Teaching and Learning through Dramaturgy: Education as an Artful Engagement 9780367549077, 9780367549084, 9781003091158

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TEACHING AND LEARNING THROUGH DRAMATURGY

The aim of this book is to contribute a dramaturgical perspective to education. The authors write from a dramaturgical perspective about the planning of teaching, leadership in the classroom, the teacher-body, the teacher’s oral skills and ethics, communication, and about the spaces in which teaching takes place. The book is written with the pre-understanding that the ways in which art creates knowledge need to be illuminated and articulated more clearly in educational thinking, thereby enhancing artful engagement in education. Dramaturgical perspectives are presented as such a way – a form of knowledge that the artform of drama/theatre can contribute to teaching and learning in general. Through examples and analyses of empirical material, as well as through theoretical perspectives, the authors show chapter by chapter how dramaturgy and dramaturgically inspired language and concepts create more possibilities of choice for teachers in planning and carrying out their teaching. Teaching and Learning through Dramaturgy brings to the forefront what will be enabled in teaching and planning of teaching, by making use of a dramaturgically inspired language and action, what in principle is possible in every subject. Anna-Lena Østern has since 2007 been Professor of Arts Education in the Department of Teacher Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She has educated drama teachers towards becoming general teachers and teacher educators. She was the academic leader of a national doctoral school for teacher education in Norway, NAFOL, 2010–2015. She is now professor emerita at Åbo Akademi University.

LEARNING THROUGH THEATRE: DRAMATIC OPPORTUNITIES, ENGAGEMENTS AND CHALLENGES Series Editors: John O’Toole and Kelly Freebody

This series commissions in-depth studies of the use of theatre and drama for the widest range of specific purposes - beyond entertainment itself - that involve learning. Contexts include formal educational settings such as schools and colleges, as well as social, communal, health, political, developing world, human services, war zones and commercial contexts. In the fields of applied theatre and drama education, three paradigms often define the purpose and the practice:   

drama as art drama as education drama as social action and change.

Books in the series tackle both the opportunities and the tensions among these paradigms: the developments, the challenges and the achievements in this still-growing field. Critical awareness and appraisal are a key feature, with some titles primarily grounded in theory and analysis, some more illustrative of good and bad practice. Authors include pioneers and established leaders as well as emerging practitioners and scholars. Critical Themes in Drama: Social, Cultural and Political Analysis Kelly Freebody and Michael Finneran Teaching and Learning through Dramaturgy: Education as an Artful Engagement Edited by Anna-Lena Østern For more information, please visit:

TEACHING AND LEARNING THROUGH DRAMATURGY Education as an Artful Engagement

Edited by Anna-Lena Østern

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Anna-Lena Østern; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Anna-Lena Østern to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-54907-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-54908-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-09115-8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

CONTENTS

List of figures Acknowledgements Foreword: Imaginative leaps and a new language for teachers and artists by John O’Toole List of contributors

vii ix x xiii

1 Dramaturgical action repertoire: Openings, breaches, encounters Anna-Lena Østern

1

2 Emergence of a teacher-dramaturg Anna-Lena Østern

9

3 Dramaturgical strategies Anna-Lena Østern

23

4 Addressing contemporary educational contexts Anna-Lena Østern

46

5 The teacher-body as a dramaturgical axis for composing a lesson Tone Pernille Østern and Gunn Engelsrud

55

6 Artistic precision in professional oral skills: Ethics and dramaturgy Kristin Solli Schøien and Anna-Lena Østern 7 Dramaturgical montage in a narrative on outdoor education Egil Galaaen Gjølme and Anna-Lena Østern

67 76

vi Contents

8 The teacher as an atmosphere-creating scenographer of the teaching space Robert Øfsti 9 Negotiating nomadic dramaturgies Anna-Lena Østern and Kristian Nødtvedt Knudsen

92 122

10 Dramaturgy and values of the professional teacher facing a new normal Anna-Lena Østern

134

Index

137

FIGURES

2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 4.1 4.2 4.3 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3

Bodily interpretations of two sculptures Dramaturgical analysis model for theatre/performance Classic dramatic dramaturgy model A teacher student performing the forest nymph ‘Huldra’ Observation form for oral presentations (academic lecture) Epic montage model with different fiction layers Simultaneous dramaturgy model with no overarching montage principle Collage with a montage of one teacher’s ideas for elaboration of text Montage of a language tree by a Norwegian student, second generation immigrant Montage of a language tree by a Tanzanian student with multicultural background Montage of language tree with roots in Masai and Mere Comparative description of theatre forms in three dramaturgical perspectives Relational dramaturgy in educational context A compilation of characteristics of child play and adult art Components of competence in professional practice Artistry in training of professional oral skills A teacher team having a seminar while kayaking Teacher educators planning outdoor swimming activities: dream, believe, achieve as guidelines for the planning A da Vinci bridge constructed during outdoor school

12 13 25 28 31 33 34 36 40 42 43 49 50 53 67 73 77 78 88

viii Figures

7.4 7.5 7.6 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14 8.15 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5

Teacher students try out the da Vinci bridge they have built Bonfire, spring and winter Narrative themes presented as braids in a word cloud Sketch of Munch’s painting History and Øfsti’s development depicting education under a tree Peter Tillberg, Will You Be Profitable, Little Friend? Basic plan of school, hospital and prison Pantheon and basilica, Cathedral of Reims The stoa The auditorium The anatomical theatre The circle – the horseshoe Basic form of a classroom in a base school Four desks, group A Four desks, group B Groups of four and their sightlines: ‘Look at the blackboard’ The long table Inside-out horseshoe Two classrooms around 2000 QR code leading to animation of nomadic dramaturgical form Teacher and students dive into a theme in a one-world society Zooming in on the teacher-dramaturg Zooming in on the diffractive patterns connected to the student/pupil Diffractive patterns from a learning moment, one stop moment in an encounter with teacher and students

89 89 90 93 93 94 97 100 101 102 103 104 107 108 109 110 110 112 123 128 129 130 131

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is a result of a long collaborative process trying out different ways to adapt dramaturgical thinking in education. A huge thank you to the students and colleagues who have experimented with the ideas concerning different dramaturgical entrances. The insights gained are our contribution to making education an artful engagement. The authors gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the blind reviews of the book, and also the English proofreading carried out by John Shepherd. A substantial contribution to the understanding of the international readership is provided by the series editor John O’Toole, who has been of great help and support through his careful reading and insightful comments on the book’s content. Thank you also for writing the foreword to the book. A warm thank you goes to copyeditor Hamish Ironside. The backdrop for this book is the Norwegian edition of Dramaturgy in Educational Context (Norwegian: Dramaturgi i didaktisk kontekst, 2014) published by Fagbokforlaget. Fagbokforlaget’s editor-in-chief Roald Valle has generously acknowledged rights to new editions, revisions, updates and new chapters, considering this book a new book. Thank you to the research participants Mari and Ingeborg for their sharing of thoughts about the teacher body as dramaturgical axis in Chapter 5. Thanks to the following artists for visualizations re-designed and designed by Anette Stølsdokken Østern, for the sketches in Chapter 8 to Robert Øfsti, and to Mads Nødtvedt for the animation of nomadic dramaturgy in Chapter 9.

FOREWORD Imaginative leaps and a new language for teachers and artists John O’Toole

To English speakers’ ears, the word ‘dramaturgy’ is still quite unfamiliar, or has only recently become known – so for those who have still to become acquainted with it, Wikipedia has helpfully and simply defined it as ‘the study of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage’. Similarly, few of us really know what dramaturgs are or what they do (or is it ‘dramaturges’? – we’re not even sure of the spelling). This is quite widely true even in the worlds of anglophone professional theatre, where there are not many companies that choose to afford a paid dramaturg, and of academia. In recent years university theatre studies departments have started to espouse the theory and practice fairly enthusiastically, but the word is still virtually unknown or unused by practitioners in drama education and applied theatre, who often co-habit in education faculties, but with little interaction with their theatre studies colleagues. That is particularly significant for this book, because of course drama teachers know intimately the world of education and schooling, and spend considerable efforts trying to embed our practice in it. Not so in Europe, where the word originated – invented in Germany in the eighteenth century by playwright Gotthold Lessing, who was employed by the Theatre of Hamburg as the world’s first dramaturg. There, both theatres and academia are quite differently regarded. Typically, they don’t just have ‘theatre studies’ (usually, here, sequestered within an English or Arts Faculty and still just emerging from a ‘lit. crit.’ tradition that privileged written literature over performance), but a long, robust and assertive tradition of theatre science – Teaterwissenschaft in Germany, Teatervitenskap in Norwegian. This is not to underplay the continuing respect for, and systematic study of Art and the aesthetic in these European academies. By contrast, the word ‘aesthetic’ in English was appropriated for many years by the visual artists and until recently largely forgotten by many drama and theatre scholars. In the same way, the word ‘science’ was studiously avoided by the generations

Foreword xi

of drama scholars who were influenced by and products of the ‘two cultures’ (arts versus sciences) damningly identified in C. P. Snow’s memorable phrase back in 1959.1 The European tradition of scientific, analytical thinking in the arts is continuously being applied to developing dramaturgy into new forms that respond to the post-modern revolutions in contemporary theatre practice. And in Norway at least, the Teatervitenskap experts do talk to – and collaborate with – their colleagues in education. As a vivid example: at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, drama and theatre can be studied in the Faculty of Humanities, and drama and theatre education for teacher legitimation can be studied in the Department of Teacher Education in the Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences. (Note the institutional titles here, which unself-consciously give the lie to Snow’s crippling categorization.) It is therefore highly appropriate – from the horse’s mouth, as it were – that this book is written by a cast of distinguished European educators and artists, and its ideas had their first incarnation in Norwegian. Two of these, including their inspirational lead author Anna-Lena Østern, are experienced also in European dramaturgy. This has inspired them to make the imaginative leap that is at the core of the book. The whole book is imbued with a deep understanding of education, art and theatre, underpinning this creative breakthrough. As a drama teacher and educator for over half a century, I have instinctively and through observation of practice long realized that drama has more to offer the world of formal education than just another subject to clutter up the timetable. Especially for those constructivist teachers and educators who see learning as a collaborative and social activity, of dialogical transactions rather than one-way transmission of teacher’s knowledge; those who strive for the democratization of education, and look (often in vain) for a more embodied pedagogy, and one that can recognize the emotional and affective content of knowledge and understanding. These are the teachers for whom drama has plenty to offer, but until they actually experience drama themselves, most are unconvinced as I struggle to explain to them that there is an important, almost unrecognized aesthetic component to all teaching, because a teacher is a performer, etc., and a classroom is a place for dramatic dialogue, scripted and improvised (isn’t it?) … They look around their classrooms, and they examine their practice – the practice they have learned in conventional education – and they don’t really get the connection, other than that drama does engage the kids and seems to keep them occupied. This book can therefore come as a godsend, because it takes our timorous efforts, and turns the whole argument upside down, quite assertively taking the challenge to the teachers. As you will see throughout the book, pretty well the whole of the action in the classroom, the classroom itself, and especially the teacher’s planning, can be both explained and improved through the practice of dramaturgical thinking. The book constantly emphasizes the aesthetic in all teaching – as one of the basic and usually unacknowledged principles of pedagogy. It’s a bold as well as an imaginative claim, and the authors back it up with plenty of examples that are rooted in their practice. Not just in drama and arts lessons, but across the curriculum, the teacher

xii Foreword

becomes simultaneously the playwright, the director and the actor, performing and improvising a giant dramatic dialogue called a school day. As the book vividly explains, this is not just a handy metaphor, but one that can be literally brought to life. John O’Toole August 2020

Note 1 In ‘The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution’, Rede Lecture, Cambridge University, UK, May. Snow was himself both a distinguished novelist and scientist.

CONTRIBUTORS

Gunn Engelsrud is Professor at the Western Norway University of Applied Science, Department of Sport, Food and Natural Sciences. She is educated both as a physiotherapist and as physical education teacher and has a PhD from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Oslo. She has expertise in qualitative research, phenomenology, body appreciation, dance and exploratory movement, gender and diversity; fundamental problems and questions related to those subjects are her main areas of research concern. She tutors PhD students and works with several interdisciplinary research projects on teaching and learning in higher education. Egil Galaaen Gjølme holds a Master of Sports Psychology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), where he is Associate Professor in Sports Education in the Department of Teacher Education. He is an experienced sports teacher in upper secondary education and teacher education. He is currently leading a research project on ‘water competence’ and has previously been leader of the EU project ‘More Active Children and Young People’. In teacher education he specializes in outdoor education and water activities, including teaching adults to swim. Kristian Nødtvedt Knudsen (Ph.D.) is Associate Professor in Theatre at the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts, University of Agder. His current research focus is on digitalization and performative approaches to arts education and artsbased research. He is chief editor of Journal for Research in Arts and Sports Education (JASEd). His main teaching, research and developmental areas are arts education, dramaturgy, performativity and artistic research. Robert Øfsti was educated as a preschool teacher. He has a Bachelor in Arts and Craft from the University College in Telemark, and he has studied art history at

xiv Contributors

Bergen University, where he gained a Masters in Art History. He has been university lecturer in arts and craft education at the Kindergarten Teacher Education in Trondheim (DMMH), and more recently at the Department of Teacher Education in the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He is now the leader of the Cultural Heritage Management Office in Steinkjer, and he is a performing visual artist. He has co-edited three volumes of Look at Trondelag! Art and Visual Culture in Central Norway (2010–2012; the title is translated from Norwegian). Anna-Lena Østern is Dr of Pedagogy and Licentiate of Philosophy from Åbo Akademi University, Finland and she has a Master’s in Drama and Theatre from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She has been Professor of Swedish Language and Literature Education at Åbo Akademi University, Department of Teacher Education. She has also been invited Professor of Drama Education at the University of Jyväskylä, Department of Teacher Education, and since 2007 Professor of Arts Education in the Department of Teacher Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, (NTNU). She has in all these positions educated drama teachers. She was the academic leader of a national doctoral school for teacher education in Norway, NAFOL, 2010–2015. She is founding editor of JASEd. Anna-Lena Østern is professor emerita at NTNU and at Åbo Akademi University. She has co-edited (with Kristian Nødtvedt Knudsen) a volume in Routledge Research in Education: Performative Approaches in Arts Education: Artful Teaching, Learning and Research (2019). Tone Pernille Østern (Dr of Arts in Dance) is Professor in Arts Education with a focus on Dance at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She is active as artist/researcher/teacher, with research interests including socially engaged arts, arts and dance education in contemporary times, bodily learning, aesthetic approaches to learning, expanded choreography, and performative research. She is Editor-in-chief for channel Dance Articulated (open access, peer-reviewed), and editorial board member for the Journal for Research in Arts and Sports Education (open access, peer-reviewed), where she has been co-editor for the special issues Doing Research with the Arts (2017) and Community Arts/Arts Education (2019). She is Head of Arts, Physical Education and Sports at the Department for Teacher Education at NTNU, and extensively supervises Master’s and PhD students. John O’Toole was the Foundation Chair of Arts Education at the University of Melbourne. He has been teaching drama and arts education for over half a century, to all ages and on all continents, and has written numerous books, both classroom texts and research. In 2001 he received the American Alliance for Theater and Education Lifetime Research Award, and in 2014 he was awarded the Order of Australia (AM) for service to drama education. He is also the series editor for Learning Through Theatre.

Contributors xv

Kristin Solli Schøien has a doctoral degree (Phil. Dr) from Åbo Akademi University in Finland. She is a performing singer and composer. She is Associate Professor in Pedagogy, with a focus on pedagogical supervision, at the University of South-East Norway (USN). Schøien has initiated a research and development project called ‘Professional Orality in Teacher Education’. She works extensively with professional development for teacher educators and teacher students. She is the lead author of a book in progress, Clear and Responsible: Professional Oral Expressive Skills, on the importance of the teacher’s oral skills.

1 DRAMATURGICAL ACTION REPERTOIRE Openings, breaches, encounters Anna-Lena Østern

What does something in an educational context mean? Our teacher education workplace has been an old farm with a courtyard. When in the morning we, the teacher educators, have driven up a stylish birch alley, parked the car in a place with a beautiful view of a fjord and walked into the courtyard, we have felt affinity with our workplace, with colleagues and students. We can turn around and look up to the fields with forests, hills, mountains and water. We can walk into the yard with a yellow wooden house, where our offices are. We have seen the little store house, the big store house and ‘låven’ (the barn), which is a modern teaching building. There is also a research centre, in the style of a plant bio centre which is also affiliated with the teacher education. This place is a good place for teacher education – a place with atmosphere and character, we think. Throughout the years we have worked here, we have had access to an extended educational space, through this location. Does the space and environment mean anything to the quality of the teaching? This question has been actualized, because this teacher education unit has now moved twice to more urban spaces on its campus. Both spaces have had a different kind of aesthetic expression, consisting of concrete, open office solutions and a lot of windows. This kind of change is something many teachers know about. One seldom hears sadness and protest over such a change, but it makes those who are affected by it aware that space and surroundings are of great importance for the teaching that is being carried out and the educational process that is taking place.

The voices of the pupils and the students, and relational dramaturgy A classroom can be considered a field where three different forms of culture meet and break against each other: a subject-oriented, specialized cultural form, the pupils’

2 Østern

cultural forms (which are not specialized by subject) and a ‘schoolish’ cultural form. The ‘schoolish’ cultural form consists of the institution’s frames and working forms. The ‘schoolish’ cultural form for reproducing and maintaining a distinction between the teaching content and the methods used can be criticized. In other words, it is not very flexible. In describing a dramaturgical perspective on pedagogy, as well as on teaching and learning, the authors of this book wish to open up forms of understanding in which the three cultural forms can be opened, encountered and broken against each other. In the book we write from a dramaturgical perspective about planning teaching, classroom leadership, the teacher’s body, professional oral skills, communication, about the teaching space, and what views of knowledge different dramaturgies entail. We have written the book based on our foreknowledge that art’s way of creating knowledge must be clarified and appreciated more clearly in pedagogical content and subject content. We see dramaturgical perspectives as a form of knowledge where the art subject theatre can contribute to pedagogy and subject content knowledge in general. Through examples and analysis of empirical data, as well as through theoretical perspectives, in the following chapters the authors show how dramaturgy and dramaturgically inspired language and concepts create a wider range of choices that teachers can use when planning and carrying out teaching. The book brings to the forefront what happens to teaching and its planning, in principle in all subjects, by applying dramaturgically inspired language and action. In teaching moments, teachers must make many choices. The teacher’s action repertoire is developed when more options are available. This is where access to a language, or in other words a mindset and awareness, becomes crucial for a broader horizon of possibility. In this book, the authors attempt to articulate in words and thereby communicate circumstances that may otherwise only be perceived more or less as tacit knowledge.

The dramaturgy metaphor used in composition of teaching and learning sequences The dramaturgy metaphor has long been attractive in several areas such as sociology, journalism, organizational development and leadership. Erving Goffman (1959) is known for having presented a sociological concept of ‘role’ through his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. ‘Staging’ is a term that is used both about young people trying out their identity and about teachers planning their teaching. In this book we show some of the opportunities that open up if we use the concept of ‘role’ as it appears in dramaturgical tradition and understanding. We thus bring back our understanding of the word role from sociology to dramaturgy. If at all, dramaturgy is mentioned in connection with teaching just in passing, and often in connection with an aesthetic approach. Magda Romanska (2014) notes that dramaturgy has turned into a worldwide field of interest in the functions of art. This concerns not only theatre, performance,

Dramaturgical action repertoire

3

puppetry, dance, music and opera, but also mass media such as film, television series and digital games. Janek Szatkowski comments on this: This is by no means a coincidence, but just another example of how the 21st century will construe one world society in co-emergence with the new media matrix born by the digital alphabet (1/0) and computers’ increased ability to handle everything representable with unprecedented speed, memory, capacity, connectivity, and interactivity on the World Wide Web. (Szatkowski, 2019, p. 6) Szatkowski defines dramaturgy as ‘production of and reflection on communication of communication to society about society’ (ibid., p. 6). He thus defines a theory of dramaturgy as a wide-ranging concept. Dramaturgy is used in various contexts beyond the world of fictive storytelling. Dramaturgy is in the news, in music videos and in advertising. We also use dramaturgy in planning of school lessons and lectures: Life itself also has its dramaturgy, by the way not so different from the Aristotelian model for a linear drama, with beginning, middle and end, as well as turning points along the way. And because we have an intuitive sense of rhythm, pulse and structure, it is possible to communicate through dramaturgy. (Engelstad, 2000, p. 29f, author’s translation) I will briefly mention some educators who have pointed out the possibilities of dramaturgy in teaching and learning. Aesthetic quality in teaching through concepts such as balance, continuity, interaction, feeling and perception is mentioned in many texts. Tom Barone, Elliot Eisner and Patricia Leavy have written extensively about the importance of arts education (e.g. Barone & Eisner, 2012; Leavy, 2018). Of special interest for the perspectives in this book are Eisner’s concepts of artistry and artistically crafted work (Eisner, 1995). He elaborates three features of works of art. The first one is: Artistically crafted works of art often make aspects of the world vivid and generate a sense of empathy. … [They] create the kind of ‘wide-awakeness’ that Maxine Greene talks about. … artistically crafted work also has the capacity to put us in the shoes of those we do not know and thus foster empathic understanding. (Eisner, 1995, pp. 2–3) A second feature is that artistically crafted works of art have a capacity to generate awareness of particularity: ‘What artistically crafted work does is to create a paradox of revealing what is universal by examining what is particular’ (ibid., p. 3). Finally, he mentions the process of being artistically engaged: ‘I believe this process rests

4 Østern

upon the ability to negotiate the tension between control and surrender’ (ibid., p. 5). He brings these features further into artistically crafted research: The conclusion I draw from this brief analysis is that artistically crafted research can inform practicing educators and scholars in ways that are both powerful and illuminating. Hence artistically crafted research helps us understand much of what is much important about schools. (Eisner, 1995, p. 5) He concludes that a teacher’s work will benefit from artistry in teaching. This focus on artistic aspects is part of a performative movement in education, where research finds new ways of inquiring and presenting production of knowledge (Gergen & Gergen, 2018). Tor-Helge Allern (2010) writes about dramaturgy and how it can be used to understand and create the basis for different teaching and learning processes. He further writes that dramaturgy expresses a view of knowledge. Thus, different dramaturgies can be linked to different perspectives on knowledge processes (Allern, 2003). The work on curriculum is seen here as a dramatic work, which is designed, staged and received by an audience. To understand how the drama works, one must know the role of the author, actor, producer, staging and audience. One also needs to know how the interaction between all these agents works, to evoke the dramatic form in teaching, as through a theatre experience.

Pedagogical reduction? Concepts such as theatre, dramaturgy and aesthetics are thus central to the teacher educators and researchers mentioned above. They point to the possibilities that these concepts allow for the development of thinking about teaching and learning. I am not aware of any educator who has criticized such thinking, but criticism of using concepts of art form to revitalize pedagogy is, of course, possible. Such criticism might fall under the term ‘pedagogical reduction’, implying a belief that what the world of theatre has to offer in terms of pedagogy can be reduced to a few simple steps. In this book, however, the basic idea is that pedagogy is an aesthetic subject, and that art’s way of creating knowledge is something that also belongs to pedagogy; however, this artistic dimension is not yet a fully developed knowledge field. By presenting teaching planning and classroom leadership in a dramaturgical perspective, as comprising the curriculum, the authors of this book select some aspects of dramaturgical thinking and use them as lenses to understand and develop, and indeed, help revitalize teaching and classroom leadership. From the world of theatre, the authors take the notion of ‘audience awareness’ and the theatre’s understanding of the crucial necessity of having something important to say – and choosing the right means to say it.

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An aesthetic dimension as a navigation tool in a complex information society The challenge for schools in a (late) modern and increasingly complex information society is formulated in a question by Søren Langager (2010, p. 21, author’s translation) in the following way: ‘what is the learning process that opens up the experience of judging, interpreting and action in situations where the answers are not given in advance, and where the routine is not enough?’ He suggests that aesthetics comes in as a professional dimension, by relying on interpretations and judgments with no unambiguous answers. Young people today must be something special, positively different from others. Therefore, Langager believes that the aesthetic has a task in strengthening the individual pupil’s subjective, expressive and unique expression (Langager, 2010, p. 23). Niels Lehmann (2013) suggests that one can reformulate an aesthetic that captures some of the significance of children’s and youth culture, because aesthetic experiences offer otherness experiences, which are therefore different from what they are used to. An otherness experience can contribute to opening one’s eyes to the architecture of the local community, or to discover nature in new and different ways. Through this book, the authors show how the aesthetic dimension can be radically and fundamentally reconceptualized through dramaturgical thinking into new subjects and professions, thus serving as a navigational tool for both teachers and students.

Chapters in the book In Chapter 2, ‘Emergence of a teacher-dramaturg’, the author takes the reader on a journey into the world of the dramaturg, a journey that outlines contours of what responsible and good teaching planning can be. In planning teaching with dramaturgical qualities, the teacher makes the usual unusual. The dramaturg Jane Rasch describes a poor play as one that is predictable, without conflict, with the dramatic action in limp and incoherent sequences, with no clear protagonist, no motives, no clear intentions or emotions. This is what today’s teenage student would describe as ‘boring’, a word that students readily use about school education. Predictability is needed in human relationships, even in the relationship of teacher-student. With such confidence there is room to think about – and re-think – how the student is guided through the school as a collaborating partner in the educational processes. In Chapter 3, ‘Dramaturgical strategies’, the author introduces dramaturgical models that are used in theatre and film. She gives some suggestions on how dramaturgy can be used in educational contexts. She points to simultaneous dramaturgy and play with fiction or metafiction as relevant elements also in pedagogy and teaching and learning. In Chapter 4, ‘Addressing temporary educational contexts’, the author describes how theatre addresses contemporary big questions and asks how the school deals with urgent questions of power, justice, injustice and values. She asks: How can education meet the change in people’s perception that technology and the medialization of society have brought about?

6 Østern

In Chapter 5, ‘The teacher-body as a dramaturgical axis in composing a lesson’, Tone Pernille Østern and Gunn Engelsrud write about how humans are entangled with the world and materiality, and that teachers sense, understand, relate and communicate as bodies. The chapter is about the teacher’s professional practice from a physical perspective, about the teacher-body’s importance to classroom management. The authors point out the importance of the teacher’s bodily sensations, correctness, breathing, presence and dynamics in the teaching moment. In Chapter 6, Kristin Solli Schøien and Anna-Lena Østern write about ‘Artistic precision in professional oral skills: ethics and dramaturgy’. An important part of teachers’ work constitutes being seen, heard and understood in communicative practice in encounters with pupils, colleagues and parents. This performative relational communication practice is a cross-disciplinary competence, which, independent of subject, is of great importance for the performance of pedagogical practice. The teaching profession is a phonic profession, and personal expression through language, voice, body, gaze and face is of decisive importance in a teacher’s daily work. In this chapter, the elements in this competence are described. The authors identify and make visible how it can be trained, developed and learnt. The dramaturgy of oral presentation is a powerful tool, and it has ethical implications connected to being clear and responsible in communication as a teacher. In Chapter 7, ‘Dramaturgical montage in a narrative on outdoor education’, Egil Galaaen Gjølme and Anna-Lena Østern write about extended educational space, The chapter alternates between a narrative of outdoor education in teacher education, and a thematic analysis of this narrative. This thematic analysis allows for dramaturgical thinking by highlighting a meaning layer connected to teaching and learning, a sensuous meaning layer and a metaphorical meaning layer. Through the dramaturgical perspective, an interlacing pattern emerges, one that makes central themes in the teacher educator’s pedagogical view become visible. In Chapter 8, Robert Øfsti writes about ‘The teacher as an atmosphere-creating scenographer of the teaching space’. He elaborates how different educational spaces can open up or limit teaching and learning because of architecture and classroom form. By organizing the space and the furniture in different ways, the teacher adjusts to and invites different types of activities. The teacher as a scenographer is a term borrowed from the theatre world. Not long ago, the podium in the classroom was elevated, and all students sat at desks facing the podium. The classroom organization signalled clear power relations, with focus on the teacher as the dominant person. Today, there are many flexible solutions for classroom organization, enabling the teacher to stage different types of activities with different degrees of freedom. The point of the chapter is that it is important how this staging is done, that it is a competence area for the teacher, and that aesthetic knowledge is required to create spaces for learning in an appropriate way. Some thoughts about the dramaturgy of digitalized teaching and learning spaces end the chapter. In Chapter 9, Anna-Lena Østern and Kristian Nødtvedt Knudsen elaborate nomadic teaching and learning from a dramaturgical perspective under the heading ‘Negotiating nomadic dramaturgies’. The authors make a leap into the present day

Dramaturgical action repertoire

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by introducing relational materialism and nomadic dramaturgies as possible developments of dramaturgical thinking in education for a one-world society, where the digital and the analogue are intertwined and the classroom has no borders. Maybe it is not even a classroom anymore. Nomadic students and a nomadic teacher find themes and spaces together. In the final chapter (Chapter 10), ‘Dramaturgy and values of the professional teacher facing a new normal’, the totality of the book’s contribution is summed up by lead author Anna-Lena Østern. Some of the possibilities of dramaturgical language lie, according to the authors, in greater sensitivity to the situation – what we call ‘presence in practice’. Presence in practice can be exercised by being present in creative moments that educational processes necessarily entail. Good teaching is dynamic and processual. Carrying out dynamic and process-oriented teaching is a challenge to the language used in teaching and teaching planning. The classroom here and now is full of unplanned processes and action elements that the teacher will have to deal with collaboratively with the students and the theme studied in order to make education an artful engagement. According to the authors, dramaturgical thinking offers a language and ways of thinking that dynamically capture the teaching processes. The chapters in the book show how teaching and classroom management can resemble the form of the theatre, where – as if studying a foreign world – we can look at this world as if for the first time, with a dramaturgical gaze. The Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky (1917) writes about ostranenjie – to make something familiar strange by disrupting the actor’s and the audience’s perceptions of reality, when these are taken for granted. It is possible through this movement not to perceive things automatically and to experience a habitual revitalization, which may mean experiencing the world again as if for the first time. Urgent questions about the tasks of education in a time when the outbreak of a pandemic corona virus makes society become destabilized, changes society tremendously. In this book we bring forward a relational dramaturgy as a contribution to the resources needed in order to cope with the challenges education faces. Education experiences ‘a new normal’ that demands new answers, and seeks for new ways of teaching and learning. Through the chapters in this book, we writers open doors to a potential space in education, a space that has been part of a previously almost silent experiential knowledge. We articulate a part of this knowledge with the desire to be voices in society’s great discussion of how teaching can be organized with an overall view – in this book, with the dramaturg’s gaze.

References Allern, T. H. (2003). Drama og erkjennelse: En undersøkelse av forholdet mellom dramaturgi og epistemologi i drama og dramapedagogikk [Drama and insight: An exploration of the relationship between dramaturgy and epistemology in drama and drama pedagogy]. Dissertation, NTNU, Institutt for kunst- og medievitenskap, Trondheim, Norway.

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Allern, T. H. (2010). Dramaturgy in teaching and learning. In A. L. Østern, M. Björkgren & B. Snickars-von Wright (eds), Drama in three movements: A Ulyssean encounter (pp. 95–111). Vasa, Finland: Faculty of Education at Åbo Akademi University. Barone, T. & Eisner, E. (2012). Arts based research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Engelstad, A. (2000). Den forføreriske filmen: Om bruk av film i norskfaget [The seductive film: Use of film in Norwegian language art classes], 3rd edition. Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk Forlag. Eisner, E. (1995). What artistically crafted research can help us to understand about schools. Educational Theory, 45 (1), 1–6. Gergen, K. & Gergen, M. (2018). The performative movement in social sciences. In P. Leavy (ed.), Handbook of arts-based research (pp. 54–67). New York: Guilford Press. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor Books. Langager, S. (2010). Den æstetiske dimension [The aesthetic dimension]. In A. Knudsen & C. N. Jensen (eds.), Ungdomsliv og læreprocesser i det moderne samfund [Lives of youth and learning processes in the modern society], 2nd edition (pp.17–24). Værløse: Billesø og Baltzer. Leavy, P. (ed.) (2018). Handbook of arts education research. New York: Guilford Press. Lehmann, N. O. (2013). En mangfoldighed af andethedserfaringer: Om æstetik på flere måder [A multitude of otherness experiences: About aesthetics in several ways]. Tidsskrift for børne – og ungdomskultur, 57, 25–36. Romanska, M. (ed.) (2014). The Routledge companion to dramaturgy. Abingdon: Routledge. Shklovsky, V. (1917). Art as technique. Retrieved from https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/first/en122/lecturelist-2015-16-2/ shklovsky.pdf. Szatkowski, J. (2019). A theory of dramaturgy. New York: Routledge.

