Volume/Jahrgang XIV, Issue/Ausgabe 2 (2020)

https://doi.org/10.33178/scenario.14.2.1

Teaching Through Performing Arts in Higher

Education: Examples in Engineering and
Psychology
Laure Kloetzer, Simon Henein, Ramiro Tau, Susanne Martin, Joëlle Valterio

This paper introduces two courses making use of performing arts at university level. The first
course, taught by Prof. Simon Henein and his colleagues, called Improgineering, aims to teach
collective creation through improvisation to master’s degree students in engineering at the
EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland). The second course, taught by
Prof. Laure Kloetzer and her colleagues, aims to introduce the Psychology of Migration via a
sociocultural approach to bachelor’s degree students in psychology and education at the
University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland). After briefly introducing the topic of performing arts in
higher education (section 1), the paper offers a description of the two courses (sections 2 and
3). These are complemented by teachers’ and students’ impressions of the course, as analyzed
from individual interviews, focus groups and students’ learning diary entries (section 4). The
conclusion presents some reflections on the convergences of the pedagogical designs of the
courses, drafting a pedagogical model for using performing arts within higher education
(section 5).

1 Performing arts in higher education

While it is true that teaching can be considered a performing art (Sarason 1999; Whatman
1997; Bale 2020), the use of performing arts strategies in education has given rise to a fruitful
and increasingly sophisticated field of work and reflection. In fact, the use of performing arts
has been expanding quickly at primary (Schonmann 2011), secondary (Harland et al. 2000,
Motos 2009) and tertiary education levels (García 2004; Jogschies et al. 2018). In addition,
many authors have pointed out the relevance of performing arts for child development
(Daykin et al. 2008; Goldstein & Winner 2012; MacDonald et al. 2020) in terms of different
psychological and social aspects. Pioneering work in this field has been conducted, and
continuous improvements have been made, in the domain of teaching foreign languages
(Blanch 1974; Via 1976; Giebert 2014; Stern 1980; Richards & Rodgers 1986), an approach that
continues to this day (Galante & Thomson 2017; Guttiérez 2004; Mentz & Fleiner 2019;
Piazzola 2018). In parallel, theater, music and improvisation have been used as resources for
teaching subjects as diverse as history (Taylor 2008), mathematics (Smith 1998), civic
education (Pellegrino et al. 2010), social science (Gravey et al. 2017), archeology (Trimmis &
Kalogirou 2018) or medicine (Hooker & Dalton 2019).

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Kloetzer, Henein, Tau, Martin, Valterio: Teaching Through Performing Arts in HE

However, it is not simple to historicize the educational uses of performing arts because,
among other reasons, there is no clear agreement about what art is, and the labels used to
describe the strategies deployed in the classroom proliferate without clear definitions.
Following Oreck, we can recall some of the classic discussions on this subject:

John Dewey (1934, 1958) placed the arts within the realm of experience as
opposed to product. For Dewey, the sources of artistic experience were
found in everyday life and were a central educational value (Jackson 1998).
According to Dewey, the nature of the experience – the process itself, and
its aesthetic qualities – identifies an experience as artistic. Vygotsky (1971)
agreed, writing, “Art is a method of experiencing the making of a thing, but
what is made is of no import in art” (p. 57). For many artists, aestheticians,
and art historians, art exists, “not in objects, but in a way of seeing”
(Weschler & Irwin 1982: 186). This broader view of art is also widely applied
to teaching. Gage (1978) calls teaching a “practical art… a process that calls
for intuition, creativity, improvisation and expressiveness” (p. 15). Dewey
believed that the teacher’s status as an artist is “measured by his ability to
foster the attitude of the artist in those who study with him” (1933: 288).
(Oreck 2006: 3).

Moreover, in addition to the different perspectives on the educational uses of the arts – and
the performing arts in particular – there are also great variations in the specific activities
employed (Redington 1983). Indeed, the strategies used in the classroom differ substantially
for different reasons. On the one hand, the artistic disciplines from which strategies are taken
are multiple, including theater, dance and music, with different variations and hybridizations
for each one. At the same time, the typical techniques in each of these domains have different
roots and specific traditions. However, regarding this diversity of definitions and performative
resources, we would like to point out that it is possible to recognize a continuum, with two
main poles, when considering the function that these adopted strategies have in the
educational process.

The performing arts can be used as one additional tool among others. In this case, the general
curricular design remains traditional, but with the addition of certain “artistic moments”. This
is the case, for example, for literature classes in which certain classical plays are dramatized,
or for language courses in which songs or roleplays are used in the target language to
motivate, entertain, inspire or simply to include a specific aesthetic dimension. At the other
end of the spectrum are those strategies that call on the performing arts to structure – or
deconstruct – the entire curricular design. Here we are no longer dealing with just another
teaching resource among others. In these cases, the use of performing arts much more radical,
as it is the core of the activities. In this way, relationships between peers and between
teachers and students, as well as the evaluation modalities and content organization, are
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completely transformed. Between both extremes it is possible to recognize a continuum with

intermediate proposals.

