Many teaching strategies exist to develop critical thinking with students. Art students engage with critical thinking in a "Connected Art" workshop, implemented in three diverse Higher Education (HE) learning environments. Participants are interdisciplinary adult learners in the UK, Germany and Spain. Using joint practice development,…

The rise in the number of young people disengaged from mainstream schooling is reaching critical proportions. This paper explores a child-framed participatory inquiry known as The Walking A/r/tography Project, which sought to challenge, empower and engage youth at risk in one Special Assistance Secondary School in Southeast Queensland through…

This article reports findings from a study using arts-based and embodied (ABE) approaches to enhancing capacity for distributed leadership and explores the professional learning which took place as a result. The data reported in the article are from the UK research which formed part of the ENABLES (European Arts-Based Development of Distributed…

The present article explores how "movement-based performing arts" lessons focusing on bodily imagination may expand secondary school pupils' learning experiences. The study centers on the learning experiences and emotions of 28 participants described through art-based action research and the lens of interpretive inquiry. The results of…

Teachers often enter practice with a narrow perspective of teaching. Through critical reflection, the minds of pre-service teachers can be opened to the bigger realities of teaching and social justice practice. Paired pre-service student teachers from two diverse university settings, Canada and South Africa, were immersed in a collaborative…

In this article, we discuss the role of affective learning and arts-based inquiry as a catalyst for providing transformative learning experiences in teaching social justice issues related to Indigenous cultures and histories. The research was conducted with first-year pre-service teachers studying an Indigenous Knowledges course as part of their…

The community engagement project described in this article took the form of the re-invention and re-interpretation of a historic symbol (Diana the elephant) on the Potchefstroom Campus of North-West University (NWU), South Africa. In 2015, the Faculty of Education Sciences invited staff and students to reinterpret the elephant (a symbol of…

This longitudinal ethnographic study involved a professional development project, Project Partnerships Achieve Literacy (Project PAL) in South Africa, with eight rural foundation phase teachers who taught Reception (kindergarten) through grade three (R-3). This Project was designed to support teachers in an under-resourced school as they learned…

This article considers drama/theater education as a form of constructivism where popular culture is both accessed and employed to engage young people and animate education. Using the familiar cultural trope of zombies, and in reference to three separate performance projects, attention is drawn to why projects such as these matter and why they…

This paper describes and analyses, through the use of case studies, two experiences of transformative learning in an undergraduate arts education unit. Pre-service teachers designed and engaged with arts-based curriculum activities, created their own artwork, participated in a modified production of The Tempest and kept a reflective journal. These…

The use of Art for educational reasons has been recently developing in Greece both in formal education and in Adult Education. Relevant theoretical texts and studies, (Dewey, 1934. Gardner, 1990. Perkins, 1994) pin point that training through the Arts can contribute to an integrated learning, since through systematic observation of works of art,…

Community-based arts projects can act as powerful learning opportunities in a variety of lifelong and life wide contexts. Many of these projects involve artists, who usually undertake a leading role to ensure that some type of transformation takes place for those involved. The impact on the leaders--in this case the artists--is difficult to…

This article shares contributions from a moderated e-forum in 2007 that explored the transformative potential of arts in learning and social change. It draws on examples of poetry, creative writing, and experiences of innovative practice shared through these conversations by adult educators in contexts as diverse as Africa, Asia, Europe, North…

This article explores the arts' potential to transform the relationships between students and teachers, so that education becomes an "as if" world, where education is an act of social justice. Interweaving themes from the children's book "Click Clack Moo, Cows that Type" with theories of transformative pedagogy and their own…

Learn how to engage and advocate for undocumented children and youth with this new resource written by and for teachers. "Teachers as Allies" provides educators with the information and tools they need to involve immigrant students and their American-born siblings and peers in inclusive and transformative classroom experiences. The…