Teaching Strategies for Neurodiversity and Dyslexia in Actor Training

Sensing Shakespeare

Petronilla Whitfield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429858192
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Learning Disabilities

Teaching Strategies for Neurodiversity and Dyslexia in Actor Training addresses some of the challenges met by acting students with dyslexia and highlights the abilities demonstrated by individuals with specific learning differences in actor training.

The book offers six tested teaching strategies, created from practical and theoretical research investigations with dyslexic acting students, using the methodologies of case study and action research. Utilizing Shakespeare's text as a laboratory of practice and drawing directly from the voices and practical work of the dyslexic students themselves, the book explores:

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• the stress caused by dyslexia and how the teacher might ameliorate it through changes in their practice

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• the theories and discourse surrounding the label of dyslexia

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• the visual, kinaesthetic, and multisensory processing preferences demonstrated by some acting students assessed as dyslexic

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• acting approaches for engaging with Shakespeare's language, enabling those with dyslexia to develop their authentic voice and abilities

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• a grounding of the words and the meaning of the text through embodied cognition, spatial awareness, and epistemic tools

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• Stanislavski's method of units and actions and how it can benefit and obstruct the student with dyslexia when working on Shakespeare

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• Interpretive Mnemonics as a memory support and hermeneutic process, and the use of color and drawing towards an autonomy in live performance

This book is a valuable resource for voice and actor training, professional performance, and for those who are curious about emancipatory methods that support difference through humanistic teaching philosophies.

PART I

The Background to the Investigatory Practice

1

INTRODUCTION

This book places the individual with dyslexia at the heart of its investigative practice. Its study has originated through an interactive dialogue spanning many years with a growing community of acting students with specific learning differences, particularly those with dyslexia. It is written using the subjective voice of the ‘I’ in directly sharing my experiences, research, and learning with other teachers, exploring how changes in pedagogy and curriculum can alter individuals’ achievements and views about themselves. Its topic has arisen from requests for help from many of the acting students I have worked with over the years, and continue to work with. In every institution I have taught in, these requests and accompanying signs of distress are discernible in certain teaching situations, across cohorts and subject areas. This cry for help arises from the presence of dyslexia, with its associated characteristics and sometimes overlapping learning differences within a range of circumstances produced within actor training. These signals of distress are frequently explicit, rupturing the flow and progression of work within the received practices of the status quo. Sometimes the signs are suppressed, yet the indicators of stress and discomfort remain palpable, and are heard very loudly by those who pay attention. Many teachers, especially in the environment of actor training, experience this sense of disquiet in certain situations within their everyday teaching practice (Leveroy 2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2015; Oram 2018a, 2018b). Historically, these requests for help have remained unanswered, ignored, misunderstood, or been considered too complicated and challenging to address. Occasionally, teachers have attempted to help, using improvised ideas or re-asserting traditional techniques pulled from their teaching toolkit. However, such techniques remain transitory, and are usually not evaluated (by peers or students) nor disseminated. They have not emerged from a long-term study into the situation nor extensive research into dyslexia itself nor the causes of the distress. Frequently, those who struggle have been blamed, in a variety of ways, for the reasons for and results of their discomfort. The studies in this book focus on a selection of individuals who are labeled as possessing a disability. An educational psychologist has assessed them all as dyslexic.

The Personal Voice

In writing this book, I speak from a perspective gained through my own training and twenty years’ experience as a professional actor, and eighteen subsequent years as a teacher of voice, acting, and more recently, academic writing (in both drama schools and university settings). Moreover, it is important to disclose myself as a member of the neurodiverse group. My wish to highlight the vulnerable status of those with a specific learning difference is influenced by my own assessed disability. Although I do not have dyslexia, I have been assessed by an educational psychologist as having a specific learning disability (SpLD) in the form of dyscalculia. Dyscalculia is a difficulty with understanding numbers, counting and matters of ‘numerosity’ (Department for Education & Skills 2004: 20). My dyscalculia lends me an empathy and concern for those with the apparent blocks caused by dyslexia. I can identify with their feelings of humiliation, discomfort, fear, confusion, and frustration, situated in an environment where the majority can do it, but the minority cannot, despite their possession of other abilities.

