Paradigms align: Emergent research drawing on socio- cultural paradigms and Vygotskian concepts in drama/education research Sue Davis, Hannah Grainger Clemson, Beth Ferholt, Satu-Mari Korhonen, Marjanovic-Shane IDIERI 2012

Sue Davis, CQUniversity Australia – Hannah Grainger Clemson, UK – Bet h Ferholt, Brooklyn College, City University of New York Satu-Mari Korhonen, Theatre Academy Helsinki, University of Helsinki, CRADLE satu- Dr. Ana Marjanovic-Shane, Chestnut Hill College

Why Vygotsky? He was a teacher, a theatre lover, a researcher and revolutionary thinker. He understood the importance of play, of human interactions, of art and the imagination, the importance of creativity and aesthetic education for all children. He wrote about how humans think, create and learn in ways that are still relevant today.

Drama, more than any other form of creation, is closely and directly linked to play, which is the root of all creativity in children. Thus, drama is the most syncretic mode of creation, that is, it contains elements of the most diverse forms of creativity… The staging of drama provides the pretext and material for the most diverse forms of creativity on the part of the child. (Vygotsky, 1930/2004: 71)

CONCEPT FORMATION Experience, activity Perception & Feeling Meaning & Signs MIND, MEMORY & IMAGINATION Words and Concepts (including concepts of self) Internalisation and Abstraction Feedback & internal dialogue Combination of concepts through work of Imagination CREATIVE EXPRESSION Motivation Ideas & emotions Goal-directed action Mediated expression Creative output including Versions of self Interacting with others and with culture Created and shared within the culture Drawing from the culture Davis 2012

SubjectObject Outcome Tools, signs & artefacts Rules Roles/Division of labour Community Activity Theory – Vygotsky, Luria & Leontiev, Cole, Engestrom Activity – the basic unit for analysis Mediation triangle – Subject, Object, Tool Joint activity – Rules, Community, Division of Labour Epiphany workshop – week 2 Group in circle. Check in – initial thoughts about characters & their special features Circle warm up – 1,2,3 (1 = walk around one way, 2 = run the other, 3 = movement selected by the group) In pairs – 1,2, 3 Columbian hypnosis Potter and clay – one person shapes the other in response to given words  (Freak, spectacle, twisted, mystery)

Role of contraction for development and learning Contradictions are historically accumulating structural tensions within and between activity systems… When an activity system adopts a new element from the outside (for example, a new technology or a new object), it often leads to an aggravated secondary contradiction where some old element (for example, the rules or the division of labour) collides with the new one. Such contradictions generate disturbances and conflicts, but also innovative attempts to change the activity. (Engeström, 2009, p. 57)

creative practice and learning “How can Information & Communications Technologies and drama be used to facilitate creative practice and learning?” The research question for my doctoral work

Research methodology considerations Mainly qualitative, though some quantitative Inquiry models, expansive learning (see Engestrom), can draw on narrative and arts- based inquiry, design based research & interventions Mixed methods – journals, surveys, interviews, CMCs and digital content Grounded theory type coding and thematic exploration Case study – exploratory & explanatory Acknowledging contradictions, contexts, different meaning making

Participants Objects, Concepts, Outcome – drama assessment ‘product’ interactive drama created using online spaces + live perf Tools, signs & artefacts RulesRoles/Division of labour Community Students, teacher, researcher/co- artist, audience at end School internet use, task centred rules Small group creation, class community, wider school/performance community Teacher determined tasks, modelled learning, groups negotiate roles/work Cyberdrama, narrative form, multi-media skills, concepts about immortality E-learning sites, Internet, cameras, computers, scaffolding, bodies, cultural artefacts Activity system analysis Contradiction or structural tension Regarding participant tool preferences

Contradiction – rules about participant tool use – ICT focus & spaces Teacher recognises some students reduced engagement Student resistance to technical tool use Expansive learning shifted tool use and practices to corporeal, face-to-face interactions Student use of inappropriate tools/utterances – Expansive learning - shift to use of institutional sites and rule structure for social network use Shifts

Findings Contradictions at the institutional level (ICT tools) and crisis/conflicts at personal level Importance of considering the nature of micro-level interactions in the external activity & internal activity Importance of acknowledging ‘flow’ as well as contradiction in models & analysis Not all students wanted to use ICTs as for creative practice, some clear preferences for somatic tools Student engagement & meaning making related to tool preferences and versions of future self Student learning impacted upon through a ‘cybernetics of self’ and degree of flexibility in ‘self’ work as an outcome of activity