In Switzerland, the tradition to teach with performing arts is not widespread. A recent paper
reports that “although theater or drama are not a school subject at Swiss Elementary Schools,
a wide variety as well as a large number of theater projects are on offer” (Sack et al. 2019: 61)
– mostly inspired by passionate teachers with a personal taste for performing arts thanks to
the “curriculum 21” transdisciplinary projects in the German-speaking schools, and linked to
after-school activities in the French-speaking part. The same authors report that “competence
centres of theatre education (Theaterpädagogik) exist at five Universities of Education,
offering assistance to teachers in the conceptualizing, planning and realizing phases of
theatrical projects” (Sack et al. 2019: 65), whose academic staff have received proper training
in the field of acting and performing arts. At the University level, the use of performing arts
seems to contradict the expectations of standard pedagogy. The authors add that “in the
current context informed by the Bologna reform and by general societal trends towards
measurable and efficient learning outcomes, the professionals involved in theatre education
at the Universities of Education experience difficulties in meeting the challenge of keeping
open spaces for the exploration towards (self) discoveries and for the creation of the
unconditioned aesthetic experiences” (Sack et al. 2019: 65).

We will now present two teaching settings that try and create such open spaces for
exploration, representing two variants within the continuum described above in the context
of University teaching in Switzerland. We will then reflect on their similarities and differences
in order to highlight key directions and conditions for expanding the use of performing arts in
Higher Education.

2 Teaching engineering through performing arts

2.1 Origin of the project and pedagogical goals of the course

Since obtaining his Ph.D. in Microengineering in 2000, Simon Henein has become a recognized
leader in the design of novel mechanisms with sophisticated dynamic properties, dedicated
to mechanical watches, surgical instruments and aerospace applications. His related
undergraduate and graduate teaching focuses on micromechanical design, with an emphasis
on the creative process. In parallel, he developed a strong interest in improvised arts,
particularly in instant composition dance 1. He participated in numerous workshops led by

1
Santos, M. S. C. (2017). Instant composition: choreographic training of the dance artist and his corporeality.
Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença, 8(1), 167–93
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internationally renowned improvisers, developed his own artistic practice and founded a
dance company in 2013. His experience in these two creative disciplines allowed him to
identify a powerful synergy: improvisation as an efficient technique for developing collective
work approaches, reflexivity, situated knowledge and embodied cognition. He successfully
exploited this synergy in his role as an engineer directing research projects, while employed
as Head of the Micromechanical and Horological Design Laboratory at EPFL (Ecole
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland). Based on this experience, he initiated, in
2017, a new course bridging the engineering and humanities faculties at the EPFL, entitled
Collective Creation: Improvised Arts and Engineering 2 (also known as “improgineering”). This
elective year-long course is part of EPFL’s Social and Human Sciences program.

The Improgineering course examines the creative processes in science, engineering and the
performing arts. The pedagogical goals of the course are to develop students’ listening and
expressive capabilities in order to strengthen their collective creative potential. The approach
involves the student learning some of the improvisation techniques used in the performing
arts (dance, music, theater) and relating them to the design techniques used in engineering.

The following learning objectives are mentioned in the official course description: comparing
the improvisation techniques of various performing arts; explaining the similitudes and
differences between these techniques and the practices of engineering; presenting live shows;
developing one’s scenic presence; and analyzing performances in terms of dramaturgy, space,
time and audience interaction.

The first editions of the course led to a video clip 3 presenting the course (a joint EPFL and
Arsenic theater press release 4), and the publication of a collective booklet 5 presenting the
course from the teachers’ and students’ points of view.

2.2 Structure of the Improgineering course

The course is open to all first-year master’s degree students. Classes are held once a week
throughout the academic year. The number of participants is limited to 25, in order to be
compatible with the size of the studios and to allow the creation of a “tight” group of students.
Registration is on a “first come, first served basis” once the online registration portal opens,
approximately one month before the semester starts. The course is supported and hosted by

2
Improgineering – Collective Creation: Improvised Arts and Engineering. In:
https://instantlab.epfl.ch/improgineering/.
3
https://vimeo.com/281099868.
4
https://instantlab.epfl.ch/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Improgineering_Communiqu_FR.pdf.
5
https://instantlab.epfl.ch/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/improgineering_180x250_26.04.18_extrait.pdf.
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the Centre d’art scénique contemporain (Arsenic theater 6) in Lausanne, a well-known

incubator of contemporary performing arts.

Attending the course is voluntary, as with all other courses at EPFL. Regarding attendance rate,
on average approximately 80% of the students present at each class. Participation in the
workshops is also voluntary: the students who are present can attend workshops just by
watching them, without participating actively, and can retract from the workshops at any time
if they wish (in practice such situations have happened only on very rare occasions). Students
work in groups formed freely.

Fig. 1: Structure of the Improgineering course, consisting of twenty-eight 3-hour weekly blocks spread over two 14-week
semesters.

2.2.1 First semester

During the first semester, the workshops explore improvisation in dance, theater, music and
performance art. Additional lectures cover the dramaturgy and sociology of improvisation,
improvisation in engineering design, and creativity in science.

