Engaging the wounded adult learner: lessons learnt from critically reflective, community-based, visual arts practice

Citation

Dickson N (2025) Engaging the wounded adult learner: lessons learnt from critically reflective, community-based, visual arts practice. In: James N, Orr K & Clancy S (eds.) Research Handbook on Adult Learning and Education. Sociology, Social Policy and Education 2025. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 179-190. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800886667.00024

Abstract
This chapter discusses the complexities that adult educators can face when attempting to engage marginalized adults in non-formal education. The diverse needs of adult learners, who may feel ‘wounded’ by their experiences of formal education, are presented in relation to the author’s research with survivors of childhood sexual abuse and homelessness. In an arts-based study in Glasgow, nine young women were invited to participate as adult learners in a community-based, visual arts process. As the artist-researcher and facilitator, the author documented the barriers and enablers to engagement and explored the impacts of the ‘wounded’ learner identity. Visual art making was used to develop the artistic skills and aesthetic literacy of the group. Together, artworks were created for a public exhibition, and the process created the opportunity to record the motivational factors that enabled active and sustained participation in the offering of non-formal adult learning. In this chapter, the author outlines her facilitation approach to arts-informed adult learning and the visual art process, and reflects on the role of trauma-informed practice and how to help marginalized adults overcome the impacts of ‘wounding’ formed through early experiences of compulsory formal education.

Keywords
Arts-based learning; Community learning; Identities; Marginalized; Trauma; Wounded learner