The weekend masterclass develops facilitation skills and is aimed at anyone who is involved in training, development and educating others.
Facilitation skills are vital in any event that involves creating a safe space for collaboration where people are interacting and discussing ideas to promote change.
The workshops explore the use of participatory approaches to professional development such as team building, gaining participants’ trust, maximizing engagement and fostering collaboration and personal disclosure.
The workshops are based on the premise that facilitation skills requires ‘presence’ and involves managing the physical, mental and emotional engagement of the participants.
The workshops also explore the use of community forums in personal and professional development. The workshops are adapted from techniques used in Forum Theatre devised by the Brazilian dramatist Augusto Boal.
Participants will learn the methodology and practice the techniques so after the programme they can apply these methods in their own contexts. This methodology provides an innovative framework for conducting professional development in institutions. It is participant centered and the issues are real concerns and challenges that participants face, while providing a safe space to frame the reflections and discussions. The methodology generates multi-voiced, multi-perspectival dialogue and is focused on finding solutions to real problems and inspiring action and change.
Led by Daniel Foley, a professional actor, who has performed in 64 countries worldwide; his one-man shows have received critical acclaim and he is the founding member of his current theatre company “Performance Exchange.” The workshop includes techniques used by professional actors to project, modulate and develop their voice.
Daniel Foley is a well-known Shakespearean specialist. His one man show brings alive all areas of Shakespearean Drama, from the tragic and macabre to the comic and historic with scenes from “Romeo and Juliet”, “Macbeth”, “Hamlet”, “The Tempest”, amongst others, with significant aplomb and participation of members of the audience. Highlights include impersonations of Marlon Brando and John Wayne taking on Shakespearean roles and an insight into some of the techniques used in hand and sword fighting on the stage. Daniel also shares his knowledge of Elizabethan theatre and tests the audience’s knowledge through an interactive quiz.
Developing Facilitation Skills for Trainers and Educators
Face to face courses at ITI Istanbul.
The course develops advanced facilitation skills and is aimed at anyone who is involved in training, development and educating others. Facilitation skills are vital in any event that involves creating a safe space for collaboration where people are interacting and discussing ideas to promote change. The workshops explore the use of participatory approaches to professional development such as team building, gaining participants’ trust, maximizing engagement and fostering collaboration and personal disclosure and simultaneously develops a range of many other performative skills. The workshops are structured on tried and proven methodology adapted from the participatory arts and used for training in community settings, care homes, hospitals and many institutions focusing on personal and professional development.
Participants will receive a certificate at the end of the course.
These series of workshops explore the use of community forums in personal and professional development. The workshops are adapted from techniques used in Forum Theatre devised by the Brazilian dramatist Augusto Boal.
Participants will learn the methodology and practice the techniques so after the programme they can apply these methods in their own contexts. This methodology provides an innovative framework for conducting professional development in institutions. It is participant (or company) centered (the issues are real concerns and challenges), while providing a safe space to frame the reflections and discussions. The methodology generates multi-voiced, multi-perspectival dialogue and is focused on finding solutions to real problems and inspiring action and change.
This paper is based on a series of diagnostic workshops conducted at a teacher training centre in Istanbul focusing on how participatory methodology can inform ELT Teacher Education. The workshops provided participants experience of participatory methodology and techniques to elicit feedback on their pedagogic value and efficacy in Teacher Education. Through dialogue and reflection, participants identify the facilitation skills they value from the workshops. While participatory methodology has a long and proven track record in Applied Theatre, education and development, it is rarely utilized in teacher development programmes. In particular we explored the use of Community Forums (an adaption of Forum Theatre) in which participants re-enact collectively experienced challenges in order to find solutions. Feedback from the workshops reveals that Community Forums provide participant-led, solution-oriented, multiple voiced opportunities for reflection and dialogue on critical incidents teachers’ face. Additionally, the workshops aim to initiate transformational change by developing participants’ facilitation skills. The research provides the initial diagnostic data to create teacher development programmes incorporating Community Forums and participatory methods.
1 Introduction.
Having just attended a series of professional workshops I am struck by a worrying paradox. Most ELT trainers and educators, while advocating lessons that are personalised, learner-centred and focus on communication and language use; in practice deliver training sessions that are tutor-centred, material driven (invariably structured by power point slides) that appear to aim primarily at the transmission of content. If trainers and educators do not set an example of how to encourage participatory learning, it is hardly surprising then that teachers often pay lip service to the concept of ‘facilitating learning’ while in reality they are stuck in the traditional conception of a teacher as a transmitter of information. We sorely need a framework and structured methodology for participant-led, solution-oriented professional development workshops.
