To spur agency and critical thinking, educators can take steps to position students as knowledge builders rather than just consumers. Drawing on Indigenous pedagogy and her own work on the value of "street data" in education, author and consultant Shane Safir discusses the importance of creating more space for student voice in…

This paper looks at the connection between project-based learning and social and emotional learning (SEL). While all learning experiences benefit from a supportive social and emotional learning process and context, the collaborative and student-led nature of project-based learning (PBL) necessitates an emphasis on SEL. This paper explores that…

The article describes a workshop that combines nature photography and haiku poems writing with the use of smartphones in an outdoor educational setting. The workshop's purpose is to enhance the experience of being close to nature by observation and introspection. The participants use photography and haiku-writing as means of visual and textual…

This article explores the contribution that a teaching strategy, such as metaphoric body-mapping, can make towards the discourse on the development of professional teacher identity. Second-year students in a Life Orientation methodology module in a B.Ed programme were offered the opportunity to validate their local knowledge and make new meaning…

Sarah DeBacher and Deborah Harris-Moore offer their experiences with teaching in the aftermath of traumatic situations. DeBacher, who taught at the University of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and Harris-Moore, who taught at UC Santa Barbara following a mass shooting, explore the difficulty of teaching writing in the wake of…

Reflection can form the basis for powerful dialogue between the arts and literacy as we seek interpretive and expressive fluency across modes. Through deep, cumulative reflection we make aspects of our world and experiences more perceivable, and open them up for artistic expression and aesthetic inquiry. Such reflections are also the catalysts for…

In the field of rhetoric and composition, literacy narratives are sometimes framed through the idea of "inventing the university"; this, unfortunately, creates a trope of literacy as success. I argue that the success trope limits student expression of "outlaw" emotions in literacy narratives--like loss, pain, and anxiety--and…

We propose that writing can be employed to foster the kind of career learning required in the twenty-first century. The article offers insights into how writing exercises and approaches can be applied to help students construct their career stories in a way that allows them to engage in a dialogical learning process and work in a self-directed…

I have worked with students at-risk for the greater majority of my career. The term has a number of meanings. Officially, it means they are at-risk of failing, but often the risks are much greater. At one extreme they are at-risk of losing their lives to substance abuse or suicide. Less drastically they are at-risk of making their way through the…

To celebrate a milestone in eighth-graders' lives--leaving middle school and moving on to high school--the author assigns them the "Coming of Age" project, which examines the big idea of identity and promotes the move from self-reflection to self-expression. The project also includes writing components that correspond to each of the nine…

The importance of critical reflection in higher education highlights the importance of creating rich learning opportunities for students. Expressive arts (e.g., poetry, drama) ignites such opportunity drawing from more than students' logical-cognitive understandings to include students' creative, multi-modal and experiential capacities. This paper…

Drawn from a longitudinal ethnographic study, this article elaborates the trajectories linking one undergraduate's extracurricular journaling to her school writing and her emerging identity as a journalist. This portrait of literate development highlights how our sense of ourselves as literate persons is forged in the interplay of multiple…

University lecturers need to help their students to develop ways of being that will allow them to flourish amidst uncertainty. Professional development workshops involving artwork and reflection provide a space where lecturers themselves can hold, examine and develop tolerance for uncertainty. Artwork and exploration of metaphors enable them to…

One of the important aspects of integrating contemplative practice into higher music education is the emphasis the practice places on individual experience. Students begin to learn to sensitize both their outer and inner listening. They begin to trust their own experience and the inner guidance that can be found in that trust. They begin to trust…

Objective: The objective of this paper is to present the practical use of a Mandala that: 1) provides opportunities for athletic training students to explore, reflect on and appreciate their clinical experiences; 2) provides educators with a model to understand and value athletic training student experiences; 3) organizes and captures factors and…