17. Using Arts-Based Activities to Foster Transformative Learning During a Teaching Practicum in Kenya

Abstract

This essay explores and presents strategies we, as Canadian faculty facilitators of a teaching practicum in Kenya, used to foster the pre-service teachers’ knowledge and understanding of critical reflection and transformative learning processes by using arts-based activities. Participation in the arts-based activities while in Kenya encouraged the pre-service teachers to reflect upon and make sense of their cultural, social, and pedagogical experiences, and provided opportunities for them to gain insights that perhaps would not have been revealed using more traditional reflection formats. The transformational learning experienced by the pre-service teachers as they were immersed in arts-based pedagogical activities was evident on a personal and professional level.

Shaping a Critical Study Abroad Engagement through Experiential Arts-Based Inquiry

“…All 13 of the students showed varying degrees of shifting perspectives with regard to cultural hybridity (Bhabha 1994) particularly across two areas: realizing that what they saw was different from what they had assumed, and realizing that culture is nuanced and individualized. As other scholars have similarly found (Black and Bernardes 2012;Chappell and Chappell 2016), the arts-based inquiry impelled students to play an active role in their own critical thinking about culture rather than just absorbing a static textbook passage.…”

Transformative Learning and the Arts: A Literature Review

“…When this is the case, there is great potential for transformation (Lawrence, 2008). Black and Bernardes (2012) recount the power of arts-based activities for Canadian preservice teachers making sense of TL experiences during a teaching practicum in Kenya. The authors state that the arts provided opportunities for the teachers to gain insights that they may not have been aware of using more traditional reflection formats.…”

“…The arts-based activities helped the students directly deal with these disorienting dilemmas. This then allowed them to more fully appreciate the position of the Kenyan students and teachers (Black & Bernardes, 2012). McDermott et al (2012) also used arts-based activities to promote TL in preservice teachers.…”