Contemporary debates on social justice and intercultural education emphasise the need to address epistemic injustice and the persistence of colonial hierarchies in educational knowledge production. Decolonial and critical intercultural approaches have shown how dominant epistemologies exclude non-hegemonic ways of knowing, producing what has been conceptualised as epistemicide (Santos, 2000; Santos & Meneses, 2014). Despite these critiques, educational theory and practice often remain grounded in modern rationalities that privilege cognitive and discursive forms of knowledge. As a result, embodied, affective, and experiential dimensions of human experience are marginalised or treated as merely expressive, rather than recognised as epistemologically legitimate. This exclusion constitutes a persistent form of epistemic injustice with direct implications for justice-oriented and intercultural education.

This proposal argues that social justice in education cannot be achieved solely through curricular inclusion or discursive recognition if epistemological foundations remain unchanged. Critical interculturality has demonstrated that functional or liberal approaches frequently fail to challenge the structures that sustain inequality (Walsh, 2010; 2013). When intercultural education remains anchored in rationalist and representational models of knowledge, it risks reproducing the hierarchies it seeks to overcome (Quijano, 2000). In this context, the marginalisation of the sensible dimension - understood as embodied, affective, and experiential knowing - operates as an epistemic absence that limits the transformative potential of social justice education.

In response to these challenges, the study addresses the following research questions:

• How does the marginalisation of the sensible dimension contribute to epistemic injustice within intercultural and social justice education?
• How can an integrative epistemological framework support more plural and decolonial educational practices?
• What are the implications of recognising sensibility as epistemologically legitimate for human formation and critical intercultural education?

The main objective of the research is to conceptualise the sensible dimension as an epistemological condition within processes of human formation and educational knowledge production. Rather than opposing reason or reducing knowledge to affective experience, the study proposes an alternative epistemological orientation termed Plural Reason. Plural Reason designates an integrative form of rationality that articulates thinking and feeling, cognition and sensibility, without subordinating one to the other. This orientation resonates with decolonial critiques of epistemic monoculture and with calls for an ecology of knowledges grounded in plurality and critical vigilance (Santos et al., 2004; Santos & Meneses, 2014).

Within this framework, the study introduces the concept of the Language of the Sensible Dimension as a communicative and epistemological pathway through which sensibility becomes articulated and shared as meaningful knowledge. Framing the sensible as language challenges its confinement to the subjective and affirms its role in dialogue and critical awareness (Mignolo, 2011). The proposal develops a three-stage conceptual model - perception, integration, and exteriorization - explaining how the sensible dimension operates within educational and formative processes. This model draws on phenomenological and neurobiological perspectives that emphasise the inseparability of feeling and knowing (Damásio, 2010; 2021), as well as on approaches that conceptualise sensibility as a structured dimension of experience (Bois & Austry, 2008).

The theoretical framework brings into dialogue decolonial analyses of coloniality of knowledge (Quijano, 1991; 2000; Mignolo, 2001) with critical interculturality and perspectives on human formation. Art, particularly artistic and musical experience, is theorised as a privileged epistemological mediation through which the sensible dimension becomes accessible and communicable, supporting processes of epistemic disobedience and re-existence (Mignolo, 2011; Walsh, 2013). By foregrounding sensibility as an epistemological condition for ethical and relational learning, the study argues that justice-oriented education requires not only new contents of knowledge, but also new ways of sensing, feeling, and relating.

This study adopts a qualitative and interpretive research design grounded in a hermeneutic approach informed by decolonial and critical intercultural perspectives. The methodological orientation derives from the nature of the research object, understood as multidimensional and relational, and from the need to analyse meanings associated with art, sensibility, and human formation that exceed purely descriptive or instrumental approaches. The research is structured around five interrelated analytical categories: decoloniality, human formation through art, critical interculturality, and the language of the sensible dimension. Methodologically, the study follows a qualitative and comprehensive logic, drawing on hermeneutic and discourse analysis of selected theoretical texts and educational contributions related to art, education, and decolonial thought. The analysis assumes that educational discourse is situated and value-laden, carrying historical, cultural, and ideological dimensions that shape how knowledge and subjectivity are constructed. In this sense, interpretation is understood as a process of meaning-making rather than as the extraction of fixed or universal meanings. Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic framework provides a key methodological reference, particularly his conception of interpretation as plural and dialogical (1986). In line with this perspective, the analysis acknowledges the coexistence of multiple interpretations and explores the tensions between implicit, symbolic, and experiential dimensions of meaning and more explicit, discursive articulations. These interpretive movements are not treated as oppositional, but are brought into dialogue through critical reflection aimed at clarifying, re-signifying, and integrating meanings. Within this methodological framework, artistic experience is approached as a privileged site for examining how sensibility operates as a dimension of knowledge in educational contexts. Art is not used as empirical data, but as a conceptual and educational reference that supports the analysis of epistemic assumptions and pedagogical implications. This approach enables the study to connect epistemological critique with educational concerns, offering a framework relevant to justice-oriented, intercultural, and arts-based educational practices.

The study is expected to contribute to debates on social justice and intercultural education by offering a theoretically grounded framework that repositions sensibility as a central epistemological dimension in processes of human formation. By addressing the dominance of rationalist models of knowledge, the research clarifies how the exclusion of embodied and affective ways of knowing sustains epistemic injustice and limits the transformative scope of education oriented toward decolonial and emancipatory aims. A central outcome of the study is the development of the Language of the Sensible Dimension as a framework for understanding how sensibility operates through different stages within educational and formative processes. Drawing on the paradigm of the sensible developed by Bois and Austry (2008), and articulated through a decolonial lens, this framework identifies structured phases through which embodied experience becomes epistemologically productive. This contribution is expected to support educational research by offering tools that move beyond abstract critiques toward more precise analytical and pedagogical orientations. Another expected outcome is the articulation of Plural Reason as an alternative epistemological orientation that integrates thinking and feeling without reproducing dichotomies between reason and sensibility. This orientation challenges instrumental and capital-centred models of education by foregrounding human formation, ethical responsibility, and relational awareness as core educational concerns. Doing so, conceptual resources are seen for rethinking education not merely as human capital development, but as a space for forming socially and interculturally engaged subjects. Finally, by placing artistic experience at the centre of epistemological reflection, the study offers orientations for educational practices that seek to foster plural ways of thinking and feeling. The outcomes are expected to inform future research, teacher education, and curriculum development in the arts, humanities, and intercultural education, supporting approaches to social justice that are grounded in embodied awareness, critical reflection, and collective responsibility.

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