The Physical Nature of Building Knowledge Through Theater Games for Undergraduates

• In Event: Illuminating Sociality and Learning in Diverse Educational Environments by Interrogating Movement, Touch, and Affect

Abstract

Objectives
Our goal is to better understand the role that movement can play in reimagining the design of learning concepts and facilitating social relationships. This paper attends to the relational work that transpires during a physical theatre game in an undergraduate course.

Theoretical Perspectives
There is robust research demonstrating the important role of the body in learning (Marin et al., 2020; Lindberg et al., 2021). Further research on learning and interaction (Goodwin, 2018; Tulbert & Goodwin, 2011; Vossoughi et al., 2021) shows the importance of movement for building social relations and knowledge (Cajete, 2005; Vossoughi et al., 2020). We take an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on scholarship in design-based studies, cultural psychology, embodied learning, and the arts, to innovate research methodologies to study movement in and for learning (Marin, 2020).

Methods & Data Sources
This analysis comes from a multi-year ethnographic project attending to undergraduates in a college course, supporting a student-centered after school program for K-5th grade students. Using video analysis methods (Jordan & Henderson, 1995), we analyzed video data from three lessons in which a theatre artist guided 30 undergraduates through embodied theatre games.

We examine a synchronized clapping activity that the artist introduced to support collaboration and a sense of ensemble. In this theatre game, participants had to work together to “pass” a “clap” around a circle, clapping to receive and pass a clap from their neighbors on the left and right. We closely analyze a specific practice (“Aww, tada!”) and how it can support social relations. In particular, we examine two components of social relations: empathy and trust.

Results
We analyze how students shifted their stance, moved their bodies, made eye contact, and participated physically in the activity. Shifts in participation are seen across the data set. We focus on moments when a clap was not performed in unison as is the goal of the game, but instead was syncopated. In these moments, the theatre artist introduced a concept she called “Awww, Ta-Da!” in which participants celebrated the perceived “mistake” of a dropped clap. Shifting the perception of a mistake to be something to celebrate supported meaningful embodied engagement for the participants. We argue that embodied engagement, often deemed normative in theatre and arts classes (Cummings, 2016), led to feelings of empathy and trust. These important sensibilities are commonly absent from traditional learning contexts (Cooper, 2010) but were cultivated in this context with the introduction of theatre practices.

Significance
We found that theatre games provided new ways of engaging in embodied, relational learning for the undergraduates. These theatre activities allowed mistakes to be viewed as positive opportunities for growth, empathy, and resilience. The activity can affirm the interdependence and relationality of learning, the importance of celebrating mistakes, and the ways we can support one another’s dignity in learning environments. Designing and studying arts-based, embodied learning activities, attending explicitly to the physical shifts of participation, expands possibilities for diverse engagement with learning and analysis in higher education.

Authors

• Ananda M. Marin, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Lindsay E. Lindberg, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Andrea N. Kern, University of California - Los Angeles
  Presenting Author

• Marjorie E. Faulstich Orellana, University of California - Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author