Teachers, Arts Practice, and School Pedagogies: Vygotskian Perspectives

• In Event: Beyond the Zone of Proximal Development: Vygotsky and English Language Arts and Drama Pedagogy

Abstract

What are the possible relationships between arts practice and teaching and learning in schools? Artists working in partnership with teachers and students on ways in which arts practice might inform, transfer or transform pedagogic practice developed over the past ten years in English education under initiatives to promote creativity in teaching and learning. A project initiated by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in which theatre practitioners and educators work with primary school teachers and secondary teachers of English and drama is the focus of this paper. How might such an exchange of theatre practices and school pedagogies be described, understood and explained. What implications fall from these collaborations for the formation of teacher identity and subjectivity? And how much can the development of arts-based pedagogies be compatible or dissonant with current contexts of schooling, including curricular arrangements and regimes of pupil and school assessment?

Data for this investigation are drawn from a commissioned research project designed to investigate how such collaborations between an arts organisation and its practitioners, teachers and a university might serve as a model to develop teachers’ professional practice and contribute to school and curricular development. Interviews with teachers, students, theatre practitioners, alongside field notes taken from observation of workshops, are the source of these data.

Explanatory concepts from Vygotsky’s work on the psychology of art, the role of meaning and sense in the development of consciousness, as well as more recent translations of an investigation into the psychology of the actor’s creative work and adolescent creativity are used as a means of explaining and understanding processes of mediation at work and the resulting effects on teachers’ pedagogic practice in school contexts. Through the application of analytical concepts derived from this work, an argument is pursued for the unity of intellect, affect and action in the development of teacher subjectivity and pedagogic practice. Finally, the cultural and historical situation of such initiatives is considered in terms of its implications for schooling, curriculum and assessment.

Author

• Anton Franks, Institute of Education - London