Carrie,
The use of story, fairy tales, myths and drama as central aspects of early childhood play based programmes is an interesting feature in some Scandinavian centres (Pentti Hakkarainen in Finland, Gunilla Lindqvist in Sweden, Faith Guss in Norway....). Teachers there can also train as "drama pedagogues". Sometimes teachers perform for the children, who in turn create successive performances and may also "create" meaningful aspects of the story using other "artistic" means, like paint, sand, collage. In this way, drama can unite all aspects of the curriculum. This is perhaps broader then improv, yet to be part of the "play" demands actors to learn and use improvisational skills and qualities alongside culturally relevant stories and literature. What do you think?
It is reassuring to see these links between literature and psychology.
And I appreciate the poems, with interpretations.The Unicorn,Rilke's eptitaph is similarly obtuse and beautiful, and short:
"Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy
of being No-one's sleep under so many
lids".
Sophie
-----Original Message-----
From: lobman@rci.rutgers.edu [mailto:lobman@rci.rutgers.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 8:59 AM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: re:literature and psychology
I am new to the list--allow me to introduce myself, my name is Carrie
Lobman and I am a professor of early childhood education at Rutgers
University.
I am writing in response to Willow's questions about the use of the arts
in educational research and teacher professional development. My
research focuses on performance and improvisation as untapped resources
for teachers and teacher educators. I have found that when teachers are
given training in improvisation they develop as leaders in the
classroom and it opens them up to more creative and collective ways of
interacting with children. I believe this is because improvisation
reconnects adults to an ability we all had as children--the ability to
be other than who we are and to create collectively with other people
without being overdetermined by the end product. I've recently concluded
a pilot study where I provided improvisational training to preschool
teachers and then studied the effects on their teaching. While I am
still analyzing the videotaped observations from the workshops and the
classrooms the strongest initial result had to do with how the teachers
understood what it meant to listen to children. The improvisation
training pushed them to see listening and responding as a building
activity where you are collectively creating the conversation with the
children rather than trying to "make a point" or even provide a learning
moment. Its been a very interesting project.
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