Performing education

Performing education Julie White La Trobe University Lynda Smerdon The Arts Centre, Victoria Authors’ biographies Dr Julie White works in the Faculty of Education at La Trobe University where she lectures in postgraduate education programs on pedagogy, curriculum and research methodology and supervises PhD students. She is a member of the editorial boards of Creative Approaches to Research and Journal of Qualitative Research and was recently guest co-editor for Transnational Curriculum Inquiry. She has particular interests in pedagogy, identity, narrative and creativity and is a researcher on two Australian Research Council funded projects investigating the identities and social connection of young people with chronic illness, and the pedagogy of teachers in relation to young people at the edges of schooling. Lynda Smerdon works at the interface of arts and education at The Arts Centre, Melbourne. Her background includes fine arts, music, drama, opera and arts management and she has spent the past nine years engaging teachers and artists to develop their understandings of each other. She has managed the Education Workshops program that has developed many projects such as: ‘Artists in Schools,’ ‘Small Bites!’ ‘SPIN’, ‘Engaging the Arts’, ‘Dramatically Digital’, ‘Going Deeper’ and ‘Arts Partners.’ During 2006 and 2007 she initiated an international collaboration between the Arts Centre and the Lincoln Centre Institute. Her research interests focus on creativity, imagination and educational engagement through the arts. Abstract Essentially conceptual rather than empirical, this article explores the complex field of creativity using two theoretical conceptions of performativity in relation to the work of teachers. While some ideas are tentatively forwarded and the story of a continuing teacher project is introduced, the intention of the article is twofold: Firstly, to offer a provocation on the topic of creativity and teacher pedagogy, and secondly, through using writing as a method of inquiry (Richardson, 2000) further the understandings we have developed through collaboration with colleagues from arts-education and the artsi. As this discussion is located in general education, it is focused on pedagogy and curriculum rather than being aligned to the arts or arts-education. As such it is hoped that we have not overreached ourselves or stepped on any toes in the development of this argument. Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 88 Introduction Creativity in classrooms is identified as the answer to the nation’s future, but how this might be achieved is highly problematic. The central interest of this article is the context for the work of teachers, and how they might be supported to explore creativity and become more courageous and collaborative themselves, which in turn, might foster and enhance creativity in their own classrooms. The article firstly considers understandings of creativity for teachers in general which is followed by two theoretical conceptions of performativity. It then touches on governmentality before turning to creative partnerships and implications of this for teacher pedagogy. This is followed by a preliminary discussion of an unfinished teacher-learning project about pedagogy and creativity that offers some hope and promise for the future of the teaching profession. Creativity and Teaching When Australian politicians make the call for higher levels of creativity, it is more often than not linked with the future, with innovation and with the economy (PMSEIC, 2005; Commonwealth of Australia, 2008a). Education is usually offered as a panacea and the promise of increased profits and innovation in business seems to satisfy most. Ironically however, the work of teachers in schools continues to be stifled and overwhelmed by a constant barrage of accountability demands by government. Teachers are expected to ‘perform’ in specific and restricted ways and the debate about ‘performance’ pay for the ‘best and brightest’ —whatever that might mean—continues to be threatened in the Australian media. Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 89 In contrast, creativity requires freedom in order to look anew and to take risks in thinking to develop ideas and consider things differently. Pürto (2004) argues that creativity ‘implies a kind of human freedom’ (p. 32) that can be enhanced or stifled and is more often than not ‘repressed, suppressed, and stymied through the process…of being educated’ (p. 37). What is it that schools, and therefore teachers do to creativity? And what can be done to change this? Creativity theory offers a range of definitions about what creativity might mean and who might be creative, but it is usually an American or western perspective that is presented (Kaufman and Sternberg, 2006). Creativity is a neglected field of research—particularly in education. While some consider that psychology has too much influence, others argue that creativity is psychology’s ‘orphan’ (Sternberg, 2003, p. 89). Much discussion about creativity has focused on intelligence and the gifted as well as products and divergent thinking, but this is of little help to the classroom teacher. While publications about creativity in the classroom have increasingly emerged from the UK since the Robinson Report (NACCCE, 1999), generalist teachers continue to be positioned as boring and lacking creativity (see Galton, 2008). Sternberg (2003) points to the propensity for ‘successful’ students to aim for high scores