Becoming Courageous: "Playing" and the Embodiment of Transformative Leadership

• In Event: Stories of Arts, Embodiment, and Praxis in Pre-K–20 Leader Preparation

Abstract

Situated in higher education, this research concerns the development of courage among the designers of educational leader preparation programs and their students. The intervention being studied is the use of embodied practice to help develop transformative leaders, those who understand “the need for education to focus both on academic excellence and on social transformation” (Shields, 2011, p. 2). It is specifically Theatre of the oppressed (TO) practices being implemented and examined as a potential source of experiential learning to promote individual and collective courage to lead for equity.
The objective of TO is "...to set a process in motion, to stimulate transformative creativity, to change spectators into protagonists" (Boal, 1979). TO is a mode of engagement that transgresses “authorized discourses” in academia (Schroeter, 2013, p. 402), challenging participants to move reflection to action with clearly defined purpose. Removing the traditional spectator, TO replaces them with ‘spect-actors’ who are committed to “playing” all of the possible outcomes of a scene. Participants, spect-actors, quickly realize “that, like life, if they don’t intervene, nothing will change… and doing ‘something’ is not enough, it has to be a strategic something” (Boal, 1979).

Methods and Instruments
A/r/tography is a qualitative, arts-based method that is invaluable to the objectives of this research (Ellis, 2004). It allows the researcher to “play” with multiple roles simultaneously, integrating artist, researcher and teacher and acting alongside others committed to finding new or re-centering old ways of knowing, being, doing, and learning. As the instructor of record, a visual/performing artist, a higher education leader, and a doctoral student, I am uniquely positioned to observe, interact and co-construct meaning with co-research-participants. I can hold many perspectives simultaneously, “experiencing oppositional concepts or facts… as two different aspects of one force” (Luana, 2018, p.129).
All interventions were delivered as a formal part of instruction within graded, degree-earning leadership preparation coursework at a large, public, R-1 university. Ethnodrama, or performed ethnography (Saldaña, 2010), was a primary research structure implemented within the a/r/tological container. Additional instruments included surveys, interviews, focus groups, analysis of artifacts, the creation of visual and performing arts pieces, and direct observation of research participants in classes and self-selected contexts.

Significance
The generative themes that have begun to emerge carry implications for future scholarship, practice, and policy. Embodiment and TO literature focuses, almost exclusively, on the teaching of university students, a group that has reported not knowing how to respond, choosing to actively avoid, or feeling isolated/ostracized when confronting inequity (Duffy, 2002). If higher education instructors and students are the intended audience and users of the various frameworks outlined by researchers, how do they themselves practice embodying courage in the face of injustice?
This pilot study sets the stage for my proposed dissertation research. It is my hope that participation in this symposium and the connections facilitated as we transgress unspoken norms and “play” with TO practices at a formal, academic conference will help inform how best to position my work in service of the field.

Author

• Nives Wetzel de Cediel, University of California - Berkeley
  Presenting Author