1.1 A Teacher’s Lament
“They don’t understand what makes us special”. A familiar lament across disciplines, this refrain speaks to the frustration of teachers who believe the uniqueness of the work they do is not recognised by those above them in the system. 1 As the distance between classroom teachers and administrators grows, and the system continues to prize high-stakes assessment over nurturing pedagogy, the cry only intensifies. Teachers on the ground in classrooms of all levels feel that the specifics of what we do and how we do it are lost to the streamlined model of teaching and learning that our schools and institutions are adopting. The sentiment is particularly sharply felt in disciplines that are already positioned as marginal, such as low-enrolment electives; it evidences a kind of siege mentality. It is a seductive way of thinking: we are united by our special-ness and by our ability to understand it, which sets us apart from the hapless “they” who cannot. It allows us to pat ourselves on the back, while proclaiming our resistance to forces that seek to flatten and homogenise our practice until it fits neatly within the prescribed box.
Of course, this lament also gets us off the hook: after asserting that we are special, we tend not to feel the need to quantify or qualify what that might mean. It is precisely this lack of clarity that makes our work difficult for principals, regulators, and policy makers to understand. If we cannot capture the uniqueness of our practice, then how can we expect it to be appreciated by others? The defensiveness and dismissiveness embodied by this lament is not productive—it only leads to teachers feeling more and more isolated within the system. Instead of digging in further, we should seek to capture and communicate our practice in meaningful ways. To do so requires a vocabulary that is meaningful not only to the teachers at the coalface in the classroom, but also to the principals, regulators, and policy makers to whom we are answerable. This book is not an argument for making teachers and what we do any less special; on the contrary, I advocate in these pages a framework for capturing that very special-ness, and moreover for communicating it to those whose ignorance we lament.
This does not have to be raising the white flag. The framework and vocabulary proposed here is designed to allow teachers and learners to have productive conversations about pedagogy. I recognise that some teachers will prefer to insist on the ephemeral and unquantifiable elements of their practice; however, in an environment marked by a move towards standards-based assessment and high-stakes examination, such resistance is no longer productive. Embracing a systematic vocabulary that seeks to capture pedagogy has a number of key benefits for teachers as education at all levels becomes more transactional and less comprehensive. By setting ourselves within instead of against the system, we will be better able to argue for the distinct place of our individual pedagogies. By making visible the often invisible codes of knowledge legitimation, transfer and transmission in our classrooms—that is, what we teach and how we teach it—we can produce more effective evidence of the quality of our teaching, and advocate for the place of our disciplines in the overall education and/or training of a student. In taking the time to explain to them precisely what makes us special, it is we who stand to gain.
If we ignore the call to capture our work in meaningful ways, we are resigning ourselves to a marginal position. Preferring obscurity over clarity, or insisting on our inability to be understood within the dominant paradigm of the system, renders us an easy target to be dismissed. Hissing at the name of the Minister for Education may well produce a visceral thrill, but it does nothing towards changing her mind about the value of our disciplines. Dismissing the opinion of a prominent critic of a particular subject through personal criticism may well deliver satisfaction, but it does nothing to counter the arguments she put forward. Speaking back to them in language that they understand, and engaging with their arguments instead of dismissing them as misguided from the outset, offers a way forward. This may not ensure success, but at the very least it will ensure work done in our disciplines is taken seriously and considered with the same sincerity as any other. In particular when our pedagogies might not fit within the dominant paradigm of the system, this is essential if our disciplines are to survive.
Throughout this book, I use the discipline of Drama 2 as an illustrative example of the difficulties faced by teachers who feel marginalised by and with in the system. This is not to suggest that the issues faced by teachers of Drama and theatre studies are unique, but simply that Drama provides an example of the application of the analytical framework that I set out. The utility of the framework provided here is not restricted to creative arts teachers: it is designed to encompass the many and varied knowers and forms of knowledge throughout educational institutions. In order to reiterate this wider application of the framework, I also draw on examples throughout this account from popular texts; principally Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys (2004), and Dan Scanlon’s film Monsters University (2013). Both of these texts are widely available, and should the written illustrations herein prove opaque, they can be referred to as support. In the following section, I locate this account specifically within the discipline of Drama and outline some of the features of that field that have led to its pedagogical distance (both perceived and actual) from the dominant paradigm of the system.
1.2 Heart over Head
Ask a Drama teacher what makes her subject distinctive, and she will usually reach for emotive language. She might say that Drama values the heart over the head, or that we are interested in the “whole” student. Popular culture has taken this one step further—Chris Lilley’s Mr G. from Summer Heights High (2007) is prone to declaring “Drama changes lives!”, and greets students with “welcome to the magical world of Drama”. While exaggerated, this portrait is a recognisable extension of the language that we use to characterise our work. These assertions do originate in truth, however overstated they may seem; it is the language in which they are expressed that sets them apart. Within the discipline, we think of these marks of distinction as strengths—they are, after all, often the very reason that students elect to enrol in our subject. When it comes to pedagogy, though, this tendency to imprecision is a weakness: it suggests that our specialisation codes are incompatible with those employed in other subjects; and it can make other teachers sceptical of the value of our discipline.
