PhD begins

So my big news of this autumn is in October I'll be starting my PhD research at The University of Warwick. Thanks to a studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council I'm going to be studying full time. It's going to be a fantastic new chapter and I can't wait to get stuck in.

Here's a summary of my planned research:

Playing Shakespeare:

Assessing the impact of theatre-based approaches to teaching Shakespeare at key stage 3

 

 

Essentially I am interested in whether a greater understanding of how learning through play occurs within early secondary age children could give new insight into assessing the impact of theatre-based approaches to teaching Shakespeare with that age group.

 

 Theatre-based approaches to teaching - in Shakespeare and more widely - have grown in popularity since the mid-90s. These approaches broadly favour a more constructivist approach to learning; as the RSC's Stand up for Shakespeare manifesto (2008) describes it, they ensure experiences are 'inclusive', 'collaborative' and use 'exploratory, problem-solving methods'. Alongside this, 'creativity' has become an increasingly important subject in educational research and policy. Though there is a growing literature exploring the positive impacts of theatre-based and 'creative' approaches to teaching Shakespeare, there is little consensus on what the value of working this way is, or the most effective way to assess its impact. Particularly within the arts education sector there has often been little support for organisations - where time and resources are often limited - in developing rigorous evaluation practices.

 Now more than ever with funding cuts looming it is vital that any theatre education company wishing to survive has robust evaluation methods. I hypothesise that framing evaluation in the terms of 'creativity' limits its' scope, partly as it has become inextricably connected to the reductive skills vs knowledge debate, and partly because becoming more 'creative' is only one aspect of theatre-based approaches to learning. Other theorists, notably Neelands and his concept of ensemble within learning have provided more nuanced frameworks, however I feel play theory has something to offer in this field.

 Within early years' education the importance of play as a mode of learning has been much developed and is a fundamental part of the early years' national curriculum. Play theory has a rich genesis in education literature, in particular theorists such as Vygotski and Bruner, while more recent theorists such as Pat Kane have postulated that we are increasingly living in a 'playing' culture. Yet it has been practically ignored in education research from mid-primary age onwards. My MA study looked at play in key stage 4 children and found it could be described as imaginative, social and transgressive in nature, that it can be defined by mode rather than specific acts, and used these characterists to evaluate the quality of learning in GCSE and BTEC drama workshops. Therefore I hypothesise that developing an impact assessment framework based on a an understanding of the play 'mode', in addition to a review of current best practice professionally and in academia, could suggest new impact assessment frameworks for theatre-based approaches to teaching Shakespeare.

 I'm hoping to explore this hypothesis by carrying out research in the evaluation practices of several theatre education organisations, and ideally carry out some action research on evaluating theatre education Shakespeare projects with key stage 3-age children. So far I've been talking to Shakespeare's Globe and 2nd tier organisation LEAN and am going to be looking for other potential research partners throughout this year.

 If anyone's interested in reading the full proposal (it's got references to back all this up and everything!) please drop me a line. I'm hoping to be a very social and collaborative researcher (see my thoughts on collaboration from January) so if you have any thoughts, suggestions or questions please do drop me a line!

TEDx London - Education Revolution: a few thoughts

Thanks to the generosity of The Camden Roundhouse and my obsessive twitter addiction I was lucky enough to score myself a place on the guestlist to the TEDx London Education Revolution conference hosted by the Roundhouse on 17th September. You can find details and (I think) vids of many of the talks through TEDx London but I wanted to talk about a few of my personal highlights and some thoughts on the issues they raised.

 Our lord who art in LA; Sir Ken Robinson opened the conference with a video talk and a nice comparison between Dramatist Peter Brook's theory of the primacy of the actor/audience relationship and the same in the teacher/learning relationship - that when this relationship is of the highest quality, there is no need to add anything unless it enhances this. A good anchor as we delved into the world of flashing, beeping new apps and technologies (my position towards which can be best defined as warmly sceptical).

 Youth campaigner Adam Roberts began the live talks with a nice point about our current need for children to be literally and figuratively 'in line' because of the current inadequacies of the education system. This chimed with one of my current hobby horses; which is the question of how many structures exist in schools because of their educational worth and how many exist for the purposes of crowd-control and money-saving?
 Carmel McConnell from the excellent Magic Breakfast underlined this issue of basic inadequacies by revealing thousands of children in the UK misbehave and struggle to learn everyday because they are hungry. For 1 in 4 children the only hot food they are EVER given is school lunch. Perhaps I am being naive, but I find this staggering. For this to be occurring, it is clear our young people are being failed in much bigger ways than by the education system and therefore to be focusing on the redeeming properties of music apps or drama workshops seems to be widdling in the wind until we can be assured the children we teach have this basic level of care.

