Transgressive or Instrumental? A Paradigm for the Arts as Learning and Development

Contemporary practices that connect the arts with learning are widespread at all level of educational systems and in organisations, but they include very diverse approaches, multiple methods and background values. Regardless of explicit learning benefits, the arts/learning partnerships bring about a specific approach to learning, which is embodied, sensory and aesthetic and makes use of metaphors, mediation, meaning-making and sense-making. I will make the point that the arts establish an alternative learning environment, which is different from the formal educational systems by offering multiple approaches to learning in a place that is characterised by pluralism, diversity and hybridity. This chapter will be mostly conceptual, leaning on creativity studies with sociocultural system perspectives. As an empirical support, I will bring examples from two sets of qualitative studies: one on artistic creativity and the other on practices of arts-integration. My final point rests on the belief that the opposition of transgression and instrumentality is a deceiving perspective on the arts, against the background of the aesthetic plurality and hybridity.