Aims
The main aims were (a) to understand more clearly the nature of the learning process facilitated by the PG Diploma/MA Creative Writing and Personal Development, in which students engage in the writing of fictional autobiography as a means of developing their creative writing - in particular to get a better understanding of how the often striking changes which students report in their sense of themselves as learners and writers are achieved, and (b) arising out of this, to formulate a theoretically grounded understanding of creative writing as a tool for learning more generally.

Methodology and Research Methods
The project took the form of qualitative research within a critical realist paradigm, using methodology drawn from psychodynamics and interpretative phenomenology, with (a) students who attended the two year part time MA Creative Writing and Personal Development at CCE (2004-06) using questionnaires and interviews and (b) students who took the programme between 1996 and 2002 - whether as a two year MA or in its previous form as a one year or 16 month Postgraduate Diploma (also using a questionnaire).

Main Research Questions

• How does the Postgraduate Diploma/MA help students to gain a stronger sense of themselves as writers and learners - in particular, how does it help them to alleviate or overcome blocks to the development of their writing?
• What are the nature of the changes in students' sense of self as writers and learners during the programme?
• What particular features of the programme contribute to these changes?
• What exactly is being learned?
• What are the main challenges of this approach to teaching and learning?
• How might autobiographical creative writing be used in higher education more generally as a tool for learning?

Publications
Some preliminary material from this project has been published as Hunt, C and West, L (2006): Learning in a Border Country: a psychodynamic approach to teaching and research, Studies in the Education of Adults 38, 160-177. A book is in progress under the title Creative Writing as a Tool for Learning: Exploring the Self in the Learning Process.

Researcher Biography
Celia Hunt is Reader in Continuing Education (Creative Writing). She is the author of Therapeutic Dimensions of Autobiography in Creative Writing (2000) and Writing: Self and Reflexivity (2006, with Fiona Sampson). She was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2004.