No abstract

The digital economy and the global pandemic, together with the effects of climate change, have taken a human toll affecting the pace of everyday life, creating an exponential increase in anxiety and stress related diseases. Today's complex, globalised world creates a need to challenge and reconceptualise educational priorities. In an increasingly polarised world of beliefs and values, with a rise in populism and nationalism, empathy is essential. In order to function successfully, one needs to know who people are, and the whys and wherefores of their actions and beliefs. This article focuses on how the Arts and humanities can teach a new generation of life skills necessitated by our globalised society and the socio-political aspects of immigration. It discusses how embodied pedagogies help develop self-awareness, emotional regulation and affective empathy and reduce stress. The authors present Arts-based pedagogies and educational strategies that bring history, cultures and beliefs alive and help counteract hatred, tribalism and racism and the illusion of 'us and them.' The article examines what these changes in pedagogy can offer to the discourse, both in the need to keep body/mind healthy and acquisition of new skills necessary for adapting to a changing global environment and cultural /political landscapes.

Education is at a transitional point: multicultural, multilingual environments are the norm and diversity a defining feature. Classrooms embrace a culture of change, enriched by people who experience the world differently - conceptually, linguistically, and emotionally, with different world visions, values, beliefs, socio-cultural and socio-economical experiences. A new understanding of identities in multicultural contexts requires pedagogies that teach and practise intercultural competence. With specific reference to (1) the author's research on the embodied learning of literacies through drama, sociodrama and empathy, and (2) the projects of The Empathy Reactive Media Lab (eRMLab), an interdisciplinary academic research lab which investigates virtual reality and its educational potential with reference to empathy, this chapter draws on diverse academic research from the fields of education, the arts, psychology, medicine, image processing, and computer vision, to examine present and future pedagogies which foster intercultural competence and the development of literacies.