Embodying Language in Action

The Artistry of Process Drama in Second Language Education

Erika Piazzoli

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319779614
• eBook ISBN: 9783319779621
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Teaching Arts & Humanities
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book explores embodiment in second language education, sociocultural theory and research. It focuses on process drama, an embodied approach that engages learners' imagination, body and voice to create a felt-experience of the second language and culture. Divided into three parts, it begins by examining the aesthetic and intercultural dimension of performative language teaching, the elements of drama and knowing-in-action. The central part of the book examines issues related to play, emotions, classroom discourse and assessment when learning a language through process drama, in a sociocultural perspective. The third part is an analysis of the author's qualitative research, which informs a subtle discussion on reflective practitioner methodology, learner engagement and teacher artistry. Each chapter includes a drama workshop, illustrating in practice what embodying language in action can look like when working with asylum seekers, adult learners with intellectual disabilities, pre-service teachers, international students and children involved in a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programme. A unique combination of theory, research and reflective practice, this book provides valuable insights for teacher/artists, teacher educators and researchers in the fields of performative and sociocultural language learning.

© The Author(s) 2018

Erika PiazzoliEmbodying Language in Actionhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77962-1_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: What Is ‘Artistry’ and Why Do We Need It in Second Language Education?

Erika Piazzoli¹

(1)

School of Education, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Erika Piazzoli

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Consciously we teach what we know; unconsciously we teach who we are. (Hamachek, 1999)

When I was eight years old, I started learning English at my primary school in Milan, Italy. I remember the first day clearly, when the English teacher came into the classroom. She told us: “Children, we’re going to study English; as a first step, you’re going to change your names. I’ll give you your English names now.” I didn’t understand the concept of learning English. What was English? She had a big dictionary with her, a name dictionary. She went through the roll and one by one she re-baptised, so to speak, each one of us with our new English names. So our classmate Angelo became Angel; Davide became David; Daniele became Daniel. When it came to my name, tragedy struck: there was no name translation for Erika. No English name for me. Anxiety crept in as the teacher re-baptised me Heather. “From now on, in the English classes your name is Heather!” she proclaimed. I still remember the feeling of displacement as she addressed me by my new name. I was alarmed by this new identity. Little did I know that the plant ‘heather’ is translated as erica in Italian. Instead, the obvious connection for me and my classmates was with Heather Parisi, a voluptuous Italian showgirl popular in the 1980s. This was definitely too much of an identity stretch for an eight-year-old introverted child. All through primary and middle school, I disliked English. I remember a vague sense of confusion mixed with shame, not understanding what I had to say, what the right answer was. Classes were a blur. My name didn’t make sense. I didn’t make sense.

As van Lier (2004) argues, our sense of identity is essentially tied to our motivation to learn a foreign language, as “we can only speak the second language when thoughts, identities and self are aligned”. He continues:

I cannot speak in that foreign language from the depth of my self, and with integrity in my thoughts, the learner might say. Or, more practically, I cannot make my mouth say these sounds and things. The identity that has been allotted to me in this new culture, country or language, creates a barrier between my thoughts and my self, and I feel tongue-tied. (Van Lier, 2004, p. 128)

If our new identity does not align with our sense of self, the motivation to learn a foreign language may vacillate. In my childhood example, my teacher’s best intentions turned sour as my allotted identity did not match my eight-year-old self. In hindsight, if I could have stepped into that teacher’s shoes, I might have asked the children to choose their own names, gifting them the agency to reinvent themselves.

The role that emotions play in second language acquisition (SLA) has been largely documented; it is widely accepted that affective factors, like attitude, motivation and disposition, are paramount (Ellis, 2008). In a sociocultural perspective on second language learning (Lantolf & Poehner, 2014; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), affect and cognition are inextricably linked. Since Damasio’s (1999, 2010) foundational work on the brain, the self, emotions and consciousness, we are well aware that cognition and emotions are interconnected in learning. In this sense, the experience of learning is not just cognitive, but also connected to the emotions and the body. As Kramsch (2009) eloquently argues in The Multilingual Subject, language learners “rely not only on cool reason, but on the embodied aspects of a cognitive and socialized self: emotions, feelings, memories” (p. 53). More recently, affective and educational neuroscience research confirms that the role of emotions is essential to acquiring new knowledge. Neuroscientist Immordino-Yang (2016) notes:

Understanding the role of emotions in learning goes far beyond recognizing the emotion a student is having about a situation in order to design learning environments that strategically manipulate students’ reactions. […] Instead, understanding emotions is also (and perhaps even more critically) about the meaning that students are making – that is, the ways in which students and teachers are experiencing or feeling their emotional regions and how their feelings steer thoughts and behaviour, consciously or not. Emotions are not add-ons that are distinct from cognitive skills. Instead emotions, such as interest, anxiety, frustration, excitement, or a sense of awe in beholding beauty, become a dimension of the skill itself. (p. 21, original emphasis)

In this light, emotions are defined as the dimension of a skill, rather than a response generated by the skill; “the rudder that steers thinking” (p. 28). Thus, Immordino-Yang and Damasio effectively replace Descartes’ formula cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) that set off the cognition/affect divide in the seventeenth century, with “we feel, therefore we learn” (p. 27), the cornerstone of embodied pedagogy. Interestingly, in the quotation above, Immordino-Yang points to “a sense of awe in beholding beauty”. Seeking beauty in education, Winston (2010) reminds us, is a vital yet underestimated endeavour, which connects language learning to an aesthetic experience.

