S Systems Centered Learning Approach to Creative Practice in Communication and Media Teaching Susan Kerrigan, Phillip McIntyre, Janet Fulton and Michael Meany University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia Synonyms Creative Practice; Creative Systems Centered Learning Approach to Media and Communication Teaching; SCL; Systems Centered Learning; Sys- tems Centered Learning Approach to Media and Communication Teaching Systems Centered Learning The Systems Centered Learning (SCL) approach to higher education provides an innovative and holistic view of curriculum design that does not privilege student-centered, teacher-centered, or content-centered approaches (McIntyre et al. 2018) but integrates each in a creative system in action (McIntyre et al. 2016). SCL is founded on an approach to creativity called the systems model of creativity, developed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1988) and adapted by Michael Meany (2017) for the educational setting. SCL extends this underpinning theory by applying it in the higher education setting, specifically focused at teaching into the disciplinary area of media and communication. Csikszentmihalyi argued that creativity occurs when a system of three elements converge, a domain of knowledge, a field of experts, and an idiosyncratic individual, who internalizes the rules of the domain, understands the expectations of the field and produces a variation in the system. If accepted by the field as a creative contribution, that variation is then included in the domain for other individuals to draw on in their own creative practice. According to the systems model, these three elements are interrelated, their existence affects each other which is then affected by them, and this relationship occurs through a series of non- linear systemic interactions (Csikszentmihalyi 1988, p. 329). It is the confluence of these elements that is needed in order for valued novelty to emerge. Employing this approach in higher education has been outlined by Meany (2017) and described more fully by McIntyre et al. (2018) as Systems Centered Learning. This entry will describe the model and demonstrate how the SCL approach can be success- fully applied to media and communication programs from undergraduate teaching through to postgradu- ate research. SCL is comprised of three components, a body of knowledge that is the subject area that gives each course its content, teachers and others who are highly skilled in the subject area, and students who learn that content via interaction with the © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 M. A. Peters, R. Heraud (eds.), Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2262-4_119-1