This discussion is not attempting to "re-invent the wheel'' in relation to the use of drama in education. The intention, moreover, is to humbly debate whether or not drama practitioners possess a developed vocabulary that explains their pedagogy.

We all know that music has its own concise vocabulary and expressive instruments. The instrument and vocabulary of music being objective to the musician. Drama, on the other hand, would appear to be an emotive tool using the vocabulary of the self as its expressive instrument. Consequently, it can be seen as an emotional extension of the self and does not always appear to have a separate objective vocabulary outside of the self. It would appear to operate from the personality base of the practitioner. There is no objective instrument.

Having stated the above this paper does not deny the popularity of drama in the classroom and the positive effects on the students in relation to social and personal development. However, this element of drama is not actually drama as an educational model. Many teachers use drama as a series of exercises, such as, improvisation, role-play, problem solving, exploration of a text, etc. This pot-pourri of drama techniques and exercises can be productive and is capable of engaging the student at a deep level, but it is not a model for learning in the same way that Dorothy Heathcote’s systematic approach to learning is through the drama of "Mantle of the Expert".

MANTLE OF THE EXPERT

Dorothy Heathcote’s systematic approach to drama in education is rooted in the processes that occur in learning, it evolved from addressing the question: "What is learning about?" She looks at the way language works. She looks at the social construction of knowledge. Her system embraces a conceptual ordering in the construction of knowledge. The system is informed by a social, psychological and anthropological view of the whole fabric of life, it echoes life.

In applying the anthropological lens to this system a picture emerges of the human in the "doing" of his/her task, which has a self-fulfilling learning objective, but which is also the mediating link through which the individual acquires a meaningful relationship to his/her social setting. In her study of Anthropology and Education Clara Nicholson points out what education is the process by which selves are shaped. She points out that it is not just through the cognitive processes that learning occurs. "Selves", in other words, are shaped by social processes, yet these processes are mostly not defined in educational systems. Culture and personality specialists have repeatedly emphasised the importance of indirect learning in personality development. Abram Kardiner states:

The point is that learning processes do not account for the integrative character of the human mind in so far as the emotional relationships of the individual to his/her environment are concerned.

The system draws from an anthropological tradition in that the anthropologist's view encompasses a view of the "whole fabric of life". The doing of a task within a society can be uplifted from the functionalist view towards a ritualistic view according to the integrative philosophy informing the group ethos. Human social behaviour is cultural, that is, it is learned from other people in a social setting and this social setting must be defined and constructed in order that social behaviour can be taught.

In ''Mantle of the Expert", the social setting is created and social behaviour is modelled by the teacher (Teacher in Role), but as the system is organically structured, thus growing and generating its own developmental infrastructures, so too does cultural behaviour evolve through an interactionary agency with those structures. In this way what is "given" (the social setting, the dramatic metaphor) is directed towards a process where the ''given" evolves and branches outwards from its holding social centre to a "becoming giveness".

To briefly cite an example of her work, she might start with the process of image making, before introducing the children to the key area of the lesson where expertise will be endowed, she introduces the class to an "unlocking" process of their intuitive knowledge. This stage provides a

receptivity on the part of the children then for the next stage. She begins the lesson by imaging the following on the blackboard:

She allows the students time to digest this image. The class is invited to "turn your eyes inwards and conjure up pictures in your mind of this particular time". An example of this inner image-making is modelled by the teacher. She demonstrates this by articulating her inner act of seeing. She articulates her vision in the "here and now" stream of "now" time. It is by an imaginative leap of the mind integrated into the communicative texture of the interaction.

TEACHER: "I'm seeing a spear but I don't know how to draw it".

This is one stage in the induction towards image-making. The next stage that the teacher wants to achieve is the externalising of the image on paper.

TEACHER: I'll bring around paper and we'll see if we can draw about things, it doesn't matter if you are not good at it and while we're drawing we'll see the Bronze Age in our mind's eye and then the Stones will appear and we’ll look up and see that the Bronze Age is here.