1 Teaching as an Art Form

Consider the dynamic relationship between a lesson plan and the actual unfolding of a class. Berghetto and Kaufman (2011) see this relationship as a gap between the “curriculum-as-planned and the curriculum-as-lived” (pp. 94–95). These, as any experienced teacher knows, are never identical; there comes a moment when the ‘curriculum-as-lived’ departs from the ‘curriculum-as-planned’, taking on a life of its own. That very same moment may be gratifying for one teacher and may provoke anxiety in another, according to levels of expertise, personality, circumstances, and many other context-specific issues. Reflecting on the gap between the curriculum-as-planned and the curriculum-as-lived, they continue: “Rather than trying to forcefully close or attempt to bridge this gap, it is much more fruitful to find ways to work in the ‘in-between’ space of the gap” (2011, pp. 94–95).

How can we, as teachers, confidently work in such ‘in-between’ space? How do we find inspiration in the threshold between what we plan and what is happening? When things depart from the plan, a degree of improvisation is obviously needed. Yet, improvisation is not to be confused with chaos; the above authors refer to a ‘disciplined’ kind of improvisation, as they suggest in the title of their essay, ‘Teaching for Creativity with Disciplined Improvisation’. Although disciplined improvisation may initially appear to be an oxymoron, it holds an important truth: improvisation is not random. In the classroom, a teacher may improvise how to facilitate learning with a particular group of students. While ‘delivering’ a lesson plan, s/he may realise it is not pitched at the right level and change the plan, on the spur of the moment. The very use of the verb ‘delivering’ needs to be entirely questioned here, as it constructs teaching and learning based on an outdated transmission model, in which knowledge is constructed by delivering content from A (teacher) to B (student). Clearly, teachers who operate between the ‘curriculum-as-planned’ and ‘curriculum-as-lived’ are doing much more than just ‘delivering’ teaching. As Morgan believes, teaching is not about covering the curriculum, but uncovering it (in Saxton, 2015, p. 259).

In The Educational Imagination, Eisner (1985) argues that teaching is an art form guided by the educational values, personal needs and beliefs held by the teacher. With Stolnitz (1960), I define art form as the sensory elements that have been chosen from a particular medium, and exist only in their relation, as “a web organising the materials of which it is made” (p. 27). The assumption underpinning this book is that teaching can be seen as an art form, following Eisner’s rationale of teaching as an art. In this context, Eisner identifies four parameters (pp. 153–155), which he calls ‘senses’, to justify teaching as an art:

• The aesthetic dimension of teaching. Teaching is an art in the sense that teaching can be performed with such skill and grace that, for the student as well as the teacher, the experience can justifiably be characterised as aesthetic.
• The spontaneous dimension of teaching. Teaching is an art in the sense that teachers, like painters, composers, actresses and dancers, make judgements based largely on qualities that unfold during the course of an action.
• The complex nature of teaching. Teaching is an art in the sense that the teacher’s activity is not dominated by prescriptions or routines but is influenced by qualities and contingencies which are unpredicted. […] It is precisely the tension between automaticity and inventiveness that makes teaching, like any other art, so complex an undertaking.
• The process-based dimension of teaching. Teaching is an art in the sense that the ends it achieves are often created in process. (1985, pp. 153–155)

To elaborate his point, Eisner defines ‘art’ as “the process in which skills are employed to discover ends through actions”, while ‘craft’ is defined as “the process through which skills are employed to arrive at preconceived ends” (p. 154). This definition is arguable; does Eisner mean that art is related to improvised work only? Such a notion would be narrow, as some of the greatest works of art have been created with a preconceived end in mind. When Leonardo da Vinci painted La Scapigliata (Head of a Woman) in 1508, for example, he certainly had countless technical and anatomical drawings where he studied the human face, and a series of preliminary sketches that enabled him to capture a specific moment in time. He used these to paint an astonishing expression of calmness and intense beauty with such delicacy and precision in the face of the woman he depicts in his masterpiece of the Italian High Renaissance (Fig. 1). No one would dispute that Leonardo was a master craftsman and a timeless artist, and that La Scapigliata is a work of art.

Fig. 1

La Scapigliata [The Head of a Woman] Leonardo da Vinci¹

In The Craftsman, Sennett (2008) discusses craft in a different light, viewing craftsmanship as the act of being engaged in concrete practices, with high attention to detail, grounded in the body. He argues: “First, that all skills, even the most abstract, begin as bodily practices; second that technical understanding develops through the power of imagination” (p. 10). He also tackles the differences between art and craft:

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: What Is ‘Artistry’ and Why Do We Need It in Second Language Education?
• Part I: Key Definitions in the Aesthetic Dimension
• Part II: Navigating the Aesthetic Dimension
• Part III: Researching the Aesthetic Dimension
• Back Matter