‘The principal character’: the triad approach and improvisation in teaching

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on a teaching case, Rona, a student in the educational dance-theatre programme that adopted improvisational teaching to deal with her lack of self-confidence. This lack had denied her feeling free and teaching without inhibitions in the classroom. Rona found a way to release her lack of self-confidence by spontaneously acting the ‘character’ of a funny and assertive ‘principal’ for ensuring a flowing dialogue with the pupils without disturbances to the planned procedure of the lesson. I analyse the Rona’s case through Shifra Schonmann’s triadic approach for teacher training, based on the theatrical perception which differentiates between a dramatic character, a social role and a performer’s personality and the through the directions of improvisational teaching.

KEYWORDS:

• Improvisational teaching
• self-efficacy
• teacher-efficacy
• teacher-in-role
• teacher as performer

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Naphtaly Shem-Tov is visiting Senior Lecturer in Literature, Linguistics and Arts at The Open University of Israel. His main interests include alternative theatre, festivals, applied theatre and educational drama. He published two books: Improvisational Teaching, MOFET, 2015 [in Hebrew] and Acco Festival: Between Celebration and Confrontation, Academic Studies Press, 2016.

Notes

1 The perception of pupils as an audience does not assume that they are passive spectators, but that they can be active similar to audiences in collaborative and participating theatre.

2 Rona’s difficulties can be explained on the base of the gender dynamics: Tomer as a male took a dominant position and Rona took a passive one. I already knew about Rona’s lack of self-confidence in teaching from her previous practical experience when she taught with a female partner and sometimes even on her own. Thus, although I do not reject the gender explanation, I do not think it was the main cause of Rona’s difficulties.

3 This is taken from an interview with Rona in Hebrew, December 13, 2009. The translation is mine.

4 The ‘yell’, in particular, and the ‘principal character’, in general, can be perceived as authoritarian behaviour, but as I highlight in the text, although the title that Rona gives is the ‘principal character’, in effect, it signifies teaching which integrates dominance with flexibility, control with listening and setting limits with empathy and humor. Furthermore, I stress that it was a grotesque yell with humor, and the children, who enthusiastically cooperated, actually understood the yell as acting and not as authoritarian teaching.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Open University of Israel’s Research Fund: [Grant Number 506161].