This paper reports on a study into the role and manifestation of dialogue and materiality/embodiment in science/arts creative pedagogy. The study was part of the CREATIONS H2020-EU funded project that aims to develop arts-based creative approaches to engender more engaging science classrooms. Our theoretical perspective is essentially relational (Biesta, 2004), viewing learning as a phenomenon produced through embodied dialogue (Bakhtin, 1984; Barad, 2007) in a creative and agentic relational performance through which new subjectivities emerge. Via an extensive literature review and workshop process led by the University of Exeter (UoE) team, a set of eight creative pedagogical features were developed, rooted in the theoretical framing of the project (Chappell et al., 2016). These features aided in designing teaching and learning plans for different science-arts activities across eleven countries. In order to study creative pedagogy rigorously and in depth, the research reported here focuses on four features, core to the team’s wider theoretical work. These are: Dialogue as construed through Bakhtin's (1986) work; Empowerment and Agency via Barad (2007); Transdisciplinarity through the work of Lattuca (2001); and Possibilities derived from Craft (2011). Our theoretical perspective argues for embodied dialogue as key to understanding the creative pedagogy of science/arts education, hence our main research question: How are dialogue and material/embodied activity manifested in creative pedagogy? This paper reports on four of the CREATIONS science-arts activities, explored as in depth case studies using multiple methods (including fieldnotes, interviews, video, questionnaires, material artefacts and documents). All four cases involved secondary school pupils and include: 1) An Action Research project with paired Science and Art teachers in SW, England 2) a STEAM project engaging Greek IB students with CERN and particle physics, 3) a Global Science Opera across multiple countries and 4) a project engaging UK Year 7/8 students with fundamental concepts in particle physics through dance. Our methodology draws on New Materialist thinking to engage in diffractive analysis (Haraway and Randolph, 1997; Barad, 2007). Diffraction is a means to disrupt pre-supposed analytic habits and requires attendance to “how differences get made and what the effects of these differences are” (Bozalek and Zembylas, 2016) and thus fits well in researching creative pedagogies with open-ended outcomes. The paper and presentation will outline the theory underlying the whole project, share the outcomes of the four case studies (currently under analysis), and consider implications in relation to inter- and trans-disciplinary teaching and learning.

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