Fostering inclusion in school through creative and body-based learning

Abstract

In neoliberal times, accountability measures and high-stakes testing further contribute to differentiated outcomes for young people. The way that knowledge is conceptualised in tests regularly fails to recognise the embodied knowledge and abilities of many young people and instead students are positioned as passive receivers of knowledge. Students who are located in structural disadvantage continue to be least successful. This paper offers a critical counter-narrative to the didactic habit inherent in education through the mobilisation of creative and embodied practices as a transformational pedagogical approach. These pedagogies signal an epistemological and pedagogical shift toward mobilising bodies as agents of knowledge production and creativity as cultural capital. This paper reports on research that investigates primary school teachers and teaching artists using creative and body-based pedagogies, with a focus on enhancing student engagement in mathematics through strategies of ‘encounter’ (MacKenzie, Sarah. 2013. “Poetic Praxis: Engaging Body, Mind, and Soul in the Social Foundations Classroom.” Journal for Learning Through the Arts 9 (1): 1–27.). Findings highlight the cumulative affective responses and shifts in subjectivity for both students and teachers when working with the body’s ability to move, feel, respond and imagine. In conclusion we argue for the potential of creative and body-based learning to build classroom communities and practices of inclusion.

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