One solution may lie in the methodology provided by the participatory arts. Participatory arts provide a form of expression which enables shared ownership of decision-making processes and aims to generate dialogue, reflection, and community cohesion. Adapting the principles and rationale of Forum Theatre I explored the use of participatory methodology (and Commubnity Forums in particular) for teacher professional development in a series of workshops at a teacher training centre in Istanbul. Community Forums are an adaptation of Forum Theatre which was developed by the Brazilian educator, dramatist, director Augusto Boal in 1973. Rooted in the Brazilian social movements of the 1950s and 1960s and based on Paolo Freire’s model of participatory education, it is designed to represent experiences of social and political oppression in order to stimulate community dialogue and problem-solving. Over 50 years later Forum Theatre has been shown to work successfully across a remarkable range of cultural, political, and social differences and demands. It has been used by peasants and workers, students and teachers, artists, social workers, psychotherapists, and NGOs, among others; in schools, streets, churches, hospitals, theatres, and prisons.
Community Forums can be seen as a methodology for generating both the participants’ understanding of their situation and the actions to improve them so, in other words, it provides both the content (problems) and the methods to interrogate reflection and elicit solutions. The procedure is relatively straight forward and easy for a novice facilitator to follow after basic training. Participants (teachers in our case) are invited to brainstorm and recall crtiical incidents from their experience of challenges / problems they have faced in their work and then share experiences with each other prior to re-enacting the scenarios in groups in order to reflect and diagnose solutions and alternative courses of action. Having investigated and rehearsed a number of scenarios, these then can be scaled up to a wider community by presenting them to an audience and inviting them to discuss and offer alternative solutions. The workshops aim at the education, personal growth and skills development of the participants as well as providing a diagnostic exploration of the efficacy of applying community forums in a professional development setting.
3 Objectives
My specific objectives for the workshops are fourfold.
1. Diagnostic: To provide an opportunity to experience community forums and to elicit participant-led feedback on their efficacy for teacher education.
2. Methodologic: Related to the above, to evaluate whether the methodology is appropriate and effective in teacher education settings (does it do what it claims to do).
3. Pedagogic: To elicit through dialogue and reflection what participants have learned from the workshops.
4. Transformational: To initiate action or change by providing opportunities to develop facilitation skills for participants to utilize in their own settings.
4 Procedure
The workshops were structured according to two components:
A.) Games and participatory activities and B). Community Forum interrogating the challenges of being an ELT teacher and eliciting creative solutions
A. Games and participatory activities.
The activities are designed to build and/or develop most, if not all, of the following:
The workshop structure relies on participation. Firstly, the workshops are built on the participants’ personal narratives and experiences. Sharing personal stories can be a powerful way of promoting teacher development through the sharing of experiences (McCabe 2002). Secondly it is inherently educational as the reflective and interactive processes promote self-aware, critically thinking participants. It encourages a ‘bottom up’ approach to change that is advocated in much literature on educational innovation and change (Fullan 2007).
The three (3 hour) workshops followed this format.
Workshop 1. Tilling the Soil.
Participants warm up to the concept of self-disclosure through activities in pairs and groups. Then we brainstorm the rewards of teaching before relating a story of positive achievement in groups which provides the stimulus for re-enacting the story through image theatre. In the final hour we repeated the cycle but this time brainstorming – challenges, obstacles, difficulties, and concerns of an ELT teacher.
Workshop 2. ‘Sowing the Seeds’
Participants focus on devising scenes for the community forum scenario. By the end of the workshop we have six scenes and a facilitator/ director allocated to each scene.
Stage 3 ‘Blooming’
Participants focus on developing facilitation skills and rehearsing the forum scenes. The scenarios are pressented to an audience in the Community Forum. The forum aims to stimulate discussion, reflection and debate amongst the audience who are also invited to participate in the search for solutions to the issues raised.
5 Findings and participant feedback
5.1 Real experiences / challenges
The aim of the community forum was to raise awareness and interrogate the challenges that teachers face and to explore solutions. After the first workshop I categorized these challenges into four groups for ease of reference:
1. Internal challenges (self-doubts, moods, energy levels, lack of confidence / knowledge)
2. External challenges (from administration, management, learners, parents and colleagues)
3. Contextual challenges (low pay, large classes, inappropriate methodology and materials)
4. Cultural challenges (poor communication, long hours, cultural differences)
When planning the workshops, I was concerned that the scenarios presented to the audience would lack authenticity. However, these comments suggest otherwise:
‘It shows the challenges of a teacher. It is nice to know you are not alone experiencing these kind of problems’
‘It mirrors real situations and presents them visually’.