and grades and, in doing so, many lose the courage to take risks. He suggests that “…teachers may inadvertently advocate that children ‘play it safe’ when they give assignments without choices and allow only particular answers to questions” (p. 115). In a similar way, is it this tendency to ‘play it safe’ on the part of teachers trying to meet the performative demands made upon them, that ultimately works against Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 90 creativity in classrooms? By deciding in advance how teachers should perform – in the measurement of their own work (through competency standards) and that of their students (through curriculum standards and standardised testing programs), the effect is one of stunting any growth towards creativity. Predetermined outcomes are akin to the ‘assignments without choices’ that ‘allow only particular answers to questions’ that Sternberg (2003) referred to. May (1975, cited in Pürto, 2004, p. 47) differentiated between different forms of courage: physical courage, moral courage, social courage and creative courage. And this idea of courage – especially creative courage is particularly interesting in relation to education. It has been suggested elsewhere (Burnard and White, in press) that “by encouraging teachers to take risks, to be adventurous and to explore creativity themselves, the resulting confidence will herald a willingness to develop pedagogy and classroom creativity.” Further, we suggest that while teachers are kept on such a tight rein by performativity (in the Lyotard and Butler senses discussed below), they are less likely to take any risks or foster creativity in their own classrooms. In short, they need courage. So, performativity is the antithesis of creativity and leads to what we have called ‘right answer’ pedagogy. Performativity and Teaching While performativity is a term used in drama, science, technology studies, as well as economic sociology, there are two major theoretical strands of performativity that are of particular relevance here. We refer to the use of the term by both Françios Lyotard and Judith Butler in this discussion about performativity and teaching. Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 91 Butler (1997; 2000) uses performativity to represent the analysis of gender development and political speech. Butler drew on speech act theory and the linguistic work of J. L. Austin (1962) to develop her conception of this term. As Redman (2000) explains, for Butler, “…performativity refers to the process by which discourse produces that which it names.” He illustrates this further: “Thus, for Butler, the midwife’s cry, ‘It’s a girl!’ is not a description for a state inscribed in nature but a ‘performative act’, a practice of ‘girling’ that ascribes gendered meaning to particular bodies” (p. 13). So performativity in this sense is both the performance and creation of gendered behaviour. Transgressions in the performance of gender have severe consequences as gender is, Butler argues, a system of regulated performances. Are teachers created as well as performed in a similar sense? We are interested in how teachers are shaped, moulded and scrutinised, and wonder about the consequences for not performing ‘teaching’ in sanctioned ways. Can teaching also be construed as a regulated system of performances? Who decides what constitutes successful performance? Aspects of this argument has been developed (Burnard and White, in press) where it has been suggested that while the ‘performance’ of pedagogy is socially constructed, increasingly through competence standards, governments have developed a narrow and reductionist version of what it means to be a ‘good’ teacher. Increasingly governments in Australia have become involved in determining the ‘goodness’ criteria of teachers. What governments count as appropriate knowledge for teachers can be seen in several forms. Firstly, education programs in universities have been critiqued and inquired into to an extraordinary extent in Australia. The result of Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 92 continually examining teacher education programs is to cast doubt on their competence and worth. Government inquiries have also served the purpose of embedding both doubt about the competence of university staff, as well as the need for ‘standards’ into the discourse. Each successive inquiry features the need for ‘standards’ and ‘quality’ in their terms of reference, so the discourse is self-perpetuating. As a result, universities appear to have been positioned by government into the role of hapless scapegoat. Does this mean that government is increasingly taking control of the teaching profession? The desire for reform of teacher education so that it conforms to the reductive ‘training’ and ‘standards’ version seen in the Australian context, echoes difficulties experienced in Britain during the 1990s (See Sachs, 2003a; 2003b; Tickle, 2000). Similarly, Tom (1997) argues that in the United States reform of teacher education “…has political and institutional roots, not just intellectual and conceptual ones” (cited in Sachs, 2003a, p. 62), and this has informed the argument in this article. During the past five years state governments have required that Australian universities subject their pre-service education courses for approval to standards-focused accreditation bodies like the Victorian Institute of Teachers (VIT) and the NSW Institute of Teachers (NSWIT), bodies that are essentially arms of government. A development of this process was recently reported in the Melbourne Age newspaper under the headline ‘Teachers Face Tough New Tests at Uni,’ (Tomazin, 2008, p. 5). In order to accredit teachers to be able to work in any state or territory in Australia, the government has announced that “…all Australian university teacher training courses, will, for the first time, be forced to meet a set of national benchmarks in order to be accredited.” Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 93 Rather like the railway gauge issue, Australian states and territories each run on different systems for historical reasons. Unlike the railways, however, the teaching profession is being compelled to comply with government edicts. The language is especially revealing, particularly in relation to the notion of forcing universities into this arrangement in order to boost the quality of teachers in schools. Government also has considerable power over practicing teachers and determines what ‘knowledge’ is of value and how a teacher’s performance measures up. Performativity, Governmentality and Education The second use of performativity refers to the work by Lyotard (1984) and is very much about governmental efficiencies — minimum input resulting in maximum output. It is also about the tension between knowledge and power, and raises the central issue of legitimation. Who decides what is important and how does this manifest? In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Lyotard pointed to the question of knowledge as being more than ever a question of government (p. 9). As Peters and Barbules (2004) observe, anything that is not deemed by the government to be ‘useful’ is removed. The depressing example they forward is the Bush administration’s erasure of all educational research studies from the government ERIC archives that do not reflect that government’s view of “…credible, useful knowledge” (p. 49). An example from closer to home is the change to the content of the Victorian Institute of Teaching’s (VIT) website. During 2004 the website archived much valuable and useful information (see White, 2004) about the formation of the VIT together with the principles and intended focus of its work according to the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MACVIT) who worked towards its establishment. Shortly after some publications using this material appeared, and after it became Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 94 apparent that a policy change had occurred concerning the function of the VIT (a shift from teacher voice and advocacy, to registration and policing), the archived material was excised from the website. Lyotard’s (1984) illumination about the transformation of knowledge by government is a particularly helpful one in relation to education. Successive governments in Australia (as elsewhere) have decided what knowledge is important for students to learn and this is manifested in the form of curriculum standards. If one considers, for example, the place of creativity in the curriculum and levels of funding and the timetable share that the arts typically enjoy in schools, Lyotard’s notion of performativity is further elucidated. performativity, which At its worst, Lyotard referred to the terrors of is at the extreme – where government measurement and accountability negates all else. Perhaps literacy and numeracy might be considered more important than the arts, for example. Foucault’s ‘governmentality’ involves both government of self as well as the government of others. This self-regulation is an important point in education, and the practices and strategies that individuals (in their freedom) use in controlling or governing themselves or others (see Peters and Burbules, 2004, Chapter 3). In education, where teachers are increasingly told what to teach, how to teach and when to teach it (see Burnard and White, in press), how complicit are teachers in controlling themselves? How well do they perform teaching? In universities, when applying for promotion, individuals are required to undertake courses in equal opportunity and the like. Applicants selfgovern, and conform in order to gain promotion. In schools, teachers Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 95 police their own work as well as the work of their colleagues and two examples from Victoria serve to illustrate this. They show what Marshall (1996, 1998), who draws upon Foucault, describes as questions of personal autonomy and freedom, and where teachers are manipulated and dominated until they turn into ‘docile bodies’ (cited in Peters and Burbules, 2004, p. 67). Firstly, during the late 1990s the Australian state of Victoria instituted their Early Years Literacy Program, which required teachers of 5-8 year old children to implement a highly structured and performative program that education academics in the literacy field summarily dismissed. The education theory underpinning that program belonged to a paradigm advocating the need for teachers to be directed and monitored. Schoolbased coordinators (often in recent positions of promotion) were positioned into this surveillance role and subjected teachers to ‘training’ about literacy that was more reminiscent of ‘re-education’ than learning. Teachers who did not comply were usually discounted as ‘difficult’ or ‘old fashioned’ and their concerns about teacher professional judgment were ignored. The performance pay bonuses of school principals were related to levels of compliance with the implementation of this