© Kamla-Raj 2014 Int J Edu Sci, 6(3): 459-468 (2014)

Engaged Pedagogy and Performative Teaching:Examples from Teaching Practice

Maheshvari Naidu

School of Social Sciences, Private Bag X54001, Howard College,University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Telephone: 0027 0716819496, E-mail: naiduu@ukzn.ac.za

KEYWORDS Learning. Education. University. Community. Praxis

ABSTRACT Effective and engaged teaching practices are those that recognise the importance of making realworld connections between the subject material taught, and the students’ experiences, through ‘engaged’ teachingand working to encourage the student to become reflexive and critical thinking societal participants. It is arguedthat meaningful teaching praxis or engaged pedagogy emanates from a teaching philosophy that is driven by thebelief that both teaching and learning are collaborative processes between the teacher and the student group. Bydrawing on experiences of teaching a large first year university Anthropology class (>550) and a smaller third yearAnthropology class (<90), the paper argues that one can use ‘performative teaching’ and ‘performance’ teachingas a praxis of ‘engaged pedagogy’. It is argued that such an approach assists in creating a classroom culture that issufficiently structured in that it allows one to guide learning of the curricular material, while still being flexibleenough to allow the class to follow the contours of a discussion that is organically prompted within the class. Suchan engaged pedagogy, the paper attempts to show, can articulate through replicable performative teaching practices1.

INTRODUCTION

To teach is to engage students in learning;thus teaching consists of getting students in-volved in the active construction of knowledge. . .The aim of teaching is not only to transmitinformation, but also to transform students frompassive recipients of other people’s knowledgeinto active constructors of their own and oth-ers’ knowledge. . . (David and Sweet 1991: 165).

This paper introduces a discussion on thetheoretical notion of ‘engaged pedagogy’ andworks with examples of ‘engaged pedagogy’ inthe context of particular teaching practices thatspeak to such an approach. The paper adds tothe work of writers such as Peterson (2009),Madge et al. (2009), Moen (2010) and Chahine(2013). These lineage of writers all draw, as doesthe researcher, on the foundational work of thefeminist writer bell hooks; her framework of‘teaching to transgress’ (hooks 1994) and herdiscussion and conceptualisation of an engagedpedagogy (see also later work by Smith et al.2005). Such an engaged pedagogy, bell hooksargues, allows the students in the classrooms tobe naturally facilitated into involving themselveswith real world issues within their own identifi-able and meaningful cultural contexts. ‘Engaged’pedagogy is also used here in the sense of aproblematic approach to teaching and learning

that does not compromise curriculum coherence,and yet lends itself to problem based or situa-tional and responsive issue driven teaching.While Murphy (2010) looks at engaged pedago-gy in the context of cultivating active citizen-ship within students, Madge et al. (2009) probethe notion of responsibility and responsibleteaching within a framework of engaged peda-gogy. Moen (2008), Peterson (2009) and Cha-hine (2013) likewise wrestle with engaged teach-ing and engendering social change and instill-ing the ability (in the student) to question thestatus quo. Engaged pedagogy, it is held, offersa strong theoretical scaffold for creative andembodied teaching techniques.

Madge et al. state that;Teaching techniques can be critically re-

imagined to include an experiential learningpedagogy… also the idea that learning is some-thing that is done to you, given to you, ratherthan something you co-create and exchange ina consciousness-raising process that involvesliteracy, reading, writing, action, reflection,self-awareness, relationship building, and rec-iprocity (Madge et al. 2009: 43).

This paper attempts to further the discus-sion on ‘engaged teaching’ by presenting exam-ples of what is seen as replicable teaching prac-tices that are based on such a pedagogical ap-proach. The paper is divided into two parts. The

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first part presents a particular teaching philoso-phy that is rooted in the theoretical elements of anengaged pedagogy. The second part presents ex-amples (in both large and small classrooms) of aperformative and ‘performance’ teaching that serveas examples of a replicable praxis in classrooms.

A TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

Teaching is a dialectic relationship and anattempt at a ‘sustained dialogue’ between self(teacher) and environment (student group). Giv-en this positioning, the objective becomes aboutteaching the students how to begin having thisconversation beyond the class confines, and,to push the students into analysing their ownexperiences. Teaching practices linked to such aphilosophy recognise the importance of makingreal world connections between the subject ma-terial taught and student experiences, and toencourage the student to become thinking soci-etal participants. Real world connections in thisinstance should, through the content and struc-ture of the various modules taught, and indeedthe manner in which the modules are taught, aimto ‘plug’ the student into contemporary global,and most importantly, local contexts. It is impor-tant, as McWilliam and Dawson (2008: 638) state,for “students to be ‘plugged into’ and mindfulof a ‘local neighbourhood’ and a larger world”.

Such a teaching praxis or pedagogy thusemanates from a particular teaching philosophy,and is driven by the belief that both teachingand learning are collaborative processes be-tween the teacher and the student group. Atboth the undergraduate levels and postgradu-ate levels, teaching ought to be a dynamic pro-cess entailing evolving a teaching and learningframework where the sharing of conceptual, the-oretical and methodological material is meant totake place. This is also a recognition that one ofthe many challenges in tertiary teaching, moreespecially for the South African context, (whichis the researcher’s geo-political location) is not‘covering’ (that is, merely teaching) the materialto the students; it is the ‘uncovering’ (that is,the act and art of learning) the material with thestudents (see Smith et al. 2005) so that they areushered into their own ongoing ‘engaged’ learn-ing. What this means in material and pedagogi-cal terms is that there is less content taught, andrather, much more conceptual engagement with

the theoretical and empirical content containedwithin the module.

Thus the imperative in teaching is to facilitatethe students in developing reasoning skills nec-essary for successful careers and for sustainingintellectual growth long after they have left theuniversity. This kind of teaching is far removedfrom a mechanistic understanding of education.And it is this kind of teaching that empowers thestudents to begin to see themselves as genera-tors of knowledge, able to intellectually confrontlocal societal and gender challenges.

Such a teaching philosophy (and resultingpraxis) works on tiered levels. On the one handis a particular understanding of teaching andlearning, and of ‘knowledge’ itself, as being sit-uational and contextual, that is, teaching that isaware of its ideological and pedagogical ‘loca-tion’. On the other hand, is the understandingthat students come from diverse educationalbackgrounds, that is itself symptomatic of a his-torically stratified access to educational train-ing and educational opportunity. Thus the im-perative is to be culturally and pedagogicallyattentive to the differential needs of studentsentering higher education. Responsible and in-clusive teaching has thus to be attentive to wid-er historical realities and socio-political mecha-nisms under which secondary education withthe former apartheid South Africa was structured,and is now repositioned.

The teacher’s responsibility is to create ademocratic classroom culture that is sufficientlystructured for the learning of the course materi-al, while still being flexible enough to allow eachclass to follow the contours of the discussion ofconcepts and theories that are spontaneouslyprovoked within the class. Teachers need to seethemselves as active learners who co-constructtheir understandings. Many learning theoriesthemselves are constructivist in nature, and viewlearners as active participants in the learningprocess. Moen’s (2008: 146) point that students“need to be given the opportunity to broadentheir own perspectives and bring in examplesfrom their everyday lives to relate to the issueunder discussion” is deceptively simple, in asmuch as it is critically important. This is alsoespecially vital given the varied demographicpersonality of the students in the classes. Assuch, these classes need to be approached assites of learning and cultural negotiation sensi-tive to one’s location.

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Moen goes on to add;The crucial issue here is to turn classrooms

into places where the accepted canons of knowl-edge can be challenged and questioned, theirconstruction seen not as a process of discover-ing universal and inevitable truths but ratheras a very particular process of knowledge for-mation and truth claims. Critical/engaged ped-agogy should seek not only to critique forms ofknowledge but also to work towards the cre-ation of new forms. By opposing knowledge asit is canonized in school subjects and academ-ic disciplines, by making the everyday and theparticular (that is, student culture and knowl-edge) part of a school curriculum, and by de-veloping forms of critical analysis, it should bepossible to encourage the emergence of alter-native forms of culture, knowledge, and inter-pretation of social phenomena (Moen 2008:141).