2 EMERGENCE OF A TEACHER-DRAMATURG Anna-Lena Østern

What story do I want to tell? A dramaturg poses one main question: What story do I want to tell? The answer to this basic question to the notion of performance; as expressed in theatrical terms, is the most important thing that is conveyed through the performance, through the characters’ and the situation’s most significant changes. Director and researcher Anne Meek formulated this in the following way: Why break the silence of the universe? There must be a reason: theatre must be of significance, have something at heart, otherwise the theatre is dead. Thinking dramaturgically means seeking answers to the two questions mentioned above. This means thinking in advance, and then giving suggestions as to how something is realized based on those considerations. Dramaturgy in theatre can be about the special way in which a story is told. It can be described as the way in which a narrative is composed, presented and implemented. In working on a performance, there are various dramaturgical analyses that can be performed. Torunn Kjølner and Janek Szatkowski mention four, that capture the whole process from idea to completed performance: 1. 2. 3. 4.

A theatre text analysis that relates to the starting point: the text. A production analysis (transformation to stage text). A performance analysis (the intention of the director and actors realized in the performance). A reception analysis (how the performance is received by the audience). (Kjølner & Szatkowski, 1991, p. 122)

These analyses can be recognized in the work of a teacher:  

what material should be the basis for the teaching theme; how the topic should be transformed for a specific teaching session;

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what the teacher wants to emphasize; and the students’ learning, perception and evaluation of the teaching session.

How I tell and what I ask for Throughout this chapter I will normally usually use the word students for those who are taught. These can be kindergarten children, students in school, or adults during education, including colleagues in teacher education. The analysis in this chapter is exploratory, alternating between describing and interpreting theatrical dramaturgy, then adjusting that to suggest how dramaturgical thinking can enrich teacher thinking. Through this exchange, I seek to answer the question of how dramaturgical thinking can be a guide in educational contexts. Here is the first of some empirical examples of dramaturgical thinking from educational contexts I have worked in.

Example 1: Philosophical walk It is the last day of an academic course, about the theory of science. Several lecturers have lectured on philosophers’ thinking. The students have worked in colloquia groups with the syllabus. Today, this work will be presented. The course programme states, ‘Philosophical walk’. In a long corridor outside the classroom, I have glued about 30 images of philosophers who have been featured on the course, as young people. The students’ task is to choose one of the pictures that they think shows an interesting person (they do not know for sure who the picture represents). After the choice, each one stands in front of the picture and tries to take on the expression of the person and imagine a philosophical sentence this person might have said. In turns each embodies the expression which has hooked them as a statue, and speaks the sentence. After this, the students find the name and main ideas of the philosopher. They have taken a philosophical walk in about 45 minutes.

The teacher’s dramaturgical thinking in the planning of the task in Example 1 is based on the students’ prior knowledge, and with the idea of starting the day’s teaching with something that connects to the work the students have prepared. At the same time, the task contains surprise and something new in their course context. The task title, ‘Philosophical walk’, is made concrete in a long corridor outside the classroom. Moreover, my wish as their teacher is that the students should engage in dialogue with the task and develop knowledge through elaboration, performatively. The task is a challenge and can be a little provocative, but at the same time invites a pleasant and playful presentation of the material they have been working on for two months. With the use of dramaturgical thinking, this work session can be said to have provide a visual, concrete hook throughout the encounters with the series of images in the hallway. The challenge for students varies between opening up and closing off with respect to what and how they are expected to work. They have the freedom to choose, and the choices ahead are also theirs. The actual task solution, with the embodiment of an expression they interpret, is the peak point of the session. In these presentations, there is the possibility that the energy will

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become self-reinforcing through the students inspiring each other into making clear and intense expressions. Borrowing an expression from system theory, this is in theatre vocabulary called autopoiesis (cf. Fischer-Lichte, 2008, p. 39). It means a self-reinforcing feedback loop (here, of positive energy) between the participants in the event. FischerLichte uses the autopoiesis concept from system theory for what can happen between actor and audience: a self-reinforcing movement of communication between them. These are what might be called magical moments in the theatre. The last part of the session involves the students writing with a marker pen (on the image) the names and main ideas of the philosophers they together recognize. Finally, with the help of the teachers, the identities of the remaining philosophers are clarified. Thus, the hour ends with reflections on why some philosophers’ images were not chosen and the reason for others being chosen. Statues or sculptures become a multimodal transformation (when for instance starting from a verbal text and ending up with a body sculpture), an interpretation that causes the sculpture’s creator to focus strongly and work on the creation of bodily meaning. Sculptures are often called still images in dramatic educational contexts, and when working with sculpture, a teacher’s documentation with photography can add a layer of meaning. In working with still images, the task can be to summarize content in a literary text, a movie, or a text by selecting, for example, three images that show the central aspects in that text. The statues shown in Figure 2.1 depict a family imitating the positions of sculptures in Vigeland Park in Oslo, partly a playful walk in the park, but also finding an affinity within the family, which confirms family ties. There is also a cultural aspect and an educational aspect, through the experience of getting to know Vigeland’s sculpture world and by trying out the still image drama convention. The idea of interpreting through the body can be used as a dramaturgical variation in many contexts. Another type of embodiment is shown when pupils, for example, depict natural phenomena. An example of a teacher dramatizing with a varied approach to interpretation is shown in Example 2.

Example 2: Children interpreting old poetry with a current theme The pupils in grade 2 [eight years old] in a school in Finland have with some difficulty read an excerpt from Johan Ludvig Runeberg’s poem ‘The farmer Paavo’, a piece about frost that destroys the rye-harvest in autumn that is worded as follows: ‘Autumn came, and the cold took everything left’. This piece of text is an empty space – that information about how the cold took what was left of the rye-harvest is omitted. How can the text be interpreted, and the empty space filled with meaning? The teacher chose ‘cold’ music with treble boost and asked the students in groups to figure out what the text could mean. In one group the pupils stand in a line next to each other and show the wandering cold that sweeps across the fields – concentrated and quietly rippling a wave over the field, and the seeds of the rye lie flattened and destroyed.

The teacher’s goal is to help the students interpret the text. She chooses the form of music and movement and allows students to shape the stage text. Different

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FIGURE 2.1 Bodily interpretations of two sculptures. Source: photos by A.-L. Østern, sculptures by Gustav Vigeland

student groups are given different parts of the text; thus, the students are alternately actors and audience. Even though the poem is an old one, rye bread is still a Finnish staple. The pupils have baked rye bread as part of their work with the text. They have been in the roles of the farmer Paavo and his wife. The teacher has challenged the students to work through various sense-based, physical approaches. In this staging, teacher-elected music contributed a layer of meaning to support the students’ bodily expression. This led to a dialogue between the teachers and school students about how today goods are distributed differently and globally. With these two examples as a background, what follows is a preliminary planning model for teachers to think dramaturgically, compose teaching and learning sequences, and thus become emerging teacher-dramaturgs.

Planning with the use of a dramaturgically inspired analysis model Thinking like a dramaturg in teaching means planning in whole cycles, like beginning-process-end product-evaluation. This planning is usually carried out by the teacher or the teacher team. Theatre and education are different contexts, but

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with a surprising number of opportunities for transfer and adaptation that can enrich the self-reflection of educators in terms of goals and forms of teaching. In the preliminary analysis model shown in Figure 2.2, the different phases of the analytical work are concretized, and show how some concepts in use can become tools for analysis. In the model there are two horizons of understanding that form twin axes, which must meet and preferably overlap each other, at least to some extent: the production team (author, dramaturg, director and actors) on the one hand, and the audience on the other. There are three big ‘boxes’ in the model:   

idea; stage text; and audience.

Between the large boxes there are two smaller boxes, or ‘filters’. A filter in this model makes some aspects more noticeable than others. The filter between idea and stage text includes choice of dramaturgical entrance (time, space, body and multimodal text). The filter between stage text and audience includes code competence, and implies choice of form, partly familiar to the students, but also something fresh and new. Code competence, for example, denotes knowledge and experience of specific theatre forms and theatre characters. Code competence can act as a reinforcement of communication, but also as an obstacle to communication and disturbing ‘noise’. Between the filters and the various boxes, communication flows back and forth as the arrows indicate, but only when the performance communicates well. To try to reach that goal, the dramaturg makes a target group analysis, that is, they must be aware of what audience they are planning for. Who is the idea for?

FIGURE 2.2 Dramaturgical analysis model for theatre/performance. Source: artistic re-design by Anette Stølsdokken-Østern

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What kind of knowledge about theatre and theatre forms does this group have? What can be introduced as part of the fictional contract with the audience? For example, in a traditional theatre performance, the fictional contract maintains that the distinction between stage and audience is maintained. A contemporary performance often has interactivity planned into the performance. The audience knows in advance some key things about how it should relate to the performance as fiction: in the programme description, the genre is most often mentioned (i.e. whether it is, for example, a comedy or tragedy). It can also be worth knowing in advance whether it is a musical, a performance for children or for teenagers, etc. In some performances, interactive sequences are included that must be negotiated (as part of the contract) during the performance, as Example 3 shows with the performance of two Sami dancers.

Example 3: Fictional contract negotiated during the performance A performance which uses contemporary dance design form, alongside Sami cultural expressions for gratitude, community and joy, begins with a display of video clips from research with older Sami persons. Then the Sami research participants’ own movement stories are built into the performance. The audience is taken into the universe that is being depicted, because everyone takes off their shoes before they go out on the dance floor. Coffee is served as an interactive part, and the spectators are asked to sit on the floor to watch the TV screen. A long way into the dance performance, the spectators are drawn into a play a with a change of space, and at the end, after the dancers have finished the performance, they invite all the spectators into a long line dance that curls around in the space.

This interactivity is created during the performance itself, and is based on an unspoken premise, namely that those who are present are interested in indigenous Sami culture and dance. The interactivity invitations start with ‘low threshold’ (unthreatening) tasks such as taking off shoes, grabbing a cup of coffee, sitting down on the dance floor. These tasks are followed by more demanding ones: playing the space change game and finally entering the dance performance. In teaching, the teacher’s daily negotiations with the students include a contract for the teaching and the interaction for one lesson (which is usually unspoken and implicit).

The idea and the first filter choice of (dramaturgical entrance) The ‘idea’ box of Figure 2.2 articulates the starting point for what is to become a performance: what it ‘is all about’. The quotation marks around ‘is all about’ indicate that the idea can be completely designed, partially designed, or rather ‘raw’ – unprocessed and open. In the work of producing a performance (the ‘stage text’ box), the idea is made explicit, and a lot of choices are made. The first filter includes the choice of different dramaturgical entrances (time, space, body, text) through theatre signs: scenography, roles, use of light, music, sound, voice and multimodal text. The relationship between different signs is also shaped, based on the idea that something is in the foreground and thus something else in

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the background. During the performance, what was in the background can emerge into the foreground when it becomes important. In this phase, the production team makes the target group analysis and choice of who is the intended recipient of the performance. In collaborative theatre processes, which are based on cooperation between different groups, the audience members themselves are also involved in this phase. Thus, improvisation becomes an important way of working.

Stage text When the choice of form has been tried out and clear, the performance has a form and a means of communication. The performance is most often built according to either a ‘classic’ dramaturgical model, or a ‘montage’ model, referred to in more detail in Chapter 3. In the performance, the production group’s intentions to have something to say, something to meet the audience with and communicate about, is realized. The theatre performance communicates through subtexts with the use of metaphors in action. A subtext is the ‘text’ that is perceived underlying or between the words spoken. Metaphors are images that provide a rich association space. Both the interpretation of subtexts and metaphors initiates the spectator’s own interpretation work. A poor-quality drama has thin material and text, and no connection between material and text. An overloaded drama has little text, but too much material. This makes it impossible to find the focus, that is, what story is being told. Jane Rasch (personal communication, 8 May 2014) describes a good performance as a performance that speaks with its own voice – with authenticity. She asks, ‘Am I excited? Is there energy, fascination, do I fall in love?’ In postdramatic theatre the text is no longer the hub for the drama, there might be no plot, no story, just a multimodal assembly, where the spectator or participant produces their story.

Audience (recipients) and the second filter code competence When the performance is played, the other filter acts as the offer of meaning that is available for the reception or acceptance of the performance. Code competence firstly involves recognition of something in form or content, preferably in both. For the performance to be interesting and catchy, it must also be something that is foreign, unfamiliar and new. A theatre performance may have something that captures, entertains, provokes – or perhaps all of these at the same time. There is thus recycling in a good performance, but with displacements or distortions, and also densification, and simplicity. A good theatre performance is never onedimensional. There can be several answers to the questions that the performance poses. Some concepts that show ways to promote multidimensionality in the performance are opening and closing, parallels and contrasts, and planting and harvesting.

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Opening and closing The classic dramatic form of the theatre can be described as a closed form. It is closed because the drama closes around itself through a few people, concentrated in time and space. The open theatre form works according to principles other than the closed one, namely with many people, times and places. An open performance not only gives the characters choice, but also gives the audience choice between different interpretations. Through the alternation between opening and closing, the performance is given further dimensions that the audience can relate to.

Parallels and contrasts Elements that create inequality, or a dissonance, or a displacement contribute to the audience’s commitment. Creating parallel actions in different ways can be thoughtprovoking. Something can happen in nature that then has a parallel in some people’s lives. Contrast provides another opportunity to keep the interest alive, and to create depth in a theme.

Planting and harvesting A theatre performance is based on the use of many modalities (semiotic signs) such as voice, movement, light, sound and colours, and it is often said that the audience goes to theatre to see the subtext (i.e. the audience will experience their own interpretation of the text). This use of various modalities forms meaning clusters, which can lie in layers or come one after the other. Clusters can be like striking a triad or a chord on the piano. There is a sound image of the cluster of tones. When planting in the theatre performance or film, a hint is inserted, something that is observed but not understood – yet. It can be annoying, because the viewer understands that this can mean something – and gets alerted. It can be a clock that shows a specific time, or there can be something drawn in a dusty windowpane on a car – which later has a concrete or metaphorical meaning. Then the spectators harvest a new understanding, an insight that can hit like a blow in the solar plexus, or make them want to cry, cheer, or just notice that something is hanging together, makes sense.

Horizons of understanding The concept horizon of understanding is borrowed in the model from the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, because the term captures something that is of crucial importance for a theatre performance, namely that the performance describes one horizon of understanding. It is positioned, it is one way to see the world. The audience meets the horizon from their horizon of understanding, their positioning, their perspective on existence. Some common aspects are needed in the horizon of understanding, otherwise the performance does not communicate with its audience. The horizons of understanding are of course not identical but should to some extent

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overlap and approach each other in order for the audience to experience that the performance concerns and touches them. To thematize the horizon of understanding gives the teacher the opportunity to open for engagement: to find touch-points with the students’ world, but also add something new and unknown to expand the horizon, and perhaps contribute to movement from a position taken for granted to a more dynamic position in both the teacher’s and student’s world.

The importance of a dramaturgically inspired analysis model In summary, the analysis model gives a comprehensive picture of how wide-ranging the planning and composing of a theatre performance is. Two crucial factors are: having something to convey and knowing who the audience of the performance will be. The two filters in the model highlight the importance of different audience groups meeting the performance with different backgrounds of experience, and the form of the performance must be adapted to these backgrounds in the choice of scenic characters and scenic communication. The performance is received filtered through the spectator’s code competence, and if there is too much mismatch between the spectator’s competence to decipher the signs and communication of the theatre performance, then the experience is lacking. The audience’s doom is harsh: incomprehensible, not entertaining, superficial, empty, wasted time. However, when the horizons of understanding meet, a theatrical performance can act as an opening to the world, and upheaval meetings can occur. Then, almost no theme is too difficult to treat, and the performance has found a door that opens a little, giving some hope in a desperate situation, or giving power to say that life must be lived anyway.

The dramaturgical analysis model for theatre in an educational context Will this dramaturgically inspired analysis model add something to an educational context? Are there the same possibilities without the special thrill and intensity of a theatre performance? The first ‘idea’ box corresponds in educational planning to goal, purpose, or idea. There is a clear parallel, and the question asked by the teacher is: What do I want with this lesson, this sequence, this semester, in my subject? How do I achieve that goal? In the context of pedagogy, goals are usually described as something quite fixed, and not as open as the initial phase in the design of a performance. Guided by dramaturgical thinking, the planning of teaching and learning may have a dynamic or flexibility within it, the way something is while being designed. The first filter, the choice of form to reach the target, can be a stumbling block for the teacher’s planning. One form of traditional teaching can be described as frontal education, where the teacher presents a subject, then assigns a task to the students and allows them to work with it, and then checks that the task is done. This shape may resemble the one-dimensional theatre performance that is closed,

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with no openings. Through conscious choice of form, the teacher can create progress in sequence with both closing and opening. For example, an opening can be given in the form of inquiry-based learning, where students in groups can find a solution to a problem, and where there are no fixed correct answers given in advance. This open form becomes more dialogue-based than the tightly controlled frontal fait accompli. The teacher therefore needs to have a toolbox with varied inputs for learning. The theatre creator’s desire to touch and to contribute to the opening up of worlds can also be the teacher’s desire for the kind of teaching where the students meet factual knowledge and can themselves add personal experience and commitment. The stage text is the counterpart to the teaching sequence spreading out over time. Here, the ensemble play is what teachers and students do together. In a theatre performance, all resistance and conflict are directed and played out according to a plan. Improvisation genres such as theatre sports and playback theatre have open sequences during the performances and a high degree of audience participation. In a pedagogical context, both fixed plan and necessary openings are combined. A teacher must be able to improvise. The teacher may have planned challenges for their students but may face (unplanned) opposition. The lesson may be chaotic and take a different direction to what the teacher had planned, and where teachers and students do not work as an ensemble that plays together. Then (at least afterwards) the dramaturgical analysis model can act as a tool to investigate where it went wrong. Where in the model? Was it in box one? Was the goal of the teaching not shared with the students so that they could acknowledge ownership of the goal, or concretize sub-goals? Was it in filter one? Did the shape and variety not fit this target audience, which resisted or rejected the teacher’s choice? Did the teacher’s understanding of this filter not find the students ‘at home’? Was it perhaps the case that the chaos was impending even before this lesson, with similar experiences from prior teaching? Or because there was no place for negotiating with the students? As in theatre and drama, the fictional contract is necessary to ensure good communication.

A teaching contract with the students Through the teaching contract, the teacher can create some basic rules for what applies in the teaching in question; what is expected of the students, and what the teacher promises to contribute. I suggest that the teaching contract can be a metatheme in teaching (i.e. the teacher, together with the students, need to agree on some rules of the game for the work). This might be a crucial necessity, especially if the lesson or drama session is placed outdoor, or in an unfamiliar environment. The frames and borders need to be clarified through the teaching contract.

Code competence, reception and dialogue In a teaching sequence, the students are also the actors in box three. They participate in teaching as students, and they are also recipients of the teaching. They both attend

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and are spectators. They are thus the ones who interpret and evaluate what this means for their learning. They are also those who experience any possible change of understanding. Here, filter two plays an important role. The students meet the teaching with the codes they know from before. They also have a toolbox of work forms that they are familiar with and which they feel safe to use. For them to be able to accept the teaching and respond to it, there must therefore be some recycling and reuse of methods and content that they know from before. But not everything can be such material – something must be new, challenging; something must trigger the students to commitment and effort. This is how the theatre performance works in its opening and closing, in order to create a dialogue with the audience. Within the reader-response tradition in literature theory emphasis is placed on the reader’s creative role in reading a fictive text. Through creating inner images and interpretations, the reader enters as co-author of the text. This creative interpretation is seen as a resource that may have significance beyond reading literature. The teacher’s positioning in teaching, for example of literature, can be an example from the school world of horizons of understanding, where the teacher’s cultural competence and proficiency means that the ‘teacher’s text’ is quite different from the ‘student’s text’, or in drama education ‘the teacher’s play’ and ‘the students’ play’. If the teacher and students do not collaboratively create a ‘text’ in common, the students experience the teaching as meaningless and difficult – that this does not concern them.

Movability and dynamics between the ‘boxes’ In the preliminary analysis model there are arrows back and forth between the different boxes and filters. This indicates that, as in the case of a theatre performance, in teaching inspired by dramaturgical thinking there is a flow of communication within the subject – work methods, teacher input and student input – during the learning process. You are allowed to try different solutions in the teaching and learning process, in the same way that it is necessary to try out different solutions during the production of a theatre performance.

Art encounter and knowledge encounter A theatre performance will create a touching encounter with the audience. The encounter can be provocative, frightening, catchy, or possibly arouse protest, or hope and strength to take a stance. It might act as a world opener. The use of various modalities might in best cases take hold of you, touch you emotionally. The encounter awakens emotions. This is called art encounter and says something about the role of art in human existence. The pedagogical philosopher John Dewey sees the art encounter as a creative situation, where the viewer (beholder) must relate as creatively as the artist does while working on the artwork: The artist selected, simplified, clarified, abridged and condensed according to his interest. The beholder must go through these operations according to his

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point of view and interest. In both, an act of abstraction, that is extraction of what is significant, takes place. (Dewey, 1980 [1934], p. 54) The relational aesthetics of contemporary art forms (Bourriaud, 1998) strongly provoke participation of the audience. The performance is seen as an event, and this event is delimited by the presence of an audience which actively interacts with the performance. Fischer-Lichte (2008) has, as mentioned earlier, designed a theory based on feedback loops between the audience and practitioners, where the audience has an active role in what the performance becomes. Can the qualities of the art encounter be transferred to educational knowledge encounters? Put another way: is not all depth in learning the result of affective and touching insights regarding life conditions? Knowledge is not acquired in a mechanical way, but dynamically. The students participate in these knowledge encounters wholeheartedly, and when the encounter fails, the student ends up with a meaningless experience. Metaphorically, this is expressed through the formulation that one must be touched to understand. Georg Lakoff and Mark Johnson in Philosophy of the Flesh described how human thought and language are based on bodily sensations and experiences (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999). They consider all cognition as bodily founded.

The knowledge encounter can sometimes be as daunting as an art encounter To expose others to influence through teaching is ethically challenging, and teachers are managers of a great ethical responsibility in attempting to be a constructive force in the lives of young people. There are many other forces trying to influence students, not least ideological and commercial interests, but they might be without the ethical consciousness that a teacher is expected to have as a basis. Many people can describe knowledge encounters that can alter. It might be the day a child breaks the alphabet code and understands that the sounds and letters have a connection and says, ‘I can read!’ As an adult, a transforming knowledge encounter forces a life crisis, when persons understand that their understanding has been too limited, and that things can be seen in a completely different and better way. The knowledge encounter leads to a new understanding. With new insights from neuroscience, there has been a move towards the body in pedagogy, and there is a growing understanding that humans are first and foremost sentient beings (Sheets-Johnstone, 2009). Therefore, feelings and commitment are necessary, and not only desirable in the teaching and processing of different knowledge materials. With such an understanding, the dramaturg’s way of thinking can help qualify the teacher’s planning and classroom leadership. Sometimes art encounters can become more concrete as a knowledge encounter, as in the example that follows.

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Example 4: Learn to make field notes by looking at works of art The students of a research methodology course are in a small art gallery. Their teacher gives them the task of choosing a work of art they like and one they do not like. They will be in front of each of the chosen artworks for 20 minutes and look. The English-language teacher uses the term ‘dwell’, which means that they should be more meditatively in dialogue with the artwork – they should dwell on it. They get five tasks related to the artwork. They are asked to make a note of these tasks. These five tasks are all participatory ethnographic observations. What happens during these 40 minutes is that the students who observe are beginning to see things other than what first attracted their attention. They begin to see the context in which the image or sculpture is located and recall their own memories connected to the artwork. They think of who it would be nice to talk to about this artwork. And in the presentation of the artwork, the students usually say that they are surprised that they have changed their perception of it.

In this exercise, the teacher used the art encounter to open an understanding of what an ethnographic researcher does and how a slow observation provides the opportunity to see more and obtain a richer understanding. The teacher worked here as a dramaturg staging a learning situation, where she encouraged the students to switch between empathy and distance. The contrasts made the teaching situation multidimensional. It became an inquiry-based learning situation, and through the sharing of experiences and meta-conversation afterwards, the value of this session could be articulated. Talking about the conversation and the significance of the work done is part of dramaturgical thinking in the context of teaching and learning. Example 4 showed the path from inquiry-based work to conversation. The conversation can take place while exploration is in progress – a repeated switch between ‘being in’ and ‘talking about’.

Example 5: The sound of water contaminated by plastic The participants are grade six students (approx. 12 years old) in a Norwegian school. They have an artist as their teacher in a natural science project; in collaboration with the teachers, a visual artist has prepared to teach a science theme, namely pure water and dirty water. In this session, the focus is on how plastic pollutes water. The students have previously worked with clay and shaped underwater landscapes. Clay seems ‘dirty’ but is clean in relation to water that is soiled with plastic. They have painted watercolours of pure water and put together the various watercolours into a large common painting in the hallway outside the classroom. Then they get the task of forming plastic that makes the water dirty. These formations are thrown up on a wall in the room where the students work. In this plastic walk the artist asks if any of the students will try out how the water runs, and whether the other students can make the moaning sound of the water because it is so dirty. Some students move like the water along the plastic film corridor, while the rest make the complaining sounds.

From a dramaturgical perspective, this example can be said to move between fact and fiction. Through their participation, the students show that they have understood the teaching contract that they are investigating a science subject by means of art. They also know that the microplastic that pollutes water does not have to be as

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visible as the foil they have been working on. They understand that the sound of the water is fiction, but the danger of micro plastic in the oceans is a severe threat for all life in an ecological chain. The students have approached the theme through various tasks in a kind of everyday hermeneutical spiral. Through the artist teaching, artistry gets plenty of space, while the natural science theme is explored in a sensual way that contributes to the theme coming closer to the students’ experiences.

Teaching guided by the gaze of the teacher-dramaturg To sum up, to look at planning and carrying out teaching with the gaze of the dramaturg is to open up new perspectives. Possibly the greatest gain in animating the direction is a strong emphasis on meaning and its creation through the sharpening and focusing provided by the dramaturg’s question regarding what you want to say something about. In institutionalized educational contexts such as kindergarten, it is even more crucial that teachers should spend some time focusing on what is important to say. Dramaturgy is part of an aesthetic field. One of the basics of aesthetics is that art can open the world to people, not necessarily through an artefact or image, but just by creating wonder about conditions that are taken for granted. The dramaturgical is about crossing boundaries, transgressing, about seeing things in a new way, and even also sometimes about making things more unclear, through problematizing issues that are taken for granted. From this perspective, it may be possible to identify extended opportunities for action and access an extended action repertoire. In Chapters 3 and 4, I go into more detail about dramaturgical models in theatre, with the intention of investigating whether and what they can contribute in a contemporary educational context.

References Bourriaud, N. (1998). Relational aesthetics. Paris: Des Presses Reel. Dewey, J. (1980 [1934]). Art as experience. New York: Perigee Books. Fischer-Lichte, E. (2008). The transformative power of performance. A new aesthetics. New York: Routledge. Kjølner, T. & Szatkowski, J. (1991). Dramaturgisk analyse for ikke naive instruktører [Dramaturgical analysis for not naive instructors]. In H. Reistad (ed.), Regikunst [The art of directing] (pp. 122–132). Oslo: Tell Forlag. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. New York: Basic Books. Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2009). The corporeal turn. An interdisciplinary reader. Exeter: Imprint Academic.

3 DRAMATURGICAL STRATEGIES Anna-Lena Østern

Analysis of contemporary society through dramaturgical models Building a theatre performance can be linked to an analysis of contemporary time, including a picture of how contemporary challenges can be presented and problematized, based on the question of what issues are important to say something about in present times. Dramaturgical models are expressions of different epistemologies (i.e. they say something about what kind of knowledge is valid from the model’s perspective on the world). In this chapter I analytically explore the three dramaturgical models, guided by the question: What are the possibilities for adapting thinking through these dramaturgical models when looking at teaching and learning activities in education? Composing a drama is a creative craft. In ancient understanding, dramaturgy means making an action. Aristotle in his Poetics described the dramaturgical structure of the classical plays he analysed. Without very much change, the model has remained a standard model for dramatic dramaturgy. Engelstad (2000, p. 25) mentions three central topics in Aristotle’s dramaturgical model: unity and concentration of theme, the importance of rhythm and structure, and conditions for empathy and identification from the spectators. This classic model is today called standard dramaturgy. It is also called Hollywood dramaturgy, because many Hollywood films are constructed according to this model (Evans, 2006). This dramatic model is also called seductive dramaturgy, because the audience is guided in one direction into one understanding of how the world is. It has a causality built into the structure. In the Greek world of thought, this dramaturgy of the tragedy would bring about a catharsis, or purification, of the spectator. The spectator should feel empathy with the protagonist, the hero, who has a fatal character flaw (called hamartia). This makes him act wrongly and he is therefore punished for his arrogance to challenge the gods (called hubris) and the drama comes to a tragic end. The classic dramatic

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dramaturgy drives action through conflict and conflicting desires towards a crucial moment. A variant of the standard dramaturgy is often used in TV shows with a peak at the end of each episode to get viewers to hang on for the next episode. In dramatic literature, the themes that are dealt with can be summarized as a few major conflicts: man against society, man against man, man against himself and man against nature. These conflicts go back through dramatic texts over the centuries. Science fiction literature and computer games are also built on these conflicts in varying guises. The Danish theatre researcher Janek Szatkowski (1989) has described two basic models for thinking about dramaturgy. The basic models are, on the one hand, the classic dramatic model, and on the other hand, the montage model, which is based on the principles of mounting fictive layers in different ways. Szatkowski has also published a wide range theory of dramaturgy in A Theory of Dramaturgy (Szatkowski, 2019), which Kristian Knudsen and I will come back to in chapter nine of this book. In this chapter I use Hans-Thies Lehmann’s (2008) theory of Postdramatic Theatre. Lehmann’s point with the name postdramatic is that he looks at theatre forms from the contemporary time where a progressive dramatic narrative is not at the centre. Torunn Kjølner and Szatkowski (1991) in their article ‘Dramaturgical analysis – a working tool for knowing instructors’ (title translated from Danish) developed model-oriented thinking by proposing alternative dramaturgical models: an epic montage model, connected to Bertolt Brecht’s theatre forms, with a simultaneous montage model that presents parallel, smaller stories, with simultaneity as the central montage principle. Kjølner and Szatkowski also suggest a meta-fictive dramaturgy, which builds on playing between different ways of thinking dramaturgically. The book Dramaturgy: Perceptions of Theatre (Gladsø, Gjervan, Hovik & Skagen, 2015, title translated from Norwegian) has been a rich source of understanding of dramaturgical basic concepts. These texts are my primary theoretical sources for my model creation and analysis in this chapter.

Classic dramatic dramaturgy model Figure 3.1 shows a variant of the classic dramatic dramaturgy model. The vertical line indicates the degree of intensity, while the horizontal line shows the time passing. The first highlighted point (1), ‘the prelude’, called ‘the hook’, is not part of Aristotle’s model. However, the hook is often used in film (and also of crucial importance in lesson planning). The hook should lead to the series of events. The hook may also be part of the (2) ‘exposition’, which explains the dramatic situation, what time it is in the fiction, who the main actors are, and what the main plot is. A plot says something about causality. The example often used in narrative texts is: ‘The king died, and the queen died’. In this sentence there is no plot: it describes two unrelated events. But if the sentence is worded as follows: ‘The King

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FIGURE 3.1 Classic dramatic dramaturgy model. Source: artistic re-design by Anette Stølsdokken-Østern

died, and the Queen soon died of grief’, then there is causality in the dramatic dramaturgical structuring. In a dramatic work, the action is driven forward through (3) ‘events’, and there can be several (4) ‘turning points’. The narrative takes a new turn, the conflicts are deepened, and hidden aspects are revealed towards a peripeteia or ‘point of no return’, with acceleration of pace towards a (5) ‘dramatic peak’ (climax). (6) An ending rounds off the drama. The basic action – that is the message the performance will convey – is most often in the dramatic peak. In dramatic dramaturgy the world is shown as seen from the author’s point of view. As mentioned, this dramaturgy is often called ‘seductive’, because a dramaturg can add complications so that many in the audience have to bring out a handkerchief to dry their tears in about the same place (but not too early) in the performance. The performance is based on empathy with the fates of the characters. Therefore, the spectators feel grief without having grief personally. What happens in the scene can nevertheless have similarities with the spectator’s own experiences, which are actualized and arouse emotions related to their own experiences of grief, sadness and sorrow.

The prelude or the hook Especially in films and TV fiction series (and advertising), the prelude, called the hook, is important. It often determines whether the viewer chooses to remain with the programme, or switch to another channel. A hook is like the first touch of a pianist on the keys of the piano; it tells about what is to come (good or bad). The hook has the function of getting the audience curious and interested, in other words getting the audience hooked. The hook is supposed

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to contain the whole performance idea to come, what the spectator will be involved in. The hook should say something about the central theme, but not everything.

Exposition It is necessary to know who the drama is about, when and where it is going, and what the main conflict is about. However, all these necessities of a classic dramatic dramaturgy do not apply to postmodern montage techniques.

Development of actions, turning points and dramatic peak Through the dramatist’s craft, the drama is built up through actions. Things happen in the drama. There are several turning points (plot points) when events take a new direction. Still, it cannot be that dramatic things are happening all the time – there must be resting points between new things happening and the true nature of the characters being revealed. As the dramatic peak approaches, the pace of action usually increases.

Rhythm and variation There is a rhythmic variation in the structure of a drama. In classic dramaturgy, tempo changes and variation in perspective are important. Revealing the action can take place at a quieter pace than later event development. Harmony is distorted through conflicts and increased intensity. One variation in perspective can be that the story is told through different people’s perspectives of what is happening. In constructing a performance, the dramatist plants within the exposition an expectation of the length of the whole play.

