"The Art of Foreign Language Teaching: Improvisation and Drama in Teacher Development" by Peter Lutzker, Francke Verlag, 2007
reviewed by Mario Rinvolucri, UK
The editor of HLT has asked me to review Peter Lutzker’s major statement about humanistic teaching and teacher training and this is something I find very hard to do. However, to refuse Hanna’s request/bidding might well land me firmly in the HLT dog house! However, I guess I need to explain to you why writing reviews is something I dislike doing.
The history of peer review in Western science is strewn with examples of pusillanimous rejection of brilliant new ideas by baying packs of mediocre people. Two examples: the Marques de Santillana was howled down by his peers when he claimed to have discovered amazing rock paintings at Altamira. He was vindicated in the archaeological community twenty years later and the baying Madrid pack then apologised to his widow but sadly this came some 8 years after he had committed suicide.
In 1916 Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift and was cold-shouldered by his
fellow geologists. It took this scientific community until the 1960’s to acknowledge that Wegener had hit the nail fully on the head. Often the reaction of lesser minds is to shun the vision of the greater ones.
Peter Lutzker is a major educational thinker and has spent half an earthly span living towards this major book. Can it be dignified or right for me to spend half a day writing a “critique” of his work? I am sorry, Hanna, but the best I can do by way of introducing something of Peter’s thinking to your readers is to invite him to speak for himself in the screens that follow.
The Blurb on the back cover:
“This study explores and develops the idea that foreign language teaching can be an art. This encompasses both considering the meaning of artistry in language teaching as well as the possibilities which artistic processes offer students in language learning.
The first part focuses on the in-service education of language teachers in theatre and improvisation workshops; the second part examines pupils rehearsing and performing a full length play in a foreign language. Thus, this work views the fields of language teacher education and foreign language learning within a common conceptual framework.”
Peter writes:
“The concept of teaching as a science became an accepted view in the course of the twentieth century. Its origins can be found in the second half of the nineteenth century, largely due to the widespread influence of Johann Friedrich Herbart’s writings and the ensuing “herbartismus” . From this point on the practices of teaching and teacher education increasingly came to be seen legitimate fields of scientific inquiry, offering the underlying basis for educational theory and practice.”
The second model Peter mentions comes from the world of business:
“Whereas the methods of science have been seen as offering a model for objective research-based educational theory and practice, the paradigm of successful business practices has often been considered to offer a model of efficiency and productivity. From a perspective based on attaining the best possible results in the most efficient manner , schools have increasingly been viewed as a form of service institution in which teachers are held accountable for productivity generally measured on the basis of their pupils’ standardised test scores. A number of studies have examined the prevalence of such business frameworks in both curriculum design and teacher education and in this context the underlying metaphor of the teacher as a technician trained to achieve optimal results has been consistently remarked on.”
Peter then presents his own counter model of the teacher as an artist ( P13):
“ Considering teaching as an art implies not only a different understanding, but requires adopting a different framework of knowledge as well. In the arts there are clearly ways of knowing that cannot be represented within the measurable, objective domains of traditional science and education. The musician’s sensitivity to nuances of tone, the actor’s to voice and gesture, the clown’s to the possibilities of improvisation, all represent forms of knowledge and expression which do not lend themselves easily to rational, scientific discourse. Nor do they represent the type of knowledge which most educational research and theory has propagated as essential in teacher education, or for that matter, for pupils in their schooling. At the same time they are all, incontrovertibly, examples of highly precise and expressive ways of knowing and acting.”
A little later Peter quotes Elliot Eisner’s book, ‘The Educational Imagination’. Eisner gives four reasons for defining teaching as art:
“ First, it is art in the sense that teaching can be performed with such skill and grace that, for the student as for the teacher, the experience can be justifiably characterised as aesthetic……..
Second, teaching is an art in the sense that teachers, like painters, composers, actresses and dancers , make judgments based on qualities that unfold in the course of action…….
Third, teaching is an art in the sense that the teacher’s activity is not dominated by prescriptions or routines but influenced by qualities and contingences that are unpredicted…….
Fourth, teaching is an art in the sense that the ends it achieves are often created in process……
It is in these four senses- teaching as an aesthetic experience, as dependent on the perception and control of qualities, as a heuristic or adventitious activity, and as seeking emergent ends, that teaching can be regarded as an art.”
Peter later quotes L.Rubin’s book ‘Artistry in Teaching’ (1985) in an attempt to give a thumbnail sketch of an outstanding artist-teacher:
“The teachers who eventually attained the highest level of artistry were characterised by four primary attributes: first, they made a great many teaching decisions intuitively;
second, they had a strong grasp of their subject as well as a perceptive understanding of their students; third, they were secure in their competence and expected to be successful; and fourth, they were exceedingly imaginative.”
