Drama as a resource for transformative learning in sustainability education

Education for sustainable development, as described by UNESCO (2017), should empower individuals to not only reflect on their own behavior but also take action to move their societies in a more sustainable direction. More facts and knowledge about sustainability is not sufficient to accomplish the personal and societal changes needed to meet the environmental crisis (Leal Filho and Pace, 2016; Wall et al., 2025). Instead transformative learning needs to be nurtured, where students critically examine their deep underlying values, reassess them and find new ways to act in the world according to their adjusted world views (Varela-Losada et al., 2022). Giving young people resources to work for system change also requires a transformed education that fosters creativity and critical thinking (Bentz and O’Brien, 2019). Education for environmental and social sustainability needs to give room to many voices and multiple perspectives, develop individual and systemic agency, promote social learning and build both adaptive and disruptive capacities (Lotz-Sisitka et al. 2015). Yet, the research on education for sustainable development holds a bias towards cognitive and individualistic views on learning. Boström et al. (2018) have mapped assumptions about learning in the literature on education for sustainable development, highlighted neglected aspects in these assumptions and shown how the field of transformative learning holds qualities that make meaningful supplements to compensate the identified deficits.

Appeals have been made for arts in our educational system, and to integrate arts and science to strengthen creative capabilities that are needed in the uncertain times we are in the midst of (Bentz and O’Brien, 2019; Duffy, 2014). Scheffer et al. (2017) describe the segregation of arts and science as “unnatural and unfortunate” (p. 5) as creative thinking is key in both practices, however only actively fostered within the arts. Creativity and imagination have a central place in transformative learning as it gives access to one’s “extrarational knowledge, oftentimes hidden away in our subconscious mind” (Blackburn Miller, 2020, p. 341). Kokkos and Fleming (2024) make the connection between the disorienting dilemmas described to initiate transformative learning and the “puzzling experience” (p. 402) often provoked by the arts. Blackburn Miller (2020) claims that arts have the potential to create disorienting dilemmas that may lead to transformation, but her literature review also shows an example of drama and arts-based approaches being a resource in handling disorienting dilemmas. Playful approaches in higher education have been mapped by Jensen et al. (2022) who show that they bring many positive effects, such as creativity, human growth, a sense of belonging, collaboration competence, enjoyment and engagement. However, there may also be a resistance to playfulness in higher education, as it challenges the norms of what it means to be an adult in an educational setting. Creating safe spaces are important, where repetition of playful elements support the normalisation and students’ ability to experience the value (Jensen et al., 2022).

Another key element in sustainability education is according to Liu and Lin (2018) to be active in visioning for the future and they stress the ability to face the future, however uncertain, with “clarity and confidence” (p. 80). Pereira et al. (2018) show the important role of arts in creating imaginaries of sustainable futures. The hope that art and imagination can bring may be especially important in the midst of a changing climate and when negative scenarios of the future may feel overwhelming, leading to hopelessness and passivity (Lawrence, 2008; Ojala, 2016; Österlind, 2012; Pihkala, 2018; Veijonaho et al., 2024).

This article describes applied drama as a possibility to create spaces for play and joyful creation amidst severe topics such as the survival of species, including our own. In processes of collective emergence (Duffy, 2014) drama and its imaginative aspects are explored as a possibility, not to flee from reality, but to dive deeper into topics that are difficult and from that place find hopefulness and transformation. The article aims to contribute to the realm of transformative learning by elucidating knowledge and experiences from drama teaching and show how it coincides with qualities described as important in teaching for transformative leaning. The article focuses on the research questions:

Transformative learning is a growing field of inquiry in environmental and sustainability educational research (Rodríguez Aboytes and Barth, 2020). Transformative learning, as first formulated by Jack Mezirow is a process of experiential learning, critical reflection and dialogue where problematic frames of reference are altered into being more inclusive, reflexive, open and emotionally available (Mezirow, 1978, 2009). Transformative learning can also be considered an unlearning of old belief systems, where imagination, intuition and emotional engagement has been identified as important (Burns, 2024; Le Pertel et al., 2020). Le Pertel et al. (2020) show how time is crucial for the deep changes occurring in transformative learning to be integrated on a neurobiological level. Butterwick and Lawrence (2009) also draw attention to the fact that transformation processes happen over time, sometimes the seeds that were planted through teaching come into fruition much later and thus remain unknown to the facilitator.