Teaching university classes in turn calls fora particular king of engaged pedagogy that em-braces not only ‘performative’ teaching (hooks1994) but also what the researcher refers to as‘performative elements’ within teaching, or per-formance teaching. These examples are present-ed as empirical references for creating a poten-tially “replicable pedagogical environment forcreative learning outcomes” (McWilliam andDawson 2008: 634).

TEACHING LARGE CLASSES: ‘PERFORMANCE’ TEACHING

The researcher turns now to the empiricalexample of teaching the large first year and small-er third year classes entitled; Anthropology 102:Culture and Society in Africa (ANTH 102) andAnthropology 301: Applied Anthropology (Hu-man Rights and Organ Trafficking) (ANTH 301).These modules were first taught in 2007/2008(ANTH 102), and in 2008/2009/2012 (ANTH 301)at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) inthe KwaZulu-Natal Province in South Africa,where the first year classes have annually num-bered around 600-700 students.

As examples of performance teaching, arecited certain ‘performance teaching’ acts. Theexamples offer a window into how teaching andlearning was designed in this particular largeclass context. The teaching praxis was cogn-isant of being situational and relevant, as wellas attempting to deconstruct what is a conven-

tional lecture mode format. While the lecturemode of teaching has its merits, especially inallowing material to be disseminated to largenumbers and on some levels allowing collectiveengagement, it is also austere in its non- partic-ipatory structure as education research hasshown. In the rather provocatively titled work‘Teaching with your Mouth Shut’, Finkel (2000)asserts that what is transmitted to studentsthrough lecturing is not retained for any sus-tained period. In addition, large, lecture classescreate a distance between the teachers and stu-dents where the teachers do not know their stu-dents, students feel little sense of responsibilityor accountability in class, and students do notretain the content of the lecture (see also Coo-per and Robinson 2002). Furthermore, lecturemode classes are not always effective in foster-ing knowledge transfer to new situations, criti-cal thinking and motivation for further learning.

Cognisant of all of the above, the researcherstructured the module, Culture and Society inAfrica to dovetail into a research project inPalaeo-heritage and the creation of ‘African iden-tities’. It was a year (2007) when new palaeo-fossils had been unearthed in the archaeologi-cal sites of Sterkfontein (a World Heritage Site)in the Gauteng province. The recent finds hadput South Africa, and local archaeological re-search back onto the global map. The then Statepresident Thabo Mbeki had co-opted the fossilfinds at the site into his African renaissance dis-course, reminding the world of scholars and layalike, that humanity and the beginnings of thehuman race could be traced back to SouthernAfrica as the ‘cradle of humankind’. The AfricanRenaissance was about reclaiming and resituat-ing the African identity back within a global con-text in reaction to decades of colonial subjuga-tion and control1.

Historically the curriculum of ANTH 102 wasan introductory level anthropology class andwas populated with content and material thatintroduced the first year anthropology studentsto constructed categories of ‘race’, ‘tribe’, and‘ethnicity’. The material and readings of themodule was however, restructured within thecourse, and the critical concepts of race, ethnic-ity etc., were re-constituted within a (situationaland relevant) discourse of palaeo and fossil her-itage and identity. These critical concepts werein turn taught and raised for discussion throughengaging performance acts that invited active

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participation from the students (notwithstand-ing the large size of the class).

Each ‘lecture’ was opened with a quick ‘whip’discussion session. In simple terms ‘whip’ re-fers to when a number of critical questions orthoughts relating to the work to be done in thatparticular period, would be written down on A4paper, crumpled into a ball and thrown randomlyto students across the class. The student whocaught the ‘ball’ would open the sheet and en-gage with the question, quite often in a theatri-cal fashion, and in turn generate a new snow-balled question that was again thrown random-ly. In this fashion issues were creatively andenthusiastically ‘whipped’ around the largeclass. The researcher’s own embodied presenceas teacher was maximised and all of the (large)lecture space was utilised, rather than merelythe lecture podium space at the front of the class.Thus using the lapel mike to full advantage, asteacher, the researcher was able to have a ‘feltpresence’ within the class and not remain lockedto merely the front space. This meant that quiteoften teacher-student could co-enact in in qua-si-theatrical fashion, any question or answer thatmight arise in class. This embodied irruption intothe ‘student space’ further blurred lines betweenteacher and student at the critical points there-by creating space and opportunity for collabo-rative learning.

