Understanding the Learner Journey in the Creative Arts: Describing and Understanding the Learner Journey with the Cultural Ecology of Scotland

This briefing provides a review of learner journey relationships with the creative sector within the devolved educational context of Scotland. It starts by outlining this journey in terms of the linear school-to-work regime upon which much policy depends for accountability and standards. It moves onto identify some of the complexities associated with this model when it comes to assessing student success in creative arts subjects. It challenges the linear school-to-work regime policy and suggests an alternative non-linear, reiterative education-and-work regime as the necessary focus for measuring the impact of higher education creative arts. To do this, it places success within the creative arts as part of an integrated system of creativity. As such it suggests that, in the generation of outcomes’ metrics, we need to find a method for assessing life-wide ‘learnING journey’ outcomes.