There are several approaches to transformative learning and the process has been described in different ways in the literature (Hoggan, 2016). Grund et al. (2024) have made a model of the phases of transformative learning based on three empirically grounded theories of transformative learning – Mezirow’s original theory and two others focused on sustainability (Ball, 1999; Mezirow, 2000; Nohl, 2015). Grund et al. (2024) find that the elements of novel experience, reflection, social exchange, shift of meaning and shift of action are present in all theories. This framework of phases is then used by the authors to review articles regarding emotions in transformative learning on sustainability and to outline which emotions are associated with the different phases.

Transformative learning is in Mezirow’s theory said to be initiated by a disorienting dilemma (Mezirow, 1978, 2000). Studies subsequent of Mezirow’s show that the start of a transformative process can also be a positive and joyful experience (Ball, 1999; Nohl, 2015); thus, this first phase is instead called Novel experience in the Grund et al. (2024) model. The common denominator seems to be that something new is experienced which becomes the starting point of transformation, sometimes it is perceived as a positive sensation, sometimes as a negative. Emotions associated with this first phase are, among others, confusion, frustration, sadness and stress, but also awe, love and joy. The subsequent phases can appear in different orders and are, with some exceptions (e.g. Shame and disconnection) associated with positive emotions (Grund et al., 2024).

Carter and Nicolaides (2023) give an expanded understanding of the first phase in Mezirow’s model of transformative learning where they propose that it also encompasses grief. Mälkki (2019) describes how “the biology of emotions” (p. 63) orients us back towards our “comfort zones” (p. 63) when our assumptions are being challenged and unpleasant emotions such as anger, fear and anxiety arise. These are by Mälkki (2019) conceptualized as edge-emotions and are aimed at protecting the stability of our inner system. If there are not sufficient resources available to work though the difficult emotions, the transformational process may instead be shut down (Carter and Nicolaides, 2023; Pihkala, 2018). We can with practice learn to embrace the discomfort of edge-emotions and welcome transformative learning (Mälkki, 2019). Galafassi (2018) points to the need of “practices able to embrace ambiguity, fears and other emotional ties that may emerge in the context of radical change” (2018, p. 20) and shows how arts-based experiences can address this need. Kokkos and Fleming (2024) connect the ruptures created by art experiences with the first phase of transformative learning and suggest that our rational and emotional sides have the chance to be integrated in arts activities.

Applied drama is an explorative learning process signified by the collective creation of, and playing within, “as-if-worlds” (Andersen, 2004; Sæbø, 2011). By stepping into different roles one can in drama experience the world from the perspective of the fiction and of oneself simultaneously. This dual perception called aesthetic doubling is central to the learning potential in drama; it allows for exploring insecurities, multiple realities and in-betweenness (Østern and Heikkinen, 2001). In drama, ideas and actions are performed as open offerings in the group, in a playful but serious environment, where the outcome is unknown. Hallgren (2018, 2022) understands the negotiations happening in drama as postupaks after Bakhtin (2010) and describes them as “goal-oriented actions that contain open, not completely defined, offers directed towards someone else with both the expectation and anticipation of an answer” (Hallgren, 2022, p. 47). The most important aspect of these postupaks is according to Hallgren the agency of hope and expectation that it shall be received, and that something will be offered back. Hallgren (2018, 2022) describes this as expectagency, an agency that bears a collective dimension and an understanding that one’s offerings will be moulded and developed in a co-created process. Improvisation in drama is thus signified by collaborative emergences (Duffy, 2014) which clearly to connects to the social exchange element in transformative learning. Other phases in transformative learning also relates closely to drama work, for instance novel experience as mentioned above, and this connection will be developed in the results section below. Reflection is a recurring component in drama, the collective reflection out of role is equally important as the creation and action in role, as well as reflection-in-action (Schön, 2003; Sternudd, 2000). Drama gives opportunities for shift of meaning through the exploration of stories and events from different positions, using drama conventions such as still images, role reversal and improvisations. Shift of action is especially emphasised in Theatre of the Oppressed where there is an articulated agenda of rehearsing for social and political change (A. Boal, 1979; J. Boal, 2023; Romano, 2019a, 2019b).

