Art-based pedagogy and meaning-making among blind schoolgirls in India

Background: Pedagogical support for blind learners often focuses on Braille, verbal explanation, audio formats, and tactile aids. These are essential but may not always support children to actively construct concepts, spatial relationships, and meanings. Art-based practice remains underexplored as a pedagogical route for learning across subjects.

Aim: This study explores how an NGO-led art-based education program supports blind schoolgirls’ learning, concept formation, imagination, and meaning-making within a blind school in India.

Method/approach: The ongoing qualitative study draws on classroom observations and interactions with five blind schoolgirls, four NGO volunteers, and schoolteachers. Data are being generated through child-centred conversations, program observations, and reflective field notes. Institutional permission was granted by the blind school through its MOU with Inside Me NGO; informed consent, child assent, confidentiality, and anonymisation procedures were followed.

Results/findings: The preliminary findings suggest that art-based activities help children make abstract ideas tangible, connect shapes and objects to everyday life, strengthen spatial imagination, express understanding, and engage more confidently with concepts in mathematics, science, EVS, and language.

Conclusion: Art-based pedagogy should be treated as a potential route to meaningful curricular participation, helping children build concepts, interpret the world, and imagine wider educational futures.

Implications for children and families: You should have opportunities to learn through touch, making, stories, and imagination, so that school subjects feel connected to your own world and future.

Implications for practitioners: You can use art-based pedagogy to help blind learners move beyond memorising concepts towards touching, making, explaining, and applying them meaningfully.

Keywords: art-based pedagogy, blind learners, inclusive education, special education, India

This presentation relates to the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:

• SDG 1: No Poverty
• SDG 4: Quality Education
• SDG 5: Gender Equality
• SDG 10: Reduced Inequality
• SDG 17: Partnerships to Achieve the Goals