Enhancing Empathy for Justice: A Methodology for Expansive Teacher Professional Development through Creative Body-Based Learning

Simon N. Leonard (), Deborah Devis, Belinda MacGill, Paul Unsworth, Jill Colton and Sam Fowler
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Simon N. Leonard: Centre for Change and Complexity in Education, University of South Australia, Adelaide 5000, Australia
Deborah Devis: Centre for Change and Complexity in Education, University of South Australia, Adelaide 5000, Australia
Belinda MacGill: Centre for Educational and Social Inclusion, University of South Australia, Adelaide 5000, Australia
Paul Unsworth: Centre for Change and Complexity in Education, University of South Australia, Adelaide 5000, Australia
Jill Colton: Centre for Educational and Social Inclusion, University of South Australia, Adelaide 5000, Australia
Sam Fowler: Centre for Change and Complexity in Education, University of South Australia, Adelaide 5000, Australia

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: This paper reports from a design-based research project seeking to reduce bullying, and so, contribute to the sustainability goal of improving (understanding of) justice. Goals such as this call for holistic and interdisciplinary ways of thinking that are quite at odds with the linear and reductionist epistemologies available with globally dominant ‘neoliberal’ discourses on education and educational decision making. To achieve goals such as improving justice, sustainable education and educators must explore and champion expansive ways of knowing that acknowledge and celebrate the complexity of everyday learning contexts. Responding to this need, this paper presents a case study of how we, as a group of educational designers and teacher educators, have explored how the arts-based pedagogy known as Creative Body-Based-Learning, when coupled with Engeström’s expansive theory of learning, can provide an alternative structure and methodology for teacher professional knowledge production. The paper will also outline the use of the research methodology of computer-aided phenomenography as a means of evaluating this kind of complex learning where simple testing and self-reporting are typically inadequate.

Keywords: expansive learning theory; cultural-historical activity theory; teacher professional learning; virtual reality; creative body-based learning; design-based research; sustainable education; phenomenography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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