Questions Surrounding Terminology of Neurodiversity and Difference

In considering what might be termed as normative or neurotypical, the term ‘neurodiversity’ attempts to describe those who might be considered as different. Neurodiversity is an umbrella term grouping together a range of profiles which are also labeled as specific learning difficulties/disabilities or development disorders, such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, attention deficit disorder, and Asperger’s Syndrome (Palfreman-Kay 2005). In a definition of neurodiversity, Grant states:

Neurodiversity is present when an exceptional degree of variation between neurocognitive processes results in noticeable and unexpected weaknesses in the performance of some everyday tasks when compared with much higher performances on a subset of measures of verbal and/or visual abilities for a given individual. Neurodiversity is a positive statement of differentiation, for while it explicitly refers to individuals whose everyday ways of thinking and behaving differ in certain key aspects from the majority of people, it rejects the assumption that these differences are dysfunctional and are to be ‘cured’. Instead, there is a societal obligation that others make suitable adjustments and accommodations to enable inherent potential to be fully realized.

(Grant 2009: 35)

Terminology is a contested area and provokes differing opinions. Although labels can be informative, the particular words used can reveal underlying attitudes. In a medical model of diagnosis, the label of ‘learning difficulty/disability’ is said by some to place the responsibility of addressing the difficulty or abnormality with the individual, while an identification of a ‘learning difference’ indicates that teaching must be adjusted. The social model of disability maintains that many of the problems experienced by those with intellectual disabilities are not caused by the intellectual disability itself, but by ‘problems of access, support, community participation and acceptance’ due to a ‘disabling society that threaten the very existence of people who are cognitively different to the mainstream’ (Goodley 2014: 7). However, some people prefer the term ‘disability’ to describe their experience, as they feel that their struggles are palpable in comparison to others’ abilities, and what they experience feels like a disability to them (Pollak 2005: 4).¹

In considering the wider meaning of the word ‘neurodiversity’, it is evident that all human beings are neurodiverse as we all have differing brains, bodies, lives, and experiences. The term ‘neurodiversity’ attempts to move away from presenting people with specific learning difficulties and developmental disorders as people with problems towards seeing them as a distinctive group of learners with different ways of learning (Palfreman-Kay 2005). According to Ross Cooper (an academic and university teacher who is dyslexic), labeling some people as neurotypical and others as neurodiverse highlights society’s intolerance of differences and their discrimination against neurodiversity (Cooper 2006). Conversely, the educational consultant Thomas Armstrong embraces the term, calling for ‘a new field of neurodiversity’, rejecting more negative language in describing brain diversity (Armstrong 2010: xi, 3). He quotes Harvey Blume as one of the first people to use the word ‘neurodiversity’ in a published article in The Atlantic in 1998, saying: ‘neurodiversity may be every bit as crucial for the human race as biodiversity is for life in general. Who can say what form of wiring will prove best at any given moment?’

Significantly, in his critical disability studies, Goodley has inserted a slash into the word dis/ability, highlighting the dualistic significations within it. He maintains that ableism, disableism, ability, and disability can only be understood ‘simultaneously in relation to each other. The slashed and split term denotes the complex ways in which opposites bleed into one another’ (Goodley 2014: xiii). The descriptions of the work in this book by those who have been designated as having a ‘learning disability’ demonstrate that dis/ability has counter-sides: the disability can reveal another dimension of a burgeoning ability when liberated to work through diverse channels.

Studying Dyslexia through Cross-disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Sources

In order to engage with the extensive body of research surrounding dyslexia, and with a range of theories which might offer explanations about experiences in working with dyslexia, it has become necessary for me to step outside performance discourse and cross into areas such as psychology, science, education, and literary theory. Reconnaissance within the familiar territories of acting methodologies and the various strands of pedagogy for actors has not rendered sufficient specialized knowledge to answer my questions about the teaching of those with specific learning disabilities/differences and dyslexia. The studies I describe in this book are therefore cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary, where the research perspectives extrapolated from diverse fields have enabled my broader understanding of the impediments and strengths presented by dyslexia.

