A global-first program helps teachers integrate creative approaches to teaching and learning through its inclusive, scalable design.
A gifted education program is helping teachers embed critical and creative thinking across all curriculum areas and school year levels. The program places ‘beautiful risks’ at the centre of its pedagogy, inspired by creativity in education expert Professor Ronald A. Beghetto.
The Creativity in Gifted Education program within the UNSW Master of Education is a global first in university-based teacher training. It offers the only pre- or in-service course focused on cross-curricular creativity.
“The program equips educators with powerful, inclusive strategies that foster creativity and excellence in diverse classrooms,” says Dr Geraldine Townend from UNSW’s School of Education, who designed the course. “It fosters an immersive learning experience that delivers strong educational outcomes.”
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) identified critical and creative thinking as one of seven general capabilities to be fostered across its 21st century curriculum, from Kindergarten to Year 12 (K-12).
“While teachers recognise the importance of fostering critical and creative thinking to help students thrive in our rapidly changing world, they frequently report insufficient training and low confidence in implementing these practices across the curriculum,” she says.
“The course helps teachers implement creative approaches within their lesson plans, demonstrating a range of classroom applications to differentiate for diverse student needs.”
The program’s influence has grown exponentially, strengthening gifted education practices across gifted education programs in the Asia Pacific. Enrolment has increased by 1650% since its inception in 2020. It has attracted more than 1,000 participants with around 70% coming from countries, such as China, India, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Korea.
Dr Townend is an expert in gifted education, twice exceptionality (gifted learners with disability and/or additional learning needs, or who are neurodivergent) and pedagogy to support creativity. She works with national and international education authorities, runs workshops with school communities, and presents internationally to promote evidence-led differentiation and excellence in teaching.
She developed the course over four years, drawing on Professor Beghetto’s research. “Fostering beautiful risk taking within teaching and learning is key. A good risk is when the benefits outweigh the negatives; a bad risk is the opposite.
“A beautiful risk is when the benefits outweigh the negatives, and students care about it. If the students care, this instantly and automatically promotes engagement and motivation, and so that's the angle we take.”
The course helps teachers recognise how and when to encourage beautiful risk taking within the classroom. For example, Dr Townend mentored a teacher to integrate creative approaches in the study of Shakespeare’s Macbeth with a disengaged Learning Support English class.
“The teacher gave them the themes – love, betrayal, murder, ambition – with no reference to Macbeth and tasked them with producing a trailer for a film featuring the same themes.
“There were war films, corruption, bombs, world catastrophes, scientists with fiery powers, all the themes were in there. Given this agency, the students’ engagement increased markedly.
“It was a bit of a leap returning to Macbeth, but they enjoyed it. Then two weeks later, he held a pop quiz on the themes. All the students got 100% with no revision; something they’d previously have struggled with.”
Building teachers’ capacity through creative-led pedagogy strengthens gifted programs and enhances quality and inclusion in teaching more broadly, she says. “By empowering teachers with knowledge and skills, we enable more equitable access to an innovative educational experience.”
Fostering an environment where gifted students feel safe and supported to take risks is fundamental, she says. “This applies to all students of course, but there are certain characteristics, such as perfectionism, that can be more prominent in gifted students.”
The program considers different ways teachers can give students permission to fail. “Fail is a bad word in our society, but we can’t get the best results unless we take risks, and taking risks means risking failure.”
The course examines how teachers can model failure, for example, by acknowledging a mistake; ways they can reward it, such as through incentivised charts; or invest in playful engagements with failing, such as including three mistakes in worksheets and challenging students to find them, she says.
“They can encourage failure through posters they have around the room, memes they share with students, videos of successful people discussing risks that didn’t pay off. For example, [Harry Potter author] JK Rowling, in a talk at Harvard, discusses the inevitability and benefits of failing.”
The microcosm of the classroom then becomes a space outside of external pressures, cultural and familial influences, where risk is cherished and failure is normalised, she says.
“You can even involve parents in the Fail Game, where you intentionally fail at something – for example, charcoaling a roast – to take the fear out of what for some is a worst-case scenario.
“This can be very impactful, particularly for young students, to diffuse the tension around the untenability of failure, and promote greater creative risk taking.”
The course teaches educators to apply the critical and creative thinking learning continuum in the classroom, looking at how it maps across Kindergarten to Year 12 cohorts.
The continuum, part of the Australian Curriculum, describes how students progressively develop the ability to generate and evaluate ideas, reason logically, seek alternatives, think creatively, and solve problems.
“Students think divergently, they come up with a billion ideas – they love it – and then they go into the critical side, where they think convergently, and they fine-tune and interrogate these ideas – the metacognitive is an area of strength for many gifted students.
“This is the same process that people in business, in entrepreneurship and innovation use.”
The continuum provides teachers with a framework to plan, monitor and extend students’ thinking skills across all learning areas; however, educators report low levels of self-efficacy, she says.
“The course directly addresses these gaps in educator knowledge, and ensures gifted students are provided with the optimal opportunities they need to thrive.”
The course design and delivery models inclusive teaching, enabling all students, regardless of background, diverse global contexts, or diagnoses to participate meaningfully.
All classrooms contain mixed abilities, even opportunity classes or classes within selective schools, she says. “The average school classroom can have up to 10 years of ability differences within it. Additionally, research has shown that up to 50% of gifted students are underperforming.
“Differentiation is needed across the board. Designing layered lesson plans and scaffolding assessments allows all students to participate at different levels of depth and complexity.”
Dr Townend’s expertise in twice exceptionality is evident in her teaching approach. She models Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to address challenges faced by neurodivergent students, those who are neurotypical but overwhelmed, and those learning in a new language.
“Offering multiple means of engagement, content representation and expression helps build more flexible learning environments. This could be introducing a variety of visual, verbal, performative or digital pathways for students to engage. These strategies have a significant impact on educational outcomes.”
Course participants have reported on the success of this inclusive approach: “I found that using UDL in my gifted program was highly supportive of twice-exceptional students – [Dr Townend’s] expertise in this area was helpful,” said a 2024 participant.
Another 2025 participant said: “I have loved the creativity course. I got so much from it and it has all been applicable in my classroom …[offering] practical approaches that I was able to implement immediately and continue to do so. My students are so much more engaged.”
Integrating different cultural narratives and referencing global contexts and student identities also helps to demonstrate relevance and encourage students to draw inspiration from their linguistic and cultural backgrounds, she says.
“While many traditional gifted education initiatives focus on individual disciplines or small specific cohorts, this program builds capacity at scale by equipping teachers with the knowledge and skills to prepare all students, including gifted students for tomorrow’s workforce demands and society’s complex challenges.”
School of Education
Dr Geraldine Townend
Pillar 7: Advance economic and social prosperity
