Turning Points Along Embodied Pathways: Attending to Children’s Ephemeral Encounters with the Arts

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:45 am - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Expanding Definitions of Literacies Through Embodied Practices

Abstract

This paper describes a critical arts-based learning experience for a group of children between 5 and 7 years old who co-authored and enacted a short story through movement, drama, music, and visual art during a 2-week summer dance camp in an American Northeastern metropolitan city. Following a child’s embodied pathway, I find turning points in their artistic journeys wherein embodied arts-based encounters reoriented their movements in personally meaningful ways. Turning points along embodied pathways showcase how children’s encounters with artistic multiliteracies can be dialogic meaning-making experiences in their learning and being. Findings encourage researchers to explore turning points along embodied pathways as a way of dialogically attending to children’s ephemeral artistic encounters.

Author

• Luke Max Muscat, St. Luke's School