The subject of dyslexia has not been much investigated nor written about in relation to pedagogical choices and inclusivity in actor training, and this may be because it is extremely challenging in many ways. (The theories and characteristics of dyslexia are outlined in detail in Chapter 4.) The unresolved arguments around the nature of dyslexia, despite years of extensive research in several fields, reveal what a convoluted area it presents in practice. It is significant that much of the literature about dyslexia contains a frequent reiteration of the words ‘difficult’, ‘problem’, and ‘complex’, both in describing the experience of the individual with dyslexia and that of the researcher attempting to comprehend or find trustworthy answers in the scientific findings and arguments. Indeed, the dyslexia specialists and psychologists Rod Nicolson and Angela Fawcett remark: ‘If it were not the case that dyslexia is both prevalent and debilitating , a researcher might be excused for choosing a more convenient research area, one not confounded by so many uncontrollable factors’ (Nicolson & Fawcett 2010: 13).

It has become evident to me that in actor training environments, it is commonplace to encounter individual students who have difficulty in reading without effort, and physically articulating and processing speech sounds and language. This can occur in conjunction with other characteristics, such as distractibility, disorganization, anxiety, physical awkwardness, and memory challenges, despite their possession of literacy, intrinsic motivation, athletic movement skills, acting talents, intelligence, and abilities. The obstacles blocking some individuals with dyslexia from being able to contribute freely to sessions using text raise pedagogical problems for the teacher, especially located within the larger student cohort. The teacher often lacks the expertise to support the individual, increasing a depression of ability in the student, which consequently promotes feelings of inadequacy in the teacher.

In gathering my research and practice together in this book, my intention is to share my experiences and to help guide the reader through some of the dyslexia research, particularly in relation to actor training. Many of the dyslexia investigations concentrate on schoolchildren rather than on higher education students in their study of artistic practices and performance. The scientific theories and research findings involving dyslexia and the brain are often complex, but I have found some to be extremely helpful in gaining insight about the experiences of acting students with dyslexia. In making direct links with the science and the processes of reading and acting, the perspectives I take can speak to others who work in similar environments. This focus can assist in answering questions that arise in our practice, helping to tackle the specialized demands of actor training in higher education and performance when working with dyslexic students.

Overview of the Book

This book argues for the necessity of a critical and reflective teaching praxis, and offers tested teaching strategies to facilitate inclusive and equitable approaches. The book’s study is focused primarily on a range of individuals assessed as dyslexic in an actor training environment (although the suggested ideas have the potential to serve a variety of cognitive styles across subject discipline areas). Recognizing the challenges presented by dyslexia for many individuals, the research enquiries described within this book explore the visual, kinesthetic, and multisensory processing preferences demonstrated by some acting students assessed as dyslexic, specifically when working with classical texts such as Shakespeare. The body of research and the teaching strategies are produced from empirical evidence accumulated through observations, discussions, and practical trials with acting students with dyslexia, using the methodologies of case study and action research, underpinned by scientific theory. This research includes some of the work carried out in my six-year doctorate study in the areas of voice, reading, and the acting of Shakespeare when working with acting degree students with dyslexia (Whitfield 2015). Throughout the investigations, Shakespeare’s text is utilized as a laboratory of study and practice.

Structure of Part I: Chapters 1–5

Part I of the book presents the background context underlying the practical explorations which are described in Part II.

Chapter 1 draws attention to the stress experienced by acting students with dyslexia, discussing the meaning of neurodiversity and the socio-cultural ideas surrounding labels such as difference and disability. Chapter 2 considers the facilitation of the acting student with dyslexia within the wider context of accepted pedagogical practices in actor training. Questioning what the overall aims might be when training acting students in higher education environments, a critical focus is given to the repetition of conventional pra...