beyond the PhD thesis. The book covers every stage of the academic writing process, from planning and researching, through getting words on the page, to the often unexpectedly time-consuming editing and polishing. Readers are reminded that writing a thesis is hard work, but it needn’t be damaging work. Each chapter includes a toolbox of strategies and techniques, such as meditations, writing exercises and tips to maintain physical wellbeing, that will help doctoral candidates start writing and keep writing, without sacrificing their health, wellbeing or relationships. Relevant at any stage of the writing process, this book will help doctoral students and early career researchers to produce great words that people want to read, examiners want to pass and editors want to publish.