Finnish AECED Data: Aesthetic and Embodied Learning for Democracy in Higher Education and Professional Learning

The dataset was gathered as part of the AECED project (Transforming Education for Democracy through Aesthetic and Embodied Learning, Responsive Pedagogies and Democracy-as-becoming), whose purpose was to explore ways in which aesthetic and embodied methods could advance democratic ways of learning. The purpose of the data collection was to gather experiences of using the AELD (Aesthetic and Embodied Learning for Democracy) Prototype Pedagogical Framework and Guides for higher education and Adult, Professional and Organisational learning that were created at the beginning of the AECED project, and which were then further developed based on the gathered data. The Professional learning data was gathered by taking notes and partly by recording group discussions from the workshops and mentoring sessions arranged for Higher education teachers and Finnish Dance and Movement Therapists and from researchers’ reflective discussions. The data from trials in Higher education was gathered by interviewing participant educators, by taking notes and gathering students’ learning diaries from the trials project’s researchers did themselves. In addition, some pictures, drawings and filled templates were gathered from the workshops. While gathering the data, there was a special attention to embodied responses (body movements, emotions, sensations) and their relation to democratic relating in educational contexts. Data was pseudonymized by giving each participant a number (e.g. teacher 5; student 8) or referred to in the publications as “one of the participants in…[specification of the course or workshop].