The content of the first semester is distributed over fourteen 3-hour weekly blocks, following
the structure presented in Figure 1. The teachers are Danielle Chaperon 7, Alain Bovet 8, Simon

6
https://arsenic.ch.
7
Professor of Dramaturgy and Director of the Centre for Theater Studies at the University of Lausanne.
8
Professor of Communication at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland.
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Henein 9 and Ilan Vardi 10 for the four theoretical blocks (T1-T4), and Isabelle Bouhet 11, Simon
Henein, Jacques Bouduban 12 and Joëlle Valterio 13 for the workshops.

Fig. 2: Photograph taken during the Performance practical workshop (W4) during a collective improvisation moment where
chairs were used as artifacts. (Credits: Instant-Lab, EPFL).

2.2.2 Second semester

During the second semester, which is also distributed over fourteen 3-hour weekly blocks (see
Figure 1), students work in fixed groups of three to five towards an improvised performance
based on physical artifacts they have created, with the goal being to explore creativity in
engineering and improvisation. The only constraints are the following: the duration of the
performance is 12 minutes; all performers are physically present on stage during most of this
duration; actions performed on stage are improvised; an artifact designed and realized by the
students is present on stage; and the installation and removal of the artifact from the stage
lasts less than 2 minutes to allow for the continuous presentation of all performances in a row.

Two 3-hour workshops at the beginning of the semester focus on reactivating the practical
learnings of the first semester. The first one, entitled Dancing with Real Bodies, is given by

9
Professor of Microengineering at EPFL, Director of the Micromechanical and Horological Design Laboratory at
EPFL, and dancer with Compagnie L’Âme-de-Fonds.
10
Mathematician and Senior Scientist at the Micromechanical and Horological Design Laboratory, EPFL.
11
Actor and theater director (Conservatoire Francis Poulenc, Tours, France).
12
Independent cellist, composer and actor.
13
Performance artist (Master’s in Contemporary Arts Practice from Bern University of Arts, and Certificate of
Advanced Studies in Dramaturgy from University of Lausanne).
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Susanne Martin 14. Based on contact improvisation 15, it focuses on physical touch as a means
for collective action. The second one, entitled Immersion Workshop, is given by Alexandra
Macdonald 16 and Mathieu Schneider 17. It focuses on the creation of short, instant composition
pieces based on improvised movement and improvised music.

Ten 3-hour blocks are dedicated to the creation of students’ performance pieces. The blocks
include five 1-hour workshops; these are led by each group of students to involve the rest of
the class in each ongoing piece creation and to collect feedback. During this whole period, the
groups are coached by several performance artists 18 from the Arsenic theater, as well as other
artists who give them creative support. The course culminates with two public performances
presented in one of the Arsenic theater studios, with basic theater lighting and an audience
of approximately 60 persons. The first public performance is called a “Dress Rehearsal”; the
second one is called the “Final Performance” and is evaluated by a jury.

Fig. 3: Photograph taken during the final public performance presented at the Arsenic theater on 23 May 2018: one of the
six groups of students is improvising with a wooden articulated artifact. (Credits: Instant-Lab, EPFL).

14
Artist, researcher, and teacher in the field of contemporary dance and performance, who holds a Ph.D in artistic
research from Middlesex University, UK.
15
Contact improvisation is a specific practice and technique within dance improvisation, focusing on touch and
weight exchange.
16
Former dancer of the Cie Alias (Guiherme Botelho) company and yoga teacher.
17
Flautist and music teacher at Conservatoire de musique neuchâtelois in Neuchâtel (Switzerland) and at the
Haute Ecole de Musique (HEMU) in Lausanne (Switzerland).
18
Including Maud Blandel (dancer), Tiphanie Bovay-Klameth (actor), Audrey Cavelius (actor), Pamina de Coulon
(performer), Claire Dessimoz (dancer), Christophe Jaquet (actor), Nicole Seiler (choreographer) and Immanuel de
Souza (musician).
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Fig. 4: Photograph taken a few minutes after the final public performance presented at the Arsenic theater on 22 May 2019,
during the discussion between the jury, the students and the public. (Credits: Instant-Lab, EPFL).

2.3 Evaluation in the Improgineering course

Course evaluation is based on three deliverables: an individual reflexive diary (assessed in four
parts over the full academic year), an oral group presentation answering one of the questions
stemming from the theoretical blocks, and a 12-minute, on-stage, public, improvised group
performance presented at the end of the year. These deliverables are described in more detail
below.

