Conclusiones del tercer capítulo

I draw upon Robin Alexander’s (2005) observation of dialogic teaching across the UK. I organised the data on classroom talk in two categories: repertoire of teaching talk (instructions, discussion, dialogue) and repertoire of learning talk (discussions, dialogue, explain, narrate, ask questions, evaluate, explore, imagine, reason, justify, critique, negotiate). As my focus is on the theatre artists’ teaching practices, I limited my analysis to the data that indicate how they harnessed talk to engage the students, “stimulate and extend their thinking and advance their learning and understanding” (ibid., p. 37).

a) Repertoire of teaching talk: sidecoaching

The theatre artists variously employ a repertoire of teaching talk. These include lecture-style instructions or one-way communication led by the theatre artists as well as dialogue between students and theatre artists to further explain the instructions. However it is the third pattern of instructional talk, sidecoaching, which I wish to elaborate. According to Spolin (1999), sidecoaching consists of instructions or ‘assists’ given over on-going activities (p. 28). They are used to:

- offer additional guidance or instructions to clarify observed doubts or to deepen the exploration;

- offer comments on the progress or development of the group or individuals working on the task. This took the form of encouragement; suggestions on how to work through the task; highlighting changes that were seen; inviting new players into the scene or activity; highlighting unexpected or new developments emerging from the activities;

- offer attention to a specific group or individual while the task is on-going;

- avoid interrupting the ‘flow’ in the exploratory process, a concept explicated later (Csikszentmihalyi 1990);

- also, as Spolin suggests, allow the theatre artists to “step into excitement” of the activities that the students were engaged in (op. cit.).

Sidecoaching engages with audio/verbal probes and stimuli to provoke a response from the subject (in this case, students). The students receiving the sidecoached instructions react by reflecting on their in-the-moment actions and adjust them accordingly without breaking away from or stopping the activity. They are required to multi-task by maintaining their focus on the task, displaying a heightened awareness of their environment and attending to the sidecoached instructions over a sustained period of time.

In the Singapore research, sidecoaching accompanied sustained on-the-floor explorations present in Olivia’s projects with Schools A, B and C, Joan’s work with the junior drama club students in School D and Sandra’s teaching of drama as a subject in School E. The possible reason for this occurrence may relate to the pace and choice of activities. For example, in Joan’s 2-hour workshop with the junior members of the drama club, she structured an exploratory movement-related activity

in which students created movement in response to music and texts. Prior to the activity, she offered the opening instruction. It consisted of a dialogue between her and the students (lines 1–11). Thereafter, sidecoaching was introduced once the activity began.

School E

Research participant: Joan

Period: November–December 2010 & July–August 2011 Observation record: 20 August 2011

1] Joan: I am going to play a piece of music and you all take your time to respond to it. You

2] move around the space. I have placed chairs and some paper on the floor.

3] You respond to the music and in your own time, pick up the paper and read the text. You

4] can read everything, some of it, up to you. Just move, stop, read. Any questions?

5] Student: Is there a space limit?

6] Joan: Ah good question, don’t hide behind the piano la. And stay within the room.

7] (laughter)

8] Student: Do we have to move with the chairs?

9] Joan: Yes, when you are ready. Ok. For now just sit on it, or move around it. Let’s see how

10] it goes.Ready? Go into the space and find your own space. You can start standing,

11] seated, lying down, whatever you feel comfortable.

The pieces of music she selected were all instrumental pieces. She played the first piece. No one moved. 15 seconds later, a girl began to move her arms to the rhythm. Soon, others bobbed their heads. A few minutes later, one student got up and ran around the space. A boy walked slowly to one of the pieces of paper and read the text out loud.

Over the on-going activity, Joan sidecoached, “When you are ready, just feel the music and listen to the reading. Do what you feel comes from you. In your own time.”

The music rolls on to the next instrumental piece.

Joan sidecoached again as she observed more students moving, “Good, some of you are using the space. How does the music affect you? Is it light and cheerful? Do you feel its rhythm? Start small and then explore what else you can do.”

A few minutes later when more students were on the floor, she added, “Have I used every part of my body? How is this piece of music different from the previous one?

The last sidecoaching offered questions to provoke the students to think about their actions and bodies in space. There were a few who remained seated throughout. She did not comment on them. This went on for 42 minutes. At the end of the activity they had a discussion. The first response from one of the students: “It was difficult”.

Viola Spolin’s various writings on sidecoaching (1985, 1999) referenced rehearsal- based exploration and the directorial lens as its foundation. Inferring from Spolin’s reference point, it is possible that Olivia, Joan and Sandra would have experienced sidecoaching as students of theatre as well as with performers and directors in their own theatre practice. Accordingly, they are familiar with this structure of instruction giving and are comfortable working with it to communicate with the students.

As mentioned earlier, sidecoaching works best in teaching contexts with sufficient time for sustained on-the-floor exploration. I observed in Sandra’s situation, she employed sidecoaching in the teaching of drama as a subject. But a different teacher talk was used in a separate in-curriculum project with Mr. T, the visual arts teacher (see Table 5.2, Sandra’s school projects).