The approach of embodied cognition acknowledges that cognition is not just situated in the brain but distributed in the body (Le Pertel et al., 2020). While cognition has traditionally been associated with intellectual functions, embodiment in the term signifies the integration of emotional and biophysical aspects of our understanding of the world (Carter and Nicolaides, 2023). In the last decades cognition research has verified already well established knowledge from theatre practitioners on how our bodies – postures, tempo and physical experiences – shape the way we perceive the world (Duffy, 2014). While embodiment already lies at the heart of drama practices, neuroscience and knowledge about neuroplasticity expand the understandings of how learning is always an embodied process, and give explanations on the value of drama as a learning resource (Duffy, 2012, 2014; Le Pertel et al., 2020).

This article is based on drama interventions in Sweden taking place in the university course Sustainable Economic Futures – nature equity and community (15 credits) at Uppsala University during the spring semester 2020 and 2021, and in the same years in the youth project Scenario 2030, run by the theatre group Teater K and focusing on imagining sustainable futures. In the university course in 2020 there were two drama sessions on site and one online session, in the second course 2021 there were four drama sessions, all online due to COVID-19. In the youth project the drama work was an integrated part and for the study it was performed in two of the project groups, one online course with six sessions and a five-day camp on site. In all cases the drama focused on how societies and economies could be sustainably organized and imagining what life could be like in such futures. The work varied a bit due to different time frames, groups and circumstances, but all the groups experienced elements of playful physical warm-ups, role-play, stepping into the role as someone in the future and interviewing each other from that position, feeling into how the body would feel and move in different situations, creating still images, and also creative writing such as collaborative poem writing and writing letters from future roles. A total of 85 participants took part in the work, and this analysis is based on interviews given in pairs, groups and individually with 36 of these participants. All participants who volunteered were interviewed. Participants who attended all or almost all of the drama sessions were overrepresented as volunteers. One can suspect that participants who appreciated the drama work were more likely to give of their spare time to support the drama research. Inspired by post-qualitative inquiry and a narrative approach (Strauven, 2024), the interviews, although following an interview guide, invited participants to tell about their experiences in a co-constructed meaning making process between the participants and me as a researcher and facilitator of the drama work. The research has been submitted to The Swedish Ethical Review Authority (Dnr 2019–06012) who had no remarks on the ethics of the research.

The analysis started with approaching the research material openly and inductively. The transcribed interviews were coded and themes or nodes were identified, first through a manual process and in a second iteration the software program Nvivo was used. A third iteration of analysis was arts-based and resulted in an image of drama work as providing an expanded learning experience, where according to the participants, the drama components of embodiment and role-taking played important roles for enhancing imagination and giving new understandings. The social aspects of drama and also the space for personal reflection, were identified as important elements to deepen the learning and create connection to self and others. Drama was found to be a space where difficult emotions associated with learning about sustainability and future scenarios could be contained and processed in a playful way. Drama was described by participants as a new learning experience which sometimes challenged them and made them uncomfortable but also opened for new and unexpected things to emerge from the learning situation. However, the potential of drama as a teaching form does not necessarily come to fruition – enough time allocated, clear leadership and motivated participants was pointed out as crucial conditions for the drama work to be successful. These findings, including more detailed descriptions of the drama-work and the participants are published in Xxx and Xxx (2023) and Xxx and Xxx (2025).