Firstly, the students are asked to write a reflexive diary during the two semesters, equating to
approximately one A4 page per week (optional annexes such as drawings, photographs and
recordings are welcome). The time dedicated to this work, according to the study plan, is 2.5
hours per week. The diary is described to the students as follows: “The role of the Reflexive
Diary is to think about what you experience and learn during the course; as one can think out
loud, one can think through writing. The style is free and personal and does not need to be
achieved or polished. It is important not to delete text as you write, but always add, even if
this sometimes leads to contradictions. It is not a report about what has happened during the
class, but a trace of your own learning process and associated reflections.” Examples of
questions are also proposed, including: “What have I learned?,” “Which details within the
exercises touched me, interested me, perturbed me, disturbed me, appealed to me most?,”
“Which resistances did I encounter and which strategies did I use to overcome them?,” “How
could what I learned be useful for my future profession or for my life in general?,” “What do I
find beautiful, poetic, fragile, banal, strong, interesting?” and “How did I solicit my body
consciousness during the exercises?”. Figure 5 is presented to the student in order encourage
them to sweep their foci of attention over the various fields of the teaching events.

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Kloetzer, Henein, Tau, Martin, Valterio: Teaching Through Performing Arts in HE

Fig. 5: Illustration of some of the foci which can be used while writing the diaries: “what you think; your immediate
environment; the others; the material taught; the teachers; the far-away environment; the world.”

The evaluation criteria for the diaries concern the diversity of the foci, the finesse of the
observations and analyses, and the progression between the parts of the diaries following
teachers’ feedback. In the middle of the semester, individual meetings are organized between
each student and one of the two main teachers in order to provide feedback about the way
they write in their reflexive diaries.

Secondly, at the end of the first semester, the students form groups of three and give a 12-
minute oral presentation in front of the rest of the class, during which they answer a question
formulated by the teachers of the theoretical blocks. The students’ oral presentations are
based on a question suggested by the teachers in the first semester; for example, “Which
function(s) can an artifact have within an improvisation regime as defined in this course?,”
“How does a collective improvisation differ from an individual improvisation?” or “Can
creativity be taught?”.

The structure of the presentation consists of contextualization of the question based on: the
content of the respective theoretical block; discussion of the question and its relevance in the
frame of the Improgineering course; and discussion of the question and its relevance in the
frame of the students’ studies and future profession. The evaluation criteria for the oral
presentations are: the clarity of the contextualization; the richness and pertinence of the
external references; the richness and pertinence of the students’ own contributions; and the
balance of speaking time among the three group members.
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Thirdly, the final performance is evaluated by a jury (50% of the grade) as well as the two main
teachers (50% of the grade) according to the following general criteria: spatial dimension of
the performance; rhythmic dimension of the performed actions; sound dimension of the
performance; integration of the artifact within the piece; visual or graphical aspects of the
performance; and pertinence of the text written to present the piece to the audience prior to
the showing.

3 Teaching psychology of migration through performing arts

3.1 Origin of the project and pedagogical goals of the course

Laure Kloetzer’s PhD, obtained in 2008, was in the field of sociocultural psychology; that is,
psychology focusing on human development in social contexts, especially on the interplay of
micro-, onto- and socio-genesis. Key aspects of studies in sociocultural psychology include
human subjectivity, social interactions, cultural mediations, sociomateriality and institutional
dynamics. Laure Kloetzer joined the Institute of Psychology and Education (IPE), University of
Neuchâtel, in 2015 as Assistant Professor. There she met many colleagues deeply invested in
their teaching, who were developing a critical reflection on their own practice, and creating
new ideas to improve the teaching and learning process. The institution also offered some
space for innovation in pedagogy, thanks to its support of “innovative pedagogical projects”.

Within the IPE, Laure Kloetzer and her colleagues experimented with new boundary-crossing
learning activities with the students, inspired by the notion of third or transitional spaces. For
example, some of the individuals designed a course to teach the basics of the theory and
practice of sociomateriality in education. In this course, hands-on activities were organized
jointly by teachers and students, including two workshops geared to children (aged 4-
11 years) and their parents, in which the participants were involved in creating musical
instruments and inventing figurines' means of transportation (Cattarruzza et al. 2019).

As the University of Neuchâtel was involved in a National Center of Competence research

program on the mobility-migration nexus (called NCCR – On the Move), Laure Kloetzer and
Gail Womersley engaged in teaching a new course called Psychology of Migration. This course
introduces bachelor’s degree level students to the psychology of migration from a
sociocultural perspective. The course description explains:

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Kloetzer, Henein, Tau, Martin, Valterio: Teaching Through Performing Arts in HE

Migrants’ mental health is affected by many factors related to pre-migratory

experiences as well as conditions for adapting to the host country. The
interaction between these factors evolve in time, with moments of relative
balance or moments of ruptures and crises. To allow students to understand
and appropriate as much as possible the content of the course, we use two
main pedagogical resources: on one hand, selected readings, on the other
hand, theater games and the collective creation of a short performance,
based on fiction books describing the subjective experience of migration.

The idea of using performing arts in teaching came from an initial concern about studying such
delicate issues: it should not be purely intellectual, far from political implications and
participants’ lived realities. The goal of the course is, therefore, to introduce students to the
psychology of migration in a way that enables them to connect the scientific theories, models
and concepts with their everyday life and human sensitivity. Collective discussions, the
construction of a short play and engagement of the students’ bodies through theater, prevent
them from keeping a purely “Sirius view” on the topic, and force them to engage their thinking
with the subjective experience of migration in its sociopolitical context.