Indeed, one audience member embodied the experience:
‘In the beginning I was so tense and I felt I was exactly the same as Asya (the protagonist), I even felt blank in the first 10 seconds after the show was over. Felt frustrated but then I started thinking how I could help her… things changed. I started to feel more confident. I could think outside the box again. I felt relieved.’
At the end of the second workshop one participant recognized that time and iteration are necessary for depth and wrote: ‘I believe this kind of training will be more ‘fruitful’ if done several times. I mean problems to focus on will get more challenging and therefore the issues raised will be more thought provoking.’
5.2 Metaxis / dramatic distance.
Participants noted that re-enacting the fiction provided space for reflection. Boal (1995, p.43) refers to the term metaxis to describe the idea of living in an imaginary world which creates a dialectic between fiction and reality so knowledge acquired in the fictional world is transferable to the real world through imaginative play. The benefits of drama to provide ‘distance’ was mentioned by participants as in these examples: ‘I think they open some doors and give perspective about real life problems. Watching other people and seeing the problems acted provides a distance from the problem. So I can think better to find a solution.’
When dramatizing critical incidents participants experience a condition of in-between-ness, a liminal space between reality and fiction. This duality creates both tension and imaginative possibilities that are crucial elements in a training context. Through imagining what it might be like to be another, at the same time as being themselves, participants experience ‘me/not me’ (Schechner, 1985). Transformative theories of learning (Mezirow, 1997) propose that learning occurs when the participant faces a challenge, either an accumulation of experiences over time or a sudden trauma. The state of disequilibrium triggers reflection and critical assessment.
5.3 Reflection and Dialogue.
When prompted to consider the benefits for professional development two comments from the audience included:
‘Confidence, talking about the issues via fictional characters makes people feel better (a bit of therapy) becoming more aware of what happens in their schools’.
‘Imagined situations may be perceived as less confrontational’
Each scenario in our performance highlighted problematic issues involving our teacher protagonist facing challenges. At the end of the event, we had a feedback discussion in which the audience reflected on the experience.
5.4 Participant-led.
By delegating content creation to the workshop participants, the conventional power discrepancy is overturned allowing for participant centred input. This flexibility in facilitation allows for creation of a zone of proximal development for the participants and shifts the responsibility for learning from the facilitator to the participants (Vygotsky, 1986). The zone of proximal development is a concept introduced by Vygotsky to describe the space between ‘not able to do’ and ‘able to do’. In this space participants seek solutions with support from the audience.
One key objective of the workshops is to assess their pedagogic value. One factor that emerged was that as the content was participant led, this allowed space for creativity. One participant commented: ‘It was lovely watching the things that were crafted by people, from nothing‘.
5.5 Change and transformation
A key aspect of the methodology is the degree of change and transformation of the participants. In the final workshop I invited participants to comment on how the workshops assisted in their professional development. Many comments referred to the methodology itself; ‘Creating alternative solutions, scenarios, paths of experience’; ‘Exploring issues that concern teachers can clarify things and help find solutions;’ Many participants commented on the relationship between challenge and enjoyment: ‘It was scary at first, but then, it was fun’. In terms of learning and development there is a need for challenge, as Sawyer (1999) highlights: ‘Change is always connected to the willingness to take risks in going beyond what is known and familiar’.
5.6 Scalability
One key advantage of community forums in terms of teacher development is that the procedure can be scaled up to involve large numbers of participants in a short time period. Simply by training an initial modest cohort of 12 community forum facilitators, if these facilitators subsequently conduct workshops for a further 12 participants and then present their community forums to audiences of 200 teachers, within a limited period more than 2,500 teachers will have been exposed to the issues and had an opportunity to discuss and generate solutions. The forums can be expanded to include other stakeholders such as School Principals, learners, and parents. In addition the impact of the forums in terms of audience responses and committment to finding solutions is visible. The forum can be filmed and/ or audience feedback obtained to provide tangible evidence of impact to sponsors.
5.7 Limitations
One audience member recognised that a representative range of stakeholders are needed to have a genuine interrogation of the issues: ‘Through these workshops we can actually educate heads of department, principals of schools, managers and even teacher trainers in order to create a healthier working environment.’