Timing and ‘kairos’ In the classic dramaturgy, ‘timing’ is important. Timing means doing something at the right time. In classical rhetoric, kairos meant ‘the right moment’ – the right situation – for the speaker to promote their message. In theatre performance the sense of timing is highly valued among actors.

Pointing forward and pointing backwards In a performance based on this model, there are often many hints or pointers forward as well as backwards. Forward point and backward point draw the audience into the action through the spectator actively trying to understand and interpret what the dramatist is pointing up. In the Hollywood model’s movie drama tutorials, ‘subjective flashback’ is often added, meaning time jumps, so that things that have happened before are played again and understood in a new way.

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‘Flash forward’ can be in the form of dream scenes, for example. In the following section, I discuss what this model might have to contribute to teacher thinking in education

Classic dramaturgy as a guide to teacher’s planning Adapting, adjusting and transmitting elements from thinking associated with a classic dramatic dramaturgy model to teaching, is challenging. There are, however, some steps associated with the classic model that are widely used in teacher planning. For example, the prelude, called the hook, is an element used, separated from the rest of the model’s elements. This model has significance as a model for some teaching sequences that are based on a progressive narrative. The teacher deliberately uses the structuring element to build their own model for a sequence of teaching. The teacher can teach students how to create a story in dramatic form, or make a movie using the model. If the teaching is situated, for example, at a folk museum with a special atmosphere from a certain period of time (a farm, a mountain pasture, school or oldtime store), time travel can be built in as a dramatic sequence with student teachers and teachers in role, along with the pupils who are also in role. Of course, time travel can also be employed at the school during a theme week about, for example, the Second World War, students in grade nine (approx. 14 years old) can be given the task of bringing clothes from the 1940s for a time travel they are going to take part in during the school day. In a lesson built upon adventure pedagogy, treasure hunting for younger children is often organized according to a simplified classic dramaturgy with villains, opponents, helpers, and the children as one group. Live role-playing games use full or partial inspiration from this model. In Example 1, some aspects are used in an outdoor education context with a teacher-in-role as ‘Huldra’ a fantasy figure, a forest nymph (Figure 3.2).

Example 1: The wood nymph ‘Huldra’ needs help to get the spring to come Pupils in grades five to seven (approx. 10–13 years old) circulate between different stations student teacher in music and drama lead one station for these pupils. The programme begins with Huldra (teacher-in-role) coming running in, complaining that she has not succeeded with her spring ritual, and thus the spring is delayed. She points out that people are depressed and asks where the sun has hidden itself. She blames trolls and ghosts for preventing her work but asks the students to help create a rhythmic spring ritual chant that can make spring understand that it is time to come. The pupils create rhythmic rap collages in groups and perform them – and Huldra finds a yellow spring flower as a sign that spring has started. She thanks the children and runs into her forest again.

This brief sequence uses classic dramaturgy embedded in a day of outdoor education, with the children arranged at their ‘stations’. When students respond to

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A teacher student performing the forest nymph ‘Huldra’. Source: photo by A.-L. Østern

FIGURE 3.2

Huldra’s call, the fictional contract is understood: the pupils know that they are entering a Norwegian mythical fairytale world, and that they are involved in a game. During the day, the student groups participate in teaching at five stations, where the idea is that they will experience teaching outdoors and at the same time practise how to teach their subjects. Creating a ritual can be part of a drama lesson, as well as a music lesson. When the pupils create rhythmic rap collages with body percussion (beats on the body) and use the lyrics ‘All birds small’ with the words ‘cuckoo, linnet, thrush, and starlings’, they are working in their subjects. At the same time, they are driving the action towards a turning point and a highlight: the flower, as a sign that spring is on the way. Elements in the classic dramaturgy provide teachers with inspiration to think like a dramaturg and ideas for use both in teaching and as working methods. However, this does not mean that exercises are added randomly to one another, but rather that the teacher’s goals for the teaching are built into the lessons that are being tried out. In all teaching, it may be useful to think out a prelude that itself contains the core point to be elaborated during a lesson, or for a weekly plan. To prepare the prelude, the teacher needs to be in the classroom before the students come to tailor the prelude, which also needs to function as a hook. The prelude is then followed up during the teaching, to include a forward point the students can interpret; and

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at the end, a pointing back reflects afresh on the prelude. It may be that not until the end of the teaching sequence is the significance of the prelude entirely revealed. Inspired by dramaturgical thinking, the teacher can introduce rhythmic variation into the teaching process: challenging tasks and tasks where the students can rest a little. A lesson may have tasks with empty spaces that the students must fill with their own interpretation. Variation implies interchangeably inquiring alone, in pairs and in groups. Variation implies time to get a formative response – as self-evaluation, from fellow students and from the teacher. Variation implies both presenting for the whole group and for an individual in the group. For John Dewey (1980 [1934], p. 162), rhythm is the mainspring of all design, because rhythm is everywhere in nature. Shape can be internal form such as tension and relaxation, but also outer form in rhythmic interaction between time, place and space. Dewey writes about the importance of both doing and undergoing to get experiences.

Let the lesson land The moment that classic dramaturgy prepares for is termination, or solution, and when translated to an educational context, this can mean ‘letting the lesson land’. When such a lesson approaches the end, an interval is created with opportunities for meta-reflection, where this lesson is made into history through pointing backward and summing up. The lesson may be tied together with the next teaching session through forward pointing.

Example 2: To tie past time and present time to each other During a one-week period, students in grade nine (approx. 14 years old) have worked within a storyline built upon Michelle Paver’s fantasy story ‘Wolf Brother’. During the week, the living conditions of Stone-Age clans have been the focus of the students’ interest in science, music, language arts, social studies and religious education. Six student teachers on teaching practice have been the leaders of different student groups. Pupils have been framed as members of various clans. The concluding session, showing the tasks the students have designed, is shaped as the annual meeting for all clans. A teacher in the role of the shaman leads the meeting (he had produced the prelude at the start of the storyline week). The various products the students have designed are displayed. Each clan group of students suggests three rules for the peaceful coexistence of all clans. When these rules are presented and glued to the storyline wall, a time-line is made to our own time, and students form three rules for the clan ‘humanity’, with its survival on our planet, the Earth as its starting point.

The dramaturgy for this final session has as its bottom line the exciting story of two 12-year-old children, Torak and Renn, and Torak’s friendship with a young wolf, called Wolf, in the face of a deadly threatening mission. The story was partly read and partly told throughout the week. As the story is built as a drama, there is a nerve in the narrative that keeps the school students hooked. Through the pedagogy

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of eliciting key questions about the storyline, during the week they encounter the challenges of the narrative through exploring learning tasks. In these tasks, the teacher uses dramaturgical montage principles in parallel with a narrative thread from classic dramaturgy. In this example, reflection over the week is built into the structure of a fiction, which the students accept as a framework for the work. The end of the clan meeting will be a meta-reflection of people’s living conditions then and now, with concerns regarding nomadic people and refugees in our own time and their living conditions.

Communication forms in dramaturgy, design and rhetoric In the analysis of Example 3, I have used terms such as design and product, inspired by Staffan Selander and Gunther Kress (Kress, 2010; Selander, 2008). They have written about educational design and use a dramaturgically inspired language to talk about teaching and learning in a multimodal context. Design includes giving shape to something, and product is what is designed (in the design). Another dramaturgically inspired form of expression is offered by rhetoric. Rhetoric, like the classic model, can be traced back to ancient times, once more to Aristotle who also wrote a book on rhetoric. In our own time, there is a new rhetorical interest in using rhetoric to describe principles for communication. In Example 3, dramaturgy in communication and in rhetorical thinking are combined in the analysis of an academic lecture. The observation form is shown in Figure 3.3.

Example 3: Training the dramaturgy of a lecture The theme of the teaching session is to learn something about the principles of a lecture. The formal rules that apply to lecture are first told to the student group. Then the group receives a short lecture on dramaturgical thinking, and a form listing some main points (see Figure 3.3). A teacher educator gives a lecture. It is a good lecture, and it takes 45 minutes. The students listen to the lecture and note on their observation schema the things they notice. After the lecture, the students discuss in small groups what they have noticed. Then they share with the whole group what they have observed.

The teaching in this session is inspired by dramaturgical thinking, but the session does not have a complete classic dramaturgy. On the other hand, it uses some dramaturgical grips in the build-up, especially variation and surprise. The session thereby becomes dialogical and exploratory in a good way. In Figure 3.3, the reader can recognize the dramaturgical concepts explained in Chapter 2, and in the first part of Chapter 3. In addition, there are concepts from literary theory, narratology and rhetoric. In The Act of Reading, Wolfgang Iser (1978) writes about empty spaces (‘blanks’ and ‘gaps’), which readers must fill with their interpretations. I suggest that the lecture may also have such empty spaces that listeners can fill with their interpretations. The narrative structure

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Aspects of dramaturgical thinking for the lecturer

The use of this aspect by the lecturer (observation notes)

Introduction Questions to elaborate: What is it about and what is the purpose? (What will the lecturer say something about?) Is there a hook/prelude, and what aesthetic form does it have? Is the audience contacted and included? What is the structure of the lecture; does the lecturer metacommunicate about it? (Plant) Middle section About three events/arguments heading toward a peak with the main point. Questions to elaborate: Are different perspectives used? (looking from one position, moving to another and describing from this position) Are there summaries after each part? (harvest and forward point) What examples does the speaker use, and why? Timing, variation/multimodality? Is the audience challenged through empty spaces that the listeners can fill out with their own interpretation? Summarise and create transition Final sextion Questions to elaborate: Does the lecture land? Summarise what the lecturer has done, conclude: Does the lecturer say how this is linked to the overall theme? Is a new forward point made to what comes next? Non-verbal communication, paralinguistic communication Lecturer body (expression, communication, gaze, handling of digital tools, use of space, use of script) Lecturer voice (voice quality, audibility, tempo, dynamics, voice pitch) Observer task: Summarise credibility and trustworthiness through comment on use of logos, ethos, and pathos. FIGURE 3.3

Observation form for oral presentations (academic lecture).

proposed is chronological, with beginning, middle, and end. The narrator’s voice and body can also be included as aspects to think about in the communication (for instance, use of I, we or third person). Since the lecture is oral communication, there must be clear forward points and backward points where the lecturer tells the audience what to do next, and what the lecturer has done so far. The observation form also contains some topics related to the rhetoric’s actiopart, i.e. the performance, with emphasis on how the speaker appears credible and trustworthy. The terms logos, ethos and pathos refer to the classical rhetoric concept, but are also relevant today. The three main means of rhetoric to be convincing are linked to the logical content (that one has something to say), ethos (that

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one appears trustworthy and seems credible) and pathos (that one is engaged in the theme). Finn Eivind Jor (2003, p. 32, author’s translation) associates logos with ethos: ‘The most appealing ethos alone is not sufficient if the speech is not formulated with enough power, flow and style’. The ethos dimensions of the classical rhetoric are phronesis (wisdom), good character (arete), and good will (eunoia) (Kjeldsen, 2015, p. 120). Jens Kjeldsen argues that one of the most important values in credibility in our time is authenticity (p. 122). A form of authenticity can be included in the teacher’s bodily communication in the teaching. Lecturer and lecturer body are important in the presentation. This theme is explored in detail in chapter five ‘The teacher-body as a dramaturgical axis for composing a lesson’. Geir Stavik-Karlsen (2014) writes that the teacher as artist articulates contours of a pedagogy of vulnerability, and suggests that the teacher in the teaching situation is as if on a stage, but without the edge of the stage. The teacher must, in the performance of the teaching profession, take the risk and be there as an authentic and vulnerable person in the encounter with the students. In the observation form shown in Figure 3.3, we chose to use dramaturgical concepts, narratological concepts, a term from literature theory, and rhetorical concepts, all together, to bring out the main features of good (academic) communication with an audience. We have chosen an example from teacher education context, but the proposal for the analysis schema can serve as support for the building of many different lecturing situations. The classic dramaturgical model can provide many tools and concepts for the teacher’s dramaturgical thinking. We have also suggested that the model can be a genre model for tasks a teacher gives students when it comes to creating text and film. We have given some examples of adaptations of form in use in teacher education contexts. In the next section, we treat another form, the dramaturgical montage model, which is built on fundamentally different thinking to classic dramaturgy. While performance built on the classic dramatic model wants to show the world as it is, the thinking guiding the montage model questions how the world is and tries to change it.

Montage as a dramaturgical form Montage refers to the installation of various fictional layers in a performance. Szatkowski (1989, p. 54f, author’s translation) defines montage in epic theatre as follows: The central narrative principle in the theatre’s epic form is characterised by the presence of at least two different types of fiction. The montage becomes visible. The theatre points to itself as a theatre. The spectator moves from one fictional universe to another. A fracture is created, and there is a dialectical relationship between the layers of fiction. In montage, the play between fiction layers is central, while a progressive event sequence does not

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exist, or is only a thin storyline. These fiction layers are also called different association spaces. Kjølner and Szatkowski (1991) mention two developments of the montage model: the epic montage and simultaneous montage. Moreover, they propose one more dramaturgical model, which is a play between the different models. This they call metafictive dramaturgy.

Montage in epic theatre In epic theatre, the montage is created with an overall montage principle and theatre signs within the various fiction layers that point in the same direction (see Figure 3.4). A concrete fiction layer (level 1) often contains a thin narrative thread. The abstract fiction layer (level 2) uses the characters of the theatre to emphasize something through music, song, light, tempo change, scenography and costumes. The actors’ performing style is also used as part of the montage. An example from Bertolt Brecht’s epic theatre is to let the actors speak in the third person, or more specifically say ‘he said’ after a line. The vertical line in Figure 3.4 indicates different fiction layers, while the horizontal line shows the timeline of the performance. A third fiction layer (level 3) may be the metaphorical, where a unifying metaphor contains what the performance wants to say something about. In Brecht’s theatre, various distancing techniques (called ‘Verfremdung’) are used, which are intended to distance the spectator from immersion in the play being performed. In Brechtian theatre, it is desired that the audience should think and take a (political) stance regarding the issue at stake in the performance. Allern (2009, p. 71, author’s translation) summarizes the features of epic theatre with relevance to work in schools in the following way:

FIGURE 3.4 Epic montage model with different fiction layers. Source: artistic re-design by Anette Stølsdokken-Østern

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Brecht emphasized an alternative tradition, the epic, in which knowledge, in the same way as the texts and narrative forms in theatre, is changeable and temporary. This narrative and knowledge form corresponds to dialogical teaching and learning forms. It emphasizes contradictions and contrasts, and the students’ own experiences and perspectives are given greater weight than in the classic [dramaturgical] form. The epic and dialogue-oriented narrative not only refers to reality but points out that it is possible to change it. The epic theatre form, is episodic. One genre of drama pedagogy, process drama, also called exploratory drama, uses a montage of episodes as the main dramaturgical form.

Montage in simultaneous dramaturgy In the second montage form, called simultaneous dramaturgy, or parallel dramaturgy (see Figure 3.5), there is no overall montage principle. On the contrary, theatrical signs from the various fiction layers can point in different directions. The theatre signs are revealed, and the spectators must create their own narrative from the fragments displayed. Text and action do not drive this type of assembly. The various theatre signs create a space for associations. Crossing the borders between genres results in blurring the expression in the montage (i.e. genre boundaries are blurred, and new hybrid forms are created). Recycling materials from used texts and putting them together in new combinations is common. There are no clear role characters; time and space are blurred, if formulated at all. The people involved can play themselves, alternating with marking a role. Time can be pulled out so that one moment is magnified, or it can be condensed. The text may not have any spatial expression, or that may be

FIGURE 3.5 Simultaneous dramaturgy model with no overarching montage principle. Source: artistic re-design by Anette Stølsdokken-Østern

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given the same value as other expression forms. The visual aspect is of great importance. Here, image montage, film sequences, filming in the present (during the performance), or possibly filming with some offset in time are often mixed. There is no clear beginning, middle part or end. Invariably, cinematic and digital techniques claim a lot of space. In texts on postmodern dramaturgy, authors use concepts such as crossover and fusion to describe new ways to put together different art forms, elements and media.

Metafictive dramaturgy Kjølner and Szatkowski (1991) conclude in their text aimed at knowing instructors about a postmodern conflict in theatre. It is about how far to go in saying that each spectator creates their own meaning. They suggest a meaningful interaction between the experiencing spectator and the artwork as an experience-creating point. Theories of interpretation are a field of conflict in postmodern thinking. Kjølner and Szatkowski propose a hermeneutic interpretation spiral, in which the interpreter of a work seeks elements creating a totality, but at the same time gives a different option of interpretation, which precisely seeks the opposite: the discrepancies in the text. Kjølner and Szatkowski (ibid., p. 131, author’s translation) propose yet another dramaturgical model that cultivates ‘the play between modes of interpretation, and thematizes the terms and possibilities of interpretation’. They call the model metafictive dramaturgy. The fiction comments on itself as fiction. It can be a handheld camera that jumps so that the spectator remembers that this is movie, or it can be a movie showing two alternative endings. In a comparison between various dramaturgical perspectives, Gladsø et al. (2015) emphasize that the story in metafictive form is mounted both with fragments and a progressive narrative. The story is ironically-logically motivated, and meaning is problematized. The form plays with the audience’s longing for wholeness.

Montage and metafiction In summary, montage models are concerned with illuminating different perspectives by placing contrasting fragments next to each other. The simultaneous montage can shape a spiral movement through the same theme being illuminated from different perspectives. It can be a kind of circular drama, where you come back to the starting point, perhaps with new insight. Montage techniques are also called postmodern and are linked to societal changes that make the great modern stories of progress no longer credible. In metafictive dramaturgy, there is often a self-ironic distance, as part of a self-reflexive project among those who create the expression. Self-reflexivity is about self-criticism and paying attention to what you pay attention to. When in the arts you look for artistic expressions that can be part of society’s big dialogue with itself in contemporary time, montage offers some ways of expressing our hyper-complex society. Creating theatre as a collective process in devising (which means ‘inventing’ or ‘thinking out’) performance

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represents a radical thinking process, in which everyone who participates has shared responsibility for what is created.

Possible contributions from montage dramaturgies to thinking in education In the planning of teaching, the teacher mounts various tasks that will shed light on various aspects of a phenomenon. Thus, creating montage is not uncommon in thinking about teaching and learning. Circular dramaturgy is used in teaching sequences planned, for example, with the students at work stations, often in a circle with an episode at each station. When students create a collage – something they can do in widely different subjects – they work with different types of meaning production. Collages can be made as ‘clip and paste’ on a theme. A collage can consist of both poetry and music, put together according to an overall principle. Figure 3.6 shows a montage, designed by teacher Anette, who makes a collage depicting her dramaturgical thinking in lesson planning connected to elaboration of a text, and how the students can use language in interaction. The idea with the collage is realized as a house with entrances, doors, windows, and three floors. The planning is general in that she plans for adult education of a multicultural, very diverse group in order to support their communicative skills in language learning.

Collage with a montage of one teacher’s ideas for elaboration of text. Source: courtesy of Anette Stølsdokken-Østern

FIGURE 3.6

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She mounts a planning process resembling a simultaneous dramaturgy with paths in her planning moving up and down through the floors, opening and closing different windows and doors as viewpoints. The speech bubbles depict her inner teacher dialogue in the planning. The globe is her and the students’ one world society, and diversity is a driving force in her composition of performative teaching and learning events where the collaborative, active explorations of themes are central. As the text in Figure 3.6 is largely unreadable due to the constraints of this book’s size, I reproduce it below for clarity, reading from the entrance to the first floor in the lower-left corner: Staircase in lower-left corner: Step into it First floor: First impression Have a look! What do you think this text is about? Talk to your partner, be curious and inspire each other. Listen and read out loud Learning a new language takes time and practice. Make this a collaborative activity. We are all in the same boat when we practice correct pronunciation and pitch – accent. Take your time! Explore and get inspired Assess your prior knowledge! Which associations does this text give you? What do you want to learn, and what do the others know? Talk together and see connections. Search for more information and inspiration about the topic, contents or the genre. Words and terms Expand your vocabulary! Start by systematically highlighting the words you don’t yet understand. Compare with your partners’ text and try to help each other. Find synonyms & antonyms. Use the words in new sentences. Second floor: Reading comprehension strategies What do you do when you don’t understand the text? Share your tips and ideas and try to remember them until another time when you’re on your own. Linguistic structure & grammar Discuss with your partner [the] sentences that do not make sense to you and underline them. Gather with another pair and see if you as a group

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can sort out the meaning together. If you can’t, hand in a Post-it note to your teacher to go through in a full class later on. Mind-mapping Work in pairs with large paper sheets and illustrate some aspects of the text that you want to reflect on. Can you make a timeline – or categorize some of the information? Perhaps you want to compare views or characters, or simply make a map of all new words you try to learn. Q’s & A’s Make a multiple-choice QUIZ to the class! Make questions with one answer being correct and the rest being incorrect. How well have the others read and understood the text? Third floor: Views and perspectives The view from your house depends on which window you choose to look out from. Try to look at the text in the same way. Share your perspectives. As human beings we’re all different. It is OK to be critical, emotional, optimistic or original. Our interpretation is coloured by our life experience, knowledge, mindset and background. The text might be more meaningful to you if you also listen to the others’ interpretations. Text type and genre What’s specific about this type of text? How do we read and interpret this kind of genre? Get to know the formal aspects and try to write a new text in the same genre. Thoughts, ideas & opinions Involve in your own learning. Develop a meta-focus on your own learning-process. In what way is this text useful for you? Talk to your teacher for guidance and support. Create & produce Which topics in the text do you draw attention to? Cooperate with another student and highlight a theme or element of interest. Draw, write, build, cook, dramatize, take a photo, make an interview etc. Make something you can present later on. Summarize Retell the story in your own words! What is this text about? Find some keywords. Look for the wholeness and overall meaning in what you have read.

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Present Time to evaluate! What have you learnt from working with this text? Find the words to concretize any outcome of your interaction with the others. Has the text opened up any new doors to your learning? Present your product and be proud of what you have accomplished. Staircase in upper-right corner: Express yourself Elaborating a theme in small groups provides students with many opportunities for montage, and for creating episodes that can be mounted together. Students can work with digital storytelling using montage as a guiding principle. In dialogic and explorative inquiry, montage is often the result of various groups’ investigation of a topic. I will highlight Scottish storyline pedagogy (Example 4) as an example of a hybrid form (in terms of dramaturgy) that both uses a fictive frame with a progressive narrative, and a montage of episodes to examine and understand a theme.

Example 4: Storyline and montage with the Alta action as the centre of rotation In a research and development project conducted with students from grade nine (approx. 14 years old) in a secondary school – in collaboration with practice students in teacher education – the teacher team chose the theme ‘The battle for water power’. The starting point for this storyline – which stretched over a few weeks – was the Alta action, an historic event from the 1970s in Norway. Pupils encountered the story of the Alta action through student teachers who were in the role of indigenous Sami people, parliamentarians, rural people, nature conservationists, salmon fishermen, eco-philosophers and construction workers (Figure 3.7). Then the students chose their roles, which they worked on for the rest of the week. The fictitious framework with the roles they chose was visualized by the students by mounting their own faces in pictures and posters from the Alta action’s documentation. Over the weeks, the students worked in their groups to learn about the events and attitudes. They had a debate based on their roles. They learned about hydropower by constructing a small hydropower plant. They learned about Sami culture through a Sami teacher, who showed Sami costumes and told about her role when the Sami camped outside the parliament in Oslo. They prepared debates based on the position their role had in the conflict. At the end of the project, where there was debate between the various groups and the police action in removing the activists was dramatized, the groups were able to ascertain that the Alta-Kautokeino water system was regulated, but that ‘the Sami people lost the battle, but won the war’. The case of the indigenous Sami people was put onto the political agenda in Norway much more strongly than before this event.

In the storyline, the teacher ensures a professional focus by leading the work with the storyline through several key questions. With these questions the students explore and present their hypotheses on the problem they are inquiring into. The students were able to read about the documentation of what happened in the 1970s, watch movies about the protesters, and hear people who were participating in describing the Alta action. Thus, there was plenty of academic knowledge from

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FIGURE 3.7

Montage of a language tree by a Norwegian student, second generation immigrant.

science, social sciences and Norwegian language that could be processed. To maintain focus in the elaboration of episodes with inquiry-based learning, the work of the teacher team and student teachers could be supported by planning for the various episodes to be mounted together, and highlighting the different layers of importance of the various activities. In Example 5, ‘My language tree’, students make a montage of the personal language background, built in the organic form of a tree.

Example 5: My language tree In working with teacher education students with a focus on teaching students about the value of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, I have used the metaphor of a tree as a model for

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reflection on linguistic and cultural identity. In the task, the students draw a tree, and then fill in their language roots (parents and grandparents), they fill in the trunk with their language history (their own childhood and youth), and fill in the crown of the tree with their own current experience of linguistic competence in the different languages that they have mastered (the present languages of the student).

These three linguistic identities are a few examples in the drawings. The language tree in Figure 3.7 is drawn by a student in Norwegian teacher education. He has in his roots (his parents) Vietnamese and ‘Pakistani-Norwegian’. In the crown of the tree, which describes his experienced language competence and linguistic identity now, Norwegian takes the largest space, while Vietnamese, English, body language and specialist language are virtually the same size. This language tree shows the student’s language change during childhood as a secondgeneration immigrant. A student from Tanzania has entered three linguistic roots (Figure 3.8): Nyanja, from both mother and father, and between them are Bwmba (Zambia), explained by the fact that an uncle took care of him, because his parents could not provide support to so many children. In the school, first came Kiswahili and ‘bad English’. Then the Sukuma language came through marriage. Through studies came more English. Now there is no distinct largest language, but a compound competence in English, Sukuma, Nyanja and Bwmba. The third language tree (Figure 3.9) shows a female Tanzanian student’s experienced language proficiency. Her father spoke Masai and her mother Mere. During childhood, Kiswahili also came in as a language, and later, through marriage, Couples and Chagga languages. English also came into the language crown of the tree. When describing her linguistic and cultural competences, she places all the languages she has acquired through her life. This task can be done with pen and paper, but it can also be created as a digital narrative with ‘hot spots’ that activate voice examples: how the student spoke as a baby, as a child, as a young person, etc. In other places, pictures of grandparents and soundtracks with their language can be activated. Examples of beginner’s text in a language can be placed next to more developed texts in a digital folder. The dramaturgy of this task still represents a longing for wholeness, when the student draws their personal language history, and articulates how language and communication in different contexts vary. At the same time, this task is built through fragments, which can be put together in self-ironic, touching and expressive ways.

The end of the Gutenberg galaxy and the advent of new technologies transforming dramaturgy Different modern and postmodern dramaturgies can be brought together as opposites. Modern dramaturgy sought originality, depth and uniqueness, while postmodern, contemporary dramaturgy often recycles, experiments with the aesthetics

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FIGURE 3.8

Montage of a language tree by a Tanzanian student with multicultural background.

of the surface, and works with artists from other art forms in crossover and fusion. Kjølner and Szatkowski write about simultaneous theatre montage: No matter how you read the text, it is not its own key book. It requires the audience’s own answers. … It gives the audience simultaneous images to relate to. The texts can be results of processes in which the performance and the text are developed simultaneously, where space, text and play are opposed to each other. (Kjølner and Szatkowski, 1991, p. 128, author’s translation) Jukka-Pekka Hotinen (2001, pp. 217–218) has gathered concepts that characterize ‘new’ dramaturgies. For example, he mentions fragment, composition, difference, opening, fracture, unfinished and parallel. He states that the only rule that applies is

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FIGURE 3.9

Montage of language tree with roots in Masai and Mere.

that there are no established rules. There are no role characters, but there are different voices. These voices can be heard simultaneously, or consecutively. A monologue can be created which collects many people’s voices, called a polylog. Hotinen’s list shows concepts used in postmodern thinking as a sign that the modern times of great narratives are over. Instead, people in a hyper-complex society strive hard to get a holistic understanding of their lives in society, where, however, understanding is reached in fragments. Hans-Thies Lehmann expresses the following regarding the challenges for theatre in a transformed society: With the end of the ‘Gutenberg galaxy’ and the advent of new technologies, the text and the book are being called into question. The mode of perception

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is shifting: a simultaneous and multi-perspective form of perceiving is replacing the linear successive. (Lehmann, 2008, p. 16) It is also true for education, that the new technologies transforms the teaching space and the modes of communication in multimodal ways. Lehmann writes that the entire theatre situation tends to promote self-reflexivity and thematization of themselves both among those who create an expression and those who are spectators/participants. Thus, it is necessary to seek a new aesthetic logic for the theatre outside the dramatic action, for example in rituals and through different voices in a world space.

References Allern, T. H. (2010). Dramaturgy in teaching and learning. In A.-L. Østern, M. Björkgren & B. Snickars-von Wright (eds), Drama in three movements – a Ulyssean encounter (pp. 95–111). Vasa: Faculty of Education at Åbo Akademi University. Allern, T. H. (2009). Fagdidaktikk i drama – dramaturgi i undervisning og læring [Subject Knowledge in drama – dramaturgy in teaching and learning]. Dramaseksjonen: Høgskolen i Nesna. Dewey, J. (1980 [1934]). Art as experience. New York: Perigee Books. Engelstad, A. (2000). Den forføreriske filmen. Om bruk av film i norskfaget [The seducive film. Use of film in teaching of Norwegian language], 3rd edition. Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk Forlag. Evans, M. (2006). Innføring i dramaturgi. Teater Film Fjernsyn [Introduction to dramaturgy. Theatre, film, TV]. Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk Forlag. Fischer-Lichte, E. (2008). The transformative power of performance. A new aesthetics. New York: Routledge. Gladsø, S., Gjervan, E. K., Hovik, L. & Skagen, A. (2015). Dramaturgi Forestillinger om teater [Dramaturgy: Views on theatre], 2nd edition. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Hotinen, J.-P. (2001). Draaman analyysistä ihmettelevään ja performatiiviseen lukemiseen – pari skeemaa uudesta dramaturgiasta [From analysis of drama to a wondering and performative reading – a few schemes for new dramaturgies]. In H. Reitala & T. Heinonen (eds), Dramaturgioita [Dramaturgies] (pp. 201–221). Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto, Palmenia. Iser, W. (1978). The act of reading: A theory of aesthetic response. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Jor, F. E. (2003). Ordenes herre: En innføring i praktisk retorikk [The master of the words: An introduction to practical rhetoric]. Oslo: Gyldendal Akademisk. Kjeldsen, J. E. (2006). Retorikk i vår tid: En innføring i moderne retorisk teori [Rhetoric in our time: An introduction to modern rhetorical theory]. Oslo: Spartacus. Kjølner, T. & Szatkowski, J. (1991). Dramaturgisk analyse for ikke naive instruktører [Dramaturgical analysis for not naive instructors]. In H. Reistad (ed.), Regikunst [The art of directing] (pp. 122–132). Oslo: Tell Forlag. Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. New York: Routledge. Lehmann, H.-T. (2008). Post-dramatic theatre. London: Routledge. Selander, S. (2008). Designs for learning – a theoretical perspective. Designs for Learning, 1 (1), 10–24. Stavik-Karlsen, G. (2014). Provoksjon for å koble elevene på [Provocation in order to get the students hooked] In A.-L. Østern, E. Angelo & G. Stavik-Karlsen (eds),

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Kunstpedagogikk og kunnskapsutvikling [Arts pedagogy and knowledge development] (pp. 234– 260) Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Szatkowski, J. (1989). Dramaturgiske modeller – om dramaturgisk tekstanalyse [Dramaturgical models – about dramaturgical text analysis]. In E. E. Christoffersen, T. Kjølner & J. Szatkowski (eds), Dramaturgisk analyse: En antologi [Dramaturgical analysis: An anthology] (pp. 9–92). Århus: Universitetet i Aarhus, Institutt for dramaturgi. Szatkowski, J. (2019). A theory of dramaturgy. New York: Routledge.

4 ADDRESSING CONTEMPORARY EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS Anna-Lena Østern

Youth, multimodality and design theory Through the fact that YouTube and social media like TikTok and Snapchat occupy such a large place in the lives of young people worldwide, young people today are used to putting together montage and fragments in very different ways. They can read complex multimodal texts, and many young people develop high competence in creating montage based on topics they are concerned with. Søren Langager (2010, p. 17, author’s translation) writes that common social norms and values that have traditionally held society together, and until now have been the social glue, can no longer fulfil that task: ‘To do this society has become too complex, differentiated and diverse. Too complicated. Instead, art & culture is “designated” to fill this role.’ Langager notes that subjectivity, interpretation, expressiveness and diversity are concepts that describe the competences young people should bring with them from school. These concepts are linked to the aesthetic dimension, understood as recognizing through the senses (ibid., p. 18). Gunther Kress and his group (Jewitt, 2014) argue that the school still has a weak understanding of the semiotic work that students do when they work multimodally using different signs, and orchestrating meaning through their compositions. Digital environments are part of school life. Serious games are computer games that have clear learning goals, and they are intended to be used in teaching. The concept of staging is used about the teacher’s form work in connection with teaching, and they describe interactive teaching processes where the students create multimodal designs and realize designs in products. The performative society of young people challenges education to find new ways in encounters with the students.