Therefore, the pedagogical goals of the course are to learn key concepts and theories
regarding the sociocultural psychology of migration. The course covers the topics of
integration, family and schooling, as well as mental health and local language acquisition. So
far, additional goals like expressing oneself, group work and collective creation have not been
explicitly mentioned as pedagogical goals in the course description, although theater here is
understood as a pedagogical tool to connect one’s scientific learnings with one’s personal
experience in society. The use of theater colors all experience within the course, as students’
work is from the beginning focused on the collective creation of a short play inspired by novels
that entrench the person in the experience of migration.

3.2 Structure of the Psychology of Migration course

Attending this course is voluntary. The course is limited to 20 students. Students are invited
to participate based on their letter stating their motivations and drives for wanting to attend
the course. Most of these letters reveal a combination of personal interest for the topic of
migration and some desire (not always without fear) to participate in theater productions at
the university. The course has been running since the so-called migration crisis of 2015-2016,
and most letters are very touching, with students reflecting on their discomfort, and
sometimes describing feelings of being lost, overwhelmed or helpless, regarding the mediatic
and political treatment of migration. A significant minority of students (around one-third) also
describe being personally touched by migration issues, either as first- or second-generation
migrants. Hence, some of the topics studied in the course (e.g. the redefinition of family
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relations because of migration, work issues, the challenges of staying in touch with distant
relatives, the challenges of expressing oneself in a foreign, borrowed language, or the
challenges of living in between two societies and two worlds) echo quite directly their
experience. Most students do not have any experience with performing arts, although some
have studied music, dance or circus, and sometimes performed in local theaters.

Psychology of Migration is a semester-long course, distributed over fourteen 2-hour weekly

blocks consisting of an introduction, a theoretical part, a theatrical part and a conclusion.

Fig. 6: Structure of the Psychology of Migration course.

3.2.1 Introducing the course

The goal of the course, its content and its logic are introduced on the first day. The goal is to
study the psychology of migration using scientific papers and the collective creation of a short
theater play based on works of fiction. Regarding content, students (a) study, present and
discuss scientific papers in a playful mode (theoretical part), and (b) create and collectively
perform a short theater play. The logic of the course is introduced as being a space in which
knowledge will be co-created.

A similar logic covers the two parts of the course, the so-called “theoretical” and “theatrical”
segments. The teachers frame this logic as being a spirit of collective reflection and dialogue,
the sharing of ideas and experiences, playful experimentation, openness, and listening. This
pedagogical frame is enacted by the two teachers, who also require from the students a formal
engagement with an explicit set of rules: (a) listen to others with a spirit of openness and
respect; (b) keep all discussions confidential as they may deal with delicate aspects of others’
lives; and (c) participate actively in the course, and inform of any absences in advance, as the
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group dynamics are critical. Students know that they are also expected to: (d) engage in
diverse collective activities, particularly in the collective creation of a 5-10 minute play based
on a fictional story; and (e) write a learning diary, which will be the main basis for the final
assessment. The teachers make the formal expectations for the course very clear: “each
student will have to do theater with a group, read and discuss two scientific papers per week,
participate in discussions, prepare and present one scientific paper with a peer, and write
individually a learning diary”. They also insist that students, at this point, are free to leave or
stay, but if they decide to stay, they should participate in all course sessions and agree to the
rules stated above.

The two teachers then actively construct a sense of collective work and reflection. They open
the second part with a roundtable discussion, to enable all students to introduce themselves
and describe what attracted them to the course. This roundtable setup has, in previous years,
been a very intense experience; students have been surprised by the deepness and honesty
of their peers’ words, and by the fact that many of them share in this space parts of their
personal and family story which they have never been able to talk about in the academic
setting. This roundtable discussion demonstrates to the students the diversity and richness of
(direct or indirect) migration experiences, and highlights that they are not alone in feeling
some discomfort with these issues in their social life.

The latter half of the Psychology of Migration course also introduces key theoretical models
by which to understand the dynamics of migration, the subjective experience of migration and
issues related to mental health. At the end of the second half, the scientific papers – discussed
in the theoretical phase of the course – are introduced. Groups of two are then formed based
on students’ expressed interest for some texts or topics. Finally, the fiction books for the
theatrical part are introduced. The teachers select four to five different novels using the
following criteria: the novels should talk about migration; they should describe a first-person
experience of migration; and, being an artistic work, they should offer a fully elaborated
reflection. We also tell the students that they can themselves suggest books, movies or songs
that will be shared with the class after review by the teachers. The final selection of art works
for 2018-2019 is shown in Figure 7.

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Fig. 7: Selected art works for the theatrical part of the Psychology of Migration course.

