Mirror, dynamo or lens? Drama, children and social change

In this talk I will outline a collection of metaphors in search of an idea that can express theatre’s potential as a form of social pedagogy and socialisation both for young people of school age and also for its other audiences and makers. In talking of a pedagogy of theatre I will borrow from the late John McGrath’s use of the term a ‘learning paedia’ which he succinctly distils into two main features: Accuracy – the audience must recognise and accept the emotional and social veracity of what is happening on stage, must identify with the core situation, whatever styly may be used to present it. Relevance – the core situation must reflect the central, most profound realities of its time, must speak to its audiences about a truth that matters in their lives, whether social, moral, political, emotional or individual I (McGrath 2002, p. 138) To these features of truthfulness and relevance he adds the core principle that theatre should use all possible means to reach every citizen and not act as ‘an excluding agency, whether by the price of its tickets, the manner of its box office staff, its location or its impenetrability’ (ibid. p.139)

Getting off the subject: English, drama, media and the commonwealth of powerful culture

There is an old riddle that makes us teachers chuckle knowingly. Imagine that a train driver, a surgeon and a teacher fell asleep in 1908 and woke up to go to work in 2008. Which one of them would notice they had been asleep for a century? The same rows of chairs, the same mode of instruction in many cases, the same content and modes of assessment. The same power and powerlessness between teachers and learners over what is learnt , how it is learnt and how it is valued through assessment. Our early 20c teacher would wake to find that in many places what young people are taught as valuable and socially controlled knowledge is still comfortably organised into „subjects‟. And that of these subjects English, along with Science and Maths are the kings of the curriculum. Over the sleeping century in the UK we have become naturalised into thinking that subjects are our only means of organising, delivering and assessing what young people learn about their worlds through schooling. Our children study the world through the frames of subjects and their success in later life will largely depend on their success in subject-based rather than real world-based learning. Primacy is given to achieving success in subjects rather than in a broader range of personal and social achievements and therefore to a curriculum which tends to isolate and reify the facts and figures from live(d) human experience

Acting together: ensemble as a democratic process in art and life

Traditionally drama in schools has been seen either as a learning medium with a wide range of curricular uses or as a subject in its own right. This paper argues that the importance of drama in schools is in the processes of social and artistic engagement and experiencing of drama rather than in its outcomes. The paper contrasts the pro-social emphasis in the ensemble model of drama with the pro-technical and limited range of learning in subject-based approaches which foreground technical knowledge of periods, plays, styles and genres. The ensemble-based approach is positioned in the context of professional theatre understandings of ensemble artistry and in the context of revolutionary shifts from the pro-technical to the pro-social in educational and cultural policy making in England. Using ideas drawn from McGrath and Castoriadis, the paper claims that the ensemble approach provides young people with a model of democratic living

Closing in on the picture : analyzing interactions in video recordings

This paper provides a detailed account of the processing and analysing of data, obtained through video recording during reflective practitioner research. It sets out five stages in the analysis of video recordings of classroom interactions during a series of educational drama lessons: from decisions relating to the selection of data for close analysis, to the seeking of themes, and finally to the presentation of conclusions. The researcher adapted and synthesised several processes derived from discourse analysis (Wells, 2001; Spiers, 2004; Gee, 2005) to produce a range of instruments for use in transcription and analysis of verbal and non-verbal discourse. These include: a simple transcription key; classifications for verbal and non-verbal discourse; and a template for a transcription and analysis matrix

Open-space Learning

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open-space Learning offers a unique resource to educators wishing to develop a workshop model of teaching and learning. The authors propose an embodied, performative mode of learning that challenges the primacy of the lecture and seminar model in higher education. Drawing on the expertise of the CAPITAL Centre (Creativity and Performance in Teaching and Learning) at the University of Warwick, they show how pedagogic techniques developed from the theatrical rehearsal room may be applied effectively across a wide range of disciplines. The book offers rich case-study materials, supplemented by video and documentary resources, available to readers electronically. These practical elements are supplemented by a discursive strand, which draws on the methods of thinkers such as Freire, Vygotsky and Kolb, to develop a formal theory around the notion of Open-space Learning. CAPITAL was a collaboration between the University of Warwick's Department of English and the Royal Shakespeare Company. CAPITAL was succeeded by the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL) in 2010

Open-space Learning

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Open-space Learning offers a unique resource to educators wishing to develop a workshop model of teaching and learning. The authors propose an embodied, performative mode of learning that challenges the primacy of the lecture and seminar model in higher education. Drawing on the expertise of the CAPITAL Centre (Creativity and Performance in Teaching and Learning) at the University of Warwick, they show how pedagogic techniques developed from the theatrical rehearsal room may be applied effectively across a wide range of disciplines. The book offers rich case-study materials, supplemented by video and documentary resources, available to readers electronically. These practical elements are supplemented by a discursive strand, which draws on the methods of thinkers such as Freire, Vygotsky and Kolb, to develop a formal theory around the notion of Open-space Learning. CAPITAL was a collaboration between the University of Warwick's Department of English and the Royal Shakespeare Company. CAPITAL was succeeded by the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL) in 2010