Such a method invited the participation ofstudents beyond merely listening and takingdown notes. It also notionally and visibly shrankthe class. The researcher was able, through thistechnique to reach the students (within a classof over 500) who were even positioned at thevery back of the lecture hall. Students whocaught the ‘ball’ were also encouraged to throwthe crumpled paper behind them, in that way theresearcher was able to (literally stretch the teach-ing) and reach all the way up to the top and backof the room. This method ‘shrunk’ the size of thelecture hall, and functioned as a way to ‘reor-der’ in a sense, what would otherwise have beena conventional lecture mode of lesson delivery.

The students would also, during the courseof the unfolding lectures, be brought to the frontof the large lecture hall when issues of racialconstructs and identity markers were beingtaught. Students were asked to perform theirunderstandings of race and identity markers, andthese performances were then deconstructed indiscussion. Often students would take their cue

from an enactment of the teacher, or co-enactwith the teacher. In this way, the students weremade aware that this was a ‘safe space’ and thatthey were not being asked to do anything thatthe teacher was not herself prepared to attempt.Winners who best modelled their understand-ings were nominated and small token awardswere made. This was the pattern for much of themodule. Both the ‘whip’ method and the norma-tively positioned ‘modelling’ or identity maker‘enactments’ of racial/ethnic constructions al-lowed the researcher to begin the class with aheightened sense of expectation and readinessfor the students to delve deeper, and possibly,challenge themselves with the ideas that thematerial offered.

The ‘performance’ teaching and learning wasextended through the kind of module resourcesoffered to the student. As the course dealt withconstructed (and deconstructed) notions of ‘eth-nicity’ and ‘identity’, a specialist guest speaker,the South African palaeo-anthropologist Profes-sor Francis Thackeray, anthropologist and thethen curator of the Transvaal Museum, was in-vited from Gauteng. He brought with him scien-tifically scaled fossil replicas of early human andhuman ‘culture’ and further invited lively dis-cussions around notions of prehistoric, colo-nial and contemporary African identities. Thetalk itself was meant to have the students con-nect with the issues in the module, but beyondthe confines of the class and with outside prac-titioners such as the palaeo-anthropologist, Pro-fessor Thackeray.

His visit was advertised through a novelposter especially designed for the module. A minicompetition was held amongst the class fromwhich the advertising poster was chosen. Thisgenerated great excitement and ‘buzz’ amongstthe entire class. The winner was given a trophywhich she, together with class relished.

The entire course/module was billed arounda compulsory essay writing competition with alarge first prize of R1000 (approximately $100)courtesy of the Science and Technology (SAAS-TA) grant that the researcher had received. TheEssay (Topic: The Bones Say we are All Afri-can!) was a creative attempt at assessing thestudents’ grasp of the material taught, and theywere encouraged to write as creatively as themodule itself had been taught, and to use poet-ry, rap and other alternate modes of re-commu-nicating their understanding of, as well as

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challenging, the material. Based on their winningentries, the three winners had to further develop ashort enactment of their essay or rap/poetry infront of the class. This compulsory essay/rap/po-etry/song competition took the place of the forma-tive assessment of formal test and assignment.