Peter suggests that the view of the teacher as an artist is bound to change the content of and the way that in-service training is conducted. He explains how Steiner in-service training includes training in music, dance rhythm (eurythmy), drama training and an introduction to clowning of the Bataclown School, much influenced by the work of Carl Rogers. On reading this, some readers may well be wondering what clowning, of all things, has to do with teaching? Actually clowning is used as empathy, spontaneity and here-and-nowness training in various fields, including the training of medics. A G.P., Dr David Wheeler, had this to say about a clowning course with Vivian Gladwell specially organized for medical practitioners.
“ The clown is a professional empathizer. He has to listen and respond to others on the stage, to his own feelings and those of the audience. He is an improviser and has no pre-written script. If a problem arises on stage the clown is advised ‘stay with ‘ in order to resolve the problem in a n imaginative way. Improvisers on stage together are encouraged not to ‘block’ ideas and suggestions from each other but to listen and respond to the other clown. However one clown does not have to give in completely to the other but expresses his own character too. He accepts the challenge posed by the other clown’s suggestion and then transforms it. The clown responds also to emotion but is not overwhelmed personally by it. He distances himself from it sufficiently to understand the drama and to play with it.”
Dr Wheeler then goes on to compare clowning improvisations with his consultations with his patients:
“Playing without a script was disconcerting but allowed me to observe more clearly what was happening around me.. So, if I put to one side my “bio-medical scripts’, my concern with disease descriptions, would I observe better my patients’ own stories? (….) This would mean listening carefully to the patient’s story and asking questions that clarify the story in preference to ( though not to the complete exclusion of ) pursuing ideas in my own mind. If I could respond to my patients’ emotion without being overwhelmed personally by it then I could help transform that emotion? “
Here is how a participant in one of Vivian Gladwell’s clowning courses for Steiner ELT teachers recalls her experience on stage:
“One of the first clowning exercises following a series of warm-ups involves coming on stage where an object has been placed in the center. The task is to approach to object without planning anything beforehand and connect with the object. I step up on stage. Stop. Wait. I feel stage fright, panic and waves of anxiety. Slowly I turn to face the audience. I am struck with a bolt of expectation from the audience. I feel even more unnerved. I take a deep breath and then face the audience again, my body no longer holding back the panic. I know I am all red and my palms are sweating. I start moving towards the object. Blank. No need to worry about preconceived ideas – my mind is blank. I look at the audience. They laugh. It does not seem funny to me. I look down again at the object. Years are passing by. Don’t wait. Make contact with the object – gentle probing from Vivian, our facilitator. I reach down and touch. Soft. Fuzzy. Heavy ,Soothing. Audience. I scrunch up under what is actually a piano cover. Wow! More comfort. Relief. Look at us. Look up. Snickers and giggles from the audience. I hold my “blanky” sheepishly and look at people’s sympathetic faces. I curl up a little tighter and enjoy the security. Remember to breathe. As I glance up we all follow Vivian’s gaze towards the other end of the stage. I hesitate and then reluctantly move out from under the blanket and then off the stage.”
I think the above excerpt give a strong inkling of what working with Gladwell can be like. As you read the list of things the participant below feels she has gained from the Gladwell course may I invite you to think of them applied to your own work with your own students? :
- “Activation of all senses,
- Overcoming deep inhibitions and hang-ups through accepting the clown being different. (a process still in motion),
- Acceptance of the other being different,
- Finding importance in what first seems irrelevant,
- Being able to step outside one’s own narrow little world and enter a world of a certain abnormality,
- Permission to be playful again,
- Strong activation of imagination,
- Understanding that every little incident has significance. ”
The second half of Peter Lutzker’s book deals with the year-long process of getting a class group to put on a school play ( a dramatisation of “The Diary of Anna Frank (in a foreign language, in this case English,) and has a very different feel to it from the part you have just read excepts from. To give you a feel of this difference let’s listen to a student voice:
- “I have had the experience that I could fully enter into a role and therefore was hardly nervous; that in the sad scenes I was sad and in the happy scenes, happy.
- I really enjoyed the rehearsals in the final weeks. After every rehearsal one felt one had make a further step…one was really into the role and I was not myself anymore.
- In the last month I noticed that I developed a feeling for what the Jews or persecuted people in the war must have felt and so that had become much clearer to me. In the course of the rehearsals I was able to identify ever more strong with Anna’s situation and therefore was able to act more freely.
- I enjoyed the English language much more through the English class play and I find it more interesting and my vocabulary has increased a lot. Because this has awakened my interest in English, I have decided to go to England in September for three months.”
I have a feeling that if you decide to buy Lutzker’s book you will get two books between one set of covers, both interesting, but of very different content and texture.
I have placed Peter’s book on my shelves next to those of Rogers, Curran, Dufeu and Stevick.
Please check the Expert Teacher course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the From Teaching to Training course at Pilgrims website.
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