This article builds on a fourth iteration of analysis where the empirical material was evaluated in dialogue with writings on transformative learning. The model of transformative learning phases from Grund et al. (2024) was used as an initial theoretical framework. All transcribed interviews were read again, now searching for connections between the participants’ experiences and the phases in the model, statements which somehow corresponded were marked in the transcripts. This part of the analysis showed that the participants in one way or the other addressed all the phases, and that many of the emotions described in the model from Grund et al. (2024) were mentioned in the participants’ stories. These findings confirmed the outcomes of earlier stages of the analysis (Fries and Wall, 2023; Fries and Wals, 2025) and the analysis was thus taken further with focus on other aspects that communicated with transformative learning literature. The first phase in transformative learning and the concept of embodied cognition were chosen as theoretical points of interest for the continued analysis and literature on this was now read along with the transcribed interviews. In an abductive process of looking for meaningful encounters between the empirical material and theory, understandings grew that added something to the previous findings. The results presented below are thus the outcome of selected aspects of the drama participants’ experiences which resonate with selected parts of transformative learning. There was no set criteria for this selection, but in line with post qualitative inquiry it was a knowledge production growing from “thinking with theory” (Jackson and Mazzei, 2022). The analysis was done by me as a practitioner researcher with the experience of carrying out the drama teaching and conducting previous iterations of analysis as a backdrop. Thus, the analysis was produced in the meeting point between the literature, the research material and my lived experiences, guided by analytical choices that occilated between the rational and the intuitive. The added layer of transformative learning to the analysis aimed to deepen the understanding of the drama practice, and how drama can be a resource in transformative learning, rather than to evaluate weather transformative learning was happening or not.

To represent the essential outcome of this evolving analysis, the following results first focus on the initial phase of transformative learning, the novel experience or disorienting dilemma (Grund et al., 2024; Mezirow, 2000), where disorientation is present both in relation to the subject content of sustainability and in relation to the teaching method of drama. Secondly, drama is understood as a resource for embodied cognition and enabling a certain role cognition.

In the settings that this drama work took place, the participants seem to have experienced disorientation in two obvious ways. Firstly, the participants were learning about sustainability issues and trying to imagine futures beyond the destructivity of the present global economy. This meant that through their course they were confronted with real existing dilemmas and the course content was described by participants as “heavy”. Drama was experienced as a resource that gave them space to process the difficult emotions associated with learning facts about the consequences of the present economy:

In the participants’ responses, the social dimension and the group strengthening elements of drama stand out as especially important considering that one can feel “overwhelmed or lost” when processing issues of economics and unsustainability:

The value of drama given that “we are in such uncertain times” is also that it provides the possibility to interact both with the subject content and with dimensions that are beyond hard facts. The drama work is described as something new and contrasting to the educational practices that participants are used to. When talking about what they valued in the drama practice, criticisms of conventional teaching in the academy also came to the surface:

The participants perceived there to be room for both dreaming and feeling in drama, however, allocating sufficient time for deeper processes was crucial. For reflection and also healing to happen, time was needed. Time for reflection and introspection is contrasted by participants to what is given space for in higher education and in society generally.

Secondly, for many participants the drama work was a new experience, and for some a disorienting experience in itself. Participants express that it was associated with some discomfort at first, before they “got into it”:

In the quote above Lea shows how the drama activities felt stressful, but also meaningful. The fact that “you can’t hide”, is understood as something good and challenging. Many participants share how the drama practice initially felt challenging and led to discomfort, yet they stayed with it as they understood that it would give them something back in return. The fact that drama was new and offered learning in a different mode than what is dominating in universities and regular education became a learning experience in itself. Frances story below illustrates how the drama work, through offering something different than the mainstream educational paradigm, both created resistance and opened for new learning to arise:

Frances describes an embodied understanding of the critique of late capitalism that the students were learning about in the course. The learning came from an experience of a teaching that varied in form from what they were used to, not in what they were taught. The experience of drama offered something different that in some cases seems to have expanded students’ views on what education could, and even should look like.

The participants’ experiences point out aspects to consider as an educator for the teaching to proceed to a transformative level and not just create resistance and discomfort. One success factor was that drama in these courses was a recurring element, not just a one-time experience. It seemed that the most positive experiences emerged after sufficient time of dwelling in both the course content and the drama methods. One of the last exercises was writing letters in role as someone in a fictive and positive future. One participant describes how she was surprised by the amount of inspiration that came to her when she did the letter exercise:

When asked what made this creative flow possible, Esther continues:

Getting input over time is described as crucial, but one can assume that students were supported by being used to shifting roles and perspectives through the previous drama teaching. In this last exercise the role shifting was a familiar method and nothing to be reflected on, it just “triggered all that”. Participants describe how the last sessions were more valuable to them because they felt safe with the teaching methods and with each other.

