ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some assumptions which underpin the concept of 'creative learning', what 'creative learning' is, and why promoting it is a necessity not an option to improve the level of higher music education and teachers' status as creative professionals. It discusses studies that explore partnership programmes which aim to foster and promote classroom creativities through the development of positive learning environments in which students can take risks, engage in imaginative activity, and do things differently. Bernstein offers a helpful framework which differentiates between pedagogies in terms of competence and performance. Higher music education teachers and learners have the option of co-constructing pedagogy when the institutional learning community collaboration encompasses 'the act of teaching, together with the ideas, values and collective histories that inform, shape and explain that act'. Some artist-scholars typically use a more improvisational, open-ended approach in their teaching, while others often use a more structured style.
