Transforming Education for Democracy through Aesthetic and Embodied Learning, Responsive Pedagogies and Democracy-as-becoming

Democracy is a lived experience.

To flourish, democracy needs healthy roots in people’s engaged feelings, awareness and sensibilities as embodied beings connected with each other and their localities, communities and the natural world. Democracy cannot be understood and enacted simply through cognitive learning or technical interactive skills.

Yet, education for democracy gives little attention to nurturing those aesthetic, affective and embodied roots of democracy.

This is because the learning theory on which most education for democracy is based omits a fundamental dimension of learning – that is, the aesthetic and embodied nature of learning.

The ambition of this project is to remedy this omission.The project will:- design an innovative, evidence-based aesthetic and embodied pedagogical framework which has an impact on the practice of education for democracy through associated guides to practice (toolkits) that support responsive, participatory pedagogies- test, through participatory action research, a prototype of the framework and guides in differing phases of education and national contexts- refine the framework and guides- disseminate and activate exploitation of the pedagogical framework and guides by ‘trailblazer users’.

The project’s scientific impact will be achieved through groundbreaking, transdisciplinary research that shows how aesthetic and embodied learning and responsive pedagogies for democracy facilitate new ways of ‘seeing’ and exploring self and others, enabling truly democratic relations and nurturing predispositions and capabilities for active democratic citizenship and deepening democracy.Societal impact will be achieved through new pedagogical approaches that engage learners’ and educators’ hearts as well as minds, increase capacity for democratic citizenship that connects and evolves locally, and strengthen affective predispositions for challenging social injustices, engaging with conflict and seeking mutual understanding.