Publication Date: May 2018
RRP: $39.95
ISBN: 9781925523270
Format: Paperback
Size: 153mm x 234mm
Pages: 288
Category: Education

Creativity Crisis

Toward a Post-constructivist Educational Future

Robert Nelson

Open Access

Also available as an ebook from your favourite retailer.


‘This book has a lot to say, says it well and isn’t afraid to question the dominant paradigms of education. It deserves a wide readership and I recommend it to all educators.’ Andrys Onsman, Australian Universities Review (61:01)

‘This book is one of a kind. Robert’s purpose is to arrive at a creative new vision, where education is less constrained, less instrumentalist, more encouraging and open to the imagination.’ Professor David Boud, Director, Centre For Research in Assessment and Digital Learning, Deakin University, Melbourne

Read Robert’s article in Campus Review

Read Robert’s article in The Conversation


In Creativity Crisis Robert Nelson argues that university education is systematically uncreative and suggests how this might be changed.

Constructive alignment, the centerpiece of today’s university pedagogy, promotes mechanistic thinking and the anxious gathering of manipulative skills. Learning happens more effectively when students take their study in new directions derived from their intimate, imagined relations with the new material they are encountering. Richly steeped in the history of ideas, from ancient Greece to the present, this book radically revises the concept of student-centredness, explores the language that encourages creativity, and helps teachers cultivate imaginative enthusiasm.

Creativity Crisis is essential reading for those concerned with the nature and quality of instruction at university level.


Robert Nelson

Robert Nelson is Associate Professor in the Monash Education Academy, Monash University, Melbourne, and art critic for The Age newspaper. He is the author of six previous books and over 1000 articles and reviews occasioned by his ongoing interest in how the aesthetic interacts with the moral and the educational.