It bears noting that the demographic make-up of the class was approximately 65 percentAfrican students over the years the module wastaught, with a substantial percentage beingisiZulu speaking students, students indigenousto the KwaZulu-Natal province. As these werefirst year ‘entry’ students, the discussions, to-gether with salient theoretical and empirical back-ground material on ‘ethnos’ and ‘race’, ‘identi-ty’, ‘heritage’ and being ‘African’, or being anisi-Zulu speaking African was experienced bythem as challenging to the many cherished con-ceptions that they had tenaciously clung to formany years. bell hooks (1994, 2009) of courserefers to this as ‘transgressive teaching’, wherethe teaching creates opportunity for the studentto transgress previous preconceptions and undopre-established thinking. Moen (2008: 140) pointsout that when we see schools and universities“not as sites where a neutral body of curricularknowledge” gets imparted, but rather as sitesand spaces where “critical/engaged pedagogy”can take place, we begin to usher in deeper pro-cesses of learning. For Moen (2008: 141) such ateaching space in turn becomes a “cultural andpolitical arena where different cultural, ideolog-ical, and social constructs are constantly instruggle”. This echoes Madge et al. (2009: 43)who expound on the concept of ‘knowledge inuse’ which holds that the “active constructionsof knowledge are needed as vehicles for the de-velopment of learning”. Feedback from the stu-dents indicated that they experienced it as some-what less threatening to engage in critiquingand re-thinking concepts fundamental to theirself-identity (race, ethnic group etc) through aperformative mode, that is, enacting or writing arap or creatively constructed essay that interro-gated cherished notions of race etc. They wereable to ‘transgress’ what they thought they knewand create opportunity for learning, in a mannerthat did not threaten who they felt they were(African or South African or who exactly was anAfrican etc.), and see through to the construct-ed-ness of the categories within a particular his-torical and neo-colonial context.

Teaching: Smaller Third Year Classes

The smaller third year Anthropology (ANTH301) class had the researcher revert to more ex-periential teaching. Much of the self reflectiontasks and engaged critical thinking through prob-lematic issue driven teaching could now returnto the smaller classroom as ‘engaged and sus-tained dialogue led teaching’ between studentand teacher.

Putnam and Borko (1997: 1225) advocate thatteachers should be seen as ‘active learners’, andas active participants in the learning process.Such teaching is seen as exploring ways of un-derstanding from particular perspectives andabout exploring conceptual change. The thirdyear classes, which in the last few years havenumbered under 90 students, lent themselves tomore dynamic and interactive engagements andstudent led discussions. The module entitled,‘Applied Anthropology was again (re)positionedto be situational and context specific, and wasthus designed in the context of ‘Human Rightsand Organ Trafficking’. The curriculum of themodule was structured and teaching materialfurther located within an African discourse ofso called muti or African medicine murders.These are ritualised killings within certain seg-ments of the community where it is culturallyunderstood that the organs of the ritually killed/sacrificed individual could be used to cure cer-tain ailments or effect magic and sorcery overindividuals. Such ritual killings were of courseillegal and considered inhumane within the SouthAfrican context. However, their occurrence, andthe beliefs around the social phenomena, per-sisted amongst rural communities. This was asocial reality that the students could identifywith, unlike for example, the rampant illegal kid-ney trade so common in European and Asiancontexts. The discussions on organ traffickingand ‘muti’ thus always drew strong critical reac-tions and responses from the students. The stu-dents were in turn prompted to further investi-gate concepts of human dignity and constitu-tional rights within African paradigms and un-derstandings of individual and group rights.

Discussion sessions (given that these aresmaller classes) were structured to be lively andactive. Current newspaper and magazine articlesand internet images were further used to triggerand provoke response, discussion and most

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importantly, embodied enactments and stagingof the news events. Many short video docu-mentaries, relevant to the experiences of the stu-dents, were in turn integrated into the teachingto stimulate discussion.

Again the ‘whip’ method was used to havethe students write down provocative discussionthreads/questions on a piece of ‘balled’ up pa-per and randomly thrown into the class. Thestudent catching the ‘ball’ had to un-wrap thequestion (literally), and further ‘unwrap’ andunpack his/her response to the initiated discus-sion. As the classes were small, this helped morequickly construct an egalitarian learning spacewhere students (even the quieter and shy ones)were prompted into contributing in an organicmanner, where they were in control of how thediscussion developed. This speaks to a feministpedagogy of equalising the power betweenteacher and student and contributing to a cre-ative learning space that further attests to thestudents’ enjoyment of the lively classes.

There were also quite emphatically no blue-print answers, or one normative answer of whatwas accepted as being ‘correct’, and the stu-dents were made aware of this. Students weremade clear that the point of such a teaching praxiswas meant for them to grapple with the issuesraised, in terms of their own perspectives andunderstandings against the landscape of thematerial taught. These sessions generated live-ly discussions and oral contributions from thestudents. The discussions in turn assisted mein building an evolving profile of the class’ un-derstanding of the module on a daily and week-ly basis over the course of the module.

