Contextual Background
As an associate lecture, I was teaching 2nd year students from BA Contemporary Theatre and BA Acting and Performance courses, on the Collective and Collaborative Practices Unit. My contact with the students was 3 hours a week and the task was to tutor the students on movement based theatre in a devised performance piece, to be placed within the music festival Boomtown. The biggest pedagogical challenges was working with a big disparity in terms of knowledge and skills, as well as difference in how the participants engaged with regards to collaboration which meant that my planning had to be flexible enough to cater for the changes (i.e. the irregular attendance and participation), but at the same time ensure the LO’s were meet for effective learning.
Evaluation
The students, coming from two different BA course have had a different experience in terms of both course content (skills and knowledge), and student to staff ratio (meaning the amount of 1:1 feedback and tutorship received). They also had a differing sense of belonging; some enthusiastic to be studying, others quite vocally disappointed. Adding to this a handful of students were very under confident and relucted to show work in progress. As an associate lecturer, I get chunks of time with students within different units, and in this case, 3 hours a week felt like too little to be able to make a meaningful impact for effective learning. Having taught on the same unit before, but with 6 hours of contact time a week for the full 10 weeks (rather than 7), it felt like a challenge, and my planning had to be streamlined asking, ‘What is the most important? Delivery of skills and knowledge, or space for students to reflect and create in their own (movement) language’. The answer being, of course, both, but I often thought that in this limited time: less is more – plan for less content for a more effective learning that goes deeper.
Moving forward:
What worked well:
Trusting my practise, and that movement sometimes knows based: Using the warm up and movement activities (knowledge and skills using Laban and Viewpoints methods) allowed for the less confident students to have something “concreate” to hold onto, and were not left in the void of “now create something” independently. I.e. this was where I was building skills and knowledge. Furthermore, using exercises such as mirroring and “flocking” encourages the groups kinesthetic response, and kinesthetic empathy – skills fundamental to performing as an ensemble with improvised content (2012, Reynolds D & Matthew R). The more experienced students were also able to grab onto these methods and really begin to enquire and question how they were useful (or not). Similarly, “Coming back to the body” also allowed for the group to find a greater sense of ensemble, or cohesion, as well as an ownership of their work and the space (2014, Bogart & Landau, &, 2009, Moore JL).
Naming not interpreting: Naming what I was seeing, and not interpreting [for example, I can see that you have less energy today, rather than, “why aren’t you giving it 100%”], and,
using open ended questions during crit [for example, “I’m curious to know what the groups thoughts were behind the changes you made”, as opposed to “Why did you change that?] were all important for more effective learning as they proved to gain the students trust in me, as well as leave from for their confidence to grow.
Encouraging the small positives, the small progress: It was important to name when the students had done work outside of the session, as well as name when within the session, they were able to create material together. This sounds obvious, and perhaps (to me) patronising, but this group needed the positive reinforcement for effective learning, it enabled them to become “unstuck”.
Adapting my planning, adapting my approach: I learned that the less confident students responded more positively to a more directive approach. Although this is not my chosen method (to direct, as opposed to work with), the response from the students was a lot more positive. So I began to include in my planning creative exercises that had a more directive approach, without loosing what I already had planned for moments where more advanced students were able to be more divisive. For example, I gave directive task that lead to a concreate outcome, as well as providing an enquiry based approach, for example, giving them a stimuli question to create material from.
What could be improved:
Highlighting the “Pedagogies of ambiguity” (2017, Ori & Shreeve) more. I.e. trust in the process of not knowing how the piece will be, until the piece comes together. Like the positive reinforcement, this group needed more of a reminder to trust the process. Not just by trusting me as an experienced practitioner, but also trusting the other lecturers, as well as the unit or the project brief. This was also seen by a tendency to go with the first outcome, rather than really going through trial and error in the research and development phase.
Planning and delivering 1:1 tutorials mid way through the process. This was not scheduled into my HPL hours, but the students, and myself would have benefited from 1:1 Tutorials mid way through. I believe this would have helped and improved engagement in the mid point dip, as well as the possibility to further adapt lesson plans to the needs of the students for effective learning.
References/bibliography:
Bogart A and Landau T (2014), The viewpoints book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and composition. Nick Hern books.
Moore, CL. (2009). The Harmonic Structure of Movement, Music and Dance According to Rudolf Laban: An Examination of His Unpublished Writings and Drawings. London: Routeledge
Orr, S., and Shreeve, A. (2017). Art and design pedagogy in higher education: knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum. Routledge
Reynolds D & Matthew R (2012), Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, Bristol: Intellect Books.