In their learning diaries, the students’ writings about the two course parts show that they
clearly experience a desire to promote dialogue and collectively create knowledge within the
course. One student writes, for example:

First course part. What to say… I have already been able to travel in the
thoughts and wishes of each of the participants. I was touched that this kind
of topic gets such a special place at the university. I could see that each one
had, in their own way, a deep interest for migration questions. I appreciated
how sincere my colleagues were: “I am here because, on migration, I don’t
know anything” … This course involved real questioning for me, a way to
confront to myself, leave my small comfort zone. … I already know that my
sensitivity will be at the foreground. I liked the approach that the teachers
suggested within this first course part a lot: sharing, transmitting, wishing to
enrich the other, but, first of all, to listen to her share her experience.

3.2.2 Theoretical segment

For the five next course sessions, the structure is the same: two groups of pairs present a
scientific paper that everyone has read and prepared for, with instructions to present a key
concept of the paper in detail, and to then create an activity that will engage the group in a
critical and creative reflection on this concept. What this activity should be is not explained,
but it can be anything that helps the group engage with the chosen concept and topic of the
day. Students usually design playful activities, like riddles, roleplaying games or short
performances. The discussion opens after each presentation, and, in this space, many
personal thoughts on the relevance or limits of the theory for understanding their personal
experience can be expressed. Each course session is dedicated to a specific topic, so that the
two texts and pairs of presenters are not disconnected, and the group discussion usually

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increases in deepness and richness after the second presentation. We study five different
topics related to three different approaches: the macrosocial context, sociocultural aspects
and the clinical dimension of the psychology of migration. In the last year, we have studied
the following topics: family, culture and education, education, language acquisition, and
mental health.

This part of the course ends with a reading week at the University of Neuchâtel; this is a one-
week break in which students are encouraged to read and revise their course-related work.
During this week, the students are instructed to read the chapters (selected by the teachers)
of the selected novels, and, if they like some of them, to read the books and select two books
that they would like to work on for the creation of their theater play.

3.2.3 Theatrical segment

After the reading week, the theatrical part of the course begins. We meet at the “Lockart,” an
association in the city center offering a dance studio. The students meet the third teacher of
the team, who is a drama teacher, stage director, actor and owner of a theater company. We
have been working with two drama teachers, Julie Burnier (Compagnie Pied de Biche) 19 and
Sophie Pasquet Racine (Compagnie Les Freckles) 20, who bring different energies and
techniques to the course. Students and teachers, bare feet in the dance studio, participate in
theater games and short improvisations. At the end of this course segment, groups are formed
based on the students’ choices of texts (ideally, we form four groups of five students). Then,
the groups self-organize to work within and outside the course to adapt these dense artworks,
in order to create a short (5-10 minute) and partly improvised theater play.

19
Compagnie Pied de Biche, http://pied-de-biche.ch/
20
Compagne Les Freckles, https://www.lesfreckles.net/
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Kloetzer, Henein, Tau, Martin, Valterio: Teaching Through Performing Arts in HE

Fig. 8: Collective creation work: creation at the table.

Fig. 9: Collective creation work: creation on stage.

The teachers instruct the students to share why they like the book, and what touches them in
it, and they encourage the students not to close this explorative and sharing process too
quickly. The groups decide by themselves what they want to do and show. They receive
informal feedback from the three teachers, who loosely follow the creation process. Creation
happens both at the table and “on stage” within the university and at the Lockart. For the
rehearsal, each group presents its work “behind closed doors”, with just the three teachers,
to keep the final performance a surprise.

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Kloetzer, Henein, Tau, Martin, Valterio: Teaching Through Performing Arts in HE

For the final performance, the groups perform in front of all other students, the teachers, and
some external guests invited either by the students or the teachers. Each performance is
followed by a discussion in which audience members share on what they have seen, felt or
thought during the play. After the performance, all students, teachers and guests meet at the
neighboring café.

During the final course segment, back at the university, the students re-discuss in small groups
how the two parts of the course relate to each other, by mapping and drawing on posters (one
per group) the key concepts dealt with in the theoretical presentations and in their theater
play. These posters are shared and discussed by the students. Then, in a closing roundtable
discussion, the students give their final feedback on the course, and describe what they
discovered, experienced, enjoyed, disliked or learned during the semester.

3.3 Evaluation in the Psychology & Migration course

According to the course description, there are some conditions for taking the final assessment:
presence and active participation in the course, including reading of the texts and preparing
for the discussions; presenting a scientific paper in the classroom; participating in the creation
and performance of a theater play; and writing a learning diary, “which will come back to the
works done during the course, in a critical and reflexive perspective”. The assessment is
carried out by the teachers based on the individual learning diaries. This procedure seems to
be valued by the students themselves as a coherent strategy within the general pedagogical
proposal:

It is true that I cannot imagine another assessment format more appropriate

to the goals of the course… (Extract from student’s diary referring to the
assessment of the Psychology of Migration course related work.)

The instructions for the learning diary are very open: students should start writing from the
beginning of the course, weekly; they should not delete what they have written before, but
add a new entry to their diary. The students are free to write what and how they like regarding
the content and the form of the diary text. Interestingly, the diaries adopt multiple forms, such
as electronic reports and handwritten notebooks, and frequently include non-textual and
multimodal material like maps, drawings, pictures, cut-outs, music, puppets, and even a small
Japanese-style wooden theater.