This is the initial opening of a lesson and obviously no expertise has been endowed as yet, but the communication is one of induction towards an image of Bronze Ageness. The teacher at this stage refers to herself as one of the group. Reference to Stones here is in the context of six adults who were draped in black cloth and wearing stone coloured masks. Obviously, such a luxury would not be feasible to teachers, in such cases, inanimate objects would serve a similar purpose. Space does not allow me to develop this part of the lesson suffice it to say that the drawings were placed around the room and the children were invited to look at the gallery of drawings. Entry was made into symbolical representation of the gallery by a simple verbal suggestion on the part of the teacher - "Well we'll go on as if it is a gallery - do you think you could?" This suggestion is followed by the teacher modelling gallery behaviour simply by looking at childrens' images. There is no suggestion of, or expectation towards emoting behaviour. The symbolical level is in the mind and the object or task representing this level is externalised in the context of the work/task being explored. The symbolical level at this stage generates another stage in the inductory process and motivates a new perspective from which to input further knowledge.

Douglas Barnes comments on this aspect of making meaning with students to the effect that you cannot expect children to arrive at cognition without having travelled. Travel towards cognition it would seem is via an effective route. There were many more steps in this image making process but for the purpose of a brief illustration it can be said that it is an integrative part of this system and could be seen as the first enabling step to be taken in the dynamic pattern of this pedagogy.

The next stage of the drama is "Enabling Expertise". The teacher's material for this lesson is thirty application forms from thirty different people with letters attached to each pair of application forms. These were real letters that Heathcote got various people to write in response to the notice hereunder. The application forms are in sets of two, that is, from couples wishing to become members of a proposed Bronze Age Community Project which is being set up to provide research data for town planners and architects. The letters accompanying the application forms state the applicants' reasons for wishing to join the project. This twofold statement from proposed applicants provides two channels from which to examine their personalities; the letter accounting for the applicant’s own personal reasons and the application form requiring a formal accounting. The class was given the following document as explanation for the proposed project, this was also the document which advertised the project to the symbolical applicants.

NOTES TO GUIDE APPLICANTS

It is proposed to make a study of the ways in which a specific environment might affect the behaviour, attitudes, social living and ways of getting on together of a group of people who will agree to live as a Bronze Age community. The particular site of the village is close to a Megalithic formation of six standing stones and the people selected will have to live in close proximity to these and recognise how this may affect their daily living. They will, therefore, be interviewed at frequent intervals (still to be decided) so that evidence of the effects of the architectural environment may be collated.

This research ultimately is for the benefit of town planners and architects who must now begin to consider the ways in which strange environments may affect humans, e.g. living on space stations, new town centres with differing proportions of building and so on. The site will be prepared in advance as a Bronze Age site - all needs to begin the project will be provided, e.g.:

- Bronze Age tools and utensils.

- Yarns as necessary for fabric.

- Animals, fences, etc.

- Instruction in fencemaking, buildings suitable for the period and working with bronze etc. will be available before the date of formal commencement. Candidates should be available from (date). It is expected that successful applicants will be involved in the project until (date six years hence).

The students were to be the experts employed in and responsible for setting up this village, interviewing and selecting applicants which they deemed suitable but such an expertise had to be endowed upon them.

Hereunder is represented the opening stages of endowment of expertise. The documents at this stare have been passed out to the students and each pair of students is reading a set of application forms from an unknown couple. Then the teacher is satisfied that the students are involved in the activity of reading she creates the next frame whereby the work task of the application forms are framed in a meaningful convention.

TEACHER: As you can see Ladies and Gentlemen it is quite a problem. The Ministry has asked us if we can prepare this site and get it ready so that everything needed for a Bronze Age Village is available.

She is here introducing the formal/official history of the context and initiating proposed framework for negotiation. She continues in a conversational tone extending proposed framework into an active context implying that she is the linking agent between the Ministry and the Committee of Experts:

TEACHER: … So I said I didn't think people would be interested. Who would live there for six years? …And then they said… There is only one way to find out and that is to advertise. Now to our amazement people want to live in a community for six years.

She then comes out of role to renegotiate the working relationships of the group. This stage is spent in building the expertise of the group by suggestion as to what historical activity they might be engaged in.

