Shifra Schonmann

Training physicians in communication skills with adolescents using teenage actors as simulated patients.

Role‐play exercises with simulated patients may serve the purpose of training professionals to develop appropriate communication skills with adolescents. Authentic adolescent responses toward the physicians may be achieved by actors who themselves are in their teenage years. We describe our experience in continuing medical education programmes for primary care physicians aimed at improving their skills in communicating with adolescents, using simulation methodology with teenage actors. Eight 16–17‐year‐old actors from the drama department of a high school for the arts were trained to simulate 20 cases with characteristic adolescent medical problems, as well as confidentiality issues and home and school problems. The actors performed in front of large groups of 20–30 paediatricians, family practitioners, or gynaecologists in continuing medical education. Diagnostic issues as well as therapeutic and management approaches were discussed, while the actors provided feedback to the trainees about their understanding and their feeling regarding the issues raised during the exercises. Normally, smaller learning groups are more suitable for such training purposes; nevertheless the participants could appreciate learning the principles of careful listening, a non‐judgmental approach and assuring confidentiality. A collaboration of medical schools and postgraduate programmes with high schools which have drama departments may be fruitful in the teaching of adolescent medicine with special emphasis on communication skills with teenagers.

Theorizing Aesthetic Transactions from Children's Criterial Values in Theatre for Young Audiences

Child spectators and adult theatre critics often hold opposite views on what makes the “best” theatre for young people. To explain why this enormous gap exists, we discuss childrens aesthetic criteria as cross-cultural spectators and examine the theoretical and methodological differences between aesthetic appreciation and artistic criticism. To explain aesthetic transactions between child spectators and adult actors, we discuss our different philosophical interpretations of aesthetic distance and propose two models to stimulate further discussions. Future reception studies need to integrate theories of aesthetic philosophy and developmental psychology to raise the artistic quality of TYA around the world.

An Anthology of Voices: an Analysis of Trainee Drama Teachers’ Monologues

ABSTRACT This paper reports on research undertaken into the processes through which student teachers begin to formulate an identity as a professional teacher. Using Fullers investigations into the attitudes of trainee teachers towards their courses (1969) as a baseline, a discussion is established on the place of the student voice in contemporary initial teacher training programmes. In order to further investigate the potential importance of affording student teachers the opportunity to reflect on and express their thinking and feeling as they embark on their chosen career path, the concerns of a group of student drama teachers were recorded and interpreted. The vehicle for this exercise involved writing and subsequently performing reflective monologues. These were analysed by using The Listening Guide as composed by Gilligan et al. (2003). This paper illustrates how the methodology revealed distinct yet generally harmonious voices at work in the group in the first few weeks of their training year. Subsequent analysis suggests a model for the initial formation of a teaching identity built on aspects of self, role and character. Recognising the relative values and relationships between these factors for student teachers may, it is argued, provide greater security for them while affording their tutors insights which could help them to re‐shape initial teacher training programmes.

The game veteran theatre teachers are playing: anatomy of musings

This paper is the result of an explorative study, based on the in‐depth meta‐analysis of a corpus of contemporary pieces of research in which there was found clear references to veteran theatre teachers talking about their work. Following that, extracts from interviews of experienced theatre teachers were analyzed. The major aim of this study is to expose attitudes, ideas, beliefs, feelings, and insights that veteran theatre teachers may have experienced in referring to their work, to their life career, and to their own selves. Analyzing their musings is a way to discover that there are identifiable parameters involved in the formulation of an experienced teachers identity. The quest for self‐professional identity is an ongoing search that may fuel teaching and enhance understanding about the level of commitments to ones work. Studying the identity of veteran theatre teachers is assigned, in this respect, to the role they play in the ‘game’ of teaching. It may enable induction about identity construction processes in general.

Playing peace: School performance as an aesthetic mode of knowing

This article attempts to shift the focus of peace education from being mainly sociological towards a discussion focusing on theatre education. Case study methodology is used to investigate the daily experience of drama classes. The study describes and analyzes a theatre/drama project in two Israeli junior high schools, one in an Arab village and the other in a Jewish town. The purposes of the study were: to provide opportunity to explore the meaning of “living” in an era of peace, using personal interpretation through aesthetic problem solving and developing skills of recognizing, tolerating, and valuing attitudes of others through the process of preparing for a school performance celebrating peace. It shows how schools as the cradle for authentic feeling, deepen the intuitive support of diversity felt by the young.

“Rememory” and meaning: the narrative of a mother giving birth to her own subjective identity through weblog writing

ABSTRACT The narratives of mothers are usually not expressed through cultural and national memories. In addition, the psychological theories insist on defining motherhood and subjectivity from the point of view of the developing child. The term “subjective motherhood” enables us to attempt to describe and theorize maternal subjectivity in this complicated and contradictory sense. The aim of this research is to create a wide enough concept of motherhood subjectivity in order to contain the motherhood experience as a process of creating identity and meaning. The blog “this is the way I am” is the room of Pema, a 49 year old Israeli mother and the author of a weblog. The written narratives in her blog reflect the dialogue between the mental dimensions of rememory and meaning. Through the writing process, Pema is giving narrative birth to her subjective identity as a mother. Writing a blog gave Pema the most precious thing she owns, the story of her subjectivity.

An Identity Card In The Making

Reading a book is the most impressive game that people have yet invented maintains Wislawa Szymborska in the preface to her book, Nonrequired Reading(2002). I would like to echo her words by considering the idea of writing and asserting that writing a book is a similarly impressive activity created by people seeking to enjoy themselves. It is a demanding enterprise that entails concentration, dedication, restraint and patience. It demands creativity with thoughts that soar freely as well as utterances that are sensibly controlled. It is an activity that serves as a womb for the birth of the human spirit. With this thought in mind, I approached a number of the sixty authors now participating in this book; I was hoping my colleagues would join me in a journey of writing to convey the spirit of the times in our field of theatre/drama education.