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taking, individual leadership, teamwork, innovation and creativity (Hellner
2003
).
Experiential and anecdotal evidence suggest that if anything, the NCEA is variable
and produces students with a wide range of capabilities. With that in mind, the edu-
cational strategies deployed in the BCT programme focus initially on developing
play and playfulness at the prepersonal level as a levelling process to assist all stu-
dents to learn about multiple perspectives and disciplines, before progressing
through different play rhetorics to aim to develop students' full potential.
The transition from high school to university is a signifi cant life change that
often results in students feeling out of place and unsure of their own competencies.
As a result, the behaviour of students is such that they tend to adopt the magical
'play self' that is characterised by feelings of confusion and anxiety arising from
dealing with the complexity of the new environment. Incoming students typically
have no sense of their potential or capability, which results in some students under-
taking overly optimistic projects, whilst others err on the side of caution.
3.3
The Space of Play
The BCT is, in part, conceived as a creative inquiry-led undergraduate degree with
the characteristics of a postgraduate research programme (Connor et al.
2009
). We
emphasise interactive, project-oriented learning in which students are engaged and
active participants. As a result, their learning experience is one of personal transfor-
mation that has the potential to produce graduates that function at the postpersonal
and transpersonal levels. Team-based project work also enhances opportunities for
peer review and co-creation.
At another level, it is the hybrid nature of the learning space in which the BCT is
'played out' that is key to how students engage with the transdisciplinary nature of
the emerging Creative Technologies domain. We combine aspects of the artist's
studio, the design atelier, the workshop and the laboratory in to a unique active
learning space. The fi rst two combine personal inspiration, 'creative freedom' and
the specifi c conditions of creative practice, the lab focuses on the scientifi c simula-
tion of reality and the workshop is concerned with engineering and the production
of the world. Thus the programme encourages students to playfully imagine, model
and make connections, relationships or associations between ideas and phenomena
under investigation, not to fi nd an answer but rather a starting point or an 'attitude'
(Gamper
2012
; Koethen
2012
). Like 'the arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the
temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, [and] the court of justice', the learning
place can be seen as 'a play-ground, a place where 'special rules obtain', dedicated
to the performance of an act apart' (Huizinga
2000
).
It is important to emphasise that this 'performance …. apart' does not denote a
closed or self-contained system but relies on frequent interaction, intervention or
dynamic interplay with the everyday world. Neither does our focus on play under-
mine the importance of real tools, media and context in human development.
Following Piaget, we recognise that 'knowledge is experience that is acquired