The next stage of the drama is the sifting of the application forms:

TEACHER: I'd like you to make a judgement as to whether these people can stand up to the problems. You are the historians after all and archaeologists and so on. I have a feeling with your expertise, your experience of working abroad and so on you should be able to judge the letters of these people. If you spot any snags, put a note on the application form.

She has now fully endowed their expertise and they are now being led towards such expertise and enabled with the power to express it.

TEACHER: Has anybody got an application form from a builder or an architect?

The function of talk and task in this system can be seen as inseparable teaching tools which imperceptibly blend towards each other in their operations. However, at the level of planning the design of the task is uppermost in that it is the nature of this task that powers the talk. The task's function forms the seminal layer of the proposed course of study from which layer is generated further branching structures evolving toward a progressive complex of infrastructures. There were several more stages to this episodic drama which widened outwards to include geographical location, ecological systems of then and now, etc

• Defining Mantle of the Expert

Mantle of the Expert is a system enabling teaching and learning at all levels of the curriculum and integrating all areas of the curriculum. As a system of teaching its applicability covers all modes of institutions at all levels of society. It is a system of education that allows broad flexibility in its application. However, it does have its own law and authority both informing and generating the dynamic of its pedagogy. As a system of teaching it evolves its syllabus from the matrix of society. It is as a result of socially based, concentrating on groups of of people rather than on individuals. The group ethos is the norm by which the method progresses by way of interaction with work based tasks.

• The First Law of Mantle of the Expert

The communicative network is firmly based in its first enabling mechanism and that is that the teacher endows the class with the expertise of the field of knowledge that is being pursued. By this endowment the power is also placed with the group. The teacher by investing the group with expertise also becomes a member of the group by a democratic process of negotiation. In this case the group are expert historians who are setting up in the twentieth century (now time/actual time) a replica of a Bronze Age village and are about to select and interview and instruct people who have volunteered to live in this village. Having enabled a group of people with a given expertise, the teacher then structures educative processes whereby becoming more expert is enabled. The path towards knowledge is inducted by a refined embryonic process towards the realisation of this expertise.

• The Second Law of Mantle of the Expert

This stage involves applying the dramatic imagination to the employment of whatever social reality is to be symbolically represented in the class work. In this case the focus is seeking a site which the historians will select in order that the experiment in Bronze Age living will take place.

Tasks are the signposts which move the drama and are related to the given expertise. These tasks are worked through at the cognitive level but are introduced through the affective mode. It is through the affective mode in which the dramatic imagination builds the outer walls of the social structures from within which real learning evolves.

This discussion does not set out to explain the system of Dorothy Heathcote’s system of learning called "Mantle of the Expert". It does, however, humbly make the claim that her system does have its own vocabulary, it does have inherent in its pedagogy "A theory of communication" and "A theory of representing knowledge". It would appear that the theory of communication set up by her system in the most revolutionary aspect of this system in that she completely reverses the power balance. In traditional teaching situations normally, the expertise of the teacher dictates and ordains the communicative network that evolves and is sustained throughout the transmission of knowledge. Language researchers such is Edwards, Furlong and Barnes highlight:

that the forms of communication which predominate in classrooms make up a large part of what is learned there - and the inseparability of what is said and how it is said form the social relationship in which the speech is embedded.

In classrooms it is their position as knowledge experts which justify teachers in owning the interaction. To the extent that their expertise is acknowledged, they will be expected to do most of the talking themselves and to evaluate what is said by others. The transmission of knowledge creates and sustains very unequal communicative rights between teachers and learners. Pupils are too consistently treated as consumers of knowledge in a context where they have little status and few rights. A large group of pupils have to behave for considerable periods of time as one subordinate participant. Their main communicative role is to listen.(2)

 

Nicholson, C.K., Anthropology and Education. Charles E. Merrill, Columbus, Ohio.

Kardiner, A., Personal Character and Cultural Milieu. Essay: The Concept of Basic Personality Structure as an Operational Tool in the Social Sciences. P. 471.

Barnes, D., From Communication to Curriculum. Penguin (1976).

Barnes, D., Communication and Learning in small Groups. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London (1977).

Herbert, Phyl, M.Ed., "A Theory of Education as Presented Through the Drama Process THE MANTLE OF EXPERT." Newcastle-Upon-Tyne University, England (1982).

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