Lifelong learning, the arts and community cultural engagement in the contemporary university

International perspectives

Darlene E. Clover, Kathy Sanford

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781526108623
• eBook ISBN: 9781526111449
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Politiche educative

Lifelong learning, the arts, and community cultural engagement in the contemporary university maps the work of adult educators, teachers, researchers and graduate students from North America, Europe and Africa who use the arts in their university classroom teaching, their research and in service.

PART I

Arts-based teaching and learning

1

Embodied learning through story and drama: shifting values in university settings

Kathy Sanford and Kristin Mimick

Beginnings

The opportunity to teach a graduate course focused on oral language and literacy – what we call ‘oracy’ – came late in the year, followed soon after by the opportunity to team-teach. For both of us this was a new experience. Kathy, a faculty member in language and literacy education, was teaching the oracy course for the first time, and Kristin, having recently completed her PhD in drama education, had considerable experience with creative curriculum development. In shaping the course together we were able to explore (in Kathy’s case) preconceptions about what graduate courses entail, and (for Kristin) ways to interweave expertise in drama education into the framework of the course. As a result we came to consider how we might best address issues of oral language and to imagine new ways of approaching key concepts.

As part of a graduate programme in language and literacy at the University of Victoria, this course represented foundational learning for all students, and Kathy initially felt some tension in reconceptualising the learning experiences presented. On the one hand, she was very aware through many prior teaching experiences of the importance of embodied learning – engaging the mind, body and emotions together to enable deep rich learning. On the other hand, she was aware of graduate student expectations regarding ‘learning’ that, although unwritten and unarticulated, included the importance of reading theoretical texts and writing papers. And while embodied, connected and collaborative work is important, tried and true academic production for future possibilities (i.e., published articles, completed theses, individual writing) continues to trump any type of engaged, creative process of learning. Paradoxically, while this was a course on oral language, there was a tacit expectation of using written text as the primary medium for communicating and learning. An additional tension revolved around the course’s assessment framework. While it was important for us to utilise and infuse strategies for ‘assessment for learning’ and ‘assessment as learning’ (Earl and Katz, 2006) into the course dynamic, ‘assessment of learning’, represented as summative feedback and letter grades on transcripts, is typically privileged and expected as part of graduate courses in our university. This process of ranking, gate keeping and rewards weighed heavily on Kathy and we will revisit this later in our chapter. But fortunately for Kathy, Kristin had had no occasion to feel these tensions and pressures. For Kristin, experienced in drama education, the way forward was much more clear: to engage with and about oral language as fully and authentically, and in as whole-person centred a way as possible throughout the course. This commitment to and passion for drama education was a driving force throughout the course. The challenge, then, was for Kathy to work through her own felt tensions between the unwritten expectations of graduate teaching and her awareness of what makes significant memorable learning that would potentially transform thinking and practice. Together, we began to imagine ways of using oral language in authentic situations as much as possible to engage the students in their learning, and determine what really was of relevance to learning about oracy, while still meeting the course requirements expected by the academy.

Thus our journey as university instructors of this oracy course began. We both believed that what was most relevant to oracy was deep, rich experiences of using oral language in embodied ways, recognising that ‘communicative meaning is first incarnate in the gestures by which the body spontaneously feels and responds to changes in its affective environment’ (Abram, 1996: 74) and attempting to model our beliefs as much as talking about them. Because of Kristin’s drama education background, and Kathy’s belief in embodied ways of knowing, we saw storytelling and drama as powerful personalised approaches to introducing and exploring oral language concepts, and started using these activities from the first class. Using a team-teaching approach, we shared responsibility, ideas and successes as the course progressed. Ideas from one instructor would be shaped by the other as goals and strategies melded into a unified set of learning activities and events. As our own roles as co-instructors, co-collaborators and co-artists evolved, they informed the relationships forming among the entire class, which became a learning community sharing ownership of the ideas, activities and future directions.

