Exploring the Playful and Transformative Learning Potentials of Arts-Based Methods in Social Education Studies: A Design-Based Research Study

With the Playful Learning Program, which began in 2018, Danish University Colleges aim to develop and adopt a playful approach to academic content that offers teacher and social education students different ways of learning, knowing, and being, and engages them with their own learning and with learning spaces in powerful ways (playful-learning.dk). There is a growing body of evidence about the impact of arts-based teaching activities in Social Education Studies in Denmark as there are numerous reported positive outcomes (Chemi & Jensen, 2013). Research shows that both students and teachers experience a number of positive effects, including new opportunities to work with professional development and innovation within their profession (Chemi & Jensen, 2013). There is, however, a lack of knowledge about play in connection with arts-based and aesthetic practices in adult higher education, and how such a playful aesthetic approach creates the conditions for playful learning to emerge. This study seeks to: a) develop a deep understanding of how theory of aesthetic processes and current aesthetic practices can contribute to the creation of the conditions through which playful learning can emerge; c) and how we can use this knowledge to design an intervention in Social Education Studies that can develop social educators creative skills and enable them to use aesthetics as a professional approach to create spaces and processes that promote playful learning.

The PhD project is situated within Design-Based Research study, where the design consists of the following steps:

1) Developing a deep understanding for frameworks and theories that can guide designing for playful experiences at an operational level.
2) Developing a deep understanding of what new aesthetic practices do and make possible and how they become involved in creating the conditions through which playful learning can emerge.
3) The establishment of strong relationships with participants and partners to provide the opportunity for a deep understanding of their needs and realities to co-design a strong and relevant intervention.
4) Design and development of an intervention that combines local knowledge, needs and values with research and empirical evidence.
5) Development of design principles that can guide other interventions in similar contexts.