Making Invisible Intersectionality Visible Through Theater of the Oppressed in Teacher Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: Educating Teachers Through Arts-Based Educational Research

Abstract

Theater offers strategies to help educators recognize the multiplicity of identities within classrooms with the goal to expand student and teacher agency. Brazilian theatre artist and activist Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed (TO) offers opportunities to embody Crenshaw’s (1991) notion of intersectional identities and Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach’s (2008) concept of invisible intersectionality. This paper shares research conducted in a teacher education course on culturally relevant pedagogy where students engaged in TO activities to explore the multiplicity of their and their future students’ identities. The authors suggest that artistic approaches in teacher education create so-called safe-enough spaces for students to recognize their own identities and to make moves toward including the identities of their students in service of inclusivity.

Authors

• Beth Powers, Millersville University of Pennsylvania

• Peter Duffy, University of South Carolina