Power, negotiations and creating work of the collective

imagination: Using Vygotskian concepts and activity theory for understanding young people’s drama learning.

Dr Sue Davis, CQUniversity Australia s.davis@cqu.edu.au

IDIERI 2012

I want to sing opera

I want to make funny, subversive video clips

I love to sing and dance but I’ll have a got at anything

creative

I want to create

innovative new work with my students and keep my boss

happy!

How do we get everyone on board?

What is co-artistry?How do we create collective work of the imagination that meets the goals of the group?

Project principles• INCLUSION: Young people and teacher-artists will be included in every

phase of the process. Project design needs to be mindful and aware of the potential for unequal power relationships inherent in the development of an arts experience such as GBD. To truly promote agency, young people and teacher-artists must be creative agents engaged in determining the project design, making creative content decisions. The role and relationship of the artist and teacher-artist will be clearly established.

CO-ARTISTRY: There is a commitment to providing the time and space for co-artistry to occur in all interactions (student/teacher-artist, teacher-artist/artist, artist/student). Dialogue will continue throughout the process from early development right through to performance product and hopefully beyond.

Co-artist role in syllabus• Function as a co-artist with students • Recognise each student as a developing or emerging artist in drama

and yourself as artistic facilitator or teacher-artist. • Intervene in students’ work if necessary to deepen and enrich the

work artistically and dramatically. • Encourage a climate of reflection and critique that challenges

students to raise personal and group standards in drama work. • Use the teacher-in-role convention when appropriate. • Extend your own artistic practice and theoretical understanding by

professional reading, participating in professional development activities, directing, playwriting, designing, performing, producing and/or attending theatre. (Queensland Senior Drama Syllabus, 2007, p 17)

This personalised experience occurs in a highly complex relationship, oscillating between teacher/student as initiator and controller of form, and student/teacher as controller of ideas. (McLean, 1996, p. 14)

“It is the [teacher’s] function not only to initiate aesthetic activity but also to enter it directly as creative agent, to develop it and deepen it” (Abbs in McLean, 1996, p. 52).

Co-artistry

Co-artistry

• “… dialogical frameworks for learning which places interactions between learners, teachers and artists at the heart of learning, and which offers each participant ownership in the learning process, which itself is conceived of as a creative one”(Craft, 2005, p 143).

Participants ObjectOutcome

Tools, signs & artefacts

RulesRoles/Division of

labourCommunity

Activity Theory – Vygotsky, Luria & Leontiev, Cole, Engestrom

Activity – the basic unit for analysis

Mediation triangle – Subject, Object, Tool

Joint activity – Rules, Community, Division of Labour

Workshop – week 2 • Group in circle. Check in –

initial thoughts about characters & their special features

• Circle warm up – 1,2,3 (1 = walk around one way, 2 = run the other, 3 = movement selected by the group)

In pairs – 1,2, 3• Columbian hypnosis• Potter and clay – one person

shapes the other in response to given words (Freak, spectacle, twisted,

mystery)

3rd generation activity theory (CHAT)

• Figure: Two interacting activity systems (Engeström, 2001, p. 136)

I want to have a good

time with friends

I want to do well to get

good grades at school

We work together to create quality creative performance in

response to the creative challenge

Participants – students, teachers, artists, researcher, coordinator

Object – drama & performance concepts, importance of water

Potentially shared outcome – polished performance product

Tools & signsBodies, music,

pre-texts, online spaces & performance

texts

Rules – co-artistry, group

devising, rehearsal protocol

Roles/Division of labour – teachers as directors, student co-devisers (unequal status), artist support and design

Community – school group, cluster, production team

Potential Outcome – learning about drama, theatre performance texts

Potential outcome – identity formation – self as creative agent, future self

Potential Outcome – social engagement and working with others

Experience

Participants Object

Potentially shared outcome

Tools, signs & artefacts

RulesRoles/Division of

labourCommunity

Contradiction or structural tension Regarding concept for the outcome

Mid-way through process

Contradiction – lack of connection with idea of the work (Bundy) and degree of student input

Agency and ownership “This is our show and we are building it together”

Both had same starting point, what was different?

POWERPower – the ability to influence the behaviour of others – with or without resistance It can constrain and enablePower is everywhere, everyday, is constituted through and emerges from human activityOperations of power and authority emerge from the interactions, use of cultural tools & mediational means

Authoritative a position is assumed which generally allows for no dialogue, feedback or change. These kinds of positions are often assumed in religious, political and educational institutions and

Internally persuasive discourse encourages dialogue between agents, allows for responses, exchange and change in what is said.(Wertsch 1998, drawing on Bakhtin)

Micro-level interactions important for negotiating power and learning

t

Power relations - assuming and conceding power

• Students happy to concede power those with more artistic expertise, experience and authority (trust)

• Respect for the virtuoso• Delayed gratification or exercising power,

in belief that the outcome will be worthwhile

Types of interactions

Basic level• Make offers• Accept• Reject

Micro-interactions• Making offers• Accept• Reinforce• Extend• Block/reject• Evaluate• Resist• Ignore

Negotiating collective creationNegotiating and re-negotiating shared group object and outcomeConnecting to the idea of the work – Activating personal

conceptual connection Dialogic processes - physicalising experiences & verbal

discussion – micro level interactionsCollaborative dialogue to scaffold feedback/evaluation processes

and internalisation of learning

Subject IdentityPersonal goal (lead activity)Varying degree of buy in to the Communal goal

Personal outcome

Collective outcome and products

Rules Community Roles/

Division of labour

Objects

Tools, signs & artefacts

Individual subject activity within communal activity

OutputFeedback

AcceptReject or accept Stop, resist, block, adapt, reinforce, extend

Trust and dynamic power relations realised through internally persuasive

dialogue and ongoing interactions

Significant learnings• Co-artistry involves ongoing negotiations of

power and requires regular space for dialogue and two way interactions

• The importance of participants connecting with the idea of the work and building shared imaginative vision

• Authoritarian exercising of power – little room for two-way listening, dialogue and negotiations

• Operations of power include positive exercising and concession of power, trust and exchange

• Micro-level interactions are important and worthy of analysis and explicit discussion

• Value of socio-cultural theory and activity theory for framing drama education research.