Course context

The oracy course occurred during autumn 2011. This was a time in the province of British Columbia when the concept of ‘personalised learning’ had become central to the government’s new idea of transformation for school-based education. This quickly, therefore, became a key topic of deliberation among university educators and policy makers. Awakened by the influence of globalisation, exponential knowledge expansion, rapidly advancing technology, current global economic instability, systemic health and environmental crises, as well as ‘the troubling fact that industrialized, technological societies have turned out to be fundamentally unequal ones’ (Greene, 1995: 170), university educators and policy makers began openly exploring how education could better meet the needs of today’s learners. As part of this discussion, some educators and policy makers began reconceptualising education standards as broad ‘literacies’, ‘competencies’ and ‘dispositions’ that could span all curricular areas, thus challenging positivist notions of impersonal, objective knowledge and systematic control through homogenised outcomes. It seemed appropriate then that we, as instructors of this course, should also broaden our view of what it means to be ‘literate’ in the twenty-first century and shine light on oral language as a construct expanding beyond pure academic listening and speaking and into the realm of embodied literacies, drama and story.

With only the academic calendar course description as a rough compass, we gathered current research on oral language and envisioned a socially constructivist framework where instructors and students were both learners and teachers. We had little idea what this learning and teaching would ultimately look like; however, we did know how we wanted it to unfold – in emergent, contextual and responsive ways. This is our ‘oracy’ story.

Approaching oral language instruction

Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand. (Chinese proverb)

In an academic educational world that is seemingly fixated on written texts, we asked ourselves what was the purpose of focusing on oral language and how we could convey the significance of oral language to our students – students who were accomplished teachers in an educational system that focused on production and assessment of written texts. We began to articulate, for ourselves and for our students, the myriad ways that oral language is vital to our learning – it is the primary mode of communicating for most people throughout their lives, and it is a significant component of the curriculum for students of all ages. We felt we simply could not engage in an oracy course without modelling multiple modes of using oral language. We were also aware of the rich background experiences and expertise of our graduate students, much of it relating to their oral language use and practices. And we were reminded of the many students for whom oral language shapes their cultural identities and learning experiences. The primacy of oral language for students of Aboriginal heritage, for additional language learners and for aural learners is paramount. Further, hearkening back to the wisdom of ancient Chinese philosophers, we believed that rich engagement with many aspects of oral language enables powerful learning through listening, speaking, feeling and imagining.

Embodied literacies and drama education

Many of our explorations in the course occurred through embodied modes of expression; the structures, strategies and skills that underpin drama education seamlessly offered media congruent with what we needed to explore. It seemed a fitting choice for us to ground much of our course work in drama education methodology because drama education enables the development of multiple literacies through its rich cross-disciplinary approaches aimed at critical and embodied exploration and expression. Such congruence would perhaps be best articulated by Gavin Bolton, an internationally renowned drama scholar and practitioner, as ‘the meaning … is, a least partially, encapsulated in its form’ (1992: 19).

Drama education is a mode of learning and an art form in which students explore relevant issues, events and relationships within fictional contexts so they might come to make meaning about their own lives and communities. The goal of drama education is to create a way into understanding by engaging students in the content of fictional worlds so that the ambiguities, subtexts, assumptions and biases of the topics and issues being explored are exposed and can be reflected upon. Using voice, story, sounds, movement and our bodies as expressive and reflective media were therefore compatible pedagogical choices as we explored the complexities of language development as well as the power and privilege associated with formal and informal language and story as ways of knowing.

Through the process of integrating drama structures (e.g., story drama, role drama, choral speaking, script work, in-role reflection), strategies (e.g., improvisation, tableaux, soundscape, games) and skills (e.g., voice, movement, embodied expression) into the fabric of the course, a collective experience took shape. Our work together (as co-instructors and as a whole class) was possible only because everyone was willing to invest themselves in the social context of both the course (i.e., graduate students and instructors who came together each week in order to share and learn) as well as the fictional contexts within which we engaged as part of our drama education work.