School E

Research participant: Sandra Period: August 2010–March 2011 Observation record: 10 January 201i

Sandra: All right. So we imagined. We thought about something we did before. In fact what we did was, we closed our eyes. Remember that? (responses from some students: Yes). And each of you was asked to remember, well you were asked to remember about something you always wanted to remember, a day in your life, that you always wanted to remember. Something. Remember that? (students nodded their heads) And then you wrote this down. Do you remember what that was you wrote down? Who doesn’t remember (Sandra raised her hand as a signal to invite those who do not remember to do the same. No one did.) Ok. Excellent. Now we are going to work with that further today. First you went back, you remembered, you imagined, you wrote it down. And today we are going to continue. You are going to tell that story. And you are going to do it in a special and different way, all right. We are going to show you how it is done. You are not going to stand up and tell it to the whole group. Ok you need to listen otherwise you wouldn’t know what is going on. All right. You are going to tell it to one other person first, that is the first thing you do. All right. I am not going to explain it yet, I will show you what happens.

(Demonstration)

Sandra: So you will tell a story, give someone a story, the one you wrote about, yes all right. Story that you already wrote about, that memory, now you will tell it to someone. All right. And that person will then take it as their own. And you will theirs. Ok. And when you get this new story, you will then tell it to someone else and then you pass on again and tell it to one other person. So you will tell it twice over. Ok. All right. So let me arrange you now. This is how we are going to do it. You just move down a little here (indicated where the girl should sit). And the girl next to you will face you (and pointed to the next girl to her new position). So you come and sit here, so that we make two circles (Sandra gestured to show how the circles meet). All right, girls do you see that? Can we all move and do this?

Students then formed two circles and began exchanging stories.

In this extract, Sandra was observed spelling out what was needed, how the activity was linked to the previous week’s work and where it would lead to next. As Sandra later explained, these students have been identified as academic underachievers. She was mindful of ensuring full comprehension to help them achieve the task. From the data, it appears that the lesson objectives and outcomes as well as student capabilities affect the employment of appropriate classroom talk to engender engagement with the activities.

b) Discussions and dialogue: large group, smaller groups and one-on-one

Discussions and reflections while present, vary in frequency and duration across the different Singapore sites contingent upon the different project needs. I revisit the findings from the research in Phase I/England discussed in Chapter 4. I discussed how talk-centred dominated the structure of learning in Rita’s approach. This observation was made when comparing Rita’s teaching approach to Viola, Reese and Rona in the English sites. The comparison suggested a continuum between talk- centred and body-centred approach as an explanation. It was suggested that Rita’s approach leaned towards a talk-centred approach of teaching, where group discussion, oral reflection and brain-storming of ideas were privileged (Chapter 4, section 5, pp. 142–146).

Meanwhile in the Singapore sites, Olivia, Joan and Sandra appeared to lean towards a more body-centred approach where discussions occur less frequently and are often initiated at the start or the end of their sessions with the students. In separate interviews, I asked them to comment on the place reflections and discussions have in their teaching practices. While all three admitted that the presence of ‘talk’ and its corollary adjustment of tone and vocabulary vary according to context and project needs, nonetheless there was a greater investment in the actual doing and that discussions were often generated from the experience of doing. Olivia and Sandra offered an explanation for this occurrence. Olivia explained,

I don’t have the skills to sit down and solve deep-seated problems with the students. But through theatre and the language of theatre, we can offer some perspective about life that helps us feel, not so different in our situation or not so alone, or that its ok, even if its super hard and complex. (DS160111).

Sandra highlighted the importance of feeling it in the body to prevent the students from,

just being cerebral about what they were saying (200810). She adds when working with the body, something else that has been sourced that is in my body and I feel it and part of me is thinking I know where this is coming from . . . because the body doesn’t lie. (DS200810).

The sense offered through their narratives is that criticality and reflexivity is engaged in the doing and that it is in the ‘doing’ that ideas are concretised, deconstructed, questioned and probed.

There is also a recognition that not all students are “able to verbalise so much but

they are doing things” (Joan, DS400098). Implicit in Joan’s statement is the

acceptance of the complexities of working with the English language in theatre education. As depicted in the exposition on Singapore (Chapter 2, section 5.1, pp. 55–56), while the English language is the lingua franca, it is seldom the mother tongue (Rae & Tan 2012), which suggests a psychological and emotional distance with the language. It is a complex relationship resulting in a varied and hybridised proficiency of the English language in Singapore’s multi-cultural and multi-lingual classrooms, which may privilege ‘doing’ over ‘talk’. There is yet another factor worth considering. The theatre education classroom, for many of these students, offers a ‘different’ and ‘new’ educational experience. Dialogue and discussions are uncommon practice within an educational environment that is dominated by teacher authority (Alexander 2005; Tan, Sharan & Lee 2006). Accordingly, the skill to engage in reflective talk for both the theatre artists as well as the students may require more time and exposure to develop. The issue of language and culture of discourse within the Singapore classroom are two ideas, which I am presently unable to expand given the limits of the current research. However, they are worth investigating in the future on effectiveness of body-centred approaches to circumvent language inhibitions in the Singapore classroom.