When asked whether institutions would be interested in professional development using Community Forums there was a mixed response. ‘The institutions are interested in making money. I think they don’t care for using professional development that needs a lot of time and costs a lot maybe’.
‘Here is the point, sometimes people prefer the old-fashioned techniques (books, homework and old rules) so they are not accepting new things.’
6 Conclusion
Community Forums operate at the facilitative, open end of the teaching / training continuum and therefore are liable to elicit more fervent participant responses, interaction and dialogue. Community Forums epitomise an interactionist, participatory approach to learning espousing the philosophy that the process of meaningful dialogue and interaction and the flow of ideas is where learning occurs.
We can conclude by revisiting our initial objectives for the workshops.
1. Diagnostic.
The workshops generated reflection and discussion that provided valuable information about participants perspectives of Community Forums and its relevance to their development as teachers.
2. Methodology.
Despite some limitations, such as potential lack of acceptance by institutions and other stakeholders, we can conclude that Community Forums provide participant-led, authentic content to generate solution oriented interventions, reflection, and dialogue of lived experience as well as offering a safe, fictional distance to encourage personal disclosure and multiple perspectives.
3. Pedagogic
Participants identified numerous facilitation skills that emerged primarily through the games and activities. The methodology provides participants opportunities to develop facilitation skills of raising their awareness of self, others and reflect on their beliefs, behaviour and feelings. These facilitation skills are rarely addressed in teacher education where the focus is primarily on a cognitive, instrumental orientation rather than towards a performative-humanistic understanding of “teaching and learning with head, heart, hands, and feet” (Schewe, 2013, p. 7).
4. Transformational
My aim in conducting the workshops is to stimulate action and change. The workshops are a pilot project to explore the efficacy of Community Forums and how to develop the skills of facilitators who can then disseminate the methodology. After my initial diagnostic workshops I have created two short courses: 1) A week intensive training to develop facilitator skills; 2) Three (3 hour) workshops leading to a Community Forum (see Appendix A). The overall aim is to introduce teachers to a range of techniques to raise awareness of the participatory arts in general and the us of community forums in particular and reveal a fresh landscape of creative personalised expression, enjoyment and gratification.
Works Cited
Boal, A., 1995. The rainbow of desire: the Boal method of theatre and therapy. Routledge, London; New York.
Freire, P., 1995. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum, New York.
Fullan, M., 2007. The new meaning of educational change, 4th ed. ed. Teachers College Press, New York.
Mezirow, J., 1997. Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice. New Directions for Adult and Continuing , Volume 1997, pp. 5 – 12.
McCabe, A., 2002. A Wellspring for development. IATEFL Publications 82–96.
Schechner, R., 1985. Between theatre and anthropology. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Schewe, M., 2013. Taking stock and looking ahead: Drama pedagogy as a gateway for performative. Scenario: Journal for Performative Teaching, Learning and Research, Volume 8, pp. 5 – 23.
Vygotsky, L., 1986. Thought and language. Cambridge, Massachucetts: MIT.
7. Appendix
Developing Facilitation Skills for Trainers and Educators
These series of workshops explore the use of community forums in personal and professional development. The workshops are adapted from techniques used in Forum Theatre devised by the Brazilian dramatist Augusto Boal.
Participants will learn the methodology and practice the techniques so after the programme they can apply these methods in their own contexts. This methodology provides an innovative framework for conducting professional development in institutions. It is participant (or company) centered (the issues are real concerns and challenges), while providing a safe space to frame the reflections and discussions. The methodology generates multi-voiced, multi-perspectival dialogue and is focused on finding solutions to real problems and inspiring action and change.
Identifying Performative and Meta-Performative Skills pertinent to Teacher Development.
This article is based on a series of diagnostic workshops conducted at a teacher training centre in Istanbul focusing on how Performative Pedagogy can inform Teacher Education. Performative Pedagogy provides embodied, participant-led, solution-oriented, multiple voiced opportunities for reflection and dialogue on critical incidents teachers’ face. In addition, participants highlighted a number of performative skills pertaining to developing awareness of self, others and setting that are fundamentally ignored in current competence-based teacher education programmes. Finally participants uncovered meta-performative skills revealing aspects of their identity and reflection on why teachers act in the way that they do.
