Situational Potential and Artistic Pedagogy: Rethinking Student-Centered Creative Learning

This article explores the figure of the student through the philosophical lens of François Jullien’s "situational potential," offering an alternative approach to dominant pedagogies in arts education. It argues that, rather than being confined to a predesigned curriculum, the student is an active agent engaged in a situation. Consequently, the development of their own potentialities and learning processes is intimately linked to the potential inherent in successive situations, conceiving learning as a silent transformation. The article examines how this paradigm, which prioritizes "deployment efficiency" over "efficacy understood as control and planning," is intrinsically suited to address the diversity of students’ styles, rhythms, and interests. Finally, the concept of "deployment islands" is proposed as a practical strategy to foster creativity, connection, and affirmation of difference, allowing students’ "cognitive and bodily differences" to become a constitutive part of the learning process (Preprint version).