College teachers all too often still play Sage on the Stage - lecturing
to rooms full of passive and supposedly absorbed students. The
cutting-edge opposite is still supposed to be the Guide on the Side -
facilitating wherever students themselves are already going, mentoring
and coaching them along the way. But who says that these are the only -
or the best - alternatives? This book advances another and sharply
different model: the Impresario with a Scenario, a teacher who serves as
class mobilizer, improviser, and energizer, staging dramatic, often
unexpected and self-unfolding learning challenges and adventures with
students.
In this book, the author argues that to pose a single alternative to
lecturing is profoundly limiting. In fact, he says there is no reason to
have to choose between "student-centered" and "teacher-centered"
pedagogies. The best ways to teach and learn are both. The same applies
to the false choice between "active" students and "active" teachers -
there can be more than enough activity for everyone. In particular, the
author argues that we need a model in which the teacher is notably
pro-active - a kind of activity for which certain theatrical metaphors
seem especially appropriate.
Picture a college teacher who regularly sets up classroom scenarios -
challenging problems, unscripted dramas, role-plays, simulations, and
the like - such that the scenario itself frames and drives most of the
action and learning that follows. For teaching as staging, the primary
work of the teacher is staging such scenarios. The basic goal is to put
students into an urgently engaging and self-unfolding scenario, trusting
them to carry it forward, while being prepared to join in as needed.
This book offers a conceptual and practical framework for Teaching as
Staging, grounding the approach with illustrative and sometimes
provocative narrative from the literature as well as the author's own
practice.
Teaching as the Art of Staging offers a visionary challenge to the
prevailing models of pedagogy. The book presents a thoroughly practical
model that opens up new possibilities for anyone interested in dramatic
new directions in teaching and learning.
