The Why of Arts-Based Pedagogies: Yohana Junker

The Wabash Center's Dialogue On Teaching

Yohana A. Junker, PhD is Assistant Professor of Art, Religion, and Culture and Associate Dean for Strategic Planning at Claremont School of Theology.
Employing arts-based pedagogies allows students' analysis and curiosity to get inside the systems which oppress, wound, and hobble in order to dismantle, rethink, or jettison. Designing classroom experiences which takes seriously a story-centered approach asks students to use their imaginations to learn and grow for the good of community. Experience-praxis methods invite students to seek healing, remedies, and reclaim the passions which brought them to the classroom in the first place. Using creative practices, engaging all the senses in learning activities, beckons students move to new kinds of meaning making and learning. The aim of these classrooms is for student and teacher, together, to walk into potential, possibility, and hope.