Arts as aesthetic education: Understanding the challenges related to citizenship

The aim of this chapter is to shed light on how teacher trainees can acquire skills to explore the meaning of citizenship through aesthetic education, working with primary and secondary school students. The fragmentation of traditional values makes the everyday lives of teachers and students increasingly complex inside and outside the sphere of education. One urgent question for the field of education is how students can master their lives in a hyper-complex society. This is, of course, a question that must be discussed at all levels of education; however, in this chapter we will focus on arts education and citizenship, what it means to belong to a community. Who has the right to claim that they belong, what does it mean to belong and a more urgent question, on what grounds? The research is based on a socio-cultural frame of understanding and will, through working with teacher trainees in the Nordic context, explore the challenges related to citizenship and bring new perspectives to our way of thinking about citizenship today. This includes discussing and working with relevant/new artistic methods and strategies in order to rethink and expand the practice of citizenship in relation to identity, gender, racism, prejudices and images.