Lehtonen, Anna Elsa Aurora

Pihkala, Panu Petteri

English

Journal.fi

Education for Hope in times of Eco-anxiety: ThePotential of DramaAnna Elsa Aurora Lehtonen, Panu Petteri PihkalaUniversity of Helsinki, FinlandAbstractClimate change causes many direct and indirect emotional impacts. The diffi-cult emotions can be described as part of “eco-anxiety”, which is a real chal-lenge in education and a growing theme in interdisciplinary environmentalresearch. Arts-based learning, such as the use of drama, has a wide potentialto address these difficult issues. Eco-anxiety often hides behind various mech-anisms of denial and socially constructed silence. Participatory performance-making enables students to think and feel about issues which are generallyunspoken. These include fears, dilemmas, and cultural prejudices. Arts-basedlearning situations can offer a safety space and give means for emotional in-volvement, personal meaning making, critical thinking, and active agency.Personal perceptions of meaning can become enriched in artistic encountersof drama with other people and the world.Our presentation brings together drama education, research on climate changeeducation, and interdisciplinary perspectives on the psychological and socialdimensions of climate change. We draw on material from a) various drama897 Synnyt / Origins | 2 / 2019 | Abstractsworkshops and b) theoretical literature. Our main question is: How can art-based methods help to produce a process where anxiety is encountered in sucha way that hope is strengthened? We discuss studies in environmental edu-cation which emphasize the significance of hope, but we also enrich existingresearch by showing how education for hope is linked with giving enough at-tention to the difficult questions and emotions of participants in the dramaworkshops.KeywordsDrama, Eco-anxiety, Emotions, Drama education, Arts mediated research.898 Synnyt / Origins | 2 / 2019 | Abstracts

Education for Hope in times of Eco-anxiety: The Potential of Drama

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Education for Hope in times of Eco-anxiety: The Potential of Drama

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