What ultimately is my position?
Formalising the informal.
Why is this my position?
To promote and make visible the benefits of learning about technical production skills-based learning that isn’t immediately obvious on the academic curriculum. In my dream curriculum, all unit project briefs are written as a collaboration between relevant academic and technical staff in order to achieve greater understanding of practical knowledge and how it can improve their academic contributions.
Has there been any positive examples?
Yes. Year 1 BA Theatre Design tutor is successful at consulting technicians around project briefs. They recognise that technicians aren’t merely ‘support’, that they have valuable skills to teach and were keen to suggest methods of implementing technical teaching in the classroom in a co-delivery model.
Successful examples include:
- Co-delivered production meetings (effectively co-delivered technical and academic tutorials in preparation for real-life or speculative productions) where the academic tutor would focus on design form and function and I would focus on feasibility and practicability in order for students to design successfully within a set of defined parameters.
- Technical sessions on constructing sound pieces in order to communicate a design intent. I was left to construct the teaching outcome and learning method (based on the unit learning outcomes). The academic tutor remained in the classroom throughout. This co-delivery model has been invaluable for support, increasing student knowledge, as well engaging in the session to enliven discussions. Although these sessions do not go towards assessment, they provide an avenue for students to investigate different areas of theatre design, introducing new languages and processes into their areas of research.
Key words post-tutorial
- Informal learning
- Student-centred practice
- Life-long learning
- Skills-based learning
- Agency
- Creative problem solving
- Real-world applications
Further thoughts
Seeing my positionality as a humanistic approach to students (giving students trust and respect to get the work completed in my absence due to my occasional temporary absence), finding connections between peoples’ work and their lives.
Document successful outcomes into a clearly defined diagram of positive achievable outcomes in order to ‘sell’ technical involvement in academic project writing.
Terror management theory – what we’re learning and are we scared of learning at the same time? E.g. learning to use the flying system (danger of death, but a huge element of theatre design understanding).
Explore the dynamics between formal and informal learning. Explore the what the boundaries are, especially as formal learning is now moving towards a more experiential/hands-on/old methods of informality approaches.