It’s All Critical: Acting Teachers’ Beliefs About Theater Classes

Abstract

Acting classes and theater education have long been framed as activities during which children can learn skills that transfer outside the acting classroom. A growing empirical literature provides evidence for acting classes' efficacy in teaching vocabulary, narrative, empathy, theory of mind, and emotional control. Yet these studies have not been based in what is actually happening in the acting classroom, nor on what acting teachers report as their pedagogical strategies. Instead, previous work has been unsystematic and fragmented in its measured transfer outcomes, and absent mechanistic explanation. Expanding research on this topic requires more grounding in teachers' beliefs about the acting classes they teach, as well as observation of the classes themselves. As a first step, we surveyed 173 acting teachers online, asking them about the activities within acting classes they believed caused change in their students, as well as which outcomes they believed were changed as a result of acting classes. Teachers taught across educational levels (elementary to professional) and had a variety of training in teaching acting. Overall, teachers rated almost every activity within classes as important for and causing impact on students, and almost every outcome as being positively influenced as a result of acting class. When forced to rank-order outcomes, teachers focused on collaboration, communication, creativity, confidence, and empathy as most likely to change. Teachers rated the importance of class activities and outcomes differently depending on what level they taught. This study shows the difficulty of surveying highly motivated teachers, given the globally high rankings, but also proposes candidate psychological skills likely to change as a result of acting classes and the mechanistic behaviors that may cause change.

The Impact of Interactive Acting Learning as an Alternative to Digital Acting Teaching in Malaysian Art School: A Comprehensive Review

“…Instructors have a range of acting skills and taught students at all educational levels using a digital platform. When forced to rank-order outcomes, teachers focused on collaboration, communication, creativity, confidence, and empathy as most likely to change [38]. See Figure 3 for average endorsement scores for use of mechanisms.…”

“…3. Average endorsed use of mechanistic class activities [38] The goal of the interactive acting learning, which combines elements of genuine learning and creative drama education, is to give the students new learning experiences that are authentic in nature and that put the focus on their capacity to lead a complete theatre production. The course provided a detailed study of the different stages of acting skills development by making performances for Malaysian Art School students [39].…”

Developing creativity and other 21st century skills through theater classes.

“…Teacher ratings as measurement is also likely why the highly loaded latent factor emerges. Teachers may be conceptualizing creativity and communication as similar or thinking of all possible outcomes as equally likely and important, as past research has shown with theater teachers (Goldstein et al, 2020). This means that in the quantitative data, each individual 21CS does not advance on its own separate from the collective of skills.…”

“…In another study of 178 theater teachers, many outcomes (from verbal abilities to collaboration) were rated as “extremely likely” to occur. However, out of 28 choices, teachers rated collaboration, creativity, confidence, communication, empathy, and interpersonal skills as most likely to positively change as a result of theater classes (Goldstein et al, 2020). Of note, in these studies, teachers used their own definition and understanding of these terms.…”

“…Taken together, theorists have long proposed that theater experiences may be uniquely suited to simultaneously engage ensemble collaboration, group problem solving and communication, individual initiative and creativity, and use of the body and mind (Dawson & Lee, 2018; Goldstein et al, 2020; Omasta, 2012). A 2011 report by The College Board proposed that out of 24 Consortium of National Arts Education Associations Standards for Theater, 22 are positively aligned with critical thinking and problem solving, 20 with communication, and 16 with creativity (Charleroy et al, 2011).…”