IDIERI 2012

1. 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

2. I want to sing opera 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! I want to make funny, subversive video clips

3. 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?

4. 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.

5. 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)

6. Co-artistry “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). 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)

7. 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).

8. 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 Tools, signs & artefacts Outcome Participants Object Roles/Division of labour Rules Community • 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)

9. 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

11. Potential Outcome – learning about drama, theatre performance texts Tools & signsBodies, music, pre-texts, online spaces & performance texts Potentially shared outcome – polished performance product Potential outcome – identity formation – self as creative agent, future self Object – drama & performance concepts, importance of water Participants – students, teachers, artists, researcher, coordinator Experience Roles/Division of labour – teachers as directors, student co-devisers (unequal status), artist support and design Rules – co-artistry, group devising, rehearsal protocol Community – school group, cluster, production team Potential Outcome – social engagement and working with others

12. Tools, signs & artefacts Contradiction or structural tension Regarding concept for the outcome Potentially shared outcome Participants Object Roles/Division of labour Rules Community

13. Mid-way through process Agency and ownership “This is our show and we are building it together” Contradiction – lack of connection with idea of the work (Bundy) and degree of student input

14. Both had same starting point, what was different?

16. POWER Power – the ability to influence the behaviour of others – with or without resistance It can constrain and enable Power is everywhere, everyday, is constituted through and emerges from human activity Operations of power and authority emerge from the interactions, use of cultural tools & mediational means

17. 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)

18. Micro-level interactions important for negotiating power and learning t

19. 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

20. Types of interactions Basic level Micro-interactions Making offers Accept Reinforce Extend Block/reject Evaluate Resist Ignore • Make offers • Accept • Reject

21. Negotiating collective creation Negotiating and re-negotiating shared group object and outcome Connecting to the idea of the work – Activating personal conceptual connection Dialogic processes - physicalising experiences & verbal discussion – micro level interactions Collaborative dialogue to scaffold feedback/evaluation processes and internalisation of learning

22. Individual subject activity within communal activity Tools, signs & artefacts Feedback Subject Identity Personal goal (lead activity) Varying degree of buy in to the Communal goal Personal outcome Collective outcome and products Reject or accept Accept Objects Output Stop, resist, block, adapt, reinforce, extend Roles/Division of labour Rules Community Trust and dynamic power relations realised through internally persuasive dialogue and ongoing interactions

23. 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.