2016 Annual Conference

Arts-based learning offers opportunities for students to develop creative avenues for processing difficult subjects like social justice education. This session will explore how instructors and adult learners might further developing critical thinking skills by utilizing arts-based learning within social change education and other adult classrooms.

Adult educators involved in non-formal and formal education. Areas with application could be higher education, museum education, and community development as well as any adult educators seeking to encourage critical or creative thinking in adult learners.

In an age rife with racial and cultural tensions, arts-based learning for social justice education can help identify social and culturally responsive processes for adult learning. While the academy claims to prize creativity and critical thinking, the majority of students experience structured classroom pedagogy, which intentionally or unintentionally supports the hegemonic systems currently in place. There is a need to break outside the norms of classroom experience to create innovative opportunities for critical thinking and creative processes which arts-based learning can help meet. Arts-based learning offers methods to enhance both student and instructor understanding of creative processes, and critical thinking as well as its application for social justice education. Using arts-based learning can impact the classroom by integrating creative processes designed to engage adults in considering current and historical issues. Adult educators may have an interest in using arts-based learning, but may not feel they have the understanding necessary to fully utilize the methodology with students who have learned to be uncomfortable with the creative process. This session intends to better equip instructors to overcome student resistance towards arts-based learning and create inclusive classrooms engaged in critical thinking and creative processes.