Perhaps the aspect most enjoyed by the classwas the weekly enactment sessions. Here groupswere tasked to script and enact short scenesinvolving human rights issues using materialfrom class readings and discussion. They wereallowed to bring in ‘cultural props’ or creativeartefacts to incorporate within their performanc-es. These performances around human rightsissues were deconstructed by the class in termsof their own frames of references and their ownsituated experiences as students living withinSouth Africa. Such an approach, it is believed, isgrounded in socio-cultural theories of learningthat contend that human development is found-ed upon social interaction in cultural practicesthat are mediated by the use of creative culturalartefacts and tools (Olson and Clark 2009: 216).

In these instances student feedback indicated ahighly positive response for the kind of teach-ing and learning that took place in the classes22

It bears noting that the conscious delimitedfocus of this paper was on praxis. To this endresponses regarding the teaching and learningexperience in the class were gathered in the formof a survey questionnaire and interviews. It isrecognised however, that a qualitative and quan-titative analysis of those responses as well as aquantitatively structured study into gaugingstudent responses against student outcomes ofexamination results, are potentially rich avenuesfor future follow up research.

Replicable Practices and the TheoreticalFramework of Engaged Pedagogy

The approach to teaching and teaching praxissketched in the paper is not without theoreticaland practical antecedents. bell hooks (1994) de-scribed teaching as a performative act whichoffers most readily spaces to enact change, andshifts that can enhance the students as humanbeings. Likewise, in her ground breaking essayalmost two decades ago, ‘Teaching Is Perfor-mance: Reconceptualising a Problematic Met-aphor’ (1994), Elyse Lamm Pineau, who is anassociate professor in the Department of SpeechCommunication at Southern Illinois University,makes the connections between performanceand pedagogy in the areas of instructional nar-rative, and critical pedagogy. Pineau (1994: 111)illustrates that the locus of power in performa-tive pedagogy, in both classroom practices andpedagogical theory, is capable of further ‘flat-tening’ power differentials between teacher andstudent, and flattening boundaries between thevital social and educational contexts. It is a crit-ical pedagogy that attempts to re-inscribe dif-ferences in power, to help create a more demo-cratic and emancipatory classroom environment.

The performative aspect of teaching com-pels one to engage ‘audiences’, in other wordsthe students. Although a challenge in large (andnoisy!) classes, these alternate approaches arepossible if we were to eliminate the need for stu-dents having to take down large chunks of notes,and spend that time inviting the students to en-gage with the visual material presented, and witha discussion of concepts raised through inno-vative performative or performance teachingacts. Performative practices reference a ‘doing’

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that takes place in the construction of class-room knowledge. Louis (2002: 101) points outthat performative pedagogy concerns the ac-tion taken within the classroom to constructknowledge and the contingent process that suchactions invoke, rather than (merely) the dramat-ic or performative manner in which informationis stated. The ‘performative’ and ‘performance’within performative pedagogy is thus claimedas marking education as, both, a process of do-ing (of creating knowledge) and the embodied,performance-inspired means by which such do-ing occurs (by the teacher).

Louis (2002) spells out a clear description ofapproaches to performative, and performancebased pedagogy within the wider social sciencesubjects; asserting that the performative modeallows for teachers and students alike to con-sider how their lives are constructed via ongo-ing, embodied, performative practices. Louis alsopoints out that a performative mode of engage-ment uses classroom methods that privilege andengage the socio-historically contingent bod-ies of participants (students and teachers) inthe classroom (Louis 2002: 106).