Integration of knowledge is according to Carter and Nicolaides (2023) core in embodied cognition. The participants describe how the subject content in their courses is integrated through the drama work, the intellectual and the emotional is tied together and also bodily anchored through physical expression:

For Michaela embodiment gave “new pathways of thinking”, Alba suggests further that movement gives access to a bodily creativity:

With reference to a segment in the first drama class when participants used art material to build the institutions of a future society, cognition is described to be distributed out to the hands, helping imagination to become “real”, palpable and to reach beyond what is in the present:

Embodying the sustainability issues through the drama exercise of still images is also said to have supported a critical analysis; through the visualisation of people’s standpoints different aspects of an issue became clear. At the same time, seeing the similarities in the statues was also described as a, emotional relief, to see that others shared the same worries and discomfort with inequalities and future scenarios.

Although the embodied aspect of drama seems to have been important for the participants, they also describe that drama contributed with something yet beyond the bodily. Therefore, as an addition to the concept of embodied cognition I propose we can also can speak of drama and role taking as a way to reach an extended epistemology, where role cognition is another layer of perceiving.

Stepping into other roles is a central component in drama work, and it comes back in different ways in the participants’ stories. One of them is about attaining new perspectives:

New perspectives were attained as Dennis describes, by experiencing something from the inside. The role taking also gave the outsider’s perspective on oneself and the society from the outside:

Participants speak of how their thoughts took new paths through the embodied work, but this is emphasised even more when they speak of being in role. Below Talita speaks of an exercise in pairs where both persons played someone in a fictive future:

The interaction that Talita speaks of come back in participants’ descriptions and can be understood as postupaks, the mutual dialogic creation described by Hallgren (2018). Additionally, the aliveness and personal relating to the course content seems to be an important contribution when using role taking as a learning medium:

Big parts of the drama work reported from here was, due to the outbreak of COVID-19, facilitated over Zoom and thus the embodied elements of drama did not get as much space as in conventional face to face drama teaching. The fact that the roleplays and shifts of perspectives still made an impact shows that this is something that moves beyond the embodied, and in addition to the embodied cognition, we can speak of role cognition.

Drama was a new teaching method to many of the participants, and the introduction of this new element seem to initially have caused some confusion and discomfort. At the same time, the participants were through the courses they were taking dwelling in the sustainability issues of the present, this in itself being disorienting. The drama component was used as a means to interact in new ways with the difficult issues raised in the course and as a resource to navigate through these. In this way, drama was both a cause of disorientation and a means to deal with disorientation. This is in line with earlier findings by Blackburn Miller (2020) on the potential of arts in transformative learning, where her literature review shows examples of both these functions of the arts in relation to disorienting dilemmas. What is new in the results presented here is that drama seems to have functioned both as a cause of, and a support in disorientation in one intervention, in some cases even for the same participants.

Letting go of outdated beliefs can be painful and needs space for emotional care, Carter and Nicolaides (2023) suggest it to be a grief process. The participants’ stories however, show that the grief process may be present in the learning situation not only due to one’s frames of reference being challenged, but also associated with the whole subject content when learning about sustainability. The participants in this study already had a high awareness regarding sustainability issues, learning facts about this did not change their frames of reference. Yet, dwelling in the reality of an ongoing polycrisis (cf. Søgaard Jørgensen et al., 2023) was expressed as heavy by some participants. This is an indication for teachers to give space for emotions and reflection time throughout the learning process when dealing with challenging topics.

Although drama in the analysis was shown to be a support in disorientation, it was also challenging. From participants’ responses we learn that drama can create conditions for transformative learning through offering something new and unexpected, although it may initially be perceived as uncomfortable. According to Mälkki (2019), our nervous system does not want us to shake our frames of reference and go into transformation where edge-emotions are likely to arise. This results in resistance to new learning and to events that bring us out of balance. Rather than seeing uncomfortable experiences as negative, Carter and Nicolaides (2023) mean that they have played an important role in survival and learning throughout evolution. Thus, the fact that drama can be experienced as uncomfortable is not necessarily a bad thing. Although our nervous system strives towards equilibrium, it is also in our biology to challenge ourselves (Horikoshi, 2023). Learning always entails embracing the unknown and throughout history humans have left their safe surroundings to expand their lives and learn (McNeill, 1992; Van Gelderen, 2023). How to facilitate drama, or any learning situation, so that it is just enough challenging is a key question. As educators we want to move participants out of their usual habits for learning to occur, but still make them feel safe enough to stay open and receptive. The “’no penalty’ zone” (Heathcote, 1991, p. 165) of drama together with the engagement that is created through postupaks (Hallgren, 2018, 2022) and collaborative emergences (Duffy, 2014) provide a fertile ground to make drama participants willing to step out of the comfort zones of safety and predictability, into unknown processes that might lead to transformation. Participants describe how the co-creation in role enables a creative flow where they forgot themselves and entered a mutual exploration. This can be understood in the light of the expectagency described by Hallgren (2018, 2022) where the satisfaction of being received and taking part of a co-creation becomes a stronger force than the possible discomfort or insecurity this might entail.