program. Another example (sadly also from my state, Victoria) is the Principles of Learning and Teaching (PoLT) program (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, 2008) that dictated a state-sanctioned view of pedagogy and was ‘implemented’ by teachers who were given time release or promotion. While, somewhat chillingly, this program appears to have not been based on any research it did involve academics who ‘trained’ teachers for the state in return for funding. While the PoLT documents continue to be available via the official government Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 96 website, the training program was offered only 3 times in 2008 at the cost of $650 per teacher. (see also White, Scholtz and Williams, 2006, and White, 2008b, for further discussion of this program). Indeed performativity in both the Butler and Lyotard senses and governmentality in the Foucault sense seem to have taken hold in Australian education, and the professional voice of teachers is gradually being diminished while “…bureaucrats have clearly been written into the contemporary tale of teaching to the extent that they have, arguably, taken over authorship and are in complete control of the teacher’s tale” (White, 2004, p. 192). The ‘2020 Summit’: Australia’s Best and Brightest? With the election of a federal Labor government in Australia in 2007, a unique national summit of national leaders was organised, which included representatives from business, social welfare, the arts, education, governance, and many other fields of the Australian community. The word ‘education’ appears 524 times in the subsequent 2020 Report (Commonwealth of Australia, 2008a), and all groups reported on the crucial role of education for the future. Even though it was purported that the ‘best and brightest’ participated in the Australian 2020 Summit, and even though education was the answer to most issues it seems, the voice of teachers was strangely absent. Apart from everyone pointing to education as the way forward, education was not afforded a strand of its own, but was included as one minor aspect of the productivity agenda. Nor was education included as a topic in the eighth strand on creativity, Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 97 but was relegated to the functional ‘skills and training’ arena. While all of the participants at the 2020 Summit seem to have identified education as the panacea – at least in rhetorical terms – the dominant view of teaching that clearly emerges from the report is consistent with a bureaucratic preoccupation that teachers need to be told what to do and to be controlled and measured. In the Thinking Big (Commonwealth of Australia, 2008b) paper, which was prepared for participants in the 2020 Summit, creativity in education seems to be coupled with the arts. Prior to the Summit, one of the important questions asked in relation to creativity was ‘What can Australia do to encourage experimentation, innovation and creative thinking in a changing environment?’ but this doesn’t appear to have been considered within general areas of school education. While clearly the core business of the arts and arts education is creativity, and we know these areas don’t lay exclusive claim to it, the way in which creativity seems to have been cordoned off in order to allocate it to the arts seems pointless. By way of illustration, consider that in primary schools in Australia it is usual for the children to have access to the arts — taught usually by a specialist teacher — for an hour or two a week. In the first few years of secondary education, time for students to engage with the arts is carefully rationed – and by mid secondary schooling many young people have opted out of the arts altogether. Students still spend a significant amount of time at school not specifically focused on the arts where creativity might still apply. The Bureaucratic Intention Analysis of the discourse about education of the 2020 Summit Report (2008a) reveals that the prevailing bureaucratic view of education in Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 98 Australia has not changed with the change of government. Education continues to be positioned as a site for the ‘training’ of ‘skills’, and where teachers need to be directed, measured and kept continually accountable, leading — through some magical process — to greater national productivity and economic outcomes. The bureaucratic intention regarding education in the near future in Australia has also been revealed and supports the 21st century version of Australia’s cultural cringe. Firstly, there is an unfortunate and obvious reference to the harshly criticized American ‘No Child Left Behind Act’ (United States Congress, 2001) in the 2020 Summit Report with “We need to have high aspirations and expectations that all students will achieve to their potential and that no child will be allowed to fall behind” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2008a, p. 19, authors’ emphasis). A pattern in Australian education is, it would seem, is to take initiatives from the United States and the United Kingdom — particularly failed or ineffective ones — and import them wholesale into Australia. The second issue of concern emerging from the 2020 Summit Report, is the echoing of the Bush Administration’s resolve to only fund research in education that conforms in method to use randomized scientific trials (For detailed comment, see Lather, 2004). In the Summit report it says: “We need to have high aspirations for all children. Of crucial importance to this is the need for a stronger evidence base and for trialling and assessing what works” (Commonwealth of Australia, 2008a, p. 20). The voice of the career bureaucrat is recognisable here with the persuasive blend of motherhood rhetoric and policy intention. The work of Joe Lo Bianco (1999, 2004) about the development of particular discourses in the US, helps to make sense of the pervasive Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 99 bureaucratic discourse in Australian education. Lo Bianco explains how conservative American politician, Newt Gingrich, “…made a specific aim of changing public discourse” about bilingual education by repeating his key terminology again and again in speeches and written materials. In our context, the discourse about education and teacher knowledge has been usurped from the profession. Teachers and others in education have been bludgeoned into accepting that the performative agenda is somehow normal. This seeping and deliberate discourse has continued to influence education policy and is thriving despite changes of government, which seems to indicate that it is the public servants or ‘educrats’ who are leading it. During the past five years this discourse has gone from strength to strength through a favoured way of communicating with the profession – via media release. For example, see the recent announcement that education courses in universities “…will be required to meet tough new standards…to boost the quality of teachers in schools” (Tomazin, 2008, p. 5) and the persuasive and pervasive bureaucratic writing exemplified in the 2020 Summit Report (2008a). Creative Partnerships and Teacher Pedagogy Instead of ‘Arts’ partnerships, Galton (2008) from the UK uses the term ‘Creative Partnerships’ and argues that the term “…recognizes that the word artist is often associated with a narrow range of creative activities, whereas in the various CP projects [of his study] there are environmentalist, horticulturalists, media specialist and other partners who are not usually regarded as ‘artistic’ among the population at large” (p. 6). In an intriguing research exercise, Galton (2008) asked children to imagine creative practitioners and teachers speaking. The children Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 100 depicted the language of teachers and creative practitioners quite differently: Where pupils imagined a teacher or creative practitioner to be speaking most of the comments were neutral in tone to do mainly with giving task or routine directions. Whereas creative practitioners were frequently depicted as offering advice about specific aspects of work actually undertaken (such as carrying out a mime in drama, taking a photograph, loading the video camera etc.) teachers’ comments were of a general nature and more often concerned procedures (have you finished?). One third of teachers’ comments were negative in tone and had to do with classroom control. Pupils were admonished to ‘stop talking,’ ‘sit up straight’ and to ‘pay attention.’ Overall, the classroom climate was viewed more positively when creative practitioners were present (p. x). While we are reluctant to read too much into this, it nevertheless provides a useful entry point into a discussion of pedagogy, while illuminating the unfortunate and prevalent binary of teachers getting it ‘wrong’ while artists get it ‘right.’ As Pringle (2008) points out: Artist practitioners can adopt creative and experimental pedagogic modes because generally they are free from curriculum constraints whereas teachers are not always at liberty to do so. The artist thus becomes a creative ‘other’ whereas the teacher can be cast in the role of didact or policeman (cited in Galton, 2008, p. 67). And this of course leads us back to performativity. But is there a conservative and timid tendency amongst teachers? What might be the Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 101 cause of this? And what can be done about it? Artists and other creative practitioners in partnership with schools are credited with pedagogies that support and enhance creativity, but generalist teachers are often characterised as not being equipped for this task. Some of the leading Arts Education organizations in the United States and the UK have grappled with this issue and address it through teacher support programs, professional learning programs and the implementation of preproject planning between all partners engaged in the development of artist-teacher partnerships. For example the Lincoln Centre in New York, the Kennedy Centre in Washington, the Chicago Arts Partnership (CAPE) and in the UK, the Creative Partnerships model systematically brings artists and teachers together. Often the divide between ‘the arts’ and ‘education’ remains. The artists continue to view the artistic processes as being their responsibility, and continue to require the classroom teacher to take care of the ‘learning.’ If our aim is to foster creativity in schools, then it seems logical that the construction of a creative classroom requires the blurring of these boundaries rather than the maintenance of them. For the purposes of this discussion, we propose that the teacher at the centre of this process (not at the centre of the learning, but at the heart of the construction of the learning) needs to see themselves as creative individuals in order to understand the creative encounters of their students (Sinclair, 2008). Leading arts educator, John O’Toole goes some way to offering an explanation for the timidity and reluctance to embrace the arts: Most teachers only receive a brief introduction to the arts in their pre-service training, sometimes not even that. This is compounded by those gaps in the pre-service students’ own education, so that Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 102 when they graduate, many teachers are still basically ignorant of the importance or relevance of the arts to their students. Even many of the lucky ones who are aware of their importance, or are excited by their potential, feel they do not have the necessary basic skills themselves, let alone the pedagogy, and so they are too fearful to take the risk. And some of those who do come out with confidence and skills to do the job find themselves in schools where there is little understanding, support or resources, and it is much easier not to teach the arts (2008 forthcoming). Indeed, there is much that works against teachers being free and confident to enhance creativity in their own classrooms. Distilling the work of Bond, Smith, Baker and Hattie (2000) and Brophy (2004) about exemplary teachers, Galton (2008) identified ten practices that may prove helpful in this context: 1. Pupil exploration will usually precede formal presentations. 2. Pupils’ questions and comments often determine the focus of classroom discourse. 3. There is a high proportion of pupil talk, much of it occurring between pupils…. 4. The lesson requires pupils to reflect critically on the procedures and the methods they used. 5. Whenever possible what is learned is related to the pupils’ lives outside school. Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 103 6. Pupils are encouraged to use a variety of means and media to communicate their ideas. 7. Content to be taught is organized around a limited set of powerful ideas. 8. Teachers structure tasks in ways which limit the complexity involved. 9. Higher order thinking is developed within the context of the curriculum and not taught as a discrete set of skills within a separate course unit. 10. The classroom ethos encourages pupils to offer speculative answers to challenging questions without fearing failure (p. 70). The flexible thinking, risk-taking, looking anew and inherent freedoms that we suggest characterise the democratic and inclusive form of creativity to be encouraged in classrooms might be enhanced if these general pedagogical practices were more commonplace. Instead of berating teachers or describing them as boring, or by attempting to ‘train’ them, professionally ‘develop’ them, or continue to measure their performance (in relation to standards and sanctioned knowledge), We wonder if there might be another way forward? Returning briefly to the 2020 Summit and the absence of the teacher’s voice in the discussion, we raise the question: What might happen if we invite teachers to be creative, not just in the classroom, but in the staffroom as well? How might engagement with artistic practice (for example) generate a shift in teacher identity? What will teachers gain? Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 104 And what might it equip them for? Will they become more confident, and be more willing to engage in the kind of risk-taking and disruption that sits at the heart of profound learning? (Sinclair, 2008). The Principal and the Performance By way of contrast with the bleak and powerless education landscape depicted so far in this article, a small project emerging from one Melbourne school brings a sense of hope and promise. While the project is not yet complete, the ‘Creativity and Pedagogy Project’ at North Fitzroy Primary School, might provide a way forward for teacher learning, for creativity in classrooms and for teacher professionalism. The school is in a middle class inner Melbourne suburb, which has continued to gentrify over the past thirty years. Many parents live alternative and artistic lifestyles, but an equal number represent the traditional professions and the corporate sector. The principal, Connie Watson, is a diminutive woman who wears her hair up and laughs easily. She wears eye-catching clothing and earrings – which suggests something about her approach to leadership. She had a hard time of it at first, with a dominant group of parents resenting her. These days she is very much an independent thinker, which seems a desirable quality in a principal. She protects her staff, wherever possible, from performative demands, but has particularly high expectations of them: What I am trying to create is an intelligent culture in a primary school…I felt that often there was a lack of intellectual rigour, I suppose, in primary schools, and a dependency on a formulaic way of operating. And what I was looking for was people who were thinking about why they were doing things … and having a vision of Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 105 children who also question why they are doing things … and who are creative, innovative, able to be flexible in any situation because that’s what the future requires. But not just the future, it’s what the world requires (Interview 21/12/07, p. 1). While she has worked for several years to support a creative and professional culture, it has been challenging at times. The teachers seemed to appreciate the intellectual rigour that Connie brought with her, but it was not straightforward, and it was not immediate. Nevertheless, Connie observed that ‘Many of them just were relieved that they were no longer being treated as ten-year-olds themselves, and that there was respect for them as professionals (Interview 21/12/07, p. 6). An email from one of the Leading Teachers sent to all staff in a Christmas message, signalled that her approach was bearing fruit: But then I got an email from one of the leaders, saying how…how wonderful it was to work at a school where we actually thought about what we were doing, and that people could have intellectual conversations and disagreements, without taking it personally. And that’s very much what I wanted for the staff. That we don’t have to agree with each other, and in fact intellectual debate is absolutely essential to what we do (Interview 21/12/07, p. 4). The project (White and Watson, 2006; White, 2008a) grew out of a professional learning program that began with a focus on pedagogy and curriculum and grew into an action research project (McNiff and Whitehead, 2006) undertaken by the teachers in order to explore creativity and pedagogy. While it is usual for action research to be reported through written accounts, in this project the teachers decided to perform their learning and understandings. This was familiar territory for us as we drew on earlier work with pre-service teachers (White, 2006). Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 106 During the project there have been many discussions about creativity, pedagogy and teacher collaboration. Much of the value of the project lies in the informal discussions held by the teachers, and the immeasurable impact it has had. The project is premised on the idea that to foster creativity in their own classrooms, the teachers needed to play and explore creatively themselves. The principal wanted the teachers to investigate pedagogy as well as creativity, but was not enamoured by the PoLT program, which was the official approach to pedagogy in Victoria at the beginning of the project. Towards the end of July this year the project will culminate in a performance by teachers for an audience of pre-service teachers. Through the development of performance the teachers have expressed significant ideas through song, dance and symbolii. They have stepped outside the bureaucratic discourse of education and instead have explored what it means to be a teacher for the future. They have explored key professional issues with a particular focus on pedagogy and collaborative collegiality. Above all, they have explored creativity, by playing and taking risks even though they were often nervous about this. The key question guiding the development of the performance has been: What have we learned about ourselves, and our own creativity from our action research project? And what does this mean for our pedagogy and practice? While this introduction to the North Fitzroy Primary School Creativity and Pedagogy Project is tentative and preliminary, it will be reported on in greater depth and clarity shortly. It has been included here to indicate a glimpse of an alternative vision to performativity and a possible way forward to supporting the inclusion of creativity in the mainstream Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 107 curriculum of schools. As the former Federal Minister for Education said at the beginning of the National Education and The Arts Statement: Schools that value creativity lead the way in cultivating the wellinformed and active citizens our future demands: where individuals are able to generate fresh ideas, communicate effectively, take calculated risks and imaginative leaps, adapt easily to change and work co-operatively (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs and Cultural Ministers Council, 2007, p. 3). Conclusion The work of teachers is performative, in the Lyotard sense because it is increasingly devised, controlled and measured by bureaucratic and political processes. And it is also performative in the Butler sense because the discourse about education and the work of teachers promulgated by bureaucrats (as exemplified in the 2020 Summit Report) “…produces that which it names” (Redman, 2000, p. 13). We are in danger of witnessing the demise of teaching into a compliant workforce of program implementers rather than professional teachers capable of fostering and enhancing creativity in the nation’s classrooms. In the pedagogy stakes, it is evident that the artist, the teacher of the arts and the general teacher might work together to enhance creativity in many aspects of school education—starting with general teachers—and engender hope about the future of teaching and learning. Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 108 References Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Burnard, P. and White, J. (in press). Creativity and Performativity: Counterpoints in British and Australian Education British Educational Research Journal, 34(5), 667-682. Butler, J. (1997). Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. 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Paper presented at the Australian Association of Research in Education Annual Conference, ‘Engaging Pedagogies,’ The University of Adelaide, Australia. i We would like to acknowledge Dr Christine Sinclair from Swinburne University who made a significant contribution to the conception of this article. ii We are indebted to Hannes Berger from the Arts Centre who supported the project. Journal of Artistic and Creative Education ISSN 1832 0465 © University of Melbourne 2008 Volume 2, Number 1 White, J., & Smerdon, L,, (2008) Performing Education Page 112