The pedagogical significance of performa-tive teaching and performance teaching needsadditionally to be contextualised within recentshifts in scholarly attention-away from tradition-al lecture mode teaching, to more innovativeways of engaged teaching and deep learning.Deep learners it is said (Marton and Saljo 1976),read for overall understanding and meaning whilesurface learners focus on stand-alone, discon-nected facts and rote memorization. The praxisof engaged pedagogy for deep learning, is itselfcast against a particular philosophy of teachingand learning as being a dialectic relationshipbetween student and teacher, and attempting tomake real world connections. By workingthrough the examples of teaching within the twoanthropology modules as “purposeful reflectivepractice” (Kane et al. 2004: 284) the paper at-tempted to show how creative teaching and(deep) learning spaces through creative andembodied teaching can be engendered. It is be-lieved that such creative spaces also opens up apotential theoretical space for responding to thelimits and theoretical impasses that exist in con-temporary visions of (a positivistic) pedagogy.

A relatively high number of academics seethemselves as experts in their discipline and hold

canonised content-oriented conceptions ofteaching. As Kember asserts, it can then be dif-ficult to persuade them to adopt forms of teach-ing incorporating active student engagement,“even though there is evidence for the effec-tiveness of such forms of learning” (Kember2009: 1). Signature pedagogies (see Gurung etal. 2009) that is, ‘disciplinary habits of teaching,while important in some respects, can also berestrictive and limiting, especially within multi-ple classroom dynamics; large sizes, varied de-mographics, stratified and differentially empow-ered students coming in, etc. Thus, while wemay well opt for such signature pedagogies inshaping what and how we teach and transmitknowledge and ways of thinking specific to ouracademic disciplines, we need to be even morecognisant of who we are teaching. What is need-ed (especially in the larger classes) is thus amore innovative lecturing format that is capableof allowing collective engagement. While sig-nature pedagogies present vital insights fromdisciplinary teaching habits, it is just as vital, ‘tobreak’ with habit, in order to generate new andrich ways of ‘doing teaching’ which may chal-lenge the “traditional understandings that are inevidence in the work of academic teachers”(McWilliam and Dawson 2008: 638).We are re-minded of Koestler’s (1994: 96) wonderful defi-nition of creativity as ‘the defeat of habit byoriginality’!

Applied to the classroom, Ross McKeehenLouis (2002: 110) points out that performativeplay disrupts traditional pedagogical practicesby privileging experimentation, innovation, cri-tique, and subversion. Louis further claims, quiterightly, that a performative pedagogy (Louis 2002:109) further recognizes the processual tenden-cy within the classroom. As a process, one canrecognise that so too, pedagogy should unfoldand respond to the needs of the students.

Lessinger (1979: 4) asserted some time ago,that teaching is an act of performance; assertingthat in order to be a better teacher, one must firstbecome a better performer. When one casts one’smind back to the kind of lessons and teachers,best remembered in terms of the meaningfulnessof the teaching and material taught, one cannotbut agree. In this kind of pedagogy, teachers aremore likely to be successful because they useperformance to generate an emotional environ-ment in which students acquire knowledgethrough the expression of feeling, as opposed

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to only cognitive assimilation. Rocklin (1990: 153)writing more than a decade after Lessinger, alsocalled for teachers to opt for performance as ateaching methodology because it pushes stu-dents to participate in a dramatic experience thatmight reactivate a natural sense of curiosity,energy, and hunger for learning that many sec-ondary level school systems so effectively teachto suppress. Recognising that an important dif-ference between theatre and education lay inthe role of the respective audiences, Louis Ru-bin reminded us that the student is a co-per-former rather than a vicarious onlooker (Rubin1985: 116). This ‘respective audience’ as the stu-dent and co-performer-should be seen, as Cha-hine (2013: 23-24) informs us, “as whole humanbeings with complex lives and experiences rath-er than simply as seekers after compartmental-ised bits of knowledge.”

All of the writers referred to, one confesses,are scholars from some time ago. However, theirassertions hold potency and value in currentteaching and critical pedagogical approaches.What they appear to be describing, are the nu-ances of an engaged and critical pedagogy. Theimplementation of engaged pedagogy fosterscritical thinking skills and the ability to developone’s knowledge (for the teacher/lecturer) ac-cording to the perspective of others (students).This approach is what bell hooks (2009: 10) calls“radical openness”. Teachers can thus elicit morefrom their students than a mere mechanical re-gurgitation of material. There is a need to mili-tate against the potential “fear of not coveringenough material” which may well restrict us interms of what we offer in our teaching instead ofletting and trusting the “the mood of the class”in deciding how and what to do next (see Cha-hine 2013: 25). Granted this fear is possibly morerealistically confronted in smaller classroomswhere the numbers are still manageable for suchan organic feedback from the students them-selves. It is more challenging in larger class-rooms, but not impossible.