 One of my personal high points though has to be Ken Spours burning a righteous flame on the stage, stating that a true education revolution would involve education ceasing to be a political football for career politicians; creating false polarities within teaching practice in pursuit of highlighting their clever new idea. Echoing a common sentiment for this conference, Spours ended by pointing out good ideas don't prosper because they're good, but because conditions are there for them to prosper.

 Dougald Hine's talk on creating a new university had me wriggling excitedly on the edge of my seat - the PhD lives again! Hine's central point that 'learning is not a commodity to be exchanged, it grows between people over time' and his talk of the current existence of a 'university in exile' were eloquently made and I will be following developments on The University Project with interest.

 Artistic Director of The Southbank Centre Jude Kelly gave the final talk of the day, and well deserved the standing ovation she received for it. Her commitment to breaking down the false dichotomy that 'adults appreciate, children learn' and passion that everyone should have access to the arts was smartly brought home by placing herself in the continuum of pioneering individuals who have opened previously closed cultural doors to ever-widening spheres of society. In the same way it is a staggering crime young people are not fed, it is a similar crime many people still believe elements of our arts and culture are not appropriate or accessible to all our young people and I'll be watching The Southbank Centre with interest to see how Kelly's pledge to work towards ending this inequality becomes reality. My last PhD proposal set out to explore how arts-based practice effects learning, and I find myself wondering if Kelly would have an interest in this research.

 For a natural optimist like me, nearly every conference has that moment when you give yourself up to the collective wave of euphoria and mine was during Kelly's talk when she spoke of how through childhood ballet lessons 'I have become the person that I have been ever since'. That experience of yourself, and therefore the world, suddenly making sense though a particular field or craft made perfect sense to me. It felt clear to me in that moment that there is something in the world that does this for each of us: a door we walk through to find ourselves. As educators we have been lucky enough to find the ones that work for us and surely our commitment has to be to patently, rigorously and creatively opening as many of these doors as possible to as many young people as possible. You will never know if it's the door for them, or even if they are in the right place to walk through it. But if we all - subject teachers, artists, sportspeople, techno-types, business moguls - aim just to try - to 'pass it on' as The History Boys Hector would have it; then surely that's not nothing?

 Of course, revolutions of the past have taught us it's relatively easy to give rousing speeches and feel your heart soar in the company of your peers. But as we headed out into the balmy Camden night how much of what we had heard and seen would stay with us, would continue to make sense in our everyday practice and become reality, and what would be left behind? David Price addresses this issue more fully in his excellent blog on the day, however the impression I am left with following this conference is that education is certainly going to exciting new (and exciting old) places, but does the underlying structure of our education system, and the support society as a whole affords it through the care and valuing of it's young people, provide the conditions for these good ideas to flourish?

Onwards and Upwards

The news in brief:

1. No PhD funding from the ESRC this year :( Dissapointing, but not deterring. The plan is to continue improving my academic and research skills and refining the ideas for my proposal (possibly by getting an article published in an academic journal - any advice RE this on a postcard please!)


2. With the end of the summer term work is winding down and I'm taking the opportunity to engage in some career development - had a wonderful day with Sound Connections today developing my use of singing, voice and music with early years. Next week will see me dusting off my ballet pumps and heading to The Place for a week's intensive Introduction to Ballet (in an attempt to improve my flexibility, agility and creativity with physical work) If anyone knows of any other exciting training/courses happening over the summer, please let me know!


3. In a recent holiday to Cyprus (visiting the girls who I studied with on my MA) I read Mike Alfred's book on acting and directing Different Every Night. I'm really excited by his approach to the rehearsal process, and as I've always believed the reheasal process has the most to teach drama and theatre facilitators on curriulum and pedagogy I'm excited to look over my own practice to see where I can intigrate some of Alfred's ideas....

And that's really all for now folks - a few ideas cooking for the next term, but can't give it all away up front, so watch this space!

May?!

I've been neglecting you for far too long. So before I leap out of my house to take advantage of this continued gorgeous weather with a jog round Peckham Rye Common (I have recently signed up for a 10k charity race, lord help me!) I thought I'd update you on all recent happenings...

Deadline for PhD application is tomorrow, so the current cadaver's head balloon following me around is finishing that and drawing all the many MANY disparate parts together. Im applying for four years' of full time funding, the first year being taken up with a masters in research methods (known as an MRes) before beginning my PhD research the following year. More on the exciting content of this research later - for now I'm superstitious about jinxing it.

A busy spring term of freelancing, and summer term now gearing up. After little luck last term have managed to secure myself on the freelance books of another TIE company, this time one based in North London; who have a fantastically specific approach - maths through music, history though drama, storytelling through dance. Simples. I have some training with them this week and I'm looking forward to getting stuck in to something new.

I've also been trying out a non-curriculum path a little over the past term - children's discos and birthday parties. It's been a massive challenge, but really interesting do to work so far removed from my usual fare and also great to have a platform to be unashamedly silly. The company I've joined is run by one of the most enthusiastic, personable individuals I've ever met, who manages this company alongside holding down a part time job in the finance sector and running a professional development company for creatives. Inspiring freelancing!

When to stop

I wanted to talk today about the new youth theatre I've started volunteering at. I'm working with their new young group of 5-8 year olds.

What attracted me to this group is it's real commitment to inclusively. Young people are defined as individuals, rather than by traditional SEN labels, and support provided accordingly. There's also a commitment to training all volunteer practitioners in Makaton, which I love using and find really useful with almost all early years work, regardless of any language issues within the group.

Yet, there are some real, practical issues with the operations side of this group:

1 The school hall we're using is a deeply inappropriate space - big, full of distractions and as echoey as you like. The group is largely drawn from the school that hosts us and they feel total ownership over the space - anything that can be climbed on, jumped off, run over or hid under will be.

2 The group is large - to my mind very large for such a young age and range of needs - around 35. Even allowing for the large number of volunteer practitioners - 6 or so each week - their diverse needs and issues with behaviour management makes the group nigh-on impossible to lead.

3 Due to myriad factors around children from other schools attending the group and times we can access rooms there is a complicated and disparate signing in process which involves children waiting in the school library for up to 20 mins before the sessions (like some book-strewn pressure cooker) The school is a large one and practitioners must accompany children at all times, meaning a complicated process of ferrying children round corridors set the tone as chaotic and unfocused before a session's even begun.

All this combines to make what is to my mind utter pandemonium. No only was there very little engagement with anything creative, there was a very limited grasp on safely.
 And let me be very clear - this is not down to the children, who while having various educational needs are by no means unsuited to drama work of this kind. It's not down to the practitioners, who are doing their absolute best with the parameters set for them. I don't believe it is even down to the school, who are managing their operations as best they can to make room for us. Nevertheless a combination of the above has made this youth theatre a battle for any moment of engagement: last week we achieved about 2 minutes' worth when me and a fellow volunteer managed to get out group lying in a circle, heads together, imagining different animals we could be. That was the only thing that allowed us to cut off the noise and chaos of the rest of the room.
 And so my question is, when do you calmly step back and use that theatrical phrase "I can't work in these conditions"?
 I feel this is a classic example of drama in schools at once being overvalued and undervalued. Overvalued because it is assumed we can work wonders, with the most difficult children and with the most limited of resources. And therefore because of this jedi mind-trick we're supposed to be able to do, or because it's seen as harmless fun we are also undervalued, and given deeply unsuitable spaces to work with.
 And at the end of the day, everyone likes to be overvalued, and no one (especially arts education charities) likes to kick up an awkward fuss when they're being undervalued so we by and large just accept what we're given rather than admit that actually nothing about this set up is conducive to doing anything positive or inclusive through drama. After all, we (practitioners in general and this youth theatre in particular) are a positive bunch and like to focus on what can be done - yet I feel there has to be a point where we put our hands up and admit this just isn't working for us.
 Would love to hear if anyone else has ever been in a similar situation, and how they dealt with it?


In other news, I am going to Goldsmiths University Postgraduate Open Evening this week, with a view to beginning the process of applying for my PhD. I want to look at how play as a mode of learning can be used in secondary schools. The more I think about this, the more excited and determined I am, so expect more news very soon!