Contemporary educational contexts 47

In Education for Socially Engaged Art, Pablo Helguera writes: Traditional pedagogy fails to recognize three things: first, the creative performativity of the act of education; second, the fact that the collective construction of an art milieu, with art works and ideas, is a collective construction of knowledge; and third, the fact that knowledge of art does not end in knowing the artwork but is a tool for understanding the world. (Helguera, 2011, p. 80) Following Helguera’s thoughts about the performativity of education, and the notion that working with community arts ends up in knowing the world. We have identified seven features of an aesthetic educational design (Østern et al., 2019), where the first feature is an overall aesthetic approach to learning, and the seventh about dramaturgy is focused in this book. In the following we shortly list the seven features.

Seven features of an aesthetic educational design 1 Aesthetic approaches to learning The aesthetic approach implies a sensuous approach. It is important that can we go back to tthe feeling of liveliness is present in the elaboration, and that affects and bodily resonance are asked for, and designed, by the teacher. An aesthetic approach to learning consists of active elaboration of experience, focus on the senses, and shaping of form. The approach implies that a performative inquiry is elaborated into a meaningful theme. Through work in the art form the teacher challenges the students to give a response when elaborating and exploring the task or formulating a task within the given theme. This aesthetic approach is the baseline for an aesthetic educational design.

2 Bodily learning Working in an art form implies a practice where the body-mind works as a totality. This aspect is elaborated in next chapter. Affective aspects connected to feelings and attitudes are activated when focusing on bodily learning, and these add to the joy and thrill of learning. In order to be moved you need to move, and in order to understand you need to grasp the material, touch and feel. You need to experience the nature/culture space you inhabit with the students. The verbal articulation of knowledge is but one way to express knowing, and a bodily expression is also understood as knowledge formation, where the insights might be transformative, even shocking, mind-blowing and eye-opening

3 Multimodal impulses and materials working performatively Different art forms like dance, drama, visual arts, film, oral traditions, literature, and more can serve as impulses for the students’ elaborations. Different materials

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offer different opportunities and challenges, when the students inquire into them. Both the modality and the material chosen work performatively: they have agency and produce something during the process, something that was not obvious from before. All matter can have agency, meaning that it influences the learning process.

4 Difference and friction as important for meaning making, learning and teaching Just as an artist does when he or she wants to explore possibilities, so also students and teachers can explore differences and frictions. The differences and frictions are considered values in a performative inquiry, when trying to find out what it is, how it works, why it is, or how it could be, or creating new stories, new hybrid formations, that make sense in a contemporary context. To be disturbed and destabilized opens up for deep, transformative learning.

5 Exploring, relational and intra-acting learning Explorative and performative inquiry is a key to learning with an artistic approach. The students and the teacher are in relationship with each other through their common interest in the production of knowledge. The learning is complex and dependent on both human relations and materiality. A performative inquiry, relations and intra-acting between humans and other than human, the materiality of things, the vibrant matter, are entangled and ever changing.

6 Participatory arts encounters Arts demand active interpretative work from the person experiencing them. In participatory arts encounters the students are also active in forming the artistic expression, and therein lies a potential not yet explored enough in education. Both to participate and work collaboratively are challenging the teacher’s creativity as well as the students.

7 Focus on dramaturgy in the educational context This is the focus of this book. Above all, the choice of meaningful aims and meaningful means are underlined in dramaturgical thinking. The gaze of the dramaturg shows how important form and the shaping of form are in educational processes The means of the teacher dramaturg can be employed to compose a story, or to make a montage with episodes. The teacher thinking is connected to finding a balance between what the students know from before and what new experiences they can be challenged by. The different group or individual work forms are carefully chosen by the teacher dramaturg in order to support the students’ learning processes in meaningful ways.

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Different views of knowledge and understandings of contemporary time in dramaturgical models It is not just society that is changing at a rapid pace - the forms of theatre are also changing. Education strives to find its place for children and adolescents to continue working on the project of becoming the adult citizens of tomorrow’s society. The dramaturgical models I have given some snapshots of can be placed next to each other in the way Szatkowski (1989, p. 81f.) has done, inspired by Bertolt Brecht and Eugenio Barba. The compilation in Figure 4.1 (which includes only some examples from a long list) shows how different understandings appear in dramaturgy. Allern (2003) has discussed various dramaturgical models and knowledge views related to the models. While the classic dramaturgy model is searching for linear explanations of what and why things are so, dialectical assembly models such as epic dramaturgy ask why relationships are as they are and how things could be different. In the simultaneous assembly model, knowledge becomes an ongoing conversation about various opportunities and barriers. Allern mentions melismatic dramaturgy as an ‘idle state’ dramaturgy. Melism is a music term which means that the tone moves upwards and downwards on the same syllable, as an ornament. A state is described, not an event development. Allern suggests that the Sami yoik (a characteristic singing form and style)1 has this dramaturgical structure. He also suggests that drama by the Norwegian author Jon Fosse gives an example of the use of melismatic dramaturgy. In this understanding of melismatic dramaturgical form, Allern binds together an old tradition with innovative drama. Each era creates its own artistic forms, and the theatre seeks forms of communication that can affect contemporary people and explore human vulnerability in the world. It is not only in theatre and politics that the major issues of power, justice, injustice and values are thematized. These issues also arise in education and we must seek forms where they can be processed.

Dramatic form

Epic form

Simultaneous form

The scene embodies a situation. Conveys experiences. Suggestion is elaborated. The human subject is recognisable The events unfold in a linear way. The world as it is. What mankind should do.

The scene tells.

The scene simultaneously presents several fiction layers. Questions the term knowledge. Complex images are worked on. The formation of meaning is investigated. The events unfold like paths in a labyrinth. The many possible worlds. Can mankind do anything?

Conveys facts. Arguments are elaborated. The human subject is the purpose of investigation. The events unfold in curves. The world as it could be. What mankind must do of necessity.

FIGURE 4.1 Comparative description of theatre forms in three dramaturgical perspectives. Sources: Szatkowski (1989, p. 81f); author’s translation

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Relational dramaturgical form as a guide in teaching planning The preliminary dramaturgical analysis model for theatre (shown in Figure 2.2 in Chapter 2) has undergone an artistic adaptation into a relational model for education (Figure 4.2). In this relational analysis model, ongoing transformations, interactivity and participation are more clearly represented than in the analysis model for theatre. The dramaturg’s gaze has transformed the figure to be more dynamic, and in detail to be much more communicatively focused than the analysis model for theatre, which had boxes and digital arrows. The artist’s thinking represented by the various zones denotes that these are places for meaning making in a societal and cultural context, and the classroom as an important arena for relational teaching and learning A new large spiralling circle with the headline ‘Meaning making’ focuses on the continuously ongoing interpretation process in which each participant is involved. The relational dramaturgical model visualized in Figure 4.2 summarizes what kind of dramaturgical thinking might guide the educator in planning their teaching and learning, thinking like a dramaturg in education. The first broad entrance on the left side is the teacher’s ideas, academic goals and understanding of the profession, both of which are fundamental to a dramaturgical understanding. Here, the curriculum, framework plan and thoughts about education, formation and competence are updated. Here, the teachers formulate their ideas. In this broad arrow there is a first filter consisting of the choice of four dramaturgical entrances: time (rhythm-flow), place (management structure), body (improvisation), text (theme-multimodal means).

FIGURE 4.2 Relational dramaturgy in educational context. Source: artistic re-design by Anette Stølsdokken Østern

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The broad arrow from the right-hand side indicates the students’ knowledge production and ideas. Knowledge can be internalized as more knowledge, qualitatively different knowledge, with the transformation of understanding and insight. The students in the learning event are participants and have ownership through experience and exploration; there is room for thinking back and forth, up and down, and in circles. These ideas are filtered through the second filter, a filter called code competence, and implies knowledge of available forms. The second filter affects the student’s learning. The importance of the form for creating meaning is central. The student can be familiar with some forms of knowledge; other forms are new and arouse resistance, but allow for an intensified process in knowledge production. The square in the middle is the arena for knowledge production. On this arena, the learning events are played out in a field of engagement that encompasses the culture of the academic subject, the school’s culture, and the children’s and youth’s culture. On this arena uncertainty and resistance are part of the meaning making process. This space is also a space for hesitation, for identity creation and vulnerability because it makes the person visible. The meaning making is achieved through the exploration of human space, materiality and participation in the world. Here, a diversity of perspectives on power, justice, equality and responsibility are highlighted in a social perspective. Through interpretation, the students and the teacher can jointly think holistically and point out opportunities. Communication and interaction are, as the arrows indicate, fundamental in all aspects of the relational model. Regardless of the choice of specific dramaturgical model, the elements included in the relational dramaturgical analysis model in Figure 4.2 are relevant. The arrows back and forth are significantly reinforced, compared with the preliminary model presented in Figure 2.2. The communication - the collaborative, the interactive, the entangled and the students’ ownership and participation in the design of studies and teaching and learning - can through this adaptation be focused in a way that stands for contemporary thinking about education. The students are not only recipients, but also participants in knowledge production. Curator Nicolas Bourriaud, in the book Relational aesthetics (Bourriaud, 1998) defines relational art as artistic practices that take interpersonal relations and the social context as their theoretical and practical starting point. In relational aesthetics, art is considered as a function of the interpersonal relationships they represent, produce and evoke, writes Bourriaud (ibid.). In the analysis model shown in Figure 4.2, a spiralling movement indicates the horizons of understanding, denoting that many learning processes are cyclical and non-linear in progression. We should also mention some other aspects of dramaturgical forms, namely interactive, collaborative and open and closed forms. We have explored and defined these forms especially in connection with very young children, but they are equally relevant for older pupils and for students in higher education. Those dramaturgical forms

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present challenging ethical questions about the risks involved in their manipulation, and also questions regarding democracy in art and education.

Open and collaborative dramaturgies in child play and adult art Lise Hovik and Lisa Nagel have described interactive dramaturgies in performances for children and have found different degrees of closed and open dramaturgical forms. In closed dramaturgy the child audience is mainly just looking at the performance (Hovik & Nagel, 2017). In open dramaturgical forms the children participate in dialogue and improvisation. Hovik and Nagel point at the ethical dilemmas that arise in balancing play, care and art when very young children are involved. Gabrielle Faith Guss has written about kindergarten children’s dramaturgy of spontaneous theatre (Guss, 2017). The fast movements and shifts in their staging she gives the name dramaturgical helixes. Julie Dunn and John O’Toole have explored the relationship between the actual, the dramatic and the virtual in a juxtaposition of process drama world design and multiplayer world design (Dunn & O’Toole, 2009). Their juxtaposition is a dramaturgic grip, explicating how new agglomerations are brought to life in the virtual game world. They start from asking four traditional questions: who, where, when, what. They name the basic building blocks with context of the setting, of the medium, the fictional context and the leader. They find the narrative components being very much the same in both work forms. The find the hooks in immersion, tension and point of view (POV) for the virtual game. Finally they mention role attributes, which for the virtual game are: role, persona and attributes, avatar and role-playing games (RPGs). O’Toole (2007) has also explored fantasy play initiated by ‘what if …?’. He has juxtaposed the child’s play forms with the adult’s ‘as if …?’ in art making. O’Toole has identified shared aspects in a common aesthetic and a playful behaviour (Figure 4.3).

Planning in cycles An important task in the education of becoming teachers is to learn to translate subject knowledge into teaching and learning in school. Thinking about stage planning, year planning, period planning, sequence planning and block planning helps teachers and students to see relationships and to prioritize. Progression in learning does not proceed in linear progression, but recursively, in cycles. To the dramaturg, being able to think back and forth, down-and-up in order to create something is both necessary and self-evident. This kind of cyclical thinking, now quite familiar to progressive teachers, brings together the teacher’s and dramaturg’s planning processes. The theatre seeks new ways of saying something for the present day by developing new conventions or forms of expression. These conventions include, for example, the re-use of already used material, mounted in new constellations. These conventions also problematize role and character by using autobiographical stories from people

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FIGURE 4.3 A compilation of characteristics of child play and adult art. Source: O’Toole (2007)

who are not actors, or alternatively with actors as performers. The theatre also moves to places beyond the theatre building – with performances created for specific locations. In chapter nine we describe these traits also in educational settings in a dynamic, relational and nomadic dramaturgy illustrated by an animation. Education is necessarily in dialogue with contemporary thought flows, and dramaturgical thinking can help to provide some navigation tools and points for this dialogue.

Note 1 For an example, see www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPqKAuzo0tk.

References Allern, T. H. (2003). Drama og erkjennelse. En undersøkelse av forholdet mellom dramaturgi og epistemologi i drama og dramapedagogikk [Drama and insight. An exploration of the relationship between dramaturgy and epistemology in drama and drama pedagogy]. Dissertation, NTNU, Institutt for kunst- og medievitenskap, Trondheim, Norway. Bourriaud, N. (1998). Relational aesthetics. Paris: Les Presses du Reel. Dunn, J. & O’Toole, J. (2009). When worlds collude: Exploring the relationship between the actual, the dramatic and the virtual. In M. Anderson, D. Cameron & J. Carroll (eds), Drama education with digital technology (pp. 20–37). New York: Continuum. Guss, F. G. (2017). Barnekulturens iscenesettelser II: Dramaturgiske spiraler [Staging of children’s culture II: Dramaturgical helixes]. Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk. Helguera, P. (2011). Education for socially engaged art. New York: Pinto Books. Hovik, L. & Nagel, L. (2017). Deltakelse og interaktivitet i scenekunst for barn [Participation and interactivity in performance art for children]. Oslo: Fagbokforlaget. Jewitt, C. (2014). Routledge handbook of multimodal analysis, 2nd edition. London: Routledge.

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Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. New York: Routledge. Langager, S. (2010). Den æstetiske dimension [The aesthetic dimension]. In A. Knudsen & C. N. Jensen (eds), Ungdomsliv og læreprocesser i det moderne samfund [Lives of youth and learning processes in the modren society], 2nd edition (pp.17–24).Værløse: Billesø og Baltzer. Østern, T. P.et al. (2019) Dybde//læring: En flerfaglig, relasjonell og skapende tilnærming [Depth// learning: A cross-curricular, relational and creative approach]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. O’Toole, J. (2007). Ace in the hole with Alice. Journal of Artistic and Creative Education, 1 (1). Szatkowski, J. (1989). Dramaturgiske modeller: Om dramaturgisk tekstanalyse [Dramaturgical models: About dramaturgical text analysis]. In E. E. Christoffersen, T. Kjølner & J. Szatkowski (eds), Dramaturgisk analyse: En antologi [Dramaturgical analysis: An anthology] (pp. 9–92). Århus: Universitetet i Aarhus, Institutt for dramaturgi.

5 THE TEACHER-BODY AS A DRAMATURGICAL AXIS FOR COMPOSING A LESSON Tone Pernille Østern and Gunn Engelsrud

Background To understand the teacher as body (hereafter ‘teacher-body’) is crucial for understanding how contact and communication take place between teachers and students. Everyone has met teachers who pace restlessly round the classroom, stepping back and forth, pulling at their clothes, or twirling their hair around a finger, without being fully aware of their expressions, but rather lost in instinctive bodily teaching habits. The bodily habits seem to live their own lives. These bodily habits are still deeply involved in shaping the teaching and further influencing the relationships in the classroom. Bodily habits like restless wandering, avoiding eye contact or a tone of voice that is ambiguous, can be recognized and experienced in one’s own body, and might be difficult to interpret and value as relevant knowledge for the teacher. Even the teacher who only sits behind a table ‘doing nothing’ while teaching, expresses herself bodily. Bodily expressions are present in every moment of teaching; sweat might come trickling down, cheeks blush, legs tremble, the neck become stiff or the heartbeat extra hard due to experiences of joy, resistance or excitement in the classroom. These are expressions of affect and presence: teaching work that takes place through a bodily engagement (even if the teacher does not move very much). The students and teachers influence each other, and the teacher-body intra-acts (Barad, 2007) with the students. We might say that teachers and students together ‘body’ the space. By this, we mean that teachers and students are mutually influenced by – and act on each other – as bodies. The teacher-body becomes a dramaturgical axis for the teaching. By dramaturgical axis, we mean an axis for composing the lesson, where the teacher’s bodily sensations and listening with the body are important for the choices the teacher takes to move the lesson further. In the next paragraphs, we will provide a background for the teacher-body’s position for and in teaching.

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Theoretical perspectives – embodied pedagogy The view of the body in pedagogy has changed radically through the bodily turn in social science and the humanities. Håkan Larsson and Birgitta Fagrell give a full account of how ideas of the body and pedagogical designs are linked (Larsson & Fagrell, 2010). The number of authors who write in this context of pedagogy, often called embodied pedagogy, is increasing. Despite research on learning and teaching, pedagogical practice, according to Larsson and Fagrell, has largely neglected the body’s role and importance. Likewise, the book entitled The Language of the Body in Professional Practice. About Contact, Presence, Leadership and Personal Communication (Winther, 2012; the title given here is our translation) explains itself in taking up these issues. Helle Winther, the editor, writes: ‘The language of the body is of great importance for authenticity, presence, empathy, leadership, relationship competence and crisis management in professional practice’ (ibid., back cover). These are among numerous contemporary authors who point out the importance of bringing understanding of the body into pedagogical research and practice. As already stated, we build on the understanding of teaching as bodily, touching and powerful. Many teachers say they use gut feeling or intuition to make choices while they teach. Teachers’ bodily knowing clearly tells when students are tired and need variety. They notice – bodily – when the students do not understand, and they are – bodily – informed and affected by the mood in the classroom, a mood created by bodies in constant exchange, affecting one another. In some situations, teachers might talk about getting an adrenaline rush, excitement and high spirits as they teach, and in other and more demanding teaching situations, that they are exhausted and drained. Most teachers have experienced both extremes. Common to such conditions are the immediate sensations: body moods that are experienced, manifested and ever-changing. These body moods are affective and shared on a pre-verbal level. Brian Massumi (1995) describes affects as intensities. According to Massumi, affects are autonomous bodily processes that work directly and independently from reflection and verbalizing. Affects should be understood as intensities and influences that work directly as energy in the body These affects, or body moods, as the dance teachers in a research and development project we will describe shortly name them, come about through our actions in different relational situations, and they are experienced as intensities, moods or sensations in the body. An educator who gives such experiences importance is Max van Manen, who in the book Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy (van Manen, 1990), emphasizes the body’s role in teaching processes in a similar way to Winther and the contributors to her edited volume (Winther, 2012). In Winther’s book, the focus is on the body’s importance for the teacher and other professionals who work with people. Most of the writers in the Winther book base their understanding on the term the lived body and a body we are and have and express; as – and in relation to- subject and object and world. Body phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s body subject is a lived and expressive subject that exists in a dynamic relationship with the world. Merleau-Ponty (2002 [1962], p. 185) perceives the body ‘without confusing it with a cognitive operation’. Hence, we do not first think about

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other people’s bodily behaviours, and then respond bodily ourselves. Instead, we feel and notice the expression of other bodies directly. From another, post-humanist, perspective, we intra-act (Barad, 2007), as Karen Barad argues. From this perspective, the teacher-body and other bodies (human and non-human) are in continuous becoming in relation to the students and the complete teaching space and situation. In terms of teaching, this means that teachers and students experience each other as bodies: they create and are created by and in relationships, moods, emotions and communication. Shaun Gallagher (2012), coming from phenomenology, further draws on intersubjectivity, neuroscience, body resonance, and narrative theory to illustrate that empathetic understanding – understanding others – is a bodily experience. Bodily experiences are important for the teacher to understand the fullness of the teaching moment and act in and with the moment. Interactions are also, as Anthony Synnott (1993) writes, cultural-historically situated. He describes that the ways in which people in different cultures and at different times have thought and felt the body have had a decisive influence on the way their life is lived, and how people have been able to experience and unfold themselves as human beings. In this way, we mean that to pay attention to the body’s experience in the moments of teaching has potential for enhancing contact, relationships and communication, and for exercising leadership while teaching. This can involve a revaluation of pedagogical understanding where listening to and recognizing the body is part of teachers’ professional knowledge. When we point to the development and increased awareness of bodily action repertoires, we refer to Charlotte Svendler-Nielsen’s (2012, pp. 116–118) sketch of phenomenologically based teaching and learning. She mentions the following points as relevant to develop for teachers in order for the body and bodily communication to gain importance in their teaching (ibid., p. 118):      

Being able to ‘see’ (with the whole body) what happens in space, both in relation to the individual participants and social processes. Being able to react to non-verbal processes (to be faithful to the gut feeling). Being sensitive to experiences, body expressions and atmosphere. Being able to handle situations where you yourself and the participants may feel that they are in a vulnerable situation. Being able to notice and react to the uniqueness of each participant and in each situation. Having a well-developed kinaesthetic and aesthetic empathy, which is based in the ability to bodily distinguish even small dynamic differences in movement qualities.

As Svendler-Nielsen explains, the teacher learns to become a teacher from what happens in and through the meaning-making body in continuous relation to other people’s meaning-making bodies. In the next section, we continue with analyses of a research project where two dance teachers worked on noting their own bodily experiences while teaching. Through the analysis, we seek to

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enhance our understanding of what knowledge from and with the body means in a teaching context.

Research approach – investigating teachers’ bodily action repertoires In order to illuminate how bodily knowledge is a part of the teacher’s professional knowledge, a first step will be that the teacher becomes interested in examining her bodily experiences while she is teaching. With the teacher-body concept, we include bodily, emotional, verbal, cognitive and relational aspects of the teacher. Together, they create the teacher-body. This was the starting point for the first author’s interest in following two dance teachers for one year each, focusing on their teacher practice and what is experienced in the teacher’s body while teaching. In the two-year long project, together with the dance teachers Mari and Ingeborg, I explored and wrote about the embodied pedagogical knowledge of the two teachers. The dance teachers wrote self-reflexive logs just after completing their classes throughout one year. In the logs, they focused on bodily aspects of their teaching. Due to the results of the study, we began to understand the teacher-body as a dramaturgical axis for the teaching. Understanding the body as a dramaturgical axis, we examined which topics the teachers brought forward as their repertoire of action. The context was dance classroom leadership, which we propose is relevant in order to bring out the teachers’ specific bodily repertoires. In classroom leadership, the teacher intra-acts with bodily dynamics in a constantly shifting and creative classroom, where she bodily takes position as the classroom’s communicative axis. In what follows, we examined what was being experienced in the teacher’s body while teaching, and our research interest was to create a vocabulary to discuss, share, examine, and discuss how our findings could contribute to knowledge about the body’s importance for understanding the teacher’s profession. In this, teachers might become aware of what repertoire of bodily action was being active during leadership and relationship building in the classroom.

Ever-changing body moods One central theme is ‘body mood’. We base the relevance of the term on what the dancers write in their logs. They describe how ever-changing body moods ‘fleet through them’: they are constantly ‘tuned’ in their teaching. They describe teaching as a deeply touching experience. They describe, for example, sensations of having ‘a lump in the stomach, pressure over the chest, clamped voice, or floating in the steps, flow of joy, tingling excitement.’ The body moods that dance teachers write about are changing and continuous in relation to the classroom (dance studio) episodes and situations. According to phenomenological thinkers such as Medard Boss (1999), ‘moods’ in the body are a fundamental phenomenon. The moods ‘do not reside’ in the mind, but are felt and sensed, while thoughts arise

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(cf. Merleau-Ponty, 2002 [1962]). In her log, Mari gives insight into the practicalpedagogical, bodily engagement at stake in the moment of teaching: Warm after the lesson, dry in my mouth. Energy discharge, no power left. But still excited. I notice that my nervousness leads to a rather rough body attitude, as though I am bodily compensating for the hesitancy I am experiencing inside. Maybe in this way I try to create a balance. I become warm in my body right away, even though I am not moving as much as the others. (Mari) In these lines, Mari touches on a wide range of ways in which the body expresses itself and what is at stake in the teaching. The moment the students enter the room, before she has even begun to move or teach, Mari’s teacher-body begins to work affectively and bodily. During the class, she quickly gets warm, even though she moves far less than the dancers, as she frequently interrupts her moving with verbal supervising. The attention towards the students, the space and herself, as well as the effort to keep the thematic threads clear in her teaching during the class makes her body temperature rise. Her mouth gets dry, and the uncertainty remains inside. Mari tells about how the teaching is an ‘energy boost’ and that she is ‘drained of energy’ during the class. The energy release comes from the effort that the teaching itself demands. Mari is fully committed to listening, perceiving, understanding, relating, communicating, feeling and continually making teaching decisions. All the affects and thoughts are involved in the teaching: the body functions like an ambiguous and ever- changing filter in the meetings in between dancing, affective bodies. Red cheeks and a dry mouth are bodily expressions of high presence in the situation. This experience calls for reflexivity about how the teaching moment is embodied and about the resonances that run through the body in the teaching moment. Immediately, one’s own body moods are in constant exchange with others, which is in line with Merleau-Ponty’s (2002 [1962], 1968) understanding that it is through our bodily being-in-the-world that we have access to understanding others, or with Barad (2007), that we intra-act with others. Listening to the body, Ingeborg writes about experiences that we relate to kinaesthetic empathy, and defines it as a form of knowledge that is about knowing in your own body where the other person is. She feels that she knows bodily how the students feel, what they struggle with and what they enjoy. We find that this indicates how own bodily experiences can be seen as a barometer of being where the other is in their bodily experience. To be able to listen bodily, both teachers write that it is important that they themselves participate in the teaching – that they relate closely to the students and that they move around the room and get close to the students’ learning situations. Mari and Ingeborg write: It is crucial to participate myself as I teach. My own participation makes me feel safe and I understand the bodily processes that the dancers go through. (Mari)

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As soon as I listen into my body while I lead the group, I feel what we need to do. I rapidly construct movement themes, which I build up as I am listening to my body. (Ingeborg) When the teachers move around in space and in among the students they are in clear contrast with the teacher standing in front of the students, which they know from traditional teaching. When the teacher stands in front of the class, it indicates that they are standing outside what is happening with the student (and themselves) within the teaching practice. In teaching that is more traditional, the teacher often takes a position where they practise methods based on instruction, control, monitoring and adjusting students’ movements; a position on the side – as one who sees, observes and considers from a distance. Here Mari and Ingeborg instead show how participation gives access to and creates exploration, testing, movement and/ or playing with the students. However, to be in motion in the ‘in-between’ among the students also take considerable effort.

The body that provides and drains energy The dance teachers describe the body, and especially the skin, as a sensitive and subtle surface that senses the energy level in the classroom as well as in individual students. They describe this sensation as painful. They sense negative or tired energy immediately and this sensation creates the experience of heaviness and resistance: ‘I feel pressure on my chest’ (Ingeborg). They feel that they almost give up, withdraw and go through the class with a sense of failure, or compensate for the waning energy of the students by striving to supply the energy that the students lack. Often, they try to spread energy by moving around in the dance studio; their own presence around the room and round different students creates energy. For example, Ingeborg writes: I lightly run through the dance studio in order to provide energy with my body without saying a word. (Ingeborg) Here, she shows how running through space becomes a way to create and add new energy. In her formulation, she points to how she bodily senses and gets insight about the space as a teaching context where her own bodily presence with the others in the classroom gives clear advice about how to operate and organize the moving body in space. According to Ingeborg, this can be both revitalizing and calming, varying from situation to situation. Svendler-Nielsen (2012, p. 113) writes about the importance of where teachers position themselves in the room. She writes, for example, that it is easier to notice when it is time to switch to a new task (something that dramaturgy is about) if you are part of the room and move around where the students are, than if you stay at a distance behind a desk, not

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sensing the room. Such a presence in moving around shows how rhythm, time and flow live in the teaching space.

Rhythm, time and flow I try to listen to what the rhythm in my body needs. I have to listen especially to the time, how the time works on my and the others’ bodies. (Ingeborg)

Both teachers and students can get the feeling that a class is fragmented, or vice versa, that the lesson is fluid and comfortable. A class may feel fragmented for many different reasons, but one reason may be that the teacher uses too long or too short a time in the teaching of some topics. The timing of their teaching is fragmented. The time spent on one task is a felt time in the bodies. The dance teachers emphasize listening to the body’s rhythm, time and flow as important aspects of the practical-pedagogical knowledge. We understand rhythm, time and flow as dramaturgical elements, which the teachers sense and are affected by and which create teaching-choices that further structure the class. The dramaturgical elements are negotiated in the ongoing ‘inner’ teaching dialogue that the teacher constantly has with herself as she goes on with the teaching. When the teacher succeeds in making choices that are experienced as fluid in terms of time (timing), the class can enter a state of flow, where the dancers, the teacher and the lesson all float along. Here we understand time as perceived time: circular, fluid and condensed with meaning-making. The dance teachers describe such lessons as experiences of ‘teaching happiness’. This teaching happiness is something they live on for a long time, and these happy moments offer support more difficult teaching times. The dance teachers describe such situations as experiences where everything is related, and everything evolves by itself: it is a typical experience of flow. The teacher hardly needs to do anything – other than paying attention to and going with the sensation for the right timing in their own body. In such experiences, the breathing function as a centring ‘force’.

Breathing and voice The dancer teachers write about how breathing expresses and regulates emotions. They can control and regulate emotions by using the breath actively. In addition, focus on breathing can help calm down and regain concentration in stressful situations. Based in a body-phenomenological understanding, the way breathing occurs is an indicator that the body is always present here and now. Breathing, emotion and body are concurrent. Breathing is the affect, or at least the affect is in the breathing. Sensations of stress and short, strained breathing come simultaneously, and they dissolve simultaneously. The dance teachers are particularly concerned about listening to their breathing. Both point out how their breathing is part of the experiences they go through. They also know how to use their own breathing to calm down and how to breathe to regain self-confidence in stressful situations. Experiencing the

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connection between breathing, emotions and the voice when they teach creates a big difference in the teaching experience. I need to enter my voice and sense how the voice influences the group and me. I need to find a voice and a rhythm in my way of talking, which creates an atmosphere and makes me clear. (Ingeborg) Ingeborg emphasizes how she brings the lesson forward through her experienced bodily use of the voice. She understands the voice as an extension of the body, and she describes how her contours as a teacher become clearer when she integrates the voice in her body while teaching. The voice then gives her a kind of musicality, and with this she can ‘tune’ the class – give it a mood. The dance teachers use this mood to shape the leadership in space.

Bodily classroom leadership I can press, direct, manipulate and lead with the help of my body. The way I walk, in what tempo, how hard I put my heels to the floor, the way I turn around and the ways I use my voice are ways that I can use to lead the dancers. (Mari)

Without any kind of direct bodily contact, Mari expresses how she can ‘push and control’ the students in the direction she wants. By raising the intensity of bodily power, energy, tempo and direction accompanied by the use of direct gaze and voice, the dance teacher shows that there is no doubt that she is the leader of the class, if needed. Small, dynamic elements in the teacher’s body have a decisive role for leadership. To use direct movements, urgency, speed, turning up the volume in the classroom, direct gaze, a driving pace, often in combination with a raised or clearer voice, are all bodily elements, which the dance pedagogues highlight as ways in which they lead the teaching, especially in situations when the class needs to work towards a result, often under pressure of time. In this example, classroom leadership is bodily grounded. However, that ground is never stable and static, rather ambiguous and in becoming.

Bodily ambiguity The relationship between experiences in the body and the teachers’ own reflexive thoughts on the experiences is expressed as ambiguity. The body’s ambiguity as both subject and object of reflection comes forth. The dance teachers experience this both positively and negatively: I become very cognitive when I become insecure. I lose contact with my skin and the body. I compensate bodily for my inner insecurity by becoming rougher in

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my body attitude. When the inner dialogue becomes too strong, I don’t manage to stay present in the situation. In my inner dialogue then, I am ahead in the teaching, thinking about my next step. (Mari) The experience of being a little ahead in time while teaching contrasts with being in the present moment, and is a theme that both teachers bring up. Being five minutes ahead in time in mind while teaching is something both dance teachers experience as challenging. Unlike bodily flow experiences in teaching, a strong analytical-cognitive element emerges and interferes with the teaching in situations where they become uncertain. Uncertainty arises, for example, from difficult questions, comments or attitudes from the students. In such situations, they begin to analyse themselves while they are in the teaching moment. The cognitive, analysing element is often strongly prominent and the dance teachers feel that they lose their presence in the moment and lose confidence in the body sensations, and breathing. The experience of time is changing: the experience of being present in the moment falls into the background and instead being a little ahead in time comes into the foreground. This means that the dance teachers begin to plan the next step of the class. Thus, the teaching feels dull and unsatisfactory, and difficult to grasp. When the dance teachers describe such teaching experiences, they emphasize that they are experiencing losing contact with the body, especially with the skin. The skin and body become numb, a little like when you have been frozen on a cold winter day. In difficult emotional situations, the body feels almost gone: confused and chaotic. They lose themselves as the pivotal point of teachingaction and communication with the students. Nevertheless, the internal teaching dialogue is also important and gives new strategies along the way in the teaching: The inner dialogue solves problems and resistance in myself and my inner dialogue also gives me new teaching strategies as I go along. (Mari) The relationship between thoughts and bodily experiences, between the inner dialogue and sensory experiences along the way in the teaching, is silent and unproblematic for the most part – it works by itself. However, when these two aspects come into conflict, it creates teaching ambiguity.

