Aesthetic and Embodied Learning for Democracy (AELD) in Latvian Secondary Schools: Anonymised Reflections from Students and Teachers (2024)

This dataset derives from Latvian cases within the Horizon Europe project AECED ('Transforming Education for Democracy through Aesthetic and Embodied Learning, Responsive Pedagogies, and Democracy-as-Becoming'). Guided by a Participatory Action Research framework, teachers and students from three secondary schools trialled Aesthetic and Embodied Learning for Democracy (AELD) methods – drama sketches and collage-creation embedded in both curricular and extracurricular activities, and reflected on changes that they observed in themselves and others. Participants focused not only on the cognitive aspects of experience but also on their emotional and embodied responses, making self-discoveries and seeing classmates and teachers in a new light, contrasting with the usual "walking heads" model of schooling that privileges thinking and speaking while ignoring affective and embodied dimensions of learning. The Latvian cases encompassed two educational phases: 1) an adult/professional phase led by Riga Technical University's (RTU) AECED team for school principals and teachers; and 2) a secondary phase implemented by those educators with their students in their schools, with RTU researchers conducting observations. Since most 10th-grade students were minors, the study followed EU research ethics: written parental/guardian consent via schools; RTU Ethics Committee approval; full information to educators and students on procedures, confidentiality, and data protection; voluntary, anonymous reflection; freedom to opt out or withdraw at any time without academic or attitudinal consequences; and RTU contact details provided for questions. No video or photographs of students' drama sketches or collage-making were taken for analysis; instead, the primary data came from post-trial written reflections by students and teachers, supplemented during qualitative content analysis by the RTU team's observations of the trials and discussions with educators in two iterations. At the beginning of each iteration, educators participated in AECED training programmes at RTU to familiarise themselves with, practise and analyse the project's key concepts – AELD, responsive pedagogies, democracy-as-becoming, its four principles and related ideas. They were then trained to design AELD-based activities for their students, which were implemented in both trials. The datasets presented here are based on anonymised post-trial written reflections by students and teachers, collected in two iterations between March and November 2024.