Inspiring engagement through creative and embodied learning

Academic underachievement of students from disadvantaged backgrounds is an ongoing problem for Australian schooling. Schools serving these communities face profound challenges in meeting their students’ educational needs. Creative and Embodied approaches draw on pedagogical practices inherent in Health and Physical Education and the Arts. They offer potential to re-connect affective, cognitive and embodied dimensions that allow access to, and alternative ways of demonstrating, learning beyond the discipline areas. This paper draws on conceptual resources in embodiment and artistic practice to build a case for a creative and embodied pedagogy that brings together notions of learning ‘in’ and ‘through’ movement and imagination. Outcomes advance understandings of ‘learning bodies’ as well as potential for transformative practice with young people from poverty backgrounds such that they might engage more powerfully with school, develop strong connections, and are re-inspired to learn.