By Karine Oganisjana and Rolands Ozols

A specific feature of the Latvian role in the AECED project is the integration of arts-based and embodied learning (ABEL) methods, namely drama sketch and collage creation, not only into typical problem-based activities on democracy traditionally considered within civic education, but also into the process of teaching and learning of study disciplines.

This approach was elaborated based on the request of the teachers and recommendations of the stakeholders who agreed upon the importance of providing students with the opportunity to try ABEL methods to make the study process itself more democratic and experience democracy-as-becoming through the content of different study disciplines. It can be justified by a richer opportunity provided for students in such a setting to identify democratic challenges through a wider variety of situations and contexts and overcome a scope of behavioural, cognitive, embodied, and affective challenges acting democratically and respecting and following democratic values.

For this reason, three models for the integration of ABEL into study activities were elaborated for the secondary education phase by the Latvian team. These models have a universal character. They can be embedded not only into the lessons meant to teach and learn different study disciplines but also make a base for any learning activity outside traditional lessons.

The first iteration of work in three secondary schools in Latvia (one day in each school) was based on the approbation of these three models in the teaching and learning of biology, literature, economics, history, mathematics, programming and foreign languages.

The observations of all the lessons prepared and held by the project school teachers were analysed by Riga Technical University (RTU) Professor Karine Oganisjana and Research Assistant Rolands Ozols.  At the end of each working day in schools, students’ and teachers’ written reflections were organised combining them with a group discussion with teachers on their new experience gained. The qualitative content analysis of all the reflections and analysis of the audio recordings of the discussion with teachers and observation notes led to the key conclusions made; some of which are given below:

• All four principles of democracy-as-becoming – power sharing, holistic learning, dialogical transformation and relational wellbeing were observed, felt and highlighted by all the participants – students, teachers and the RTU research team.

• The new ABEL experience was perceived and evaluated as exciting, inspiring, democracy-promoting, thought-provoking and learning-capacity-enhancing, though sometimes tiring because of the intensity of work in which it was impossible to escape being engaged in the active learning process.

• The embodiment, which was the most unusual element of the new ABEL experience had contradictory effects on the participants. Some of them loved it, some of them decided that it was not suitable for them, and they felt tension in their bodies. There was also a question raised by one of the teachers related to the real effect of embodiment on the experiencing of democracy-as-becoming. She tried to understand the role of each component of holistic learning asking whether we could determine the impact of specifically embodied learning vs. cognitive and affective learning in the processes which they passed through.

Having experienced that ABEL models can be successfully integrated into the teaching and learning process of a range of study disciplines with a certain regularity and organization of the study space and schedule, for the second iteration it was decided to try the three ABEL models for solving democracy-related problem situations outside concrete study disciplines. It was decided to place a specific emphasis on embodied learning activities, offering participants regular inner dialogue and reflection to become more able to hear their inner voices and notice the transformation in the perception of their own selves and others, to become more sensitive, take initiative to lead or follow the leader when needed.

Therefore, on 23 August a seminar was organised at RTU with the participation of 23 colleagues – three school principals and 11 teachers of the three project schools from Riga, Jūrmala and Daugavpils, five project team members from RTU and four stakeholders from National Centre for Education of the Republic of Latvia (one expert in education), Latvian National Centre for Culture (two experts in education and culture) and a psychologist from Riga Stradins University.

After a welcome and an informal chat with each other, Anna Šteina, the psychologist started the training of embodied activities with all the seminar participants, combining the exercises with the explanation of which democracy-as-becoming elements can be promoted with each of them and how they enhance cognitive as well as emotional effects of learning. A short video clip (below) shows an embodiment exercise in which a group leader is making different movements caring for the group mates/followers to see and reproduce them as correctly as possible. From the point of view of establishing democratic relationships within a group, such an exercise is meant to promote mutual caring, attention and respect towards each other.

After doing about 12 embodiment exercises with different variations and analysing their democratic-ethos-establishing and democratic-behaviour-promoting effect, the participants got acquainted with the research outcomes of the first iteration and accordingly planned their joint activities for the second iteration in each school team separately.

The action and synthesis and analysis phases of the Participatory Action Research in the second iteration will take place in September and October 2024. We look forward to sharing the findings from these phases in due course.