The aspect of time stands out as important both when drama is a support in disorientation and when drama is the disorienting experience in itself. Enough time for reflection and feeling into oneself supports the processing of difficult issues and heavy subject content. This result aligns with Pereira et al. (2018) who describe sufficient time to be an important factor of success in their study on future methods for transformative change. Also, the time for reflection and introspection seemed to have sparked transformative learning for some participants, as it was both challenging and gave new insights. The fact that participants became stressed or questioned the productivity of the teaching made them aware of assumptions about learning that they had, but when they reflected on them did not adhere to. This can be interpreted as reflection on premise, a part of transformative learning which by Rodríguez Aboytes and Barth (2020) is described as “the deepest level of reflection and occurs when learners assess the assumptions that underlie their thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, actions and behaviours” (p. 1002).

Participants’ responses also tell stories of the extrarational knowledge that the arts give access to and which according to Blackburn Miller (2020) gives them such an important role to play in transformative learning. Aesthetic doubling, the dual and simultaneous experiencing of the world as oneself and as the role, is described as one of the strongest learning features in drama (Østern and Heikkinen, 2001). In this study, participants expressed the value of seeing the world through the perspective of role and this was here articulated as role cognition. Role cognition can thus be seen as a specification of aesthetic doubling towards the cognitive part of a broader aesthetic experience. The added value of this new concept is giving language to explore the cognitive contributions of drama in relation to embodied cognition and other emerging fields such as extended cognition (Sprevak, 2019), embedded cognition (Orazi and Cruz, 2019; Rosch et al., 2025; Wilson, 2002) and enactive cognition (Sepúlveda-Pedro, 2023). The embodied cognition and role cognition articulated in this study suggest that drama knowledge can contribute to the further development of teaching practices as well as theoretic understandings of sustainability teaching aimed at transformative learning.

This study indicates that teaching with and through drama can play a role in the deep processes that transformative learning entails, even if evaluating transformations was not the aim of the study. Drama as a teaching method seemed to have sparked micro-transformations for participants, and supported participants in the bigger process of transformative learning that they were already going through when learning about and imagining sustainable economic futures. By relating drama to embodied cognition, some specific contributions of drama in teaching for transformative learning occurs. Finally, the introduction of the new concept of role cognition frames the aesthetic doubling and additional dimensions that role-taking in drama adds to learning situations. This serves as an encouragement to further research on the relation between embodied cognition and role cognition and the potential of drama in transformative learning for sustainability.

These results came out of a study with groups of young adults in two different settings – higher education and a youth project. The participants were highly motivated for sustainability learning and generally expressed positive attitudes towards the drama components. There may be a correlation between positive drama experiences and a willingness to volunteer to be interviewed, thus these results should be interpreted mindfully. As with any qualitative research the results are not necessarily transferable to other groups. However, they point in the same direction as other recent research on drama in higher education sustainability teaching with student groups of different backgrounds and experiences (Avsar Erumit et al., 2024; Balyali, 2023; Fanioudaki et al., 2024; Lehtonen et al., 2020; Lehtonen and Pihkala, 2021; Myllyoja, 2024; Österlind, 2018, 2020, 2022). Although drama is a relatively rare teaching method, especially in higher education, it has gained increasing interest in recent years and for readers wanting to implement drama in their sustainability teaching, the book “Sustainability Teaching for Impact: How to Inspire and Engage students Using Drama” (Wall et al., 2025) gives support and practical guidance.

The author wants to express her gratitude to all the participants who engaged in the drama work and contributed to the research.