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Kloetzer, Henein, Tau, Martin, Valterio: Teaching Through Performing Arts in HE

Fig. 10: Some of the learning diaries.

4 Impressions of the two courses

In 2016, Simon Henein and Laure Kloetzer met and discussed their impressions of the two
courses. These impressions were extremely positive. As well as being enjoyable to teach for
both teachers, the courses were apparently extremely appreciated by the students (with 90-
100% of the participants saying that the course was good or very good in the final quality
evaluation of the courses). Although the topic, the public, the goals and the methods are
different, the students’ comments in the quality assessment questionnaires at the two
institutions were very similar. Examples of the students’ comments are shown in Table 1
below.

Main topics Students’ comments regarding Students’ comments regarding

Improgineering course Psychology & Migration course
Learning “This course is excellent, we learn a
“This course is innovating and dynamic.
lot” While we learn theory, other types of
“Very interesting course. We skills get developed, which support
discover listening to yourself, to the
engagement into the topic. What theater
others, mutual help, collaboration,brings is very rich, to understand a topic
creativity, self-tolerance, openness,
which implies much more than theory.
presence on stage…” This course makes us want to dig into the
topic and this is one of the key points in a
course I believe.”
Enjoyment of “Best course this semester” “I had a real crush for this course”
courses that are “This course is the light during the “I like it a lot to attend to a course which
different in week” is different from the others, which makes
nature us understand the topic differently”
“What a pleasure to explore learning
forms which are so diverse (diary, oral
presentations, discussions, literature,
performance…) wouaw!”
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Personal & “This course really allows the “Best course in my bachelor’s degree: my
collective student to resize oneself. It is a expectations were met and above.
transformation space of openness and reflection, Dialogue, emotions, creativity, reflection,
really active, which drives us in the personal research, and management of
best way to change from the group relations, while studying such a
everyday life and traditional delicate topic as migration. A means to
standards of thinking” understand the world in a more creative
“Seriously, this course made me way, and more efficient too, and also to
relive in architecture!” shift the perspective from mine to ours.
Enriching experience, which stays in
memory”
Tab. 1: Some students’ comments regarding the quality of the two courses.

Following these convergent impressions on learning, enjoyment and personal transformation,

we decided to launch a research project to understand more about the teaching and learning
dynamics involved in the two courses. The ASCOPET project (which stands for Les arts de la
scène comme outil pédagogique dans l’enseignement tertiaire, and translates to English as The
Performing Arts as a Pedagogical Tool in Higher Education) is a collaboration established in
September 2018 between Instant-Lab and the IPE at the University of Neuchâtel (UNINE). This
project describes, analyses and evaluates the utilization of performing arts in higher education
via a comparative study of two pilot courses. Special attention is given to the embodiment of
learning practices in sociomaterial and historical environments, and to human creativity,
learning and development in “boundary zones” (Konkola et al. 2007) or “potential spaces”
(Winnicott 1971).

Our data documented a change in the course students’ perspectives and feelings. The
students started the courses with mixed feelings of curiosity, uncertainty, excitement and
fear. Their comments highlight the importance of freedom, playfulness and sharing within the
course:

I felt a bit childish, free to express myself without conditioning, free to

communicate, free to play with others and also with myself. It is difficult to
materialize and put into words what I experienced, but when I came home
in the evening and called my parents I said: “Listen, I had an unforgettable
experience that everyone should be able to have! (…). (Extract from
student’s diary, referring to the Improgineering course.)

Reading the diaries, we noted evidence of more fundamental transformations: the

transformation of the students’ views regarding some aspects that we directly or indirectly
dealt with in the course. For example, body, consciousness, relations with others, connections
between their courses and their life outside the university, or the course topics themselves.
There were also changes in the students’ relationship to their own body:

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Kloetzer, Henein, Tau, Martin, Valterio: Teaching Through Performing Arts in HE

It's incredible how difficult it is to concentrate, but at the same time you
discover a new feeling when you do it. It's crazy how I'm almost never in
control of my actions: everything is such a trivial automatism. It's also
interesting how I gain a lot of confidence when I become conscious of the
moment and my movements. (Extract from student’s diary, referring to the
Improgineering course.)

Eventually, this course has been a nice experience for me. I would never have imagined, in my
life, swimming in toilet paper in an improvised performance! What I learnt in this course, is a
way to free myself, to improve my self-expression, to be less shy in front of the others. Having
an environment in which nothing is wrong, all is fine, nobody judges, allowed me to
experiment, to express myself, especially with my body. (Extract from student’s diary,
referring to the Improgineering course.)

The students stated that they connected the topics of the course to their everyday life. In the
Psychology of Migration course, some students, who at the beginning of the course seemed
powerless regarding the migration phenomenon, now engage themselves in different
voluntary activities:

Thanks to this course, I became aware that the topic of migration is part of
my everyday life. (Extract from student’s diary, referring to the Psychology
of Migration course.)

Similarly, in the Improgineering course, improvisation becomes a part of everyday life, a way
of looking at things, people and events with a creative and inclusive perspective, which brings
the students happiness and a feeling of connection to others.

We could argue that, at least for some students, the course supports a more radical
transformation relating to the “ethos” of the student. Both courses lead to transformations in
terms of how the students inhabit the university, their “doing/being” with regard to
knowledge, their collective work, their feelings regarding migration and their improvisation.
In this sense, the courses enable a change of position, not only at the reflective level, but also
at the level of practices, of established forms of travelling through different social institutions.
Boundary-crossing and bridging functions are established with one’s past and future
experience, as well as with other practices and experiences. In this sense, there is some
evidence for the transfer of this change of position to other spheres of daily action.
Transformation is not just a cognitive change; it is a transformation of the participants’
subjectivity that goes far beyond students’ understanding of the course topics.

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5 Conclusion: a pedagogical model to relive higher education?

Although the Improgineering and Psychology of Migration courses had different designs,
public audiences, learning goals, learning activities and academic fields of reference, as
teachers we recognized strong similarities between our experiences. The subsequent
ASCOPET project scientifically explores the learning dynamics linked to the use of performing
arts in these two courses. Our first findings allow us to extract from our experience in these
two courses nine main points, enabling us to draft pedagogical guidelines (among others) for
the use of performing arts in higher education, which will hopefully be valuable for other
disciplines and situations.

1. Performing arts take place within a global pedagogical design.

Performing arts are powerful tools when used in combination with a global
pedagogical strategy. The necessary changes in teaching include: co-teaching,
sensitivity to building collective dynamics, change of teaching place, openness of
instructions during the course and evaluations, and changes in the assessment
modalities.

2. Performing arts are the leading activity of the course.

When considering the continuum mentioned in section 1 on the place of performing

arts in curriculum design, performance is a central aspect of both courses. The main
goal of the courses is the collective creation of a scenic performance that includes
improvisation. This collective creation and performance enhances students’
engagement in the courses.

3. The balance of theory and experience is crucial for learning.

Theory frames the creative practice and feeds students’ reflection process.

4. The combination of performative experience (also bodily experience) in the

classroom and its reflection within the diaries is crucial for learning and (self)
exploration.

Continuous writing of the diaries engages the students in a reflective activity.

Multimodal, open diaries are powerful tools for thinking, and for resignification of the
experience, including bodily experience. We have shown (Ramiro et al., submitted)
how the diary entries evolve and reshape the bodily experience.

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5. Freedom and collaboration are essential in the learning process.

Multiple forms of group work are organized within the courses. Most activities involve
a dimension of freedom: although the task is set by the teachers, there is freedom in
how it can be answered, and in the negotiations between student groups. The freedom
experienced in the content of the course echoes the freedom in the content of the
diaries, whose writing is required for the final assessment of the course.

6. The production of a culturally significant creation is an essential part of the

learning process.

The students have the collective responsibility of producing a performance or play for
a public presentation. Therefore, they address their work not only to the teachers but
to their peers, and they are accountable to this external audience. This variation of
address is one aspect of development (Kloetzer, Clot & Quillerou-Grivot , 2015). The
dialectics of externalization and internalization are another aspect of development.
Following the well-known proposal that culture supports and shapes mind
development (Vygotsky, 1980; Cole, 2015), mind also develops when it becomes
(collectively) cultured.

7. Expansion of space (crossing boundaries between home and university, and

theater and university) supports the learning dynamics of the course.

In particular, physical boundary crossings between institutions (university and theater)

allows for the hybridization of learning and teaching cultures within academic and
artistic practices.

8. Changes of the evaluation modes are required, to ensure consistency between

the teaching/learning process and the evaluation process.

“Consistency” here refers to that between the openness of the teaching and learning
process (do what you want) and the openness of the evaluation (write what you want).
Changes in the evaluation mode include the combined use of a group production and
corresponding learning diaries. In addition, there is “open” evaluation; no specific
content is expected, rather a special kind of engagement and quality of reflection and
contribution.

9. The teachers play a different, changing role.

The teachers reject the vertical transmission of a given set of knowledge, and instead
engage in building the conditions for collective work and reflection, and the co-
production of experience and knowledge. Co-teaching introduces multiple reference

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points and points of views. Instructions are open and encourage freedom. The course
is built with a critical collective dimension between peers, and not with a “star design”
in which individual students are mostly connected to the teachers.

10. The construction of institutional conditions for the collaboration between

academic staff and professionals from the field of performing arts should be
encouraged.

These pedagogical settings require the participation of professionals from the field of
performing arts (in our cases, dance improvisation, theater and music improvisation)
in academic teaching, as well as the use of spaces dedicated to performative
workshops and events. This requires a tight collaboration with theaters or dance
studios, for example, as well as the possibility to recruit and pay non-academic staff.

These ten dimensions/conditions are not independent. Altogether, they show that the use of
performing arts in higher education has the potential to transform not only the relationships
of the students to themselves, to others and to the topic under study, but also those of
teachers to students, and of artistic and academic institutions; it can also transform our views
on the place of the body, collaboration, collective creation and personal exploration in
education.

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