Teaching and Learning through Dramaturgy (Learning Through Theatre)

The aim of this book is to contribute a dramaturgical perspective to education. The authors write from a dramaturgical perspective about the planning of teaching, leadership in the classroom, the teacher-body, the teacher’s oral skills and ethics, communication, and about the spaces in which teaching takes place. The book is written with the pre-understanding that the ways in which art creates knowledge need to be illuminated and articulated more clearly in educational thinking, thereby enhancing artful engagement in education. Dramaturgical perspectives are presented as such a way – a form of knowledge that the artform of drama/theatre can contribute to teaching and learning in general.

Through examples and analyses of empirical material, as well as through theoretical perspectives, the authors show chapter by chapter how dramaturgy and a dramaturgically inspired language and concepts create more possibilities of choice for teachers in planning and carrying out their teaching. Teaching and Learning through Dramaturgy brings to the forefront what will be enabled in teaching and planning of teaching, by making use of a dramaturgically inspired language and action, what in principle is possible in every subject.

Anna-Lena Østern has since 2007 been Professor of Arts Education in the Department of Teacher Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She has educated drama teachers towards becoming general teachers and teacher educators. She was the academic leader of a national doctoral school for teacher education in Norway, NAFOL, 2010–2015. She is now professor emerita at Åbo Akademi University.