Experience of teaching creativity: Reaction to reviewers' comment

I submitted a conference paper titled "Teaching Creativity in Design Aesthetics: An Introspective Account of a University Lecturer" to the International Conference on Infomatics and Creative Multimedia 2013. The aim is the share my experience of teaching creativity in MRE3014, and this adheres the theme of the conference.

First reviewer's comment:

Despite being accepted for an oral presentation, the comments given by the reviewers reveal several issues possessed by both the reviewer and the organizer. Herewith one of the first  reviewer's comment:

"This is a commendable effort and a really interesting read. It was reflective and engaging especially on the topic of art and creativity. However, I find that it lacks the research rigor that is needed as a conference research paper. The title seems to say that it is a reflective research on teaching but the bulk of the literature and write up was on the teacher's understanding and debate of the concept of art and creativity etc. rather than the process of teaching this specific course with its struggles, successes or challenges as suggested by the title. The author needs to explain further what method as well as the research process that was undertook in this introspective account of him/her as a teacher. Please see other comments on the attached document." ~ Comment of Reviewer 1

Herewith my reaction to the first reviewer's comment:

Perhaps I should highlight this paper is not a research paper. If one would insist on regarding this as a research paper it is more like a reflective study--apparently one of the reviewer has a narrow view on what a conference paper must be. In other words, the reviewer has limited his or her view on the nature of academic conference, as he or she thought that a paper to be presented in a conference must be research paper. I do not denounce the reviewer for having such a narrow view, since it is the organizer's fault in requesting the reviewers to rate all papers on "Research method and data analysis are sound", "Findings and conclusions are properly presented", and other items that are only applicable for scientific or empirical research studies. If I would be a reviewer, I would insist to state "Not Applicable" or NA to all irrelevant fills, and this would be fair to authors who submitted concept papers or a paper like mine.

Nonetheless, I do agree that the paper should focus on "the process of teaching this specific course with its struggles, successes or challenges as suggested by the title." I will revise the paper by explaining how I did the reflection--using my reflection-reflexion continuum.

Second reviewer's comment: 

There are few contradicting statements in:
V. DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ON CREATIVITY BETWEEN ART AND DESIGN

1) The arguments on INNOVATION, UNIQUENESS, AESTHETICS, DESIGN PROCESS, CREATIVE PROCESS between ART and DESIGN in the context of CREATIVITY was not properly clarified; it is contradictory and perplexing.

STATEMENTS ON ART’s creativity
“Whatever it is regarded, the process of art creation activity must be carried out in a completely free condition. Therefore it is completely sensual and exclusive. This is very different as compared to the spiritual force that pursues aesthetics in order to acquire human consensus. The value of art lies in its uniqueness—all great art are unique, thus artists are devoting themselves to create unprecedented content, and then express the content through unique form. In ancient times, aesthetics is a part of the value of art form, while the expression of the form is far beyond the scope of aesthetics.”

STATEMENT ON DESIGN’s Creativity
“Seeing design process as a thinking process, he defined design as a synthetic reaction of sensibility and rationality. The creation through design is objective-driven, while its meaning is innovation, which has nothing to do with uniqueness; although sometimes it does possess the characteristics of being unique. The objective-driven characteristic is primarily meant for improving human life. While this might also satisfy spiritual needs, the satisfaction is indeed a consequence of materialistic fulfillment. To reinforce the spiritual value of design, it is natural to pursue aesthetics in its form, and there is no reason to reject aesthetics in any field of the reality of life.”

2) The difference between ART’s creativity and DESIGN’s Creativity stated earlier in section IV does Not reflect in the conclusion

V. CONCLUSIONS
“With this revelation of different types of creativity, the dilemma of incorporating four criteria of creativity suggested by Tony Buzan became a non-issue. All four criteria are in fact interrelated to and complementing each other…”

3) And the statement brought forwards in the conclusions also contradictory to the argument in section V.

V. CONCLUSIONS
“…The teaching of later two cohorts of Design Aesthetics students indicated positive improvement as the engagement of students towards in-class lecture and activities increased, probably due to the acquired knowledge on their future role as designers and how they would work with professionals in pure art and applied sciences.”

Herewith my reaction to the second reviewer's comment:

Perhaps paraphrasing what Han (2012) said about the differences between pure art and applied art in terms of creativity might not be appropriate. Anyhow, this is my first attempt of openly adopting someone's idea and put it into my teaching context. I will try improving the paper by clarifying matters, concepts, etc, before sending it to a journal, as none of the journal that is linked to the conference is related to my topic.