As instructors, rather than following traditional pre-set lesson plans, we often found ourselves responding in the moment to the emergent contributions of students and the natural flow of where their input took us. We responded by infusing activities that permitted students to explore oracy-related concepts through embodied explorative and expressive modes. For example, we explored informal and formal language through tableaux and captioning, holistic expression through voice and movement games, story through small- and large-group storytelling, as well as ways one might privilege embodied literacies within a K-12 classroom context through story and drama. And while at times we were confronted by what we would call ‘default programming’ to present theoretical considerations informing current discourse on oral literacy through print-based media, we often chose to override these previously unexamined assumptions in favour of contextually responsive and embodied explorations. Indeed, despite the rich textual discussions shared each week via the course online forum, it was the in-person, participant-driven contributions that truly engaged us (instructors and students) in collectively creating, exploring and reflecting on our ideas and experiences with embodied literacies. In doing so, each of us came to examine our own assumptions and values, as well as those reflected by the education system, regarding the nature of ‘literacy’ and learning.

Emergence of a learning community

After several weeks we began to see ourselves as more of a learning community and less of a seminar-style graduate course with traditional instructor–student roles and responsibilities. Fuelling this growing sense of community were the sharing conversation and movement warm-up activities, facilitated by either instructor or student, which began each class. Rarely at the onset of each class did we stay in our seats for long as we quickly engaged in activities that brought new energy and trust into our learning space. We also organised a food-sharing routine in which one person brought food for everyone on a given date; ‘breaking bread’ together became a time to connect informally. In addition, we created ongoing opportunities for each of us to tell our own stories (formally and informally; some of personal lives, some of professional lives; some polished, some rough and exploratory). As the semester unfolded, levels of trust and emotional risk-taking increased. For example, when representing our personal experiences with informal language through tableaux and captioning, powerful images reflecting universally human vulnerabilities and insecurities emerged with little self-consciousness. A rich large-group discussion followed and then continued throughout the week via our online discussion forum. As Bolton reminds us:

Only when you ‘give yourself’ to an event can you be said to be experiencing it. You let it ‘happen’ to you so that you can continue to make it happen. It is both active and passive … You live spontaneously in the ‘here and now’ of the social event. There is an existential quality to the experiencing, where you are engaging with the social event from inside it. This concept is also critical to an understanding of classroom drama. (1992: 4)

Engaging in storytelling, role-playing and story drama provided multiple opportunities to use oral language – as excavators of our own experiences, in role as characters, in listening to stories read as impetus, and in debriefing the experiences. Reflections on our experiences in role were a key aspect of the story drama encounters, allowing for sharing in trusting, respectful environments where participants (both instructors and students) felt comfortable talking about their experiences.

As the term continued we grew into a learning community that reflected characteristics of a community of practice. Within such communities, suggest Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002), learning occurs in social and collaborative ways among those sharing a concern and/or passion and who are interested in deepening their emergent understandings through continued and shared experience. Learning evolves as the group moves collectively toward greater expertise (Lave, 1991). In essence, our ‘practice’ within this oracy course was focused on exploring oral literacy as comprising speaking, listening, doing, feeling, playing and collective reflecting – a literacy that ultimately acts as a medium for coming to know. These interwoven elements of oral literary all draw on embodied forms of exploration and expression.

Given the active, and trans-active, nature of knowledge construction within this learning community, it seemed fitting that traditional instructor–student power dynamics were rarely emphasised. As instructors we functioned as co-learners and co-artists yet also carried responsibilities as structural operators of the classes. We both guided and participated in activities with students. A few examples include sharing our own stories within small groups and alongside students during class discussions and reflective activities (a strategy we used several times in relation to a variety of specific foci); immersing ourselves in story drama work as participants of the fictional worlds we were creating; alternating the role of facilitator so the other could act as participant within the learning; and functioning as participants during the warm-up activities facilitated by students. We also noticed that students began completing their assignments in collaborative ways. Several chose to deliver their multi-modal presentations with another member of the class and a few also decided to collaborate during their ‘turn’ to facilitate the weekly online discussion forum. Ultimately, we, as a group of people coming to know oral literacy together, not only created a learning environment characterised by trust and respect, we also equalised the inherent power structures present in many instructor and student dynamics. Our co-constructed learning process unfolded by and for its participants – instructors included.

Oral and embodied expression through story drama

With the exception of Kristin, very few of us had much experience working with drama (and one student had very recently come from another country where drama education is almost never used). Howeve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I: Arts-based teaching and learning
• Part II: Arts-based research and enquiry
• Part III: Community cultural engagement
• Overlay: messages, threads and tensions
• Index