Marié-Heleen Coetzee

Mind the gap : beyond whole-brain learning

In past research we 1 have demonstrated how methodologies used in the training of performers can both encourage whole-brain learning and answer to the demands of South Africa’s current educational paradigm, outcomes-based education (OBE). OBE is a needs-driven, outcomes-driven and competency-orientated pedagogy, which aims at incorporating learners as active agents within the learning process as opposed to the previous content-driven, teacher-orientated approach to education (Coetzee 2004). Our research was prompted by the constant need for our Drama departments to validate their existence in the light of changing funding structures for the arts, governmental and institutional demands for measured outcomes and our institutions’ emphasis on wholebrain learning as the preferred pedagogical approach to education and training. We explored the ways in which the changes in the South African educational dispensation impact on the work of educators within a Drama department in the Higher Education and Training band (HET) in South Africa. These changes include a focus on competencies and critical outcomes across learning areas and across the qualification bands identified by the new National Qualifications Framework. In our search for ways in which to implement the critical outcomes 2 demanded by the OBE framework, we turned to Herrmann’s argument (1995) that optimal, deep structure learning can only take place when whole-brain modes are operative. Our investigations were supported by research undertaken by De Boer, Steyn and Du Toit (2001:192) in which they indicated compatibility between the processes associated with each of the four modalities that constitute whole-brain learning and the processes associated with reaching OBE’s critical outcomes as demonstrated in Table 1 on the next page.

(Re)Storying the Self: Exploring Identity through Performative inquiry

This paper investigates the ways in which the use of performative inquiry can shift notions of knowledge as situated to knowledge as experiential, embodied and an in situ encounter in the domain of performance studies. Specifically, this paper will focus on understandings of knowledge(s) around the articulation and construction of identity with particular reference to the production Shiftings (2007).

Creative Synergy: Using Community Theatre and Appreciative Inquiry for Young People's Critical Participation in HIV Prevention and Education

This article positions community theatre as an agency for development and education based on the educational principles of Freire and Boals theatre for development. The article argues that appreciative inquiry can enrich the practice of community theatre by approaching HIV and AIDS education as an asset-based, participatory, inclusive, learner-centered approach. The article hypothesizes that the infusion of the four-D process of appreciative inquiry into community theatre processes aimed at HIV and AIDS education will enhance young peoples agency as active participants and agents of change in their communities beyond the didactic notions inherent in ABC education approaches to HIV prevention. The article argues that this approach can encourage meaningful participation and critical consciousness among young people in the HIV prevention response.

Embodied knowledges : physical theatre and the physicality of theatre

While the general contours of virtuosity are the same across media, every sacred monster is unique; every technique organizes its own monstrosity, and every community engages its virtuoso monsters on its own terms (Hamera 2007: 42).

The Lessac Approach as a Pedagogical Answer to Outcomes-Based Education and Training, and Whole Brain Learning

racial and educational, amongst others, inequalities of the past. In the current dispensation, the government has put structures in place that urge education providers to adopt strategies that will level the educational playing field. The National Qualification Framework () and South African Qualifications Authority () are evidence of this process. The new education and training dispensation resulted in the introduction of the concept of OutcomesBased Education and Training (referred to as ). Under this umbrella concept four divisions of education exist: • General Education and Training (—the first nine years of formal education), • Further Education and Training (—the last three years of high school, where some form of specialisation will take place), • Higher Education and Training (—the domain of tertiary training institutions), and • Adult Basic Education and Training (—an attempt to address the massive illiteracy problems amongst adults in South Africa).

Embodied knowledge(s), embodied pedagogies and performance

I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell. (Polanyi 1967, p.4)

Storying Worlds: Using Playback Theatre to Explore the Interplay between Personal and Dominant Discourses amongst Adolescents.

ABSTRACT This article explores the ways in which playback theatre was used to interrogate the views of adolescents on their social context(s) and establish what the personal and dominant discourses operating in their views were. Playback theatre, with its focus on reframing personal stories to generate new perspectives on these stories, was an appropriate tool to do so. By referring to participants’ reflections, we demonstrate how playback theatre intervened in the interplay between these discourses and how meaning(s) and understanding(s) were (re)imagined to negotiate new avenues pertaining to voiced issues.

The 2007 Paddy Crean Art of the Sword Stage Combat Workshop and Symposium—December 31, 2006–January 06, 2007, Banff Centre for the Arts

The symposium focused on exploring historical martial arts, on contemporary movement disciplines that inform the practice of stage combat, and the technologies currently in use in the entertainment industry. This well-attended symposium drew a global body of presenters and participants (a total of about 200 people) and offered a platform for stage combat practitioners, historians and scholars to share and exchange research, methodological approaches and skills. The symposium embraced pluralistic views on stage combat styles and / or techniques, on teaching methodologies, on interpretations of and perspectives on stage combat.

The Paddy Crean International Stage Combat Workshop: Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Canada 31 December 2000–7 January 2001

The annual Paddy Crean International Stage Combat Workshop was held at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Banff, Canada from December 31 2000 to January 7 2001. The Banff Centre is located in the picturesque Banff National Park. The workshop was organised and presented by the International Organisation of the Sword and the Pen (IOSP). The IOSP is a not-for-profit organisation aimed at creating an international, interdisciplinary awareness of, and collaboration in, the art of theatrical/stage combat. The workshop is named after Patrick Crean, actor, fencing master, and fight choreographer for the stage and screen in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Paddy Crean has doubled in, and choreographed for, screen stars such as Errol Flynn, and is recognised as the founder of contemporary stage combat. The annual workshops aim to bring together a teaching staff of internationally recognised stage combat practitioners and performing artists to instruct participants in a wide variety of theatrical, historical and cultural movement forms which are chosen to enhance the art of stage combat. The Paddy Crean workshop aims to develop the field of stage combat through practical skills training and through stimulating research in the field.