Building social inclusion through critical arts-based pedagogies in university classroom communities

Abstract

In humanities and education university classrooms, the authors facilitated counter-narrative arts-based inquiry projects in order to build critical thought and social inclusion. The first author examines public performance installations created by graduate students in elementary and bilingual education on needs-based and dignity-based rights of bilingual families at schools. The second author examines visual and performance art pieces on historical colonial practices in world history, created by undergraduate theatre students. We suggest that critical arts-based pedagogies can build classroom communities and social inclusion, particularly through collaborative counter-narrative and problem-posing research and performance practices about minoritisation in history and contemporary society.

Keywords:

• social inclusion
• arts-based inquiry
• critical pedagogy
• classroom community

Notes on contributors

Sharon Verner Chappell, Ph.D., is faculty in Elementary and Bilingual Education at California State University Fullerton. She specialises in social justice and arts education. She is also interested in building communities of learners in online instruction. Chappell supports just, equitable, and inclusive education in the pre-service and graduate teacher education. Her recent co-authored book with Routledge, 2013, is The Arts and Emergent Bilingual Youth: Building Culturally Responsive, Critical, Creative Education in School and Community Contexts.

Drew Chappell, Ph.D., teaches at Chapman University and California State University Fullerton. His research interests include performance, identity, and the play impulse; intersections of theatre and popular culture; and enculturation and nationhood. His edited volume Children Under Construction: Critical Essays on Play as Curriculum was published by Peter Lang in 2010, and his co-edited volume Play, Performance, and Identity: How Institutions Structure Ludic Spaces was published by Routledge in 2015.

Notes

1. AB540 is a US California law that allows qualified undocumented students to be exempt from paying significantly higher out-of-state tuition at public colleges and universities in California. (For more, see http://maldef.org/education/public_policy/ab540/).