Participatory Theatre as Critical and Creative Pedagogy in Multicultural Preservice Teacher Education

• In Event: The Arts as a Public Pedagogy by, for, and About Bilingual, Bicultural Youth

Abstract

U.S. schools are becoming increasingly multilingual and multicultural than any generation before (Nieto & Bode, 2008; Gollnick & Chinn, 2010). Teacher educators are responsible for providing preservice teachers with opportunities to critically examine the intricacies of cultural diversity prevalent in U.S. classrooms, such as addressing potential cultural conflicts in their daily interactions with culturally diverse students (Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clark, & Curran, 2004), and developing critical multicultural dispositions. What are effective pedagogical strategies that encourage preservice teachers to develop such critical multicultural practices, particulary with preservice teachers having little prior interaction with other cultural groups? Through theoretical and practical experiences as a teacher-educator, the researcher has found that “participatory theatre” can be an effective pedagogical tool for critical and creative exploration on cultural diversity (Chanmann-Taylor & Souto-Manning, 2010; Grady, 2000). Participatory theatre engages improvisational dramatic practices used to explore pertinent issues.

The objectives of this study are to:
(1) examine how preservice teachers explore their own cultural identities, develop critical consciousness in multicultural practice, and create counter-hegemonic cultural values through experiencing participatory theatrical activities in the researcher’s multicultural preservice teacher education classroom
(2) analyze the effectiveness of participatory theatre as critical and creative pedagogy for teaching issues in multicultural education.

This research is designed at the nexus of Arts-based educational research (Barone & Eisner, 2006) as the foundational method; multivocal ethnography (Tobin, 1989) as a data collection tool; and poststructural methods of textual analysis (Tobin, 2000) as a data analytic tool. The data will be based on the researcher’s field notes and the participants’ weekly journal entries that discuss their classroom experiences and reflective thoughts on multicultural education topics. The data will be analyzed by adopting diverse poststructural textual analysis methods which Tobin (2000) conceptualized and systematized, such as Lévi-Strauss’ binaries, Freudian slips, Voloshinov’s (Bakhtin’s) double-voiced, Derrida’s aporia, Macherey’s “unsaid (non-did),” and Bakhtinian citationality including authoritative and internally persuasive voices. These tools assist in examining the internalized ideological constructions of researchers/participants.

In this research, preservice teachers are asked to be Researchers/Playwrights/ Performers exploring multicultural questions through ethnodrama (Saldaña, 2005; Mienczakowski, 2006; Nimmon, 2007). They conduct an ethnographic interview with someone whose native language is other than English, and then create an ethnodrama script based on the interview data. Their constructed ethnodrama scripts are used as “evocative texts” (Barone & Eisner, 2006), shared to enhance dialogic classroom interactions and exploring critical issues related to ELL/ESL communities. Through this ethnodrama script writing experience, preservice teachers cultivate critical consciousness and enlarge capacity for empathy, listening to the real voices of marginalized people and learning about the power differentials between native English-speakers and non-native speakers. In addition, this ethnodrama helps preservice teachers challenge the status quo in education in which they simply memorize concepts explained in a multicultural education textbook with little constructed meaning making.

This research is an ethnographic documentary about the researcher’s striving to liberate himself from an “anti-dialogical banking educator” (Freire, 1970/2000; Mills, 2011). Such reflection may provide educators/researchers with examples of counter-hegemonic artistic practice for social change relating to their own work.

Author

• Masakazu Mitsumura, Arizona State University