The living classroom: a framework for resilience, creative therapy, and human connection in higher education

Abstract

Abstract Contemporary higher education operates in an era of compounding crises: post-pandemic disruption, political instability, digital isolation, and systemic anxiety that have permanently dismantled the illusion of the classroom as a purely intellectual space. This paper argues that institutional resilience must be reconceived not as passive endurance but as an active, structured, and communal practice. Drawing on two complementary frameworks, Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL) and Art Therapy Integration, it proposes a comprehensive model for transforming the higher education classroom into a shared sanctuary of psychological safety and creative healing. SEL provides the cognitive and relational scaffolding for emotional regulation and collective empathy, while art therapy opens a non-verbal, limbic pathway for processing trauma and chronic stress that analytical instruction alone cannot reach.