Concluding remarks – bodily knowledge as part of the teacher profession The topics we have highlighted in this chapter show that it is highly relevant to conduct discussions on how to investigate and articulate pedagogical perspectives on the role, importance and value of the body for teachers and for teacher professionalism. We have highlighted some examples and discussions from two dance teachers’ experiences of teaching. They clearly formulate how ambiguities and the

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present time of teaching live in their working bodies. We have pointed out how the teacher’s thinking, acting and decision-making in the classroom are rooted in what the teacher senses and experiences there, through their living and always relating body (cf. Merleau-Ponty, 2002 [1962]). We have highlighted how teachers can makes teaching choices based on these interwoven thought-feelings. The body’s intra-actions within the teaching space and with the students flow together with their teaching choices in the moment, as well as their relationships with the students. The teacher’s body processes all the moods, relations with others, classroom situations and nuances of their experiences at once, and then the thoughts come rolling along – or occasionally flashing – as part of this process. The phrase ‘I went on a gut feeling’ might just mean that the teacher has noticed understanding in the body, before formulating a clear and articulated thought. A reflexive attitude towards the teacher-body involves having an awareness of the relational aspects of the teaching, and further noticing the bodily aspects of those. There is always relationship-building and communication going on in the bodily space between teacher and pupils. A professional reflexive attitude towards the body’s importance also includes taking care of oneself bodily, and not least accepting and learning from all the bodily sensations, or body moods, that one goes through as a teacher in the moment. Since it is as body we are experiencing and because teachers are often meeting and in dialogue with a large number of people every day, the teacher will be tuned to body moods every single day. The phrase ‘being tuned’ refers to how the body is constantly coloured by, or even created by, body moods or affects: joyous, happy, heavy and discouraged. The moods manifest themselves bodily, but they are also processed and changed bodily. Moods come and go – it is part of the profession. Persistent heavy body moods are nevertheless worth directing active attention to, because they can tell that change is necessary in your teaching. You know it in your stomach, or you know with the body before the thought has struck you like ‘lightning from the clear sky’. The body itself provides pedagogical insight and can lead you in doing pedagogical developmental work. By making the teacher-body visible, we have contributed with knowledge that others researchers and dancers in the field can thermalize, criticize, change and renew. We have also pointed out what such a bodily action repertoire may consist of. We have highlighted some methods teachers can use to examine their own bodily experiences with a reflexive attitude: to know in their own body and to accept and learn from the changing body moods that come and go while teaching, and which often remain in the body afterwards. We further argue that the body needs to have an increased status and profile in the teacher’s profession, since teachers are present, experience themselves and the students and make teaching-choices as bodies. A professional practice based on an understanding of the importance of the body in the teaching moment adds new impetus to discussions on teacher professionalism. According to our analyses, practical pedagogy in teacher education could benefit from training in being in the performative and performing teaching moment. Our findings can be relevant for

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student teachers’ knowledge about how to relate to immediate bodily sensations that accumulate in relationship to their students and teaching spaces. There are probably situations where teachers open up to their body moods in an investigative and accepting way, and situations where teachers condemn, misinterpret and ignore the body in the moment. Here, many possibilities exist, depending on tradition, knowledge, situation and interest for the body as a theme and experience in pedagogy and teaching and learning. In order to develop one’s own ability to communicate and respond, the teacher can begin by noticing and recognizing what is happening in and between bodies. A question for further exploration is whether teachers can learn more about themselves in teaching by understanding the teaching action as a work involving, relating and engaging with the body. We conclude that we have illuminated what knowledge from and with the body means in a teaching context, and that this, therefore, can be a dramaturgical axis for composing a lesson.

References Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the universe halfway. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Boss, M. (1999) Grundriss der Medizin und Psychologie. Bern: Hans Huber. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row. Gallagher, S. (2012). Phenomenology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Larsson, H. & Fagrell, B. (2010). Föreställningar om kroppen: Kropp och kroppslighet i pedagogisk praktik och teori [Ideas about the body: Body and embodiment in pedagogical theory and practice]. Stockholm: Liber. Leight Foster, S. (2011). Choreographing empathy: Kinesthesia in performance. London & New York: Routledge. Lundberg, P. (2009). Krop, kultur og kundskaper: Inledning [Body, culture and knowledge: Introduction]. Cursiv, 4, 5–22. Massumi, B. (1995). The autonomy of affect. Cultural Critique, 31, 83–109. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002 [1962]). Phenomenology of perception (trans. C. Smith). New York: Routledge. Østern, T. P. (2006). Dansens uutholdelige letthet [The unbearable lightness of dance]. In K. Steinsholt & H. Sommerro (eds), Improvisasjon: Kunsten å sette seg selv på spill [Improvisation: The art of putting oneself at risk] (pp. 189–213). Oslo: Damm & Søn. Østern, T. P. (2013). The embodied teaching moment: The embodied character of the dance teacher’s practical-pedagogical knowledge investigated in dialogue with two contemporary dance teachers. Nordic Journal of Dance, 4 (1), 28–47. Østern, T. P., Dahl, T., Strømme, A., Pedersen, J. A., Østern, A.-L. & Selander, S. (2019). Dybde//læring: En flerfaglig, relasjonell og skapende tilnærming [Deep education: A cross-curricular, relational and artful approach]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Parviainen, J. (1998). Bodies moving and moved: A phenomenological analysis of the dance subject and the cognitive and ethical values of dance art. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Svendler-Nielsen, C. (2012). Krop, kinæstetisk empati og pædagogisk tone i undervisningsprocesser: Skitse til en fænomenologisk didaktik [Body, kinaesthetic empathy and pedagogical tact in teaching processes: Contours to phenomenological teaching]. In H. Winther (ed.), Kroppens sprog i professional praksis: Om kontakt, nærvær, lederskab og

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personlig kommunikation [The Language of the body in professional practice: About contact, presence, leadership and personal communication], (pp. 111–119). Værløse: Billesø & Baltzer. Synnott, A. (1993). The body social: Symbolism, self and society. New York: Routledge. van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. New York: State University of New York Press. Winther, H. (ed.) (2012). Kroppens sprog i professional praksis: Om kontakt, nærvær, lederskab og personlig kommunikation [The language of the body in professional practice: About contact, presence, leadership and personal communication]. Værløse: Billesø & Baltzer.

6 ARTISTIC PRECISION IN PROFESSIONAL ORAL SKILLS Ethics and dramaturgy Kristin Solli Schøien and Anna-Lena Østern

Professionalization of oral communication We start with a clarification of what being a professional in general education is. A profession can be described as grounded in an independent, knowledge-based practice with special privileges and obligations. Teacher education aims to qualify for the practice of independent, knowledge-based work. The privileges consist of exclusive access to a work area, but also an extensive degree of autonomy in the practice. This right entails a commitment to clear ethical standards, defined by the profession itself in form of a code of ethics. Professional expertise, therefore, is defined as comprising science-based knowledge, attitudes in the form of personal commitment, and highly specialized skills (Grimen, 2008). Components of competence in professional practice are visualized in Figure 6.1. The root of the word profession is the Latin verb professio, which denotes standing for something, saying something freely. According to this, the hallmark of

FIGURE 6.1

Components of competence in professional practice.

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a profession is a high degree of personal commitment. The right to make independent assessments requires considerable autonomy within the profession in the form of collaboration between expert knowledge, skills and pedagogical tact. To ensure a professional practice in accordance with the values and norms applicable to the profession, a measure of self-understanding and incorporation of those values is required of each professional practitioner.

Ethics of professional oral skills demands artistic precision As with all components of professional practice, oral communication is dependent on an ethically binding autonomous integrity. An important part of a teacher’s work is to be seen, heard and understood in communication with students, colleagues and parents. Such performative acts involve a cross-disciplinary competence, which, regardless of subject, is of great importance for the practice of education. Professional oral skills are an independent and limited field of professional practice, with specific characteristics and expressive means revealed at the same time and place. What is said will be perceived the moment it is expressed (except when digitally presented). This simultaneity of speaker’s performance and responder’s perception minimizes the possibility of revising and processing what you say beforehand. Similar synchronous creative processes are well known within both music and drama, described in various forms of improvisation (Chemi, Jensen & Hersted, 2015; Johnstone, 1987; Spolin, 1999), sometimes as a goal in themselves, sometimes as a tool for developing fast responses and expressive skills. The teacher is responsible for establishing and sustaining good communication with the students. Related to the model of professional competence visualized in Figure 6.1, this means that it is necessary to have knowledge regarding the students, knowledge of communication, trained skills in communicating, and the ability to make wise and reflective choices about what and how to communicate. Emphasis on the development of oral expression as a skill, which we call artistic precision is a prerequisite for being able to perform the good choices made in a communicative situation. According to Biesta (2015), a necessary skill of a teacher is ethical awareness based on a virtue-based approach to the practice of teaching. This justifies the developing of artistic oral precision as an ethical commitment in the development of teachers. Rønnestad and Skovholt (2003) identify the professionalization (of therapists) through three periods of professional development: pre-education, in education and graduated. They describe the pre-educated as the lay helper: All people have experienced helping others before they enter professional training. … The lay helper typically identifies the problem quickly, provides strong emotional support, and gives advice based on his or her own experience. In contrast to how the helper feels after entering training, […] the lay helper feels natural/ authentic when helping. (Rønnestad & Skovholt, 2003, p. 10)

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Similar to the experience of helping others, most people have experienced expressing themselves orally. When applied to a teaching practice this might imply that the professional speaker will keep on using a private knowledge base founded on their own experiences and common sense. If the oral expression is not professionalized through education, the speaker might remain in a kind of ‘lay orality’ phase after graduating. Hence, the practitioner might work with a lack of scientific knowledge, training or the tools for being objective and reflective in oral communication. The professional practice of a teacher relies on an being ethically committed, having autonomous integrity, being credible and trusting in relational work. An artistic precision is therefore necessary to communicate with credibility, to be understood and to avoid misunderstandings, and for the other to experience being treated with respect. The process of developing oral artistic precision is a teacher’s ethical obligation. However, to build up critical distance and meta-reflection, the ability to distance oneself from one’s own expression is challenging because of its simultaneity. In the next section we will elaborate how dramaturgical thinking and dramaturgical work might contribute to professional oral skills, and to an artistic precision in the communication.

Dramaturgy of a performative approach to orality An artistic precision implies the skills of an artist in communication regarding the sense of timing, choice of means to express yourself, creativity in the communication and a courageous energy, open for performative inquiry. In a performative inquiry you act in practice, try out and leave openings for the other participants to relate and communicate. We will use Østern’s relational dramaturgy model (Figure 4.2 in Chapter 4) as a starting point. We will elaborate the dramaturgical entrances, time, space, body and text. As we have noted earlier in this chapter, the utterance and the reception are simultaneous. It is highly relational and it all happens in the moment, when you perform your teacher tasks. Your approach to oral communication is necessarily performative; you perform in practice. The first analytical question for the teacher performer therefore is: Who are the pupils/ students I am communicating with? Many more questions follow: How will I meet them, and what is my idea for this session? What do I want to happen? How will I teach to make my pupils/students learn? How do I want to communicate? What do I want to communicate? What is the knowledge background of my students? How can I take that background into account, how develop and perhaps alter it?

The dramaturgical prelude or hook and meaningfulness A dramaturgical prelude or hook is a starting point which catches the attention of the pupils/students, making them focus on the task for a certain session. A hook

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carries in it the core of the actual session. It is often not only catching, but also touching, connecting to the life worlds of the group you communicate with. The hook might be provoking, it might trigger the curiosity of the pupils or students, making them want to explore more. A hook is an invitation to a performative inquiry, a learning journey. By choosing a starting point which carries meaning for the pupils in some sense, the learning journey has started. The teacher is together with the pupils on this interactive journey.

The dramaturgical tools The idea of the lesson gives the teacher and the students a focus. The focus needs to be settled, but with openings for participation. We now take a closer look at the dramaturgical tools offered regarding time, space, body and text. These are means of expression that the teacher can develop and use during the lesson. The students notice and learn to recognize the whole range of communicative signals from the teacher, the body language, the facial expressions, the gaze, the breathing, the voice qualities, the tempo, the pitch, the variation, the loudness, and, of course, what the teacher says. The teacher’s intention lies embedded in all these signals. We call this leadership qualities. One important quality in leadership is to be attentive and listen on several levels to what the mood of the group is, what the students are expressing through their own signals, why they maybe are not so attentive. However, the teacher’s intention is not always clear to the student. In Chapter 5 Tone Østern and Gunn Engelsrud wrote about the teacher-as-body and the option to feed in energy into the group by being energetic as teacher-body. When applying dramaturgical principles, this energy can be multiplied, or if not used well, extinguished.

Time Keeping track of time is of utmost importance in theatre as well as daily working life. As a teacher, one aspect is to start and finish on time, and to inform the pupils about how we use the time at our disposal. When there are five minutes left in a session, the teacher starts to wind the lesson down, letting it land, summing up, making the lesson history by pointing backward to what the group has achieved, but also pointing forward to what will happen in the next lesson. Leadership and presence are coloured and fine-tuned through subtle voice keys like breathing, tempo, variation, pauses, voice qualities, and breaks in the voice, as in affect. The energy the teacher provides in the classroom is catching, both positively and negatively. The voice is an instrument that can become more and more artistically precise, and still be both authentic and professional.

Space In Chapter eight Robert Øfsti elaborates the dramaturgy of physical space. In this chapter, however, we consider space in the way Lefebvre (1992) mentions

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a three-dimensional concept of space: first, the physical space (perceived), quite concrete; second, the social life world of the participants (lived space); and third, an abstract space for imagination and visionary thoughts (conceived space). Planning the use of the concrete space like a dramaturg also demands an artistic precision from the teacher. Try to come into the classroom before the students enter, so you welcome the students into your space. Make the necessary arrangements for the work you plan to carry out, make sure the vocal and sound facilities work, such as the microphone or video-projector, or have alternative resources available. The life worlds of the students might look quite different from your teacher life world, but getting some insight in what the students are occupied with in their minds can often help the teacher to teach well, and the students to learn well. The teacher can ask or give a starter, like writing on post-it notes what they think about the theme of the day. The third aspect of space is the imaginative world, the thoughts of future possibilities, the desires. When working artistically, the students can explore and express their desires. These desires can, through dialogue with the teacher, meet the desires of the other, and with what is good for the planet, which Biesta (2018) suggests is a task for pedagogy: finding the middle ground between self-realization/extinction and sustainable living in and with the world. Thinking like a dramaturg connected to the use of space includes considerations of audibility, the degree of intimacy, direction, and variations in moods, movement and stillness of the students.

Body and voice The teacher-body has been the theme of chapter five. When it comes to orality, we stress that the teacher-voice is a bodily instrument, in need of professional training and development to endure hard and stressful use. From the perspective of a dramaturg with a focus on oral communication skills, there are some extensions of the communication as a totality, that in special ways can focus the energy of the teacher. Eye contact with each student at some point during the lesson is powerful and gives energy to the activities. The teacher body communicates mainly through a grounded presence, and so does their voice. The embodied knowledge and voice of the teacher are loaded with emotional connotations that affect and are affected by the moods of the students. Through oral communication, the interpretation of sub-texts is clarified, not confused. The teacher body observes, improvises and gives a feeling of security (or not) to the situation.

Text Text, from a dramaturgical perspective, is a broad multimodal concept. It is about the content of a certain session, sequence or study, and how this is made explicit in the students’ own performative inquiry. The teacher who is planning like a

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dramaturg considers what kind of dramaturgy they want to apply to the session. It is always relational, sometimes with a thin narrative thread, sometimes circular, simultaneous, and often nomadic. In a nomadic dramaturgy the students are brought to different thinking spaces, or more concretely to different places where they can encounter different stories about the theme under scrutiny. The text that the teacher produces in a session is always to some degree improvisation, likewise the questions and prompts they bring. The classroom is an arena where these entrances are elaborated and explored verbally and nonverbally in a total communication. In the next section we will bring the theme of training into the dialogue by asking: how can the becoming teacher develop artistic precision in professional orality?

Dramaturgy of training the oral skills of the teacher To work like a dramaturg in the training of oral skills in teacher education implies that you have some kind of idea of an outcome, a composition. The starting point for the training is to acknowledge that the use of orality involves highly specialized professional skills, that need to be developed and trained. We also need to have a language to discuss these aspects, concepts to handle the training, and criteria to assess the skills. When the students begin their studies, they have an ideal of a genuine natural and personal way of conversation or expressing themselves orally. Many students find that the training complicates the simple and makes it unnatural: they experience discontinuity and violation of their former form of oral expression in professional communication. Their experience of authenticity and ‘personality’ is put under pressure by the demands of professionalizing their communication.

An arts educational approach to the practice of oral expression Training is a performative practice. It is also an aesthetic practice. Considering professional orality as an artful expression, the artistic qualities of oral expression can be discussed in relation to the expressive means and frames that define this oral art form. Describing specifically oral craft techniques, materials, knowledge and skills helps to prevent oral expression from being confused with personality, innate abilities or natural talent. By considering oral expression as an artful expression, it becomes possible to facilitate a process in which the student’s expression is detached from their person. As soon as the expression is formed, it influences the teacher student. This connection between creating an expression and being influenced by it gives the performer a dual role in the artistic process. The performer alternates between proximity and distance in this work, and this is the main dramaturgical composition idea. By alternating between an expressive I-position and an observing me-position, the exchange between closeness and distance to the expression develops.

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While the painter alternately paints and takes three steps back to see the image at a greater distance, the author alternates between writing and reading, reading aloud and listening to the rhythm and sound forms before continuing writing. This understanding of the ego’s double role in the artistic process is necessary to develop artistic precision. However, this ability to take distance and separate from the painting by stepping back is not possible when training oral skills. In order to professionalize orality the trainer must utilize the students’ ability to be both subject and object in interaction with others. The double role occurs as the artist, in this case the student, first becomes aware of the experience as the creator of the artistic expression, then builds awareness of the effect of what they are communicating by distancing it from the self. Figure 6.2 shows how the expression for the person who creates it and for the person who experiences it through direct contact is the same, but not identical; it is related, but because the position changes, the experiences are different. It is necessary to build this distance both from the I-position and from the me-position. To develop artistic precision means to develop oral communication skills so that the perceived expression corresponds with the student’s intention. The more the oral expression coincides with the intention, the more precise is the artistry.

FIGURE 6.2

Artistry in training of professional oral skills.

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The model in Figure 6.2 shows how the artist and the oral expression gradually become detached from each other so that the artwork is separated from the artist. The student builds distance through mastery and craft experience in one position, and through descriptive feedback in the other. The trainer’s work can be described as helping the student to alternate between intentional and expressive work, and thus relate inter-perspective to different levels of consciousness. The trainer is supporting the student’s object position as being seen and heard in the me-position, and initiating change and bodily anchoring, helping the student to focus his own mastery and bodily appreciation while performing in the I-position. This part of the artistic process is about becoming familiar with the experience of being able to distance oneself from one’s own expression, and the students’ suspicions of what they perceive as ‘artificial’ and ‘unnatural’ in their own expression are telling signs of their evolving professionalism. The model of teaching and learning orality in Figure 6.2 is showing how the development of expertise in artistic precision is made possible by the oral expression being tested partly against one’s own intentions, and partly against the experiences of others, can be further refined to create expressive nuances. To ensure that, the teacher first takes the position as the student’s ‘me’, but this is no longer sufficient; the art expression must be given exposure to real others. That may consist of discussing choices and exploring the personal experiences of others in direct contact with the expression, or it may mean that the expression is mirrored in the face of other expressions. Those who have expertise in the relevant form of knowledge about materials, techniques and skills help to build the artist’s own expertise to evaluate the result. The dialogue with these competent others is of utmost importance. The model in Figure 6.2 also shows how the artist and the expression gradually become detached from each other so that the artwork, the professional oral expression, is made independent of the artist (the teacher student). It shows how the student builds distance through mastery and craft experience, and through descriptive feedback from others who experience the expression.

References Biesta, G. J. J. (2015). How does a competent teacher become a good teacher? On judgement, wisdom and virtuosity in teaching and teacher education. In R. Heilbronn & L. ForemanPeck (eds), Philosophical perspectives on the future of teacher education (pp. 3–22). Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Biesta, G. (2018). What if? Art education beyond expression and creativity. In C. Naughton, G. Biesta & D. Cole (eds), Art, artists and pedagogy: Philosophy and the arts in education (pp. 11–20). New York: Routledge. Chemi, T., Jensen, J. B. & Hersted, L. (2015). Behind the scenes of artistic creativity: Processes of learning, creating and organising. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Grimen, H. (2008). Profesjon og kunnskap [Profession and knowledge]. In A. Molander & L. I. Terum (eds), Profesjonsstudier [Profession studies] (pp. 71–86). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Johnstone, K. (1987). Impro: Improvisation and the theatre. New York: Routledge.

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Lefebvre, H. (1992). The production of space (trans. D. Nicholson-Smith). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Rønnestad, M. H. & Skovholt, T. M. (2003). The journey of the counselor and therapist: Research findings and perspectives on professional development. Journal of Career Development, 30, 5–44. Spolin, V. (1999). Improvisation for the theatre, 3rd edition. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

7 DRAMATURGICAL MONTAGE IN A NARRATIVE ON OUTDOOR EDUCATION Egil Galaaen Gjølme and Anna-Lena Østern

I have probably not particularly reflected on dramaturgy in outdoor education, but will perhaps after this. Taking the teaching outside is also about ‘tuning’ down. That means to have time for wonder and meditation. Sitting around the fire and seeing what appears. Have thought about it. Many people seek out nature just because of this. (Email from physical education teacher)

Experience-based knowledge in dialogue with dramaturgical thinking In this chapter, we look at the dramaturg’s view of one teacher’s experience-based knowledge of outdoor education as his learning arena. We will allow this tacit knowledge to become articulated in the teacher’s narrative of outdoor education in teacher education. We will reflect on the story using the dramaturg’s concepts. Our point of departure is that a theoretical look, with dramaturgy as the theory, can provide insight into practice. We are using practice-based research, where a practitioner like the teacher educator we use in the interview is a researcher of his own practice. We use Erich Weniger’s (1990) model in this thinking to understand different levels of theory in relation to practice. In Weniger’s model there are three theory levels: T1, T2 and T3. T1 is practice, T2 is the teacher’s everyday theory and T3 includes meta-theoretical reflection. At the practice level, theories are based on habits and experiences. At the second level, the teacher, often with others, reflects on problems that have arisen. To develop this reflection, the third level is needed: theories that go beyond the current situation. The analysis in this study forms a braid created by the teacher’s narrative entwined with dramaturgical thinking. We have therefore called this analysis a braiding analysis. The way we have structured this chapter thus forms a

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FIGURE 7.1 A teacher team having a seminar while kayaking. Source: photo by Egil Galaaen Gjølme

braid, where themes illuminate the opportunities offered by outdoor schools from different perspectives that are interwoven. Brian Massumi (1987) writes in the foreword to the book A Thousand Plateaus about how to access the thinking in the book. The question is not ‘Is it true?’ but ‘Does it work?’. What new thoughts does it make possible to think? What new emotions does it make it possible to feel? What new sensations and perceptions does it open in the body? Massumi mentions things that fit into the goal of outdoor education illuminated through dramaturgical thinking, namely an opportunity to think new thoughts, experience new things, and make new sensual bodily experiences. The guideline for the analysis is, in addition to the braiding, also the terms affordance and cognitive dissonance. James Gibson (1977) created the term affordance to describe the opportunities the outdoor space provides for meaning creation. He believes that the environment’s offer of meaning can usually be perceived directly, without much prior learning. Gibson (1977, p. 82) writes: ‘The reason is that the basic properties of the environment that combine to make an offer are specified in the structure of ambient light and the affordability itself is specified in ambient light.’ Everything that an individual experiences in sensual ways, therefore, offers certain opportunities for action. Gibson’s idea is that an offer of meaning becomes apparent in light of the surroundings. With dramaturgical gaze, some meaning offers can become clear as topics in outdoor education.

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We also use the term cognitive dissonance, a term related to Leon Festinger (1962), meaning to be able to say something about the challenge of the outdoors against ambivalence and risk. When outdoors is not perceived as a positive and necessary element in school life, a psychological explanation using the term cognitive dissonance can help to explain these experiences.

Context of the study: dream, believe, achieve The authors of this chapter have for several years been involved in designing one day of school activities outdoors, where teacher students (after they have tried lessons outdoors themselves) organize outdoor schooling for a neighbouring school’s students in grades five to seven (approx. 10–12-year-old children). The empirical material for the analysis comprises a colleague’s interview with the teacher educator who is the leader of the outdoor school day.

Teacher educators planning outdoor swimming activities: dream, believe, achieve as guidelines for the planning. Source: private photograph FIGURE 7.2

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The premise for us as authors is that an out-of-school day has a dramaturgy. It supplements what we know of outdoor education as a learning arena to use dramaturgical concepts and thinking to elucidate what outdoor education can mean as a model example in a hectic and packed practical education. To explain the dramaturgical terms, we refer to Chapters 3–5. The analysis in this chapter is guided by the question: how can dramaturgical thinking contribute knowledge about the value of outdoor education in the context of teacher education? First, we summarize what outdoor education research has contributed by describing the field of outdoor education and its importance in the context of schooling. In this chapter, the focus is on how a teacher educator describes experiences of outdoor education in teacher education, as interpreted using dramaturgical concepts.

Outdoor education research In international research describing the importance of outdoor education, the terms ‘outdoor education’, ‘outdoor learning’, ‘forest school’ and ‘out-of-school learning’ are used. Outdoor education and outdoor learning mostly focus on moving teaching outdoors. Out-of-school learning can be to move teaching to another cultural context, such as a workshop in a museum (Jordet, 2010, pp. 57–58). Arne Jordet (2010) describes in the book The Classroom Outside the characteristics of outdoor school and the theory background for the outdoor school idea, and in addition he describes teaching methods for outdoor school in different subjects. Jordet notes that the outdoor school idea in Norway is ‘old news’. He gives no precise numbers about how widespread it is, but he assumes that the youngest children in school all have some experience of outdoor school. This element decreases year by year, according to Jordet. Students from grade seven onwards have little experience of it. The characteristics of outdoor school, according to Jordet (2010, p. 246), are that the school’s surroundings are used as the learning arena and the source of knowledge; collaboration with actors in the local community is a part and the approaches to learning are problem-solving, exploratory and practical. In addition, creative and play-based approaches are used. The teaching is bodily and sensebased. In addition, learning takes place through communication and social interaction. Jordet concludes by writing that there is character formation of the whole person through ‘head, heart and hand’. He refers to Nordic and other international research, which presents the positive effects of outdoor school as a learning space (Jordet, 2010, p. 61). He suggests that new knowledge in the area can lead to major changes in the school: Therefore, we are now probably in a school-political breakdown period where it is important to obtain more research-based knowledge about what role and function learning activities outside the classroom can have in school education, what effects they will have on pupils’ academic and social learning,

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health and well-being, and which conditions that must be present in order for it to function in a qualitatively good way. New knowledge in this field will prepare the ground for big changes in school. (Jordet, 2010, p. 61) Inspired by Jordet, we identify three different ways to implement outdoor school, which we see as quite different in terms of their basic pedagogy and learning goals: laminating outdoor school, running outdoor school and wondering outdoor school.

Laminating outdoor school By laminating outdoor school, we mean teaching programmes that are planned indoors by producing posters or hangings that are hung up in the forest. In this way, one can do the preparation indoors and then the school students follow a nature trail outdoor where they answer questions. The advantage of such a teaching programme is that it can easily be taken where the teacher and students move. The disadvantage is that it is a rather static teaching programme that can probably be implemented no matter where the teacher and the pupils are. Thus, a lot of the wonder is missing.

Running outdoor school Running outdoor school is another type of teaching programme where physical activity is more important than the learning of subject matter and understanding. Here, the school students’ task is to run from post to post and in the shortest possible time obtain information or solve problems. Many schools focus on increasing physical activity during school hours. Challenges associated with the pupils moving so little daily have led some schools to create teaching programmes in physical activity that are independent of subject learning. It is important that the ‘running’ has a goal and a function. If it has no function, the motivation for the physical activity will dwindle.

Wondering outdoor school Wondering outdoor school is intended to stimulate curiosity, active exploration, experience and wonder. By giving the students sensory and emotional experiences in a natural environment, it is easier for them to see the connections between cause and effect, as well as the total experience. The wonder outdoor school is the form that is closest to the dramaturgical thinking we describe in the braiding analysis in this chapter. With the gaze of the dramaturg, we try to identify the characteristics of a wondering outdoor school. Our dramaturgical model for this is the montage model, combined with a thin narrative thread from classic dramaturgy, including a prelude or hook and event development up to a peak. Through our thematic analysis of the teacher educator’s

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narrative, we identify themes that can be linked to their basic pedagogy, and their view of the students, nature, knowledge, learning and their philosophy of life. This compound view shows dramaturgical principles in use through how the outdoor school is being implemented, and what affordances or meaning there are.

The dramaturgy of a narrative about outdoor school in teacher education The montage model is based on the idea of several layers of meaning with symbols pointing in the same direction towards an overall montage. For example, in the outdoor school, the different layers of significance are: 1.

2.

3.

A concrete meaning layer with the events in the outdoor school thought of in a time sequence. This layer of meaning concerns teaching and learning, tightly structured meaning layer, and it is knowledge producing. The second layer of meaning is sense-based and multimodal, immersing the participants in their material surroundings, where they orchestrate meaning, take in impressions and respond to smell, taste, views, terrain, weather and wind, plants and animals. This is more abstract, in that everyone creates their own significance from what they have experienced. This layer of meaning is therefore loaded with meaning through experience. The third layer of meaning is metaphorical, in that the overall idea of the outdoor school is made concrete in a metaphor – one or more images of something. This layer of meaning is insight-creating.

In a dramaturgical montage, the event evolves non-linearly; it is rather a circling towards a central event with the possibility of insight and understanding. In the teacher educator’s narrative, this circling might consist of the small things he thinks about doing that are good for teacher students and pupils together. In the analysis we follow the three layers of significance, in order to highlight what characterizes the meanings created within the different dramaturgical meaning layers or association spaces. First, we present an excerpt from the teacher educator’s narrative, where he summarizes his main ideas, and where in parentheses we have labelled the emerging themes concretization, interaction, individualization, participation, learning, space and variation in outdoor school: There is something about the concretization of teaching; it becomes more real, it becomes more understandable, because you can grasp things, you can hear things, you can work on things. More interaction occurs between students [concretization and interaction]. If you have a student who wants to get away a bit, then he has the opportunity to do so; if you have a student who wants to climb a tree, then she has the opportunity [individualization, participation]. I believe that all the resources are around us without us using them. Our understanding is that we learn best in the classroom, that the student must sit

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quietly and listen to the teacher. Both from my own experience and having worked with this outdoor school project, and seen and observed it, and worked with students, I am completely convinced that getting out of the classroom, up from the chair, has a greater learning effect [learning and place]. Now we know that many schools have outdoor school once a week, so it can be such a great way to do it. I mean to integrate it to a greater extent in the daily teaching. Outdoors need not be all day long. One does not have to find oneself in a field, or go to the city, it can be enough to get up from the chair and go out of the classroom door, look at the parquet, look at the ceiling, look at the sky, vary the teaching by getting up from the desk and leaving the classroom [variation in outdoor school]. (Teacher educator’s narrative, section 1) In this part of the teacher educator’s narrative, we have labelled four slightly broader themes: concretization, participation, variety and space. These themes emerge in different ways in the continued narrative analysis of outdoor school in the teacher education context.

Teaching and learning meaning layer In what the dramaturg calls the teaching and learning layer of meaning, the teacher educator talks about what, how and why with respect to his teaching programme in outdoor school in teacher education. In this part of the teacher educator’s narrative, we have identified the following topics: interdisciplinarity, the whole being, developing a concept for outdoor education, learning through playing, the pupil’s point of view (PoV), resistance, cognitive dissonance, risk exploration, experience, reflection and assessment.

Interdisciplinarity It has been a revelation: we have been looking for good working methods to work in a cross-curricular way and, yes, it has simply been a revelation. We have seen how we work in the various disciplines and see a link between them. Moreover, we have managed to integrate the pedagogy in a very nice way by being able to observe and see each student and see how the student welcomes the pupils we have worked with. It has been one of the nicest things to see all the opportunities that exist across subjects [interdisciplinarity]. I think it is very important because of seeing the connection between the subjects and seeing the whole being [the whole being]. There is no separate knowledge; one has to be able to integrate the subjects into a common understanding of society’s understanding of reality. It has been an exciting project. In the beginning, we linked up with various professional groups of language subjects, social sciences and the aesthetic subjects, but we decided a few years ago to break up those barriers. We gather the students in seminar groups of different subjects. Then they have to sit down together and make an interdisciplinary holistic programme over a whole day with a whole group. They have had the same students in a seminar

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group all day, and it has been a journey. Then you go through all the subjects [developing a concept for outdoor school]. It is an incredibly nice venue to also implement the general curriculum – where you have the integrated human being, where you work with all different types of people and give them a holistic understanding of what, yes, what we can learn from being outside. We use nature to develop knowledge. We had a ‘prelude’ to the actual day out so that we came out in common into the yard. The ‘prelude’ does not have to be linked to the theory of outdoor school. It has a musical feature, simply, and a small, tiny introduction to what we should do, that we should be out in nature and understand that we should have fun: learn through fun. [learn by playing]. (Teacher educator’s narrative, section 2)

In section 2 of the narrative, the teacher educator talks about the development of a concept for outdoor education in teacher education. In dramaturgical thinking, concept development is a central activity. It is a stage where one moves back and forth, improvises, tries, fails and finds form: one learns through ‘playing’. As in the development of a stage performance, the teacher educator points to change from one attempt to another, bringing them together into a coherent conceptual whole. Concepts such as whole and integration go back to the whole being: a holistic approach, and understanding in common.