This kind of claim to radical difference is common to new disciplines. Unlike the heritage disciplines that have long made up the core of education and training (e.g. STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics], language and literature), newer, younger subjects have had to forcefully make the case for their inclusion in the curriculum. The swiftest way to do so is to make a case for difference—it is easier to describe a new subject as “not that”, rather than specifying what “this” is. This kind of negative characterisation not only associates a discipline with newness and a mysterious “coolness”, but also allows for instability, and a sense that anything might be possible. As Stephen Bottoms notes with reference to the academic discipline of Performance Studies differentiating itself its forebears, it “does, of course, sound ‘cool’: it sounds cutting-edge, contemporary, vaguely scientific even, thanks to its implicit association with ‘high performance’ computers or jet engines” (Bottoms 2003: 174). David Savran went so far as to characterise the discipline as an “obstreperous child” (Savran 2001: 91). So, for example, Drama is able to become the cooler, younger offspring of English Literature’s fusty old parents; the one who lets you take your shoes off, jump on the bed, and run around the house screaming.
As the previous paragraph suggests, this to a large degree a marketing ploy: asserting that we are offering something new and different makes us attractive to students. It has indeed been a very successful one, with Drama classrooms often filled with students who might feel like they do not belong elsewhere, or that Drama is the subject that speaks loudest to them. This, though, leaves Drama teachers with a problem: on the one hand, we need to cultivate these outlier students; but on the other, we need to widen our embrace back towards the mainstream. This is especially crucial as more secondary school students choose their subjects based on scaling potential or tertiary admission requirements, and post-secondary students venerate employability above the other functions of their education. The risk in insisting on Drama’s difference from other subjects is twofold. Firstly, we risk a kind of “ghettoisation” by inadvertently suggesting that it is only the most radical or unusual type of student who will succeed in Drama. Then, we risk alienating those very students in moments where Drama unexpectedly mimics its uncool ancestors. (I return to this latter example in more detail in Chap. 3.) We can begin to temper all of these risks by adopting more consistent and precise language around pedagogy.
We have become so used to asserting our difference from other disciplines that we overlook what we have in common. The search to capture our uniqueness has blinded us to potentially productive interfaces between our work and that done in other classrooms across our institutions. A large part of this blindness is terminological: the words we use to discuss our practice, and the terminology we use to capture it, often do not align with those of our colleagues. While every discipline of course has its unique pedagogical features, these can be much more effectively explicated and understood through a common framework. The easier it is to understand what we do and how we do it, the more supporters we will recruit to our cause. Rather than alienating colleagues with language that keeps us separate, we should seek to enlighten them by making our case in clear, accessible terms. The framework for the analysis of teaching and learning that is outlined in this book seeks to offer a common baseline from which constructive conversations about pedagogy can proceed.
This work will smooth our interactions with the “higher ups” like principals, regulators, and policy makers, and our students will also benefit. There are of course moments where Drama requires something of students that is utterly unlike any other subject in which they are enrolled—as there will be in any discipline, creative or not. The moments where they can bring to bear their experiences in other subjects, though, are far more numerous. By making these moments clear to students, we can encourage them to employ the full range of their personal resources and knowledge. Asserting that Drama is both similar and different to the rest of their studies creates a best-of-both-worlds scenario, in which we are able to retain what makes us distinctive while avoiding casting our subject as an exclusive club. This powerful ability to embrace a “both…and…” modality thus becomes a new strength of Drama that sets it apart from other disciplines. In the following section, I elaborate on this and the other core strengths that Drama possesses as a discipline. Any model that seeks to analyse Drama’s distinctive pedagogy, such as the one proposed in this book, must be capable of capturing these features.
1.3 Marks of Distinction
Underneath the overblown rhetoric, there are of course disciplinary features of Drama that do set it apart from other subjects. None of these are necessarily unique, and they are present in other subjects to greater and lesser degrees, but I characterise them here as Drama’s marks of distinction. Every teacher will doubtless capture these features in different ways; for the purposes of this book, I have distilled them into the three overarching themes that are set out below. These features are at the core of the distinctive offer Drama makes to students and whether they are implicit or explicit in the classroom, successful teaching and learning in Drama makes use of all three. The remainder of this book locates each at the heart of Drama pedagogy, and I introduce them briefly in order to contextualise the forthcoming account. While these features are in the main shared by other creative arts disciplines, and indeed in many cases more broadly, I restrict my disciplinary reference point to Drama. This allows me to demonstrate the function and utility of the framework I am proposing, without restricting its future application to other disciplines.
1.3.1 Embodied Knowledge
The most oft-invoked hallmark of Drama pedagogy is the idea of embodied knowledge, or experiential learning-through-doing. While the uniqueness of this mode of teaching and learning to Drama risks being overstated, any model for analysis must be able to capture this key feature. The New South Wales (NSW) Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards (BOSTES) 3 offers this definition of how experiential learning manifests in Drama:
As the terminology suggests, embodied and experiential learning turn on the body of the specific student—two elements that traditional models of pedagogy have struggled to account for. In order to account for the role ...Experiential learning involves students in learning activities that focus on the experience rather than the theory only. For instance, experiential learning in Design will involve students creating a design, working with design rather than just reading about a design (BOSTES 2009: 35, emphasis in original).