Background to the workshops
I work in a teacher training centre in Istanbul training pre-service and in-service teachers from a spectrum of cultures and linguistic backgrounds. The environment demands self-aware, reflective teachers who are collaborative, demonstrate inter and intra-personal qualities, adaptable, able to embrace diversity in multi-cultural and multi-linguistic contexts while solving emergent problems, adopting a range of roles and in most cases having to perform in a language which is not their mother tongue. Typically, the teacher education they receive focusses on cognitive, instrumental and propositional knowledge leaving them often feeling ill-equipped, disillusioned and ill-prepared to meet the behavioral challenges of teaching a class in situ. To fill this gap, I have turned to performative pedagogy and to an examination of its applicability to teacher education.
Performative approaches to learning demands skills that combine physical, cognitive and affective domains. Teaching is performative in that it is based on judgements formed through action (heuristic); it is influenced by contingencies that happen in real time and are unpredictable (improvised); it involves physical and emotional engagement (embodied) and learning is created in the process (emergent). “Teachers are taught how to instruct but not how to engage their students emotionally”. (Wahl, 2011, p. 21).
Post pandemic it is opportune to consider the importance of the embodied physical presence of learners and teachers in the learning encounter as this raises fundamental issues as to the nature of teaching and learning. Teachers are rarely trained in skills to assist them to be physically present, emotionally aware and able to improvise creatively to emergent needs. The potential of embodied methodologies and the need to acquire performative skills is ignored in teacher education which remains firmly entrenched in a competence driven paradigm. Metaphorically teacher education provides ‘the map’ (the official version of the journey route) but omits ‘the story’ (the feelings of the journey’s experience).
Research on teacher education has moved somewhat from defining what a teacher is, does or believes to a more ‘bottom up’ perspective of examining how teachers learn (Allwright 2001). Despite a move to more teacher introspection, teacher education is still rooted to the assumption that teachers need core disciplinary knowledge (Yates and Muchisky 2003) and knowledge of pedagogic skills which will be moulded into expertise through classroom experience. In contrast the underlying philosophy behind performative pedagogy is that there is a direct relationship between affective, cognitive and physical domains so we need to ‘feel’ something as well as understand it. Vygotsky refers to ‘perezvanhie’ a Russian term meaning ‘learning through experience’. In other words, we need to experience the state of confusion (liminality), a state of being in limbo between knowing and not knowing, before transformation is possible. Development is conceptualized as participatory, action oriented, holistic and requires a performative-humanistic understanding of ‘teaching and learning with head, heart, hands and feet’ (Schewe, 2013).
Definition of Performative.
The term ‘performative’ was first coined by Austin in 1962 to refer to a limited set of verbs that both describe and require the performance of the act simultaneously: ‘I name this ship Titanic’. The term was picked up 20 years later by Postmodern thinkers (Derrida, Habermas, Bourdieu) who re-defined ‘performativity’ to include any iterative action that involves social interaction and presence (embodied), indeed any action that involves people coming together to communicate meanings and affirm cultural and social values (i.e. protest marches, sports events, political rallies, concerts). Today with the advent of Performance Studies performativity has a wide remit encompassing gender, race and has opened up significant ways for rethinking language and identity.
Features of Performative Pedagogy.
Performance pedagogy has evolved from ‘drama in education’ (pioneered by Heathcote in the 1960s) and is inherently participant centred. The key characteristics are role playing, improvisation, context specific topics and reflection and discussion on the part of the participants. Like Heathcote, the dramatist Augusto Boal’s philosophy (as depicted in his book ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’) involves learning through re-enactment of scenarios but differs in that learning starts with an awareness and analysis of the present context (oppressions) and involves re-enactment and reflection to uncover solutions and promote action/ change. Boal’s methodology is indebted to his mentor the pedagogue Freire who foregrounds the movement of powerless (oppressed) people from being acted upon (objects) to initiating action and becoming subjects of their own lives. For Freire this process of ‘conscientization’ is dependent on replacing the banking system of education (filling learners with the academy’s version of knowledge) with a dialogic approach to learning. So, while Freire broke the hierarchical divide between teacher and student, Boal did so between performer and audience and by extension performative pedagogy conducts a similar dismantling of the positioning of Teacher and Teacher Educator.
The Findings
These workshops, by identifying the performative and meta-performative skills required by teachers contributes to both the participants’ personal development as well as informing Teacher Education in general. No doubt that becoming more aware of who you are and where you are going is key to professional development. Teachers share experiences and commonalities, become more comfortable with personal disclosure, and come to experience and enjoy a new level of articulation and self-efficacy.
Workshop Objectives
1. Diagnostic.
The workshops generated a lot of written data, oral reflection and discussion that provided valuable information about participants perