Theoretical Theatre: harnessing the power of comedy to teach social science theory

Gravey, Viviane; Lorenzoni, Irene; Seyfang, Gill; Hargreaves, Tom

doi:10.30950/jcer.v13i3.824

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Much has been written about the use of performing arts in education. In this respect, there are multiple theories about their function of semiotic mediation, of alternative representation of certain contents, of corporal and emotional engagement, and of their capacity to generate cognitive dissonances, contradictions or to simply introduce a dimension of funny and playful freedom (Abed, 2016;Bale, 2020;García, 2004;Gravey et al, 2017;Lilliedahl, 2018;Read, 1943;Rooney, 2004;Taylor, 2008;Xu et al, 2021). According to Aden et al, quoting Varela, performing arts also ground language understanding and communication in the history of repeated interactions of the subject in one's environment : "what makes a word relevant is not its form but the coordination of actions that it provokes" (Maturana & Varela, 1994, p.203, original in French, quoted in Aden, Clark & Potapushkina-Delfosse, 2019.…”

Section: Conditions For Effectiveness and Pedagogical Reformulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching and learning online through performing arts: Puppetry as a pedagogical tool in higher education

Kloetzer

Tau

2022

scenario

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Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a Swiss university course called “Psychology and Migration” had to move online over the Spring semester 2021. In this course, Psychology and Education students learn about the sociocultural considerations of migration, through a theoretical, personal and artistic exploration of the subjective experience of migration, based on performing arts. As part of the main pedagogical strategies, students are invited to collectively create a short theatre play based on some selected literary texts. Under the conditions imposed by the pandemic, puppetry arts were chosen as a new tool for distance-learning. Collaborating with theatre professionals, the students created a short play, and performed it online using sock puppets, image theatre or object theatre. Using data collected during the course (video recordings of online sessions and students’ diaries), this article explores the critical process of reduction and expansion, and the (potentially) productive tensions that the course creates. It analyses two main appropriation modes for course students: in adaptative appropriation, students aim to reduce these tensions by adapting to the perceived expectations of teachers; in transformative appropriation, students creatively use possibilities offered by the course to conduct a personal exploration, integrating theories with their own experiences and questions.

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Section: Conditions For Effectiveness and Pedagogical Reformulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching and learning online through performing arts: Puppetry as a pedagogical tool in higher education

Kloetzer

Tau

2022

scenario

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“…Some notable examples include using drama to teach history (Taylor, 2008), archeology (Trimmis & Kalogirou, 2018), psychology (Kloetzer et al, 2020) or social science theory (Gravey et al, 2017); poetry to teach social workers (Parker, 2020); dance to teach engineers (Baudin, 2016) and nurses (Winther, 2015); performing arts in medicine education (Hooker & Dalton, 2019) or language teaching (Mentz & Fleiner, 2019). This article examines a university course on improvisation and collective creation, addressed to master's students of the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland (Feraud et al, 2020;Kloetzer et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performing arts as a tool for university education during a pandemic: Moving from an in vivo to an in vitro modality

Kloetzer

Tau

Valterio

et al. 2021

Qwerty

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aper analyses how a course on improvisation and collective creation in engineering addressed to master’s students in Switzerland moved online. The course offers an experience in the field of performing arts, through embodied and situated activities, and the opportunity to reflect on the process of collective creation, a fundamental aspect of engineering practice often neglected in engineering training. The restrictions imposed by the 2020 pandemic forced its migration to an online format. We explore whether it is possible to maintain online a pedagogical proposal centered on embodied and face-to-face interaction, and what such a course might bring to the students. Using data collected during Spring 2020 (especially a focus group, video-recorded feedbacks and reflective diaries written by the students), we analyze the continuities and discontinuities between the two modalities. We show how the socio-material transformations im plied by the online interactions altered the interactions taking place, discuss the resultant opportunities and novelties offered by the online modality. We highlight that the apparent success of this migration to an online format overshadows the strong collective efforts needed from both students and teachers to maintain the key features of the course (playful experimentation, being inspired by others, horizontality of relations, trust, collective practice, improvisation).

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Everyday Life and How It Changes: Studying ‘Sustainable Wellbeing’ with Students During a Pandemic

Sahakian

2023

Consumption, Sustainability and Everyday Life

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Semi-confinement measures around the COVID-19 pandemic led to disruptions in everyday lives, in particular when it comes to reconfiguring habitual and routinized ways of doing things—a central theme in a social practice approach to understanding consumption. This contribution considers the weekly journal entries of 95 students in an undergraduate class at the University of Geneva, documenting how their consumption-related practices were changing, and how such changes relate to ‘sustainable wellbeing’. Students describe thrift and frugality measures in relation to resource consumption, reconsider existing practices such as ‘being fashionable’, but also explore new practices, such as preparing elaborate meals. In terms of wellbeing, consuming resources was clearly less relevant to students than social relations, whether facilitated through information-communication technologies or at a physical distance, as well as experiencing some form of contact with nature. We found that it is possible to engage students in reflecting on the normative goal of need satisfaction, and for students to distinguish between needs and desires, and between needs and their means of satisfaction. The societal context of the pandemic also led to reflections around how wellbeing must be understood at both an individual and societal level, and how ‘sustainable wellbeing’ as a normative aim might be planned for in the future.

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Theoretical Theatre: harnessing the power of comedy to teach social science theory

Cited by 7 publications

References 21 publications

Teaching and learning online through performing arts: Puppetry as a pedagogical tool in higher education

Teaching and learning online through performing arts: Puppetry as a pedagogical tool in higher education

Performing arts as a tool for university education during a pandemic: Moving from an in vivo to an in vitro modality

Everyday Life and How It Changes: Studying ‘Sustainable Wellbeing’ with Students During a Pandemic

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