Book Description

Creativity in the West is often perceived as “cutting edge” and “ground-breaking” in a singular act of giving birth to the new. However, to what degree has this model of breaking away from others and the world contributed to the current crisis in education, society, and ecology even before the tragic COVID-19 pandemic and responses to it? How can our reimagining of creativity contribute to the mutual flourishing of humanity and of relations between humans and the planet? Daoist creativity, based upon relationality and interdependence, has much to offer to today’s curriculum as a complicated conversation to sustain life and renew the world. Integrative, emergent, embodied, co-creative, and ecological, Daoist creativity has a built-in opening to difference through the organic relationality of Yin/Yang dynamics. This book focuses on one essential thread in Daoism—integrative creativity through organic relationality—and weaves its interplay with Western thought through multiple and intertwined dimensions of curriculum. Exploring Dao as dynamic and setting creative curriculum in motion, this book juxtaposes the notion of Wuwei and self-organization to conceptualize emergent classroom dynamics, and re-envisions the inner landscape of education through negotiating dialogues between the Jungian psyche and Daoist dynamics. Further, it explores gendered implications of Daoism to interact with feminism and formulates the pursuit of inner and outer peace through creative harmony to inform nonviolence curriculum. Synthesizing cross-cultural insights and wisdom, it provides an in-depth and intuitive understanding of the interactions between Daoist and Western creativity and elaborates a curriculum of integrative creativity for students, teachers, and their educational community. Let us all attend to the urgent call for individual and collective awakenings and for creativity that connects. Praise for Contemporary Daoism, Organic Relationality, and Curriculum of Integrative Creativity: "Hongyu Wang’s book on Daoism is a treasure. It is beautifully written and includes a diverse literature that demonstrates her impressive scholarship. She explores the relevance of Daoism’s ancient wisdom to many current issues including gender, nonviolence, peace education, as well as teaching and learning. This is an important addition to growing literature on Daoism. In a time of division we need Daoism’s cosmic perspective on how we can live peacefully and harmoniously on this earth." ~ Jack Miller The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto "One barrier to meaningful educational reform is our inability to imagine things differently. Wang’s study offers a set of lenses drawn from Chinese Daoism that could stimulate meaningful educational reform by envisioning a curriculum that moves beyond analytical reasoning toward more peaceful, humane, and ecologically sustainable ways of teaching, learning, and knowing. Along the way, Wang explores the links between Daoism and complexity theory and Daoism’s compatibilities and contrasts with aspects of Western philosophy, including recent scholarship on eco-feminism. Educators will be intrigued by this study of Daoism as a form of embodied curriculum that works toward the development of authentic personhood and transformative interconnectedness through an emphasis on lived experience in tandem with intellectual developmentand they will be inspired to examine and rethink their current practice." ~ Gay Garland Reed Professor Emerita, University of Hawaii "Honyu Wang’s book offers us a solution for nowadays crises like social and ecological ones, by pointing out that the integrative creativity and curriculum is the key...Her ideas are accessible and can enrich our perspective as educationists. The novelty and uniqueness of the book is that it makes a bridge between Western culture and East culture, between past and present and it is also a bridge from today to the future of the entire Earth." ~ Maria Butucea, Teacher Training Department, Technical University of Civil Engineering, Bucharest