Where the Action Is: How Drama Contributes to the Art of the Teaching and Learning of English

This paper looks at the way drama works to bring a model of an arts curriculum into reality. He also shows how drama is valuable when discussed as a separate, autonomous subject in the school curriculum as opposed to one subsumed within English. He argues for a view of the arts and gives an example of a sequence of work in an English GCSE class based around Arthur Miller's play View from the Bridge. From this he draws out several strands about the relationship of the drama curriculum to the individual students and teachers, the school, and to culture. He also emphasises the primacy of performance in drama education.     

Model method drawing acts as a double-edged sword for solving inconsistent word problems

Educational Studies in Mathematics - Drawing bar diagrams has been shown to improve performance on mathematical word problems wherein the relational keyword is consistent with the required...     

Teacher practice in multi user virtual environments: A fourth space

Practicing teaching is an important aspect of teacher education, however, its implementation can be limited due to the constraints and risks related to practicing in actual schools. There is evidence in the literature of Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) being used as spaces for training, especially in fields where the costs associated with making a mistake are high. Less has been written on their use for teachers’ professional development. This paper adds to the literature on teacher preparation and the use of MUVEs for professional development in a unique way by presenting a rationale and theoretical basis for why MUVEs might be a viable, alternative space for a range of teacher practice experiences.     

Teachers,Arts Practice and Pedagogy

What are possible overlaps between arts practice and school pedagogy? How is teacher subjectivity and pedagogy affected when teachers engage with arts practice, in particular, theatre practices? We draw on research conducted into the Learning Performance Network (LPN), a project that involved school teachers working with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the University of Warwick. The aim of the commissioned research was to look at the effects on teacher development, focusing on the active rehearsal room pedagogic techniques and ensemble methods of exploring Shakespearean text and performance. The practices of working as an ensemble through rehearsal room pedagogy were central to the LPN. Our interest is in looking for possible shifts in teachers’ subjectivity, their self-perception. What affordances, limitations, accommodations and tensions are experienced by the teachers in transposing work from the rehearsal room to the classroom? We draw on a range of cultural theories that provide complementary perspectives on aspects of subjectivity; these include Vygotskian approaches to the psychology of art and acting. Raymond Williams’s work on the ‘dramatized society’ and Jacques Rancière’s work on spectatorship and pedagogy. Data in the form of excerpts from field notes, taken in an introductory workshop where teachers worked with theatre practitioners, and from transcribed interviews with participants in the project are used to provide evidence of shifts in perspective, self-perception and pedagogic practice.