One adds though, that the success of en-gaged pedagogy (in large or small classrooms)is contingent upon both parties’ (student’s andthe teacher’s) willingness to participate in criti-cal thinking and reciprocal interaction (hooks1985: 19). Performative pedagogy within anengaged pedagogical context, supplants “in-formation-dispensing” with the negotiation andenactment of possible knowledge claims. ‘Per-

formance’ reframes the whole educational en-terprise as an ongoing ensemble of narrativesand performance, rather than a linear accumu-lation of isolated, discipline-specific competen-cies (Pineau 1994: 10) and points well beyondany impoverished sense of performance whichdiminishes the complexity of educational inter-actions. Performative pedagogy concerns theaction taken within the classroom to co-con-struct knowledge and the contingent processthat such action invokes, rather than the dra-matic manner in which information is stated (seeLouis 2002: 101). Performative pedagogy alsooperates as a contested concept, in part becauseof the wide appropriation of performance intoclassroom practices and theorising. Both theseattributes however, enrich performative peda-gogy as they insure the possibility for re-inven-tion and debate in the classroom practices ofeducators (Louis 2002: 101).

There is at present a platform of scholarshipthat is making it possible to foster creative teach-ing and learning (see Lima et al. 2002; Smith et al.2005; Browne 2005; Madge 2009; Murphy 2010;Berry 2010; Danowitz and Tuitt 2011). Moreover,discussions of performance and pedagogy (asthe above writers illustrate) need not be con-fined to a single academic discipline. Varied ap-plications of performance to pedagogical theo-ry and practice emerge from varied disciplines.Performative pedagogy speaks to a particulardegree of corporeal performance, and performa-tive pedagogy emerges from scholarly concernwith process and embodied action (Louis 2002:100). This framework helps to “unsettle the bi-naries between taught and teacher” and the “lim-inalities of the boundaries” (Madge et al. 2009:43) between teacher and student, without sur-rendering the incumbent responsibilities of ei-ther category.

Significant within this kind of effective ped-agogy is the contention by McWilliam and Daw-son (2008: 637) that it is the community, not theindividual that is the unit of analysis into howcreativity gets fostered (see also Perterson 2009;Murphy 2010). According to these scholars, thecreative process with education and the teach-ing in classrooms at tertiary level, is complex,including as it does the cultural order (domain)and the social order (field) which interact, andwithin which humans interact. According tothem, it is at the knitted intersection of theseinteractions that creative enterprise emerges.

ENGAGED PEDAGOGY AND PERFORMATIVE TEACHING 467

McWilliam and Dawson (2008: 638) give us thecogent reminder that there is much that “mili-tates” against the ‘emergence’ of such “creativecapital” from higher education learning environ-ments, as they currently exist. They point towhat they see as the resilience of the ‘lecture’,the ubiquitous culture of one dimensional ‘trans-mission’ of information and “the hard-wiring ofdisciplinary boundaries” (McWilliam and Daw-son 2008: 638), as some of the restrictive factors.All of this needs to be interrogated for furtherdevelopment in engaged teaching and learning,for both student and teacher.

CONCLUSION

The examples of ‘performance teaching’ thathave been presented, it is contended, offer in-sights, crucial for rethinking the epistemologi-cal premises of an effective and creative peda-gogy. They are not blind however, to the com-plexities and challenges involved in such a ped-agogical shift. However, it is held that engagedpedagogy offers a rich and valuable theoreticalscaffold for supporting the framework of perfor-mative and performance teaching that is able tofoster an emotional as well as a cognitive envi-ronment for collaborative learning. Within theteaching and learning context, the (potential)interactive collaborative space is the classroom.However, this potential is more fully actualisedwithin innovative creative teaching (such asperformance teaching), which allows for stu-dents to make real world local and global con-nections with what is taught.

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