Public Pedagogy and Cultural Practice
Summary
Public pedagogy refers to the myriad ways in which learning unfolds beyond the walls of formal schooling, encompassing cultural, social and material contexts in which individuals and communities make sense of the world. Cultural practice denotes the routines, rituals and creative engagements through which shared meanings and values are communicated and reproduced. Together, public pedagogy and cultural practice form an interwoven field of inquiry that examines how people learn from museums, community spaces, digital media, urban landscapes and participatory art. This field interrogates power relations, agency and identity as they manifest in everyday life and collective action. It emphasises the active role of learners as co-creators of knowledge, highlights the potential of cultural artefacts and spaces to foster critical reflection, and explores how diverse publics negotiate social and ecological challenges. Recent work has drawn attention to transdisciplinary collaborations, decolonial perspectives and affective dimensions of learning, underlining both the global significance of public pedagogies and their capacity to engender social transformation and sustainable futures.
Research from Nature Portfolio
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Public Pedagogy and Cultural Practice publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in public pedagogy and cultural practice across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Public pedagogy: Learning that occurs through cultural venues, media and everyday social interactions rather than within formal educational institutions.
Cultural practice: Routinely enacted activities—such as rituals, art-making or repair workshops—that transmit shared meanings, values and identities.
Arts-based research: A methodological approach that utilises artistic modes of expression—such as photography, visual arts or performance—as central to inquiry and knowledge production.
Photovoice: A participatory technique enabling community members to capture and reflect on local issues through photography, fostering dialogue and social change.
Holding environments: Social or spatial settings designed to support emotional engagement, collective care and the emergence of shared narratives in learning communities.
References
- Art, science, and life: where arts-based research and social-ecological transformation can meet. Urban Transformations (2024).
- Pedagogical publics: Creating sustainable educational environments in times of climate change. European Educational Research Journal (2021).
- “Like Stitches to a Wound”: Fashioning Taste in and Through Garment Mending Practices. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (2021).
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