View of the pupil/student But I think that maybe some of the most important knowledge a student should have, in fact meets the student at the level that the student is on [student PoV]. Finding their little niche, that is, because the young people or children or students we are dealing with are different; everyone is different, everyone needs different stimuli. I think it is much easier to achieve this by getting out of the crowded space that we work in. I use the example of, if you had a small school space to climb in a tree then someone might sit at the root, you see, and ponder and read a book, while others would be at the top. Some would be at the most far-away place on a branch, and some completely close to the trunk. So I think you see different characters in the kids there. And it can in a way illustrate the possibility of meeting each one and seeing each one and allowing them to live in their own way [pupil’s PoV]. (Teacher educator’s narrative, section 3)

The view of the school student presented in the third part of the teacher educator’s narrative is a story of openness to diversity. This part of the story deals with descriptions of a pedagogical basis that has consequences for the entire programme in the outdoor school. The focus of the third part of the story is the necessity for the teacher to see the individual student. Dramaturgically, includes target group analysis, which should answer the question of who the outdoor school is being organized for.

Experience, reflection and assessment Yes, you must give them the experience. Giving them a lecture about outdoor school will never have the same effect [the importance of experience]. When the teacher

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students have completed the outdoor school, they see the usefulness of it. Often. But you must exercise quite clear leadership, in a way, to sell the message, and be ready to convince them that this is a pedagogy that makes sense. We humans are concerned with control, and control can be a limiting factor for development [leadership]. In relation to when we invite schools, we underline that outdoor school should be part of the school’s annual plan, because I want them to prepare, link it to a theme, and then they can use it to reflect on afterwards. It is a challenge, and for the teacher’s part, I think it is very important in teacher education to actually implement it, because then you have lowered the threshold, where you then as a teacher go out to work with it [the importance of example]. Prepare yourself for the topic, and then actually carry it out, and then reflect on and evaluate it afterwards [action, reflection and assessment]. (Teacher educator’s narrative, section 4)

In section 4 of the narrative, structuring elements of a teaching process are presented with the themes of experience, the importance of example and of preparation, action, reflection and assessment. These elements are the framework for composing a teaching sequence. John Dewey has written a lot about the importance of experience in learning processes. In Art as Experience (Dewey, 1980 [1934]) he writes about learning through doing and undergoing. The experience is transformative only through being undergone. Transformation of understanding is a sign of learning, which is also relevant from a dramaturgical perspective. Dewey has also written about the art encounter as an event, where the viewer must undergo some of the same abstraction (selecting the elements of significance) that the artist does in encounter with the artwork. This transformative power is significant in the work of designing and implementing outdoor schools. In order to support transformative potential, reflection, meta-reflection and evaluation are crucial. In our dramaturgical analysis model for theatre, the audience are those who make the performance ‘complete’ and who assesses it. The outdoor school can also be a staging where the participants become the audience, with the right to assess the result.

Resistance and cognitive dissonance There may be some resistance during the phase where the teacher students already have many other things to keep up with [resistance]. It may require some extra energy, and it can be a challenge; I think you must get an understanding of the fact that in order to develop you should get on, and you have to dare to fail, perhaps especially within my subject, physical education. There has been a lot of focus on safety and obeying strict rules in swimming education, for example, and there is also something that is in a way limiting the learning process then. We become a bit like in the fantasy book Ronja, The Robber’s Daughter, when she had to learn to understand which stones were slippery, so had to actually balance on the stones. It’s a bit the same here, you must explore and explore. You need to be a minor researcher in your own environment to understand what is safe and unsafe. And we are like teachers, and, as legally responsible in some way, you easily become a control freak, taking greater control than one might need. It can limit both the effect of what is being done, and limit the chances of the kids or the young ones unfolding, finding their coping path. To find the balance between triggering excitement and seeking safety is difficult for many. And some are more concerned

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with security than others and this might be a limiting factor [limiting factor]. In adventure education, long voyages on the sea can be a decisive learning experience for youth at risk of dropping out of society. (Teacher educator’s narrative, section 5)

The dramaturg uses words such as tension, intensity, unpredictability and resistance, to define the element that keeps the spectators’ interest alive or growing during the performance. In section 5 of the narrative, the identified topics are resistance, risk investigation and limiting factors. Finding a balance between triggering excitement and seeking safety creates a form of drama in the outdoor school’s activity. Leon Festinger (1962) has formulated a theory of cognitive dissonance. A cognitive dissonance means that an individual is conscious of two conflicting thoughts (e.g. desire to experience tension or risk, and desire for security), and the theory says that the individual tries to reduce the cognitive dissonance between them. Cognitive dissonance does also have positive effects, which can be seen by postponing reward and partial reward by doing something, despite fear or resistance. We can see examples of this in long-term outdoor education and adventure education, something tried out with youth at risk of being marginalized in society.

The sensuous layer of meaning The sensuous layer of meaning in connection with outdoor school is linked to various sensory experiences, for example listening, seeing, knowing: experiencing different surfaces and underlay, and the bodily sensations of movement and effort, and by being in nature’s display of colour. The sensuous layer of meaning is rich in experiences. Section 6 of the teacher educator’s narrative focuses on what nature is and can mean in an outdoor school context. The themes we have identified here are peace of mind, appreciation of nature, adapted education, discomfort, philosophical reflection, touch, sensuous experience, and the importance of variety of experiences. In Norway at least we have nature; it is there, it is just that we are not good at using it. Peace of mind, that is to get peace of mind, I think is easier in nature than in a noisy classroom, where you somehow have to sit next to each other and you may have a PC, you have things that disturb you, sounds, so in seeking out nature I think it’s easier to dream away there, easier to enter into something [peace]. Taking care of nature, seeing nature: I think it has a tremendous effect, and it also teaches people to seek out and understand nature, and appreciate it [nature]. I believe that it has a very positive effect on anger and coping, finding its level, cf. adapted education [adapted education]). We have an expectation that it is unpleasant to be outside. Many have it because we have turned to an indoor life, and this applies not only to students, but even more so to teachers and teacher educators. To understand that it’s okay to be out there I think is one of the biggest barriers [discomfort]. There are lots of barriers against going out, because we are in the process of turning people away from the idea that we will stay outdoors

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[philosophical reflection]. I also think it is important not only to think of outdoor school as an understanding that one has to go out in the wild, but also go out, leave the classroom door, get out into the hallway; it may be enough to find a library; you can go to a cemetery, you can walk to a tree, you can go into special areas of a school, look at each other, take on things, do things, talk about things [sensuous experience]. I think that is much easier than when you stretch, lift your eyes and look out of the classroom door. ‘Learning by doing’ is a familiar term; I think moving outside school gives us more work tools – one goes to a tree and can attempt to estimate the height, width, weight, radius, perimeter; you can talk about colours, you can talk about sounds (sensuous experience). You can talk about the different biotopes, about wood species, you can talk about lichen that is on the tree, you can talk about photosynthesis, integrate many subject areas, talk about tree rings. That has much more effect than taking a small stick with you into the classroom, even if this can help to some extent too [meaning of experience]. It is special; I have a belief that it helps in many ways, both in relation to attitude and in relation to facts and in relation to experience, but I believe it is the variety, the idea that you can prepare yourself for going out [variety]. (Teacher educator’s narrative, section 6) In dramaturgical montage, the sensuous meaning layer can have the function of increasing the multidimensionality of the montage. The sensuous inputs represent openings for various interpretations and experiences. There are challenges and plenty of sensory impressions from nature around. In Part 6 of the narrative, the narrator is concerned with describing some philosophical aspects of being in nature: getting peace of mind and appreciating nature. He is not a romantic who talks about wild and solitary nature, but a practitioner who states that the rich natural world of Norway is a valuable resource in itself. The teacher educator creates a tension-filled image by envisioning a future scenario where many people turn their backs on nature and imagine discomfort associated with being outside. From a dramaturgical perspective, this part of the story can be a central argument for the value of being in nature, having varied experiences and being able to adapt the teaching according to the individual student’s needs and competence.

Nature and environment I think it [to be outdoors] gives an environmental perspective, in a way. It’s a free gift just to stay outside, and people understand this, and know how nice it is to get to a place that is well looked after, both in terms of littering and in relation to slightly larger things like the environment and the thoughts that conjures up. Understanding the importance of green lungs near urban areas, understanding the significance of the thoroughfares… Now, Trondheim is built in such a way that you will find such green areas almost everywhere out of town in all directions [the importance of nature]. There are some challenges in how to use nature. They can range from taking care of the forest to dealing with animals. In Norway, hunting and fishing is a right, and some who practice that right believe that they have more rights than others. We have

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experienced this and been displaced from forest areas because there is moose hunting there, for example. But at the same time, you keep public access to the land quite strong and I think that is also spreading expertise, understanding about when you can light a fire. And if you are going to light fires in the summer, then you need to know how to do it in a safe and proper manner so that you use a fireplace to prevent a fire [bonfire] spreading. In relation to the students and these young people we are discussing, I think there is a greater advantage when they can handle both themselves and each other [nature and social skills]. We have had no tradition of discussing these things, but my thought and theory about this is that this often comes very naturally. Talking about how to light a safe fire, you can never teach it theoretically [bonfire]. It’s not possible. You must do it. And you must make all the senses work together. It is almost impossible to describe it [necessary experiential knowledge]. (Teacher educator’s narrative, section 7)

In section 7 of the story, nature’s affordances, or offers of meaning, can be realized as experiential knowledge. The themes we have identified in the seventh part of the story are the significance of nature, natural wisdom, social competence, bonfire and necessary experiential knowledge. The narrator says that he has no tradition of talking about these things with the teacher students, but that the knowledge comes quite naturally. In a montage, such a compilation of elements or fragments means that when there are enough elements gathered, one gains an insight. The person changes through the meeting with a new understanding of phenomena and contexts.

The metaphorical layer of meaning The metaphorical layer of meaning creates images that gives participants a sense of wholeness and coherence: that things mean something and that everyone is part of that whole. We have chosen two examples that can be linked to a metaphorical meaning layer, a unifying image or symbol of core values in outdoor school. The two are (1) construction of a Leonardo da Vinci bridge, and (2) gathering around a bonfire.

Leonardo da Vinci bridge and gathering around a bonfire The teacher students needed to create an interdisciplinary teaching programme for outdoor schools, based on the current curriculum. After discussion in the group and searching both literature and the Internet, they decided to build a Leonardo da Vinci bridge (Figure 7.3). The idea was to gather all the disciplines into an integrated teaching programme [academic integration]. This was supposed to be done through a practical building project and conversations, discussion and reflection on this. The DaVinci bridge is built on a principle where the logs lock into each other. It can be built without either nails or ropes. The bridge can be extended and become as long as desired, without this affecting the construction. When the bridge is exposed to weight, it locks so that it becomes more stable [joint

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FIGURE 7.3 A da Vinci bridge constructed during outdoor school. Source: photo by Egil Galaaen Gjølme

effort]. In the work on the da Vinci bridge, its origins were discussed with the students. Leonardo da Vinci’s skills as an artist, researcher and engineer were elements that emerged. Most students remembered the painting Mona Lisa, but few of them knew that Leonardo had more skills. Building the bridge construction was interesting and aroused the students’ curiosity: how could the construction make the bridge more stable under load? [arouses curiosity]. There were good discussions about physics and geometry, and more people tried their skills as carpenters when the logs were made. Several groups tested the programme, and throughout the day the bridge became longer and longer. The da Vinci bridge is a construction task that requires the cooperation of several people, and the bridge becomes stronger when walked on [Figure 7.4]. After the challenge is taken up and conquered, the reward is a pause with food. We have the barbecue time, you know. It’s kind of a highlight. It is linked to grilling and cooking, but it often happens that the time is very valuable: tied to food, and tied to bonfires. This has been important to us. It is not something that I have managed to put into words but having such a fireplace becomes a gathering place [fireplace as a gathering space]. Because I’ve seen it so many times: make a bonfire, have a coffee pot and make coffee on the fire outside [bonfire]. It’s almost a cheap trick, a kind of almost dirty trick, often I feel. This with bonfires and the coffee pot does something to people. And I have seen this through all the

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FIGURE 7.4 Teacher students try out the da Vinci bridge they have built. Source: photo by Asbjørn Solberg

years that I taught about outdoor life, it is a typical hook when I have the first lecture in the forest with my students. They come there and there is a fire, and something happens to you. Small things. Creating a total experience, in which you somehow feel some fluctuations, a mood [community]. (Teacher educator’s narrative, section 8) In the theatre, the ability to read the subtext is of great value to spectators. A good playwright plans openings and closures, plantings and harvests in line with the different layers of meaning in the performance. In section 8 of the narrative we have identified the following themes: gathering together, joint efforts, fireplace as a gathering space and

FIGURE 7.5 Bonfire, spring and winter. Source: photo by Egil Galaaen Gjølme

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community. The storyteller’s expertise in dramaturgical thinking is something he experiences as almost a dirty trick. This is because, in routinely staging outdoor education, has learned that there are at least two things that make ‘something happen to you’. The total experience has some fluctuations – a mood is created through small things. Two of the things are events like (1) building together and succeeding with it, and (2) experiencing fellowship with others around a bonfire. Two bonfires from different seasons in the outdoor school are shown in 4. These two events can be called metaphors that in themselves converge and illuminate the outdoor school’s meaning potential – in teacher education and otherwise.

Themes that form braids In the word cloud shown in Figure 7.6, we have visualized the braid of theme words. The theme words that are frequently used are written with a larger font, and in this word cloud the words form a braid. Through the word cloud, the teacher educator’s basic pedagogical principles emerge as a way of valuing the work in outdoor schools: the student’s PoV (with an emphasis on seeing the individual student), the principles of knowledge as sensuous and experience-based, learning as exploratory and socially challenging, the individual as a part of a whole, and nature as a turning point for community and participation. Through the use of the dramaturg’s concepts, it has been possible to thematize the narrative analysis of a teacher’s story with a pedagogical basic view as the main element.

Discussion and conclusion Through a thematic narrative analysis of a teacher’s narrative about outdoor school in teacher education, we have identified key themes in the different parts of the

FIGURE 7.6

Narrative themes presented as braids in a word cloud.

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narrative. We have linked these stories in a braid by giving a dramaturg’s words to the themes of the narrative. The analysis has moved from Weniger’s theory level 1 – which is practice – to level 2 (reflection on practice), and through the dramaturgical perspective over to level 3. Through this braiding analysis we have described the contribution that dramaturgical thinking can provide to knowledge of the value of outdoor school in the context of teacher education. By focusing on the dramaturgical montage model, we have constructed three layers of importance:   

The teaching and learning layer, producing knowledge guided by the narrator’s pedagogical principles. The sensuous layer, where different sensory experiences contribute to experiences during the outdoor school, such as those the narrator has presented. The experiences associated with this layer of meaning are personal and individual. The metaphorical layer, which is insight-creating.

In this way, the dramaturgical braiding stories have resulted in two somewhat overlapping metaphors of building together and experiencing fellowship, and thus becoming part of a larger whole. The metaphors are the da Vinci bridge and the bonfire. The value of dramaturgical thinking about outdoor education in the context of teacher education is that it shows how the narrator’s story is constructed and integrated. The narrative of outdoor school in teacher education is lifelike and concrete, and at the same time as it reveals a mature and reflective pedagogy. When we focused on one layer of significance, and identified the narrator’s themes, we were able to recognize themes in the next layer, and in the third we were able to link together the network of insights that connect to aspects of the narrator’s pedagogy. Gibson (1977) developed his theory of ‘affordance’ precisely to capture the lifelike: ‘experiencing reality’ can be a good summary of the pedagogy that is articulated in the narrative and our dramaturgically inspired analysis.

References Dewey, J. (1980 [1934]). Art as experience. New York: Perigee Books. Festinger, L. (1962). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Gibson, J. J. (1977). The theory of affordances. In R. Shaw & J. Bransford (eds), Perceiving, acting and knowing (pp. 67–82). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Jordet, A. N. (2010). Klasserommet utenfor: Tilpasset opplæring i et utvidet læringsrom [The classroom outdoors: Adjusted education in a broadened learning space]. Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk Forlag. Massumi, B. (1987). Foreword. In G. Deleuze & F. Guattari (eds), A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (pp. ix–xv). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Weniger, E. (1990). Ausgewählte Schriften: Zur geisteswissenschaftlichen Pädagogik [Selected writings: to pedagogy for the humanities]. Weinheim: Verlag Julius Beltz.

8 THE TEACHER AS AN ATMOSPHERECREATING SCENOGRAPHER OF THE TEACHING SPACE Robert Øfsti

Learning under the oak tree: Edvard Munch as educational philosopher The old man is safe on his rocky hilltop knoll. At his knee stands a small, barefoot boy and listener, who is at the same time striving to get up onto the knoll. One their left stands a large oak. A powerful branch forms a kind of roof over the teaching room they are in. That it is a teaching room Edvard Munch is depicting in the painting History also emerges from the painting’s real-time context. The painting hangs on the wall of a teaching room – in this case a banqueting hall and not a lecture room, but it is the banqueting hall of an educational institution, the assembly hall of the University of Oslo where History is one of the three main elements of Munch’s decoration. What we see here is teaching in its basic form: the one who knows tells someone who wants to know – the one who wants to get up. It is as if Munch wants to say to the students and professors at the University of Oslo, to future lawyers and medical practitioners and theologians, and to philologists and realists who in a few years will be working as teachers in Norwegian schools: ‘This is the way a learning process unfolds’. From where the students sit in the assembly hall, they have History on the left. If they turn their heads to the right, they encounter the painting Alma Mater in red, white and blue. The mother goddess is surrounded by children who play and explore. In this painting, it is as though Munch in 1916 could peer forward towards an outdoor school – many decades before that concept was brought into the Norwegian schools debate. This is even more evident in the version of the picture that hangs in the Munch Museum and that Munch simply calls The Researchers.

The classic image of a classroom: Peter Tillberg as a witness of his time How far is the leap from Munch’s picture of these two fundamental learning situations – storytelling and exploration – to the almost classic image of a classroom

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Sketch of Munch’s painting History and Øfsti’s development depicting education under a tree. Source: sketch by Robert Øfsti

FIGURE 8.1

that Swedish artist Peter Tillberg (Figure 8.2) gave us well over 50 years after Munch. About 30 pupils are sitting behind their desks. The desks are arranged in rows. It is a long way up to the ceiling; the light enters from large windows to the left, so that the pupils will not cast shadows of themselves even when they write with the right hand (and all of them will do that). The roofs and walls are bright. On the walls we find a bulletin board with student drawings and a lot of other things, a bookshelf with a class set of core syllabi at this grade level and a pretty little landscape painting. The desks are completely empty – no books, no pencils, nothing. The students look at us who are looking at the picture, at the teacher or at the blackboard. On the blackboard in the classroom there may be the same text that Tillberg has written with a beautiful decorative script on the small board

FIGURE 8.2 Peter Tillberg, Will You Be Profitable, Little Friend? Source: reproduced with permission from Modern Museum, Stockholm and with license from BONO

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hanging with the painting, which is part of the artwork Will You Be Profitable, Little Friend?. Looking closer, we discover that not all the pupils are following equally well. Two of the desks are empty, and a girl in the row by the window is looking out of the window – at the outside world. This is also not a room for conversation under the tree or for explorative inquiry. Still, this is how the classroom is! Peter Tillberg’s image shows us that the basic function of the traditional classroom is to discipline the body, and that the basic design of the traditional classroom simplifies the teacher’s control of the disciplined body. From the dislocated podium, the teacher can monitor student activity and control entry and exit to and from the classroom just to the left of him.

The buildings discipline the bodies The same applies to school buildings in general. The school, the prison and the hospital have the same basic ground plan, with a series of more and less homogeneous spaces or cells along a corridor. And it is not random. In all these institutions the concern is to discipline the body: in the prison cell, the body is to be hard-disciplined, and the term long enough for the hardened criminal mind to become soft and improvable. In the hospital-bed, the body must be disciplined with surgical intervention or medication to become healthy. In school buildings and in the classroom, the body must be disciplined for the mind to be receptive to learning. And it is all about surveillance of discipline. In the panoptical prison system, the cells are either located in a (half) circle, or the cell wings lie in rows, from a central point, so that all prisoners can be monitored with one panoptical, all-embracing gaze of a prison guard. And from his podium, the teacher sees everything. Each prisoner is isolated in his cell – each student is isolated at his own desk.

FIGURE 8.3 Basic plan of school, hospital and prison. Source: sketch by Robert Øfsti

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Room, form and learning Peter Tillberg’s painting communicates something else that will be central to this chapter. We understand intuitively that there is a special atmosphere in this room – an atmosphere which (at least in part) is created by the shape of the room, the use of colour, how the light falls, what kind of desks there are in the room, the way the desks are set up, etc. There are basic questions here: Does how things look have anything to tell us? Do the design and furniture of the classroom have any impact on learning? What does a good learning space look like? And what can the teacher do when the architect has done his job, and when the purchasing department in the municipality or county has bought desks and curtains? In their 2008 book School, the British teacher educators Catherine Burke and Ian Grosvenor show how school buildings, both through their original design and through the remodelling that takes place through use, stand out as different expressions of changing values about what school and teaching are: Like other buildings, schools are the products of social behaviour. They should not be viewed merely as capsules in which education is located and teachers and pupils perform, but also as designed spaces that, in their materiality, project a system of values. … Rather than viewing the school building – its various rooms, walls, windows, doors and furniture, together with outdoor ‘nooks and crannies’, gardens and open spaces – as a neutral or passive ‘container’, architects and educators have considered it to be an active agent, shaping the experience of schooling and promoting and even pioneering a particular understanding of education. Certain aspects of what makes a school, such as halls, corridors, playgrounds and classrooms, have taken different forms through time. Such factors as the design of school furniture can be seen to reflect pervasive notions of pedagogy, but also to promote ideas and theories about the relationship between pupil and teacher and between body and mind in learning. … Whatever the type of school, a group of people comes together to design a structure based upon ideas about what the teacher or learner should be doing when they interact. It is these ideas that create classrooms, situate corridors and locate specialist rooms, common spaces and surrounding areas in particular ways. (Burke & Grosvenor, 2008, pp. 10–11) Schools with traditional classrooms are no longer built. Most new schools will be built according to principles other than rows of identical cells on one or both sides of a corridor. Architect and building researcher Karin Buvik writes: There are major changes in teaching programmes and working methods, and this has consequences for the school’s physical design. … Greater emphasis on project work, a practical element in many subjects, individually adapted training and teaching in age-mixed groups. (Buvik, 2005, p. 1, author’s translation)

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In addition, she mentions ‘traditional classrooms’, ‘multifunctional classrooms’, ‘large classrooms’, ‘flexible areas/landscapes’, ‘landscapes and mini-auditoriums’ and ‘student offices’ as different forms of teaching rooms or ‘home bases’ (Buvik, 2005, pp. 3–4, author’s translation). The physical environment is ‘an active agent’, not a neutral shell, and gives shape to ‘the experience of schooling’ (Burke & Grosvenor, 2008, p. 10). This is not a controversial idea that needs scientific proof. Social psychologist Arnulf Kolstad notes: The question of how physical surroundings affect us humans has been posed throughout history. … We all have the feeling that nature’s beauty, the quality of architecture and artistic decoration do something to us. We believe they affect well-being: that what we think is neat and well-kept has a good impact on us. (Kolstad, 2012, p. 59, author’s translation) He claims that there are good research results to support our intuition. In a pedagogical context, one can refer to the Italian progressive municipality, Reggio Emilia. The municipal kindergartens in Reggio Emilia and the philosophy it builds on have had (and still have) a major impact in Scandinavia. Here, the room is referred to as ‘the third educator’ (Strong-Wilson & Ellis, 2007).

Atmosphere In some cases, it is the intention of the architect to create an experience through space. The Pantheon in Rome was, as the name implies, a temple for all the Roman gods. Inside the temple there were seven niches – one each for the seven planetary goddesses. None of these took precedence over the others, and the cylinder is the shape that best expresses this. In the Christian Church, there should be just one God, and he lives in heaven. In the Gothic cathedral, with its middle aisle and its two or four side wings divided by a row of large arcades, and pointed windows soaring to the sky, the expression is a clear line straight to one point: altars and crucifixes, and up from there. In both of these cases, the visitor’s experience probably corresponds to the experience of the architect. If we turn back to Peter Tillberg’s image, then I would claim that he has managed to portray the special atmosphere that is in this classroom. We would also sense some of that atmosphere if we entered the classroom itself, even if it was empty of students. We could agree that the room has what we can call atmosphere. We would not be able to agree on the kind of atmosphere it was, but we would agree that it is possible to name the phenomenon – that it is meaningful to talk about it being a cool, rejecting, awaiting, hostile – or expectant and excited – atmosphere here, and so on. The concept atmosphere I have obtained from the philosopher Gernot Böhme, who has developed this concept in connection with aesthetics, and especially architecture. Atmosphere is the presence of someone or something in the room (Böhme, 2013).

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FIGURE 8.4 Pantheon and basilica, Cathedral of Reims. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The concept emanates from meteorology but is often used in both aesthetics and politics, Böhme says. The art critic can talk about an artwork having or lacking ‘aura’ or ‘atmosphere’, and when we get notice that ‘the negotiations are being carried out in a good atmosphere’, we understand that nothing decisive so far has happened: This vague use of the expression atmosphere in the aesthetic and political discourse derives from a use in everyday speech which is in many respects much more exact. Here the expression ‘atmospheric’ is applied to persons, spaces and to nature. (Böhme, 1993, p. 113) It is the body that experiences the atmosphere, Böhme (ibid., p. 119) writes: ‘Atmospheres are evidently what are experienced in bodily presence in relation to persons and things or in spaces.’ ‘Atmosphere’ is certainly a vague idea, but Böhme’s analysis clarifies it: … atmospheres are neither something objective, that is, qualities possessed by things, and yet they are something thinglike, belonging to the thing in that things articulate their presence through qualities – conceived as ecstasies. Nor are atmospheres something subjective, for example, determinations of a psychic state. And yet they are subjectlike, belong to the subject in that they are sensed in bodily presence by human beings and this sensing is at the same time a bodily state of being subject in space. … Atmosphere is the common reality of the perceiver and the perceived. It is the reality of

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the perceived as the sphere of its presence and the reality of the perceiver, insofar as a sensing the atmosphere s/he is bodily present in a certain way. The synthetic function of atmosphere is at the same time the legitimation of the particular form of speech in which an evening is called ‘melancholy’ or a garden ‘serene’. (Böhme, 1993, p. 122) It is the whole body that senses the atmosphere. We can, for instance, experience the atmosphere of a spring evening as ‘romantic’ when we sit on the terrace and enjoy the sunset and the bird song. But when the farmer spreads manure on the field in the neighbourhood, the atmosphere is suddenly no longer so romantic. And when the motorcycle club thunders through the small town on its first spring ride, there is a further change in the atmosphere. We on the terrace, the farmer on the tractor, and the motorcyclists also experience different atmospheres – we are physically present in different ways in the spring evening.

The teacher as a scenographer in the classroom Thus, a discussion of the teacher’s role as a scenographer in the learning space is an examination of what atmosphere-creating instruments the teacher has in place, and how they can be used. As far as I know, no systematic examination of this has been done. This chapter does not build on any systematic collection of data or analysis of the atmospheres in different classrooms, but on long and diverse practical teaching experience and many observations from many different areas. But it must be emphasized that the chapter does not give a recipe for how things should be done. Creating an atmosphere in the classroom is a type of aesthetic practice and therefore requires, in the main, tacit knowledge that one can easily acquire in a practical way, within a master’s teaching tradition. Following Böhme, it is about aesthetic work: Aesthetic work consists of giving things, environments or even the human being such properties from which something can proceed. That is, it is a question of ‘making’ atmospheres through work on an object. (Böhme, 1993, p. 123) The preunderstanding that it is possible to create an atmosphere – through aesthetic means – is a basic assumption for the actual study of stage design, Böhme writes: This whole undertaking would be meaningless if atmospheres were something purely subjective. For the stage-set artist must relate them to a wider audience, which will experience the atmosphere generated on the stage in, by and large, the same way. It is, after all, the purpose of the stage set to provide the atmospheric background to the action, to attune the spectators to the theatrical

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performance and to provide the actors with a sounding board for what they present. The art of the stage set therefore demonstrates from the side of practice that atmospheres are something quasi-objective. (Böhme, 2013, p. 3) From this we can pose the question: What could have been done to create a better atmosphere in Tillberg’s classroom – an atmosphere for better learning? First, let us look at some of the more structural conditions, on the very relationship between the form of education and space: It is obviously right what Buvik (2005, p. 1) points out – that major changes have occurred in teaching programmes and work forms that have had consequences for the physical design. This is not new, but it is only in the teaching of pupils from 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds through to 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds that all these types of teaching have received one single form of answer – what we know as the classroom. In the first place, this form of defence is also a historical phenomenon that occurs at one particular time in the history of school building and thus it can be replaced by others, even if it seems unchallengeable. But it is beyond the limits of this text to move closer to this development.

Different teaching rooms Teaching is a complex grouping of activities with floating borders between them. Learning is even more complex and fluid. One could rightly argue that it is not teaching that goes on under Munch’s oak, if we are only talking about teaching when it is organized, when it is a group that meets up to be taught a particular subject in a particular place at a particular time by a particular person. But that there is some learning process going on under the oak, we can agree upon. And it is not difficult to imagine formal teaching situations in the shadow of a big tree.

Stoa – the classic colonnade The teaching space that is closest to Munch’s oak is the classic Greek stoa, the covered pillared hall (Figure 8.5) where philosophers walk and develop learned arguments. The Stoic philosopher Zeno presented his philosophy in such a colonnade. In our day too, researcher Mia Keinänen at the Norwegian Sports Academy argues that one thinks best when one walks: ‘After a few minutes, physical activity stimulates the production of new nerve cells and the formation of new connections in the brain. This is a perfect starting point for learning,’ states this researcher, who has a treadmill in her office and walks slowly while she reads and writes (‘Go smart’, Research.no, 14 June 2012) The stoa is a good space for pedagogical conversation. Can a difficult student conversation be easier if it happens during a walk?

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FIGURE 8.5 The stoa. Source: sketch by Robert Øfsti

Auditorium In Tillberg’s classroom, the teacher is imagined to be standing on a podium above the student. In an auditorium, the situation is reversed. The lecturer stands on the floor – the audience is in an amphitheatre. The lecturer cannot monitor the students, but the students hear what they say. The distance separation from the front to the rear bench is minimized – everyone should be able to approach equally. The auditorium (Figure 8.6) is the room for learning through listening.

The anatomical theatre In the anatomical theatre, all students come as close as possible to the body that is being dissected on the table in the middle of the room. The University of Padua had

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FIGURE 8.6 The auditorium. Source: sketch by Robert Øfsti

such a teaching space in any case from 1446 and a permanent anatomical theatre was built in 1595. This is the shape of the space necessary for the student to learn through seeing (Figure 8.7). In vocational subjects, it is often the way the learning takes place, but do schools have teaching rooms that are adapted to this form?

Laboratory, reading room, workshop and living room In the school laboratory, the students are supposed to learn by doing experiments that confirm what is written in the textbook; in the reading room students are supposed to learn by studying texts; in the art studio and in the craftsman’s workshop there is apprenticeship learning – and of course, much more. From the University of Oxford, which some of us only know from detective films like Inspector Morse and

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FIGURE 8.7 The anatomical theatre. Source: sketch by Robert Øfsti

Lewis, we know of the tutorial rooms where eight to ten students sit in a semicircle around the professor, who is enthroned in a comfortable chair (Figure 8.8).

The classroom as a stage Thus, over a long period of time, there have evolved a number of different learning spaces adapted to different types of teaching or learning. This differentiation first occurred in higher education. In primary and secondary schools, for a long time, the traditional classroom has been fixed – a square room with good light, 20–30 pupils at their desks and the teacher behind the desk on a podium. Can it this produce too narrow a teaching and learning approach? Or is the classroom actually good for all the different types of learning that are outlined above? John Dewey had his opinion: If we put before the mind’s eye the ordinary schoolroom, with its rows of ugly desks placed in geometrical order, crowded together so that there shall be as little moving room as possible, desks almost all of the same size, with just space enough to hold books, pencils, and paper, and add a table, some chairs,

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FIGURE 8.8 The circle – the horseshoe. Source: sketch by Robert Øfsti

the bare walls, and possibly a few pictures, we can reconstruct the only educational activity that can possibly go on in such a place. It is all made ’for listening’ – because simply studying lessons out of a book is only another kind of listening; it marks the dependency of one mind upon another. (Dewey, 1990, p. 31) When John Dewey himself opened his laboratory school at the University in Chicago in 1896, he made use of a former mansion, not a specially built school building: [I]t worked very well for a programme that was built around hands-on learning activities that supported real life. Classrooms were appropriately formed from former living spaces of the house. Furniture consisted of tables and chairs that could be arranged according to the activity. (Burke & Grosvenor, 2008, p. 13) It is probably cheaper to build generic traditional classrooms instead of many different types of rooms for different purposes. At the same time, the most important principle behind the design has not been to find good answers for varied teaching and learning, but, as mentioned, to optimize the disciplining of the body and the

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surveillance of discipline. It is obvious that the new alternatives mentioned by Buvik also are part of a process towards less discipline and above all less control. This de-disciplinarization also applies to the development of the inventory of classroom furniture. We still talk about being seated on the school bench, and originally the school bench was just a bench, perhaps modelled on the church bench, and with just as great demands on the body to keep quiet and still. The school desk provides some greater bodily freedom, and when the chair and work table become two separated units, the student body can at least find different seating positions to switch between. As we see in Figure 8.9, the students in Tillberg’s classroom sit by a window that is possible to look through. Earlier, one would have had matt glass in the lower squares – the window was supposed to release light, but the pupils should not be able to look out: the gaze should also be disciplined.

FIGURE 8.9 Basic form of a classroom in a base school. Source: sketch by Robert Øfsti

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Erlend Vinje, a fellow at the School of Architecture in Oslo, has in several articles examined various groups’ views on the so-called base school, which is a school where the traditional classroom for 25–28 pupils is replaced by larger bases for groups of 50–60 pupils, supplemented with smaller group rooms (Figure 8.9). Vinje studied the discourse in the news media about traditional classrooms versus base school classrooms and found great opposition to base schools from teachers and parents, while school leaders and municipal school administrators were more positive (Vinje, 2011). Could the resistance against base schools be because the teachers there lack the ability to monitor the disciplining of the body? And is this surveillance perhaps necessary? Should we not have peace in school? We are going to let this discussion rest now to move on to a more practical topic: the teacher as a scenographer, the one who rigs the room for teaching.

The desk (which is no longer a desk) The most important and most useful tool for the teacher scenographer is the positioning of the desk – the work-desk. The placement pattern depicted by Dewey and Tillberg is no longer the only one that rules except during written exams. But the exam situation explains what this location means. And perhaps the exam situation also clarifies what actually counts most in school: the individual student’s individual intellectual achievement. The individual pupils are completely isolated from their classmates; each student must listen to the teacher or to the textbook text and/or write individual texts in their own exercise book, which the teacher later has to ‘correct’. The pupils can be placed by the teacher or place themselves within the pattern. Early on, it was common for the teacher or the system to place the pupils according to an openly declared ranking principle – probably in order to spur the students to stronger efforts by being able to see the results of the continuous competition. The ‘cleverest’ pupils were seated at the front desks, and those who were considered ‘hopeless’ were placed on the back bench. After some time, this competition-based ranking was replaced by a ‘special educational’ principle, where those with the greatest need to sit near the teacher and board, those with poor eyesight or poor hearing, came to the front. If the pupils can decide where to sit (permanently, or from day to day and hour to hour), the classroom is a stage for an ongoing drama with varying constellations among the actors. The experienced teacher can probably read a lot about the social life of the class from this. Either way, it is obvious that the placement of the pupils helps to create atmosphere in the classroom, an atmosphere that the teacher in any case notices when they perceive ‘atmospheric disturbances’, such as turmoil, or where the teacher directs the pupils when necessary and for different reasons by changing their places. The double desk was once common, and it is still not unusual in some countries today: to put two or three pupils together, a solution that first and foremost can save space. But the pattern also indicates that the individual pupil is not completely

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isolated. Two students with their tables close together form a small group. The pattern also shows that the goal is not clearly discipline: the companion’s authority can compete with the teacher’s monologue or the textbook and the demand for full concentration on the writing task. This pattern is an expression that schooling is also a social community. In my school days, the class lined up in two rows in the schoolyard after the break. Then we marched in two by two, a kind of transitional ritual from the social, collective life of the schoolyard to the isolated existence at the desk in the classroom. The couple split up on entry to the classroom.

Grouping for group work Groups of four and four desks are nowadays a common pattern in the classroom. The pattern is a structural response to the technical school idea of group work and discussion as a form of learning. The way in which the desks are placed not only changes the situation between the pupils, but also the relationship between the pupils and the teacher. When the groups are formed for group work, the teacher changes the role from being the one who purveys their own monologue, to being a guide going from group to group to give control and guidance. The four desks normally form a square pattern, and consequently constitute the sitting pattern shown in Figure 8.10. With only small differences in the height of the desks (although, considering good sitting positions for children of different heights, the differences should be big), the pattern shown in Figure 8.11 is the most common. With this seating about 50% of the students sit more or less with their back towards the blackboard (or whiteboard), depending on how the groups are organized in the classroom. This is shown in Figure 8.12. Many students cast a shadow over their own workspace, at least in daylight. Round tables are a solution in some schools. Here the square pattern of four chairs is made rigid in a fixed pattern. The teacher scenographer’s opportunities are at the same time narrowed down considerably. More than four desks – six or eight – can form a long-desk (Figure 8.13). This solution is not often seen, especially not in primary or secondary schools. In upper secondary schools it is probably more common. Here, there might occasionally be the ‘meeting table’, with a space for necessary documents and free discussion. The student sitting at the end of the meeting table will be the leader. One or two long tables are also good for space: this leaves a large open floor space in the classroom, and it is well suited for situations where items are sent around to study carefully or when drama and dance are part of the lesson planned. At the same time, there are also some reminders of home, of more open schooling and gatherings around the kitchen table.

The horseshoe The horseshoe is another familiar organizational pattern. mainly in the last 40– 50 years. My first meeting with it is from approximately 1970, though much earlier

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Four desks, group A. Source: sketch by Robert Øfsti

FIGURE 8.10

the 1839/40 Committee of Council on Education’s ‘Plans of School-houses No. 12, for 144 children and 150 infants’ (cited in Burke & Grosvenor, 2008, p. 35) recommended this pattern. The primary school building here had only one large teaching room for all 150 students, and the plan outlined two alternative sets of furniture – one of these had ten horseshoe formations with a ‘monitor’ in each. The monitor was supposed to teach the younger pupils to read (ibid.). The horseshoe form is ‘democratic’: no one sits at the front and no one sits behind anyone. In the horseshoe are all equal: all pupils have full insight into what everyone else does. Even the teacher is almost one of the class: sitting in the open with their back to the board. The pattern allows for multiple voices: the talking can cross the horseshoe, the learning takes the form of a round table conference. The teacher’s role is redefined from ‘speaker’ to ‘moderator’ or ‘programme leader’, which is a good metaphor for what a good teacher does. The presenter is responsible for the theme but should not speak all the time. The teacher opens the proceedings, ensures that the discussion progresses along one fruitful track (or more),

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Four desks, group B. Source: sketch by Robert Øfsti

FIGURE 8.11

ensures that everyone is in final agreement, provides variety and variation in who is in focus and is responsible for summing up and ending within the set time frame. The horseshoe is also the pattern we know from the classic British university model, with the professor in his small circle of students. The horseshoe is well-suited when the learning forms are listening and discussion. As soon as visual information comes in, the horseshoe is less convenient. Those who are far out on the sides sit at an angle to the board, which must necessarily be placed behind the teacher and the teacher’s desk. And it is a paradox that the horseshoe is often used also when there can be a clear disadvantage in permitting all pupils to see exactly what all the other pupils are doing, for example when learning tasks require concentration and absorption in their own work – not others’. For practical work in arts and crafts, it can be like that. A simple solution could be to ‘twist’ the horseshoe, so that the pupils are inside facing out, with the teacher in the scaffolding role on the outside. When the teacher moves from guidance to lecturing or instruction, it is easy for the pupils to turn around on their chairs and follow along (Figure 8.14).

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Groups of four and their sightlines: ‘Look at the blackboard’. Source: sketch by Robert Øfsti

FIGURE 8.12

With this single move, we have successfully adapted student workstations to tasks that require concentration on their own work. In the traditional classroom pattern (the ‘bus’), one sees the back of the classmates in front of oneself; in the reversed horseshoe, the gaze meets the wall or window if it moves away from work.

Summary Teaching is activity in time and space. Ideally, we should continually arrange the desks – set the scene anew every time we move to a new learning task. But this often happens several times a lesson, so it is clearly impracticable. Alternatively, we can change the scene when the teaching mode changes, and that is part of the intention behind the base school. But even the base school must be furnished. There are, as I have shown, a multitude of ways to organize and group desks and working tables. No one way is ‘more correct’ than others. Each one has its advantages and weaknesses. The teacher must take care of whether the learning tasks require listening, visual information, conversation and discussion in groups or whole-class, or concentrated, individual work, and also take note of the differing

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The long table. Source: sketch by Robert Øfsti

FIGURE 8.13

Inside-out horseshoe. Source: sketch by Robert Øfsti

FIGURE 8.14

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rhythms of each of these modes of teaching and learning. The teacher must also think about the lighting, sight lines and patterns of movement. Sightlines are controls for both the teacher and among the pupils. Patterns of movement can create conflicting patterns.

The empty space Earlier in the chapter, I explained how the most important task of the traditional classroom architecture is to discipline the student body. The desk is intended to keep the body still. From another point of view, the physical shapes of rooms, the furniture and so on can be designed to create conditions for activity. The room creates conditions for a long time motionless. The desk creates conditions for writing and thinking. In the gym, the wall bars create conditions for climbing. But compared to the free and creative climbing that a boulder wall permits and signals, wall bars signal a more disciplined and disciplining physical education. Today, many people have their own physical exercise room at home. But I am old enough to remember the concept of classroom gymnastics on the radio. Classroom gymnastics broadcast from a studio was based on the assumption that desks would be in place, and that the pupils at their desk. The idea of emptying the classroom of desks was unthinkable. But it is easy to do – and the empty space provides conditions for completely different activities and tasks from a room furnished with desks. Maybe there are not enough empty rooms available in many schools – room for dance and play, for drama, theatre, for gathering and crawling on free floor surfaces. But there are corridors.

What creates the atmosphere in a classroom? Let us return to Peter Tillberg’s picture of the old typical classroom. The viewer can have no doubt that there is a very special atmosphere here. Quite a lot is due to the lack of colours. The ceiling is very high and it makes the white wall surfaces extra dominant. The curtains are also quite bright and translucent. The atmosphere in the classroom is reinforced in the picture by the artist having made all the colours lightly tinted, even in the landscape painting on the wall, the books in the bookcase and the student drawings on the bulletin board. But it may well be that Tillberg illustrates the curtains perfectly. They can be bright to avoid contrast with the light surfaces themselves. Darker curtains would make the light surface dazzling, and functionalist architects wanted to avoid this. We probably could not find a single classroom of today that could be as typical as Tillberg’s is of yesterday. None of the 15 shapes published by Gry Seland in her master’s thesis (Seland, 2001, pp. 8, 11–13) is more typical than the others. But together they give an accurate impression of a situation with great diversity (Figure 8.15). It is still easy to identify a space as a modern classroom, whether we are talking about the base or the more traditional classroom, or we might be talking about subject areas or general rooms (and when in the following I use the word classroom, it is

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FIGURE 8.15

Two classrooms around 2000.

implicitly understood that this in principle applies to all rooms in the school building which are directly or indirectly part of the student’s learning space). Lena Solheim Kirkebø calls this the transition from the auditory school to the laboratory school (Kirkebø, 2010, p. 78). Tillberg’s classroom is typical of the auditory school: nothing was allowed in the classroom that could create visual noise and distract the student from being aware of the teacher’s speech, illustrated with words or drawings on the board, and as I mentioned, even the lower parts of the windows frosted to prevent the students from looking out. In the laboratory school, as in the illustration, we find an atmosphere that tells of many possibilities at the same time.

The classroom – a marketplace? Another description of the laboratory school is of course the school that prepares students for work. And it is the workshop or the art studio that is the driving force. But it is the kindergarten, the home and the leisure club that seem to be the visual inspiration – the aim being to create a private, pleasant, recreational atmosphere with room for play. There are guitars and games, and pop idol posters allowed in the classroom. The best metaphor for the modern classroom at its best is the marketplace. At the marketplace, customers come to look for goods that interest them, and they make their choices and engage in lively discussion and interaction, says Loris Malaguzzi, creator of the philosophy and the methodology of the municipal kindergartens in Reggio Emilia (Gandini, 1998, p. 173). The marketplace atmosphere can also be described as follows: [F]ruit, vegetables, pies, maple sugar, or flowers, laid out in a feast of multicolors, rich and layered, a sight bewildering at first until you learn to discriminate by color, texture, and of course, price. Meanwhile, there are also sounds to take in (people jostling, laughing, speaking in a number of languages; merchants hovering, pointed to discourse on the value of their produce) as well as the smells, with the expectation of taste, whetting the palate. (Strong-Wilson & Ellis, 2007, p. 44)

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Classroom walls – a multimodal text? The marketplace, in all its overwhelming variety, is nevertheless strictly arranged – everything has its fixed place in a fixed structure. The critical question for classrooms like those in Figure 8.15, is of course: is there a corresponding order in these classrooms? Are the classroom walls used in a thoughtful way – are all the elements well-chosen? We can preferably look at these walls as multimodal texts. A multimodal text is a text or a body composed of signs from different modes of communication, e.g. writing, speech, pictures, colours and sound, according to Staffan Selander and Gunther Kress: Multimodal communication or communication using different kinds of characters and different kinds of media is becoming increasingly important. But this does not mean that multimodal expressions have appeared for the first time today. The ancient tradition of rhetoric combined figures with gestures and spatial positioning, which contributed to emphasizing the more important parts of the speech. In the medieval church, the word of God was conveyed by means of both speech and the abundant illustrations that dressed altars, pulpits, and church walls. (Selander & Kress, 2010, p. 28, author’s translation) Is the multimodal text that the classroom wall represents readable and appropriate? According to research by architect Birgit Cold (2002b, p. 6), experts (visiting artists and architects) and users (the school’s own students and teachers) view this factor as the least important of the ten positive characteristics of criteria for a good school environment they were asked to rank: 1. 2. 3.

Neat, tidy, structured and readable: eight persons (32%). Art and student work: five persons (20%). Beautiful materials and surfaces: five persons (20%).

Experts consider this type of visual noise negatively than the users: ‘The architects also mentioned that the caretaker’s office was particularly messy, while an educator referred to it as “adventurous”’ (Cold, 2002b, p. 12). Cold argues that this difference in evaluation connects to the fact that the users have a deeper knowledge of the reasons for ‘the mess’. They know that the chairs are put on the desks to allow the floors to be cleaned, and that it is practical to let them stand there when they are not in use, even if one student is sitting at the neighbouring desk. Experts who are visiting perceive this as a lack of structure, and lack of respect for the student’s workplace (while the users view this as respect for the cleaning staff’s workplace in the same situation and may ask if it is the student’s job to move chairs other than their own up and down from the desk in time). Professor Hansjörg Hohr calls for more aesthetic features in the school: The school building and the classroom should not only be functional but should also speak a language that invites all the activities that will take place in them,

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which tells what value and importance one attaches to these activities and that they care about them because one should have respect both for oneself and the other. … Noise, therefore, represents structures that students and the teacher must spend time and effort sorting out so that what matters can be allowed to emerge. From an aesthetic perspective, ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’ are not relevant criteria. The decisive factor is whether the learning environment’s form or structure communicates appropriately. (Hohr, 2002, p. 10, author’s translation) Thus, there is reason to believe that the classroom wall, understood as a multimodal text, will be better and more easily understood if it is carefully thought out and arranged, and if it considers the criticism of experts who have studied and practised in this area. This corresponds to the view of the Reggio Emilia pedagogy on the surroundings as the third educator: The Reggio Emilia approach to education talks about three educators as being in the classroom at any one time: the teacher, the child, and the environment. … By seeing the environment as an educator, as the Reggio Emilia approach does, we can begin to notice how surroundings can take on a life of their own that contributes to children’s learning. … Fraser (2006), in her work with preservice teachers, has identified eight Reggio Emilia principles as key to the environment being the third teacher: aesthetics, transparency, active learning, flexibility, collaboration, reciprocity, bringing the outdoors in, and relationships. (Strong-Wilson & Ellis, 2007, p. 41) How can the teacher, with these principles in mind, make the classroom walls a better multimodal text and create an even better atmosphere for learning?

Colours in the classroom Colours are obviously important. Let us start with a zero point – an empty room. It does not mean that it is without colours – ceilings and walls consist of different materials that have their different colours, and modern school architecture places more emphasis on varied material use than before, and there are more types of material available to the architect. Cold’s (2002a, p. 20) investigations show that both users and experts consider genuine, sustainable materials highly. In any case, the colours found in the room must form the starting point for what the teacher can decide upon (e.g. curtains). A conscious use of colour is needed if we are to take care of principle no. 1 from the Reggio Emilia – aesthetics (aesthetics here both understood as direct sensual experience and as the beautiful and appealing). The use of colour can contribute to creating wholeness in space – forming one necessary unifying background for all other texts. According to Cold (2002a, p. 20), the experts liked to have bright,

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neutral colours, which together create a sense of peace, while the users appreciated the elements of strong, clear colour elements. Without commenting on Rudolf Steiner’s thinking and the pedagogy of the Steiner school, there is good reason to emphasize the conscious colour chart that prevails in the Steiner schools, where Goethe’s colour theory forms a theoretical basis for thoughtful choice of colours and painting techniques in the classroom. Colour usage can help in reading the classroom wall as text, by dividing it into ‘chapters’ that can follow subjects and topics, or learning tasks, or follow the different types of ‘text contributions’ that will be chosen for the wall (see below). A division and ‘colour coding’ of the walls will make the classroom more aesthetic and transparent, readable and understandable.

Five different text types There can be up to five different text types on the walls: 1. 2.

3.

4.

5.

Classic educational visual material. Typically, maps, the anatomical charts or teacher-produced A4 sheets with Aa, Bb, Cc, etc. Student documentation of various kinds: student work from the art and crafts lesson, self-produced maps, wall papers, products of group and project work in the form of plans, etc. This can, following Reggio Emilia terminology, be considered as pedagogical documentation (Rinaldi, 2009), a term that also can include photo reports from excursions and day-to-day activities in the classroom. Objects of wonder, fascination and for in-depth studies. Here, the Reggio Emilia pedagogy is full of interesting examples, amongst others the extended and imaginative use of mirrors. One example is primary school teacher Arne Samuelsen having one corner in the classroom where there was always one object (natural or artifact) that the pupils could just wonder about. There were constantly new objects, but they were never commented on by the teacher or drawn directly into the teaching. Art (not student work) on the walls in the classroom can have the same effect as objects to wonder about. It might not be necessary to have original art, but good (enough) reproductions? Wall surfaces are also occupied by shelves and cupboards as storage space for books, educational material, raw material and student work in process, etc. This can also be arranged as part of an aesthetic solution. The Reimida Centre in Trondheim, which is part of the Reggio Emilia network, shows how an enormous supply of materials can appear as an organized system – entirely in accordance with the marketplace as metaphor. Cabinets and shelves can be placed with care and imagination. In a little space between two cabinets, the possibility arises for a ‘wonder niche’ – which does not need to send the cleaning staff into deep despair. Contributions that the students can bring into the text to make the classroom their own are e.g., rock star posters, figures from video games, football players

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or other personal items (which may be of greater educational value): ‘The student must be given the right to make his/her area as personal as possible.’ (Hordaland fylkeskommune, opplæringsavdelinga, 2009, p. 21) It is self-evident that without control and consideration for either the aesthetics or the other principles for the surroundings as the third pedagogue, this will become such an extensive text that it becomes unreadable. Strong-Wilson and Ellis conclude: Teachers can … examine classroom and school environments for what they allow and what they prevent children from exploring and investigating. … teachers can also conduct an informal inventory of what they see on their walls [and as] and ask questions about whether, how or to what degree their present uses of spaces ‘move thinking and learning’ … Why am I displaying these materials and for whom? What image of the child does the display communicate? Does the display honor children’s voices and work? (Strong-Wilson & Ellis, 2007, p. 45, citing Tarr, 2001)

Time for a change of scenery One key step for the teacher as a classroom scenographer is time in the room. When is it time for a change of scenery? You can create new atmospheres by changing the text on the wall – when the time comes. The map can be pulled down when it is needed. But does the chart still hang on after the group work is done? Is your A4 sheet with Aa and Bb still displayed? At the same time, many people emphasize that part of what makes a classroom good as a learning environment is that it has a visible history, precisely in the form of ‘deposits’ on the walls. In Reggio Emilia they make a point of things to wonder at always being there. And it is in principle a wonder that one that continues. Are there two profiles or one vase, and why can I not see both parts at the same time?

Billboard In thirteen of the fifteen classrooms that are depicted in Seland’s master’s thesis (Seland, 2001, pp. 8–13), we see the traditional, dark green chalkboard. The survey is from 2001, and today we find more modern equipment in many classrooms. White boards and electronic smartboards have a number of excellent features. The use of smartboards is the subject of multiple books (one search on Amazon.com provided 83 hits, and another the book SMART Board Interactive Whiteboard for Dummies by Radana Dvorak). The board – both with and without text and image – is of course an important element in the classroom’s set design, be it written on with chalk, ink or digital. Here, however, chalkboard must briefly be mentioned, both from the recognition that for a long time still there will be traditional chalkboards in many classrooms, and because from an aesthetic perspective of learning it should not be removed.

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Chalkboard by virtue of tradition and as a symbol contributes to creating the classroom’s atmosphere precisely as a classroom, which is something other than digital technology theatres. The digital smart board is what cybernetics call a ‘black box’ -, it is not possible to understand how is created. The chalkboard is like a ‘glass box’ – it is clear to understand what it is that produces the line and which gives the line quality. The board is cheap to purchase and operate – one gets large surfaces, which allow many students to work at the same time. In older pedagogy and methodology books, the chalkboard gets thorough attention. It is often said that all students should be able to draw on the board simultaneously. Picture drawing is also an aid for the teacher – not just for writing: One can draw a nice picture rapidly, a visual view for the entire class, even for a larger audience. In addition, with a crayon drawing one can check step by step how some pupils progress, change or grind on. (Kvalheim, 1932, p. 7, author’s translation) The author Wilhelm Kvalheim, who was the head teacher at Volda teacher school from 1924, shows in the same way that drawing on the board can develop into particularly high-quality, but short-lived, works of art. Chalks (of course in several colours) are themselves a feature of artistic creativity with the potential for great variation in stroke, hatching and density, which the author gives instruction in. More prosaically, both in form and content, when the authors of a methodology book in the 1960s write about the chalkboard One should seek to make a certain system: either one now begins from the left and fills the board completely full, or one divides it up into, e.g. three parts and fills these in turn, or one uses one-third at first, one-third to ‘draft notes’ and the last part for sketches or the like. (Naeslund & Vrethammar, 1967, pp. 70–71, author’s translation) I sometimes hold courses for colleagues in teacher education in the use of audiovisual aids, and with the chalkboard, advised the three-part system, but must admit that, in practice, I struggled to be as disciplined as many of my colleagues.

True information Edvard Munch might have some song text in mind when he places the sun in the middle between History and Alma Mater in the auditorium in the University of Oslo. The scenographer knows that the light cannot be used just to metaphorically ‘shed light on’ something, but quite concretely to focus on, to direct the subject to something. The common classroom lacks the possibility of varied lighting. But it is not so difficult to do this – one can achieve a lot with a single spotlight. This way one can imagine the prelude or hook for a lesson: the pupils enter a classroom so dark that they can hardly find their places. They are in an atmosphere of expectant

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darkness. The spot comes on. There is a cone in the beam of light. Mathematics teaching can begin. The Fibonacci series of numbers is the theme. It is well documented that sufficient daylight is important for health, welfare and a learning environment. The architect Leif Daniel Houck has recently documented a tendency for Norwegian schools built after 2007 to be built as what he calls ‘compact schools’, with deep or ‘twisted’ classrooms, with windows commonly in the short wall instead of in the long wall (Houck, 2013). This reduces the daylight in the classroom significantly, and on many desk layouts the light comes from the back, so that the students will sit in their own shadow (another reason to consider and vary the desk organization). There is every reason to take Houck’s warnings seriously. In addition to sufficient daylight, good artificial lighting is needed as a necessary element for all teaching and learning. But the light itself could be a subject for teaching and learning – with both aesthetic and non-aesthetic learning methods – in many (maybe all) themes and subjects. It opens a wealth of possibilities, but since the lighting design in the school is not intended for an active role as ‘the third educator’, it will challenge the teacher’s creativity and skill to find solutions. Creativity thrives best within tight limits. The challenges lie in finding simple ways to change the quality and quantity of light in the room or to find rooms in the school where the light has special qualities. Daylight and windows hang literally together, although candles are also an interesting solution. And outside the window there is nature or the urban landscape with a rhythmically changing scenography throughout the day and year, with its varying layers – a forward-looking scenography for the study of light. Light and transparency can also be studied on a light table. There are professional models, but it is also easy to make one yourself, and overhead devices not much used any more, can also act both as a light table and a spotlight. Finally, we should not forget what good teachers of the past have done – create atmosphere with light… or rather, with an absence of light. In December’s twilight morning they turn off the ceiling light, light a candle and read mythical stories.

In the props store On the theatre scene, no items are randomly selected or placed. They create atmosphere. Of course, this is also what a green plant in the classroom does, and according to Cold’s investigations (Cold, 2002a, p. 11), green plants are a positive factor that both users and experts rank highly. There have been investigations about what effects green plants have in the office work environment (Raanaas, Evensen, Horgen & Grindal, 2012). The plant is ‘for decoration’, but it can also (like the light) be visual material for teaching and learning. It brings together the thinking behind science and art and crafts, but one birch sprig on a hook in the classroom has in one way roots in the same soil as Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life, and the lilies in the field. Can the classroom have an aquarium? I remember my elementary school with a sandbox for environmental education. Arne Trageton, a former associate professor at Stord Teachers’ College, who developed a practical

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teaching strategy for young children – an experience-based, interdisciplinary and thematic ‘workshop pedagogy’ – also carried out research on the value of these ‘props’ (Trageton, 1995).

In the costume store I can so easily remember having had high school teachers who wore suits that were really school uniforms – both grey and white – but I can also remember that the phenomenon disappeared in the late 1960s. Today, in Norway there is no dress code for teaching staff, but as recently as 2013 the North-Trøndelag County Council raised the issue, as council representative Erik Fløan said from the county council rostrum: ‘I do not mean rigid rules, but rather a request to dress in shirt and tie for men. Women’s clothing I am not the right one to consider’ (reported in Trønder-Avisa newspaper, 12 June 2013). ‘Ladies in red always get to dance’, it is said, and I know of one experienced primary school teacher who wears a special red dress when meeting the pupils on the first day of school.

The outdoor room This chapter started in the hall of the University of Oslo, with Edvard Munch’s History. The closure brings us back here – to Alma Mater on the opposite wall. In an earlier version, Munch calls the painting The Researchers. Here we meet, as mentioned in the introduction, the outdoor school – long before the concept came into use. Over time, an extensive literature on the outdoor school has developed (Jordet, 2010) as well as widespread practice. Egil Galaaen Gjølme in Chapter 7 of this book talks about the benefits of outdoor education, and all teacher students in the teacher education at my university have for several years tried to plan and carry out outdoor school days. The experience is interesting. Everyone can see for themselves how the outdoor space opens new possibilities for engaging teaching in subjects such as science, physical education and art and crafts. But it has been equally amazing to see how students who have taught religion, English and history have invented new forms of teaching in dialogue with a new spatial situation. It is possible to understand how this is so if we look at the outdoor space and its aesthetics. Outside, the spatial arrangement between the teacher and the pupil is different: the podium is no longer the teacher’s starting point, and the desk no longer the pupil’s anchoring. This allows you to think differently about teaching. The situation opens for ‘get-up-and-go’ education, where the student is learning and finding, experiencing and understanding. The outside space is, in principle, and in practice, infinitely large, but it looks paradoxically enough to make the students more concentrated. One can observe how they alternate between being ‘out and about’ and clumping close together around the teacher in concentrated reporting or listening. Outside, sensory impressions are infinitely more than even in the most chaotic and overcrowded classrooms, but still arranged in a natural order, and they are

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intuitively understandable, while at the same time shifting and not possible to predict in advance. Herein lies both a challenge and a brilliant possibility to create moments of decisive importance. A crow can perch at the top of the tree, which the students are about to measure the height of. Do we handle that situation with a song? A rain shower can cascade over the religious education specialist group. But then the sun breaks through and throws a godly light over the situation – creating a heavenly atmosphere.

Site-specific education opens many possibilities Outdoor school is not only outdoor-in-nature school. It can just as easily be a city tour where one learns history (or social sciences) by looking at sculptures in the city, looking at buildings and learning architectural history, looking at pavements and building stones and learning geology.

Shifting the scenery to the digital classroom The outburst of the COVID-19 pandemic made the change to a digital classroom accelerate. In this classroom the dramaturgical principles are still relevant, but the scenery has radically changed. The students all ages communicate with their teachers on digital platforms (Hangout, Zoom, Teams and more) that are secured via passwords. The teacher gives tasks, which the students solves by going out exploring some phenomenon, creating films, taking photos etc. and send to the teacher. The teacher and individual students chat with the teacher about the solutions to the tasks given. Still: the relationality is important also within a digital learning landscape. In next chapter we will elaborate dramaturgy for a digital world, where the main idea is that both teacher and student are learners together in analogue and digital encounters. Still, the dramaturgical principles presented in this chapter and earlier can be applied, and underlined as meaningful experimentation in producing knowledge.

References Böhme, G. (1993). Atmosphere as the fundamental concept of a new aesthetics. Thesis Eleven, 36, 123–126. Böhme, G. (2013). The art of the stage set as a paradigm for an aesthetics of atmospheres. Retrieved from http://ambiances.revues.org/315. Burke, C. & Grosvenor, I. (2008). School. London: Reaktion Books. Buvik, K. (2005). Trender innenfor fysisk utforming av grunnskoler [Trends in design of physical education]. Retrieved from www.skoleanlegg.utdanningsdirektoratet.no/asset/ 1507/1/15071.pdf. Cold, B. (2002a). Gåturer på tre barneskoler [School walks in three primary schools]. Trondheim: NTNU. Cold, B. (2002b). Skoleanlegget som lesebok: En studie av skoleanlegget som ramme for læring og velvære [The school buildings as textbook: A study of the schoolbuilding as frame for learning]. Trondheim: NTNU.

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Dewey, J. (1990). The school and society, and the child and the curriculum. Chicago, IL: Dover Publications. Fraser, S. (2006). Authentic childhood: Experiencing Reggio Emilia in the classroom. Albany, NY: Nelson Thomson Learning. Gandini, L. (1998). Educational and caring spaces. In L. Edwards, L. Gandini & G. Forman (eds), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia approach – Advanced reflections (pp. 161–178). Westport, CT: Ablex. Hohr, H. (2002). Skole uten sanselighet? Det estetiske i grunnskolens nye læreplan [A school without sensuousness? The aesthetic in the new framework curriculum] (Skoleanlegget som lesebok, delrapport 5). Trondheim: NTNU. Hordaland fylkeskommune, opplæringsavdelinga (2009). Skoleanlegget som pedagogisk arkitektur [The school building as pedagogic architecture]. Bergen: Hordaland Fylkeskommune. Houck, L. D. (2013). Skolelys i mørke skoler? Dagslysets kår i skolekonkurranser [School light in dark schools? The importance of daylight in school competitions]. Arkitektur, 2, 16–26. Johansen, A. B. (2012). Gå og bli smart. Retrieved from https://forskning.no/hjernenpartner-trening/ga-og-bli-smart/700498 Jordet, A. N. (2010). Klasserommet utenfor: Tilpasset opplæring i et utvidet læringsrom [The classroom outdoor: Adjusted education in a broadened learning space]. Oslo: Cappelen akademisk. Kielland, A. (1973). Gift [Married]. Oslo: Den norske bokklubben. Kirkebø, L. S. (2010). Pedagogisk arkitektur? [Pedagogic architecture?]. Master’s thesis in art history, University of Bergen, Norway. Retrieved from https://bora.uib.no/handle/ 1956/4047. Kolstad, A. (2012). Arkitekturens psykologiske og sosiale påvirkning [The psychological and social influence of architecture]. In A. Fyhri, Å. L. Hauge & H. Nordh (eds), Norsk miljøpsykologi [Norwegian milieu psychology] (pp. 57–80). Trondheim: SINTEF. Kvalheim, W. (1932). Tavleteikning [To draw on the chalkboard]. Oslo: Samlaget. Naeslund, J. & Vrethammar, H. (1967). Allmenn metodikk for yrkesundervisning [General methods for vocational education]. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Raanaas, K., Evensen, K., Horgen, P. & Grindal, G. (2012). Planter i kontorarbeidsmiljø [Plants in office mileu]. In A. Fyhri, Å. L. Hauge & H. Nordh (eds), Norsk miljøpsykologi [Norwegian milieu psychology] (pp. 213–234). Trondheim: SINTEF. Rinaldi, C. (2009). I dialog med Reggio Emilia. Lytte, forske, lære [In dialogue with Reggio Emilia. Listen, explore, learn]. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget. Seland, G. (2001). Voksne og barns inntrykk av skolens estetiske utforming [Adults and children’s impression of the aesthetic design of school]. Trondheim: NTNU. Selander, S. & Kress, G. (2010). Design för lärande: Ett multimodalt perspektiv [Design for learning: A multimodal perspective]. Stockholm: Nordstedts. Strong-Wilson, T. & Ellis, J. (2007). Children and place: Reggio Emilia’s environment as third teacher. Theory into Practice, 46 (1), 40–47. Tarr, P. (2001). Aesthetic codes in early childhood classrooms: What art educators can learn from Reggio Emilia. Art Education, 54 (3), 33–39. Trageton, A. (1995). Verkstedpedagogikk 6–10 år [Workshop pedagogy]. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget. Vinje, E. (2011). Baseskoledebatten i media – hvem mener hva og hvorfor? [The debate about base schools in media – who argues what and why?] Formakademisk, 4 (1), 24–47.

9 NEGOTIATING NOMADIC DRAMATURGIES Anna-Lena Østern and Kristian Nødtvedt Knudsen

The concept of dramaturgy in a performative society Any attempt at trying to define or review the concept of dramaturgy in a contemporary context is doomed to fail. Throughout the history of the theatre, the definition and usage of the concept of dramaturgy has been expanding and redefined in many different contexts (Coppens, Pewny & Callens, 2014; Pavis, 2014; Romanska, 2014). Baz Kershaw highlights the relationship between dramaturgy and belief, between representation and reality, in the following way: For there can be no dominant dramaturgy in an era when belief itself is revitalized, when whole systems of belief can be translated into mere representations of difference, and when some even argue that there is nothing left for us but representations of representations in a hyper-reality that makes even history itself inaccessible. (Kershaw, 2001, p. 208) Thus, Kershaw’s understanding of dramaturgy holds an existential dimension that goes beyond the theatre and into what he calls the performative society – a society in which the human is crucially co-constituted through performance. According to Kershaw, the performative society holds both the threat of the hyper-real, moving us closer to the post-human, and the possible source of a new kind of sensorium (Kershaw, 2001, p. 211). A sensorium is a concept inspired by the Bauhaus artist Walter Gropius’s ‘total theatre’ which, through its auditoria and stages, can be radically reconfigured by utilizing walls and screens onto which scenery can be projected. The sensorium design holds some similarities to the number of digital screens and digital walls that are present in the lives of young people in the society of today. Both Kershaw and the concept of ‘total theatre’ resonate with Janek Szatkowski’s description

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of a one-world society that is in co-emergence with the new media matrix presented in Chapter 1 in this book. Furthermore, Kershaw’s and Szatkowski’s understanding of dramaturgy implies a communicative dimension, where meaning-making can be interpreted as a process that takes place in complex interaction through reflection, new media, uncertainty and resistance. Thus, the concept of dramaturgy in a performative society also resonates with the overall intention of this book - thinking about the contribution of dramaturgy to the educational context. In the book’s chapters, the authors have pointed out various dramaturgical inputs and perspectives, which may have significance by giving some more choices in education. In this chapter, we connect to the dramaturgical understanding presented earlier in this book regarding how learning occurs, but we take a leap into the understandings made possible by dramaturgical thinking of the twenty-first century. Such a leap enables us to transform the dramaturgical thinking presented in our second (collage) model and transform it to nomadic dramaturgy. We will describe the learning journey by zooming in on four dramaturgical moments and animating the journey of the nomadic teacher-dramaturg and the nomadic students. The animation can be accessed via the QR code in Figure 9.1 (using a scanner on a mobile device or tablet), or at https://vimeo.com/425070703 (with the password: Dramaturgy2020).

Performative agents in education We are going to take a ‘quantum leap’ into considering relational and nomadic dramaturgy as performative agents in an educational context. A ‘quantum leap’ can in this context be explained as a shift from where we were looking at teaching and learning from the dramaturg’s perspective in transition: from a sociocultural understanding to a sociomaterial understanding; from a social semiotic focus to a material semiotic, and above all how we place ourselves both as being in and becoming with the world, or, following Szatkowski (2019): a one-world society. The transition from sociocultural to socio material enables us to look towards relational materialism as we implement a relational and nomadic dramaturgy.

FIGURE 9.1

QR code leading to animation of nomadic dramaturgical form.

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The relational is of the utmost importance to all dramaturgical thinking, but within the thinking of relational materialism the entanglement of relations to all matter is underlined by the concept of intra-action. Our exploration of the possibilities for teaching and learning is inspired by concepts in use in the works of Karen Barad (2007): intra-action, entanglement, performative agents, materiality, diffraction and interference. Intra-action refers to the relational aspects of what is human (and more than human) as always being in relation, entangled and interdependent. A shift towards intra-action as a guiding principle allows us to move away from the sociocultural perspective. From the sociomaterial perspective all matter matters, and materiality as well as affects and emotions can become performative agents in a learning event. Also emotions such as the bodily sensed impulses of joy, disappointment, engagement, etc. are entangled with cognitive conscious thinking. We co-constitute each other and the learning events we participate in, in ways that are at the same time both affective and cognitive. Human matter, nature, culture and materiality all serve as performative agents, enabling or restricting our knowledge production. The digital as a performative agent is an example of materiality that has enabled people to immerse themselves in projects, inquiring with a global perspective.

Diffraction in quantum physics and in social science Barad (2007) introduces a concept from quantum physics as a metaphor for describing how learning can be considered with the relational materialist perspective in mind. The concept is diffraction, which is an optical metaphor for how light or waves behave when they encounter a barrier or resistance: the waves diffract or spread into new different waves. The original wave patterns can still be noticed. In quantum physics this phenomenon can be observed both as waves and particles at the same time. By Translating diffraction to a concept of social science provides a focus on difference, nuances that matter in teaching and learning events. The focus is not solely on reflection, which is also a metaphor for an optical phenomenon (reflecting like a mirror), focused on finding similarities, the same things, categories. Diffraction in social science is a metaphor for a practice of analysis that pays attention to the co-constituting relationship between inquiry and possibility, measurement and materiality. It is like a ‘quantum leap’ to start looking for the difference that makes a difference in learning.

Relational and nomadic dramaturgies – a ‘quantum leap’ In this chapter we are attempting to articulate the idea of learning as performative inquiry, risk-taking, uncertainty, stop moments and an openness towards the affectiveness of being in what Biesta (2012) describes as a third space, which we discuss in the final chapter, summing up. The questions we are elaborating here are: how can Barad’s concepts help to articulate the contours of a nomadic dramaturgy? And

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what implications could such a dramaturgy have for understanding teaching and learning in the twenty-first century? We do realize that such articulation might seem naive, overly ambitious, utopian or idealistic. However, as long as central national policy documents focus on testing fragments, we suggest that this ambition is an ethical obligation in educating for the twenty-first century

The dawn of the teacher dramaturg Inspired by Goethe’s concept of Weltliteratur, calling on fellow writers and scholars to widen their knowledge of literature across borders, Tom Sellar outlines an expansive global dramaturgy taking shape in new collective practices that signal a shift and evolution for dramaturgy (Sellar, 2016, p. 113). Rather than focusing on the refinement of dramatic texts for the stage, Sellar suggests that the dramaturg needs to place a premium on the structure and context of collaborations, and he calls for a change in the understanding of a theatre production: The notion of theatre production and artistic creation as a finished object is replaced with another proposition, in which theatre - including the performance event itself - is a continual process of social interaction and negotiation. As these disciplinary lines blur, making collaboration and participation defining elements rather than formal components, the dramaturg’s role in facilitating communication among collaborators will only grow. (Sellar, 2016, p. 116) Following Sellar, the very concept of dramaturgy and understanding of the role of the dramaturg are moving towards a more relational and nomadic understanding. Magda Romanska describes the dramaturg in the twenty-first century as ‘the ultimate globalist: inter-cultural mediator, information and research manager, media content analyst, interdisciplinary negotiator, social media strategist’ (Romanska, 2014, p.14). She even goes on to proclaim that the twenty-first century will be the century of the dramaturg. Though it might be taking it a little too far to describe contemporary dramaturgy as the dawn of the century of the dramaturg, Romanska’s does analyse the dramaturg’s potential central roles. The platforms for its practice are no longer confined to an activity that happens inside a theatre and on a stage. When working with dramaturgy, literally all the world is a stage… and that includes the role of the teacher. In A Theory of Dramaturgy, Janek Szatkowski describes a wide range theory of dramaturgy for a one-world society, and he suggests: Reality is an infinite complex simultaneity of matter, spaces and movements. The only chance we have to create meaning (also scientifically) is temporarily to produce a ‘stop’ of this restless movement and reduce complexity. In order

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to do so we need time, communication and observations, i.e. and operation that indicates something as distinct from something else. (Szatkowski, 2019, p. xiv) In relation to the intention of this book, the operation described by Szatkowski also resonates with the characteristics of a meaning-making process in an educational context, where the teacher, as a dramaturg, is constantly trying to initiate processes of learning, that are implementing those stop moments on different platforms for learning (cf. Knudsen, 2017; Østern & Knudsen, 2019).

What are the characteristics of a nomad? We would like to continue this chapter by creating a character called ‘our teacher’. This teacher is a nomad. Not in terms of their ability to change jobs and workplaces constantly, but in their approach to teaching, and to meaning-making processes and learning. Our character is based on a colleague who teaches lower secondary school children. He does not work in a school that has unlimited access to economic benefits. On the contrary, the school is close to being bankrupt. He does not use schoolbooks in his subjects. According to him, the world’s ability to change rapidly will make schoolbooks out-of-date in a matter of years. Thus, he implements different approaches and content in his teaching praxis, bringing in the literature of fiction or everyday content and contemporary happenings that could be of a political, social or historical character. Furthermore, the digital lives of his students play a considerable role in his approach to teaching and learning. He does not treat his subjects (English, history, mathematics) autonomously, but in relation to one another. For example: when teaching about the Cold War, his students perform live video interviews on Skype with former submarine captains who have sailed below the North Pole. Another example: when the theme is the relationship between Israel and Palestine, the students make video snaps of their everyday lives on FlipGrid and share them with students from both countries, exploring what it means to live in countries of conflict. All of this is done in English, even though it is not the students’ native language. Afterwards, the knowledge produced by the students is transformed into TED talks, recorded in professional studios and presented to parents, colleagues or fellow students. Here, the students can present through a fictional character based on their investigations, or as themselves. The TED talks are also in English. If we were to create the archetype of a nomadic teacher, we believe that our colleague would be an interesting and relevant place to start. Dramaturgically, this teaching praxis can be described as both nomadic and relational. Among the characteristics of this teacher’s praxis are the following: Rather than focusing on the refinement of an autonomous curriculum, the nomadic teacher places a premium on the structure and context of collaborations and calls for a change in the understanding of content when teaching. The concept of a school that has a monopoly on education is replaced with another proposition, in

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which education - including the understanding of platforms for learning - are in a continual process of social interaction and negotiation with the contemporary world. As these disciplinary lines blur, making collaboration, application and participation defining elements of both the nomadic teacher’s practice and of the student’s capabilities, the teacher’s role as a facilitator of educational processes while implementing contemporary content and tools for learning will only grow. In a dramaturgical perspective, the characteristics of her teaching praxis can be described as both nomadic and relational. This backs up Sellar’s suggestion that the dramaturg (here our teacher) should place a premium on the structure and context of collaborations rather than regarding the educational understanding or the goal of the learning process as a finished object. Further, Romanska’s description of the dramaturg as an inter-cultural mediator and social media strategist resonates with the teaching practice of our colleague. In the following section, we explore how a relational materialism as a scientific theory might affect such a dramaturgical position on teaching and learning.

Diffractive analysis according to Barad When you position yourself in a relational materialist stance it implies that you take in materiality as a performative agent (Barad, 2007). Both human and more than human matter are of importance. The point is that we co-constitute each other as entangled: nature-culture is entangled, we as beings are body-minds, and all learning processes are from the beginning both sensuous and cognitive, both affective and cognitive. Furthermore, learning is from this position looked upon as the production of knowledge, highly relational and dynamic. The learning moments are especially the moments when you encounter insecurity, risk, vulnerability (i.e. the stop moments, when you need to take a new direction). From a dramaturgical perspective the teacher needs some new tools to handle this such as a diffractive analysis. According to Barad (ibid.), the unit of analysis cannot be a single moment; our entanglement with the all the phenomena we study is something distributed through time. In encounters involving teachers and students we can experience different diffraction patterns and how they interfere with each other.

A nomadic dramaturgy for education in a one-world society In order to produce our dramaturgy for the relational and nomadic teacher and student, we will apply the concepts from earlier in this chapter, and transform the relational model presented in Chapter 3 into a nomadic dramaturgy, which can then be our ‘quantum leap’ into a new kind of understanding of how dramaturgical thinking can inform educational work. We present this in four images, each one zooming in on one orientation hub, and this transformation has been animated, which the reader can open with an iPad or a mobile phone by clicking on the QR-code in Figure 9.1 earlier in this chapter. Then the transformation from model two to the nomadic dramaturgy can be seen, and the central concepts

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emerge. Diffraction patterns and their interference in moments of pause within learning events form the main idea. Figure 9.2 shows the teacher and the student/pupil diving into the one-world society (which is the frame for every activity). They dive into a theme, immersing themselves in an event elaborating a theme, which functions as an orientation hub producing waves in the event, through the performative agents. The waves the teacher produces are not the same as the waves produced by the student. When these waves meet there is an impediment, a resistance that creates diffractive waves and thus causes stop moments. In such moments time is needed, as well as a reduction of complexity, and communication. The key concepts in the animation of this dramaturgical moment are:    

Education in a one-world society. Teacher and student immersed in the world. Framed by being digital citizens. Stop moments creating diffractive patterns.

Figure 9.3 describes the teacher thinking like a dramaturg about what stories to tell about the chosen theme, and how they can facilitate learning. They define their space for manoeuvre and look for potential stop moments in encounters with the student and the theme, framed within a digital culture, and also being a citizen in a one-world society. What instant communication in a network that potentially reaches out worldwide can be used? How can the students and the teacher participate in society’s big conversation with itself about sustainable ways of living, about cultural diversity? What hooks can work ethically to sustain focus on the implications for their future? What are the performative agents and what do they

FIGURE 9.2

Teacher and students dive into a theme in a one-world society.

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FIGURE 9.3

Zooming in on the teacher-dramaturg.

produce? How can the teacher be part of contrasting ideas and actions, experiencing how they interfere with one another - as in the example of our teacher and his students contacting young people in Israel and in Palestine telling their stories? The teacher knows that chaos lurks around the corner, and that the future is indeterminate, unstable – but it is the future his students will be grown-ups in. The concepts in use in the animation of dramaturgical moment 2 (Figure 9.4) are:                 

Youth culture. Chaos that lurks round the corner. Their future. Learning choices. The teacher dramaturg asks: What stories? Which learning journeys? How to get the students engaged, hooked? How do we together get immersed in the theme? Indeterminate world. What is my manoeuvre space in a stop moment? What centre of rotation will I choose? Dramaturgical potential. Instant communication in a digital world. Performative agents. Materiality. Affects. Cultural diversity. Sustainable future.

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FIGURE 9.4

  

Zooming in on the diffractive patterns connected to the student/pupil.

Network. Negotiation. Teaching and learning as participants in society’s big conversation with itself.

Every new quantum leap gives the student energy for yet another quantum leap into exploration. In the student’s world chaos lurks around the corner, but curiosity is a strong driving force. Safety is provided by the facilitating teacher making the student willing to take risks. Aesthetic approaches and cultural resources serve as performative agents when the students immerse themselves in the world. These also give the students the prerequisites for development and depth in learning. However, the students’ waves interfere with the teacher’s waves (Figure 9.5). The waves diffract and interfere with each other and make new diffraction patterns possible. In the animation the following concepts are in use:         

Curiosity. Cultural resources. Immersing yourself in the world. The nomadic student. Experiences from before. Sustainable future. Safety. Willingness to take risks. Hesitation.

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FIGURE 9.5

    

Diffractive patterns from a learning moment, one stop moment in an encounter with teacher and students.

Existential digital inquiry. Knowledge articulated. Aesthetic approaches. Materiality. Depth in learning.

In a stop moment (Fels & Belliveau, 2008) the student experiences emotion, risk-taking, vulnerability and hesitation. These situations, when you do not know what to do, are the learning moments. Barad calls this quantum diffraction, when the observer is brought into the materiality of the phenomenon being studied, like in the example when our prototype nomadic teacher with nomadic students inquires into how it is to live as a young person in a conflict zone by bringing the students into contact with living young persons from Israel and Palestine. Things can be learned by juxtaposing/contrasting ideas and actions, by seeing how they interfere with one another. The world is undetermined until we shape the orientation hub by our choices in a stop moment. The dots in the image can be the ways in which the theme is explored, and by that form orbiting points that diffract and interfere. The concepts and sentences being animated from one stop moment are      

Stop moment. Learning moment. No answers in advance. Both the teacher and the student as learners. Orientation. The stories.

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Immerse yourself. The world is undetermined until a choice is made. Rotation centre. Interference. New diffraction patterns emerge. Affects. Risk. Vulnerability. Hesitation. Becoming anew in each event. Meaning-making. Becoming differently yourself.

The analytical questions posed earlier in the chapter are: How can Barad’s concepts make the contours of a nomadic dramaturgy become articulated? And what implication could such a dramaturgy have for understanding of teaching and learning in the twenty-first century? The relational dramaturgical analysis model is now transformed into an animation of a relational nomadic dramaturgy. We have needed Barad’s vocabulary in order to articulate how the notion of a one-world society should be in forefront of teacher thinking in education. By articulating a nomadic dramaturgy we have sketched the contours of how teaching and learning can be unique events, or become so. The re-animated teacher thinking is clearly that of a teacher-dramaturg, a nomadic one, together with their nomadic students facilitating their performative inquiry into the theme under study, becoming new along with the students in the different phases of their common learning journey.

References Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Biesta, G. (2012). No education without hesitation: Exploring the limits of educational relation thinking differently about educational relations. Philosophy of Education. Retrieved from http://ojs.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/pes/article/view/3594/1215. Coppens, J., Pewny, K. & Callens, J. (2014). Introducing dramaturgies in the new millennium. In K. Pewny, J. Callens & J. Coppens (eds), Dramaturgies in the new millennium: Relationality, performativity and potentiality (pp. 7–13). Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag. Fels, L. & Belliveau, G. (2008). Exploring curriculum: Performative inquiry, role drama, and learning. Vancouver, British Columbia: Pacific Educational Press. Kershaw, B. (2001). Dramas of the performative society: Theatre at the end of its tether. New Theatre Quarterly, 17 (3), 203–211. doi:10.1017/S0266464X0001472X. Knudsen, K. N. (2017). #iLive – konturer af en performative dramadidaktik i en digital samtid [#iLive – contours of a performative drama didactics in a digital contemporary time]. Dissertation, Department of Teacher Education, University of Science and Technology NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. Østern, A. L. & Knudsen, K. N. (2019). Performative approaches in arts education: Artful teaching, learning and research. New York: Routledge.

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Pavis, P. (2014). Dramaturgy and postdramaturgy. In K. Pewny, J. Callens & J. Coppen (eds), Dramaturgies in the new millennium: Relationality, performativity and potentiality (pp. 14– 36). Tübingen: Narr Verlag. Romanska, M. (ed.) (2014). The Routledge companion to dramaturgy. Abingdon: Routledge. Sellar, T. (2016). The dramaturg as globalist. In M. Romanska (ed.), The Routledge companion to dramaturgy (pp. 113–118). New York: Routledge. Szatkowski, J. (2019). A theory of dramaturgy. New York: Routledge.

10 DRAMATURGY AND VALUES OF THE PROFESSIONAL TEACHER FACING A NEW NORMAL Anna-Lena Østern

Working with education means being in a space of potentiality, a space that is not finished, but that is changeable and transformative. This book is an introduction to the theme of dramaturgy in educational contexts – so far. The book’s authors challenge the reader to continue exploring the possibilities, exploring what is to be gained from thinking like a dramaturg in education. That includes teaching and learning, where the underlying values are not invisible, but made clear. It represents a classroom where questions about what makes sense provide the students with ownership of the learning. It is education where everyone has a chance take part, where both bodily sensations and cognition are valued as sources of knowledge, and also knowledge producing. Geir Stavik-Karlsen (2014) writes about a continuous endeavour not to end the other (the pupil), not to end the situation, and thereby in fact also not to unsubscribe oneself from responsibility. Through that statement, he perhaps unknowingly points to an occasion for dramaturgical montage, relational dramaturgy and nomadic dramaturgy, because a teacher’s fundamental vision of what education aims to do includes ‘not to end the situation’, but to find ways to open up opportunities for changing insights, knowledge, and ways to go. Dramaturgical entrances form creative spaces: empty spaces, that are potentially transformative. Such spaces are also educationally interesting: the spaces that provide room for hesitation, uncertainty and reflection between opportunities. Gert Biesta (2012, p. 4) writes in the article ‘No education without hesitation’ about the necessity of hesitation in relational pedagogy. He describes a gap, a space, between those who participate in a communication in the educational context. He sees this space as ‘a third space’ and as necessary and desirable, because there are gaps, distortion of communication and distance, which allow for new understanding: The reason for this is the fact that any attempt to represent this third space — the in-between space in which meanings emerge – can only be undertaken

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from the position of one of the interlocutors and not from some kind of neutral position outside of this. (Biesta, 2012, p. 4) Biesta underlines that it is the participants in this third space who re-create it. He describes the importance of involvement and active participation in learning processes. Biesta’s philosophical thoughts are in line with the relational and nomadic dramaturgy described in the previous chapter, and our attempt to create an animated model. Furthermore, Biesta (2018) has developed his thinking especially connected to arts education by suggesting a middle ground where arts education provides the time and space for students to express their desires in artistic forms. Pedagogy can create a dialogue with these desires and can ask questions as to whether or not they are desirable also for the Other and the planet we live on. He thereby suggests that arts could have a prominent place in education, teaching about how to live in grown-up ways in the middle ground. The nomadic dramaturgy outlined in chapter nine can provide tools for working in the middle ground in education.

Conclusion Through this book, the authors have pointed out what dramaturgical ways of thinking can contribute to educational contexts, and what happens to teaching and the teacher’s planning, regardless of subject, by using dramaturgically inspired language and action. Some key themes have been foregrounded in the individual chapters, while others have formed an underlying basis of reference and resonance for the whole book. From our own areas of expertise, the authors have introduced, described and analysed themes we see as important, as researchers, practitioners and teacher educators. Dramaturgy has great potential for raising awareness of what is happening in education. Education is always part of society’s major project on the future of society and citizens, and it is vital that the ways and the forms we choose are worthwhile. Dramaturgical thinking illuminates this. Through the book, we have explored and elucidated the concepts of the embodied teacher and classroom leadership, and we have illustrated the importance of dramaturgically inspired teaching and learning in a variety of spaces, indoors and out. Ethics, aesthetics, engagement and relationships have been highlighted as dramaturgical themes. The value of the dramaturgical perspective is that it focuses on the dynamics, the space of action, and the possibilities of real teaching. The teacher’s professionalism is not just about planning and assessment, but about acting, relating, and making choices in living and complex moments. By borrowing from theatre art the vocabulary and understanding of how communication happens, we can start a discussion on how a teacher exercises professionalism as an ongoing process. The potential of dramaturgical language lies in a greater sensitivity to the situation – what we call ‘presence-in-the-practice’. Practice attendance can be exercised by being present

136 Østern

in the creative moment that educational processes entail. Stop moments are learning moments, which the teacher-dramaturg can elaborate together with the students. Through the book’s chapters, we have opened doors to some new educational spaces. We believe most teachers can recognize these spaces, but may not yet be familiar with our vocabulary to help them in their planning. Thus, these dynamic aspects of the teacher profession could easily remain in the unconscious background of teachers’ tacit knowledge. The contribution of this book is to provide them with a new dramaturgical vocabulary to articulate and discuss these dynamic aspects of the teacher’s profession, which, like theatre, in so many ways is about being alive in the unfinished.

The new normal challenges nomadic teachers and nomadic students During the process of finalizing this book, major threatening events have forced education and politics to think anew to face ‘a new normal’ caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the challenges of climate change, and regarding refugees migrating in order to make their lives better. This situation calls for solidarity and activity. In this moment of time the teacher dramaturg can contribute with tools for an education in need of new tools and new ways of thinking about teaching and learning in the new normal. The teacher dramaturg can potentially apply dramaturgical principles on to new teaching situations maintain education as an artful engagement.

References Biesta, G. (2012). No education without hesitation: Exploring the limits of educational relation thinking differently about educational relations. Philosophy of Education. Retrieved from http://ojs.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/pes/article/view/3594/1215. Biesta, G. (2018). What if? Art education beyond expression and creativity. In C. Naughton, G. Biesta & D. R. Cole (eds), Art, artists and pedagogy: Philosophy and the arts in education (pp.11–20). New York: Routledge. Stavik-Karlsen, G. (2014). Provoksjon for å koble elevene på [Provocation in order to get the students hooked]. In A.-L. Østern, E. Angelo & G. Stavik-Karlsen (eds), Kunstpedagogikk og kunnskapsutvikling [Arts pedagogy and knowledge development] (pp. 234–260). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

INDEX

Adaptation 13, 32, 50, 51 aesthetic educational design 47 affect 49, 55, 61, 65, 70, 71, 96, 127 affordance 77, 91 arena for knowledge production 51 Artistry in training of professional oral skills 73 audience, 4, 11–20, 23–26, 31–33, 42, 52, 84, 98, 100, 117 audience awareness 4 authenticity 15, 32, 56, 72 Allern, T.-H. 4, 7, 8, 33, 44, 49, 53 Aristotle 23, 30 Artistically crafted research 4, 8 artistic precision, 6, 67–69, 71–74 artistic process 72–74 Artistry in training of professional oral skills 73 art’s way of creating knowledge 2, 4 An arts educational approach 72 artful engagement 136 atmospherecreating 92 avatar 52 Barad, K. 55–59, 65, 124–125, 127, 131–132 Barba, E. 49 Barone, T. 3, 8 becoming anew in each event 132 Belliveau, G. 131–132 Biesta, G. 68, 71, 74, 132, 134–136 Bourriaud, N. 20, 22, 51, 53 Breathing and voice 61 Brecht,B. 24, 33–35, 49 Bodily ambiguity 62

Bodily classroom leadership 62 Bodily knowledge 58, 63 body moods 56, 58–59, 64–65 Body and voice 71 Böhme, G. 96–99, 120 Chemi, T. 68, 74 Circular dramaturgy 36 classic dramatic dramaturgy model 7, 24–25, 27 classroom leadership 2, 4, 20, 58, 62, 135 co-constituted through performance 122 code competence 13, 15, 17–18, 51 communication 1–6, 11–19, 32–44, 49, 51, 54, 55–57, 63–79, 113, 125–129, 134–135 composing the lesson 55 collaborative 15, 37, 51–52 collaboration, application, and participation 127 contemporary society 23 concrete meaning layer 81 core point to be elaborated 28 cultural diversity 128–129 cultural forms 2 curriculum 4, 50, 83, 87, 121, 126, 132 design theory 41 Dewey, J. 19–22, 29, 44, 84, 91, 102–105, 121 devising 35 Diffractive analysis 127 digital citizens 128 digital platforms 120 digitalized teaching and learning spaces 6 digital world 120, 129 dramaturgical forms 51–52

138 Index

dramaturgical analysis model 7, 13, 17–18, 50–51, 84, 132 dramaturg’s gaze 7, 50 dramaturgical action repertoire 1 dramaturgical axis 6, 32, 55–65 dramaturgical entrance 9, 13–14, 30, 50, 69, 134 dramaturgical helixes 52 dramaturgical montage 6, 30, 32, 76, 81, 86, 91, 134 dramaturgical perspective 1–6, 21, 71, 84–91, 127, 135 dramaturgical tools 70 dramaturgy of a performative approach to orality 69 dramaturgical thinking for the lecturer 31 dramaturgy metaphor 2 Dramaturgy of training the oral skills of the teacher 72 Dramaturgy and values 3, 134 educational context 17, 22, 29, 48, 50, 123–126 embodied pedagogy 11, 56 entangled with the world 6 Eisner, E. 3–4, 8 Empty spaces 29–34 Ethics and dramaturgy 6, 67 Experience based knowledge in dialogue with dramaturgical thinking 76 Ethics of professional oral skills 68 event evolves non-linearly 81 Existential digital inquiry 131 existential dimension 122 experienced 41, 55–56–62, 68–69, 81–87, 97, 119 Facing a new normal 7, 134 feedback loop 11 Fels, L. 131–132 Festinger, J. 78–91 fiction layers 7, 32, 33, 34, 49 fictional contract 14, 18, 28 filter 13–19, 50–51, 59 Fischer-Lichte, E. 11, 20, 22, 44 forms a braid 76 genre model 32 Gibson, J. 77–91 Goffman, E. 2, 8 Grimen, H. 67 Guss, G.F. 52–53 Helguera, P. 47, 53 Hersted, L.S 68, 74 Hohr, H. 113–121

Hollywood dramaturgy 23 hook 10, 24–31, 69–70, 80–89, 117–118 horizons of understanding 13, 16–19, 51 Hotinen, J.-P. 42–44 Hovik, L. 44, 52–53 idea 4–36, 69–70, 72, 77–86, 96–120, 124–128 immersing yourself in the world 130 instant communication 128 intra-acting 48 intra-act 55, 57–59 intra-action 64, 124 Jensen, J.B. 68–74 Johnson, M. 20–22 Johnstone, K. 68–74 Jor, F. E. 32, 44 Jordet, A. 79–91 Kershaw, B. 122–132 key questions 30, 39 kinaesthetic and aesthetic empathy 57 Kjeldsen, J. 32, 44 Kjølner, T. 9–22, 24–42, 44–45, 54 knowledge articulated 131 knowledge encounter 19–20 Kress, G. 30, 44, 46, 54 Lakoff, G. 20–22 laminating outdoor school 3 Langager, S. 5–8, 46–54 layer of meaning is insight-creating 81 Lehmann, H.T. 43–44 Let the lesson land 29 Massumi, B. 56, 65, 91 materiality 6, 48, 51, 95, 124–131 melismatic dramaturgy 49 Merleau-Ponty, M. 56–65 Meta-fictive dramaturgy 24 meta-reflection 29–30, 69 metaphorical layer of meaning 87 montage in epic theatre 32–33 montage model 7, 24–33, 80–81, 91 multidimensionality 15, 86 Nagel, L. 52–53 narrative themes 8, 90 no dominant dramaturgy 122 nomadic dramaturgies 6–7, 124 nomadic teacher 7, 123–131 nomadic student 130 one-dimensional 17 one world society 37, 123–132

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opening and closing 15–19, 37 oral communication 8, 31, 67–73 O’Toole, J. 52–53 parallels and contrasts 15 pedagogical reduction 4 pedagogy of vulnerability 32 performative society 46, 122–132 Planning in cycles 52 planting and harvesting 15 Pointing forward and pointing backwards 26 power relations 6 practice-based research 76 process drama 34, 52 process-oriented teaching 7 professional orality 15, 72 Professional practice 6, 56, 64, 66 Production 3–19, 36–75, 99, 124–127 professional oral skills 2–7, 67–69 QR-code 127 real teaching 135 Relational dramaturgical form 50 relational materialism 7, 123–127 Repertoire of action 58 Resistance and cognitive dissonance 84 Revitalize pedagogy 4 Rhetoric 26–44 Rhythm and variation 26 rhythm, time and flow as dramaturgical elements 61 Romanska, M. 122–133 Rønnestad, M.H. 68, 75 running outdoor school 80 Selander, S. 30, 44, 113–121 Sellar, T. 125, 133

sensuous layer of meaning 85 Sheets-Johnstone, M. 20–22 Skovholt, T.M. 68, 75 Simultaneous dramaturgy 5, 7, 34, 37 Spolin, V. 68, 75 spontaneous theatre 52 staged 4 stage text 9 Stavik-Karlsen, G. 32, 45, 134, 136 standard dramaturgy 23–24 stop moments 124–136 sustainable living in and with the world 71 Svendler-Nielsen, C. 57 Szatkowski, J. 3–8, 9–22, 35–45, 49–54, 123–133, target group analysis 13, 15 Teaching and learning meaning layer 82 teaching contract 18, 21 teacher-dramaturg 22, 123–136 teacher’s body 2, 58–64 The prelude or the hook 25 theory of dramaturgy 125, 133 scenographer of the teaching space 6, 92 theatre form 16, 34 theatre signs 14, 33–34 Timing 26, 30, 61, 69 Toolbox 18–19 Values of the professional teacher 7, 134 Van Manen, M. 56, 66 virtual game 52 Weniger, E. 76, 91 wide range theory of dramaturgy 24, 125 willingness to take risks 130 Winther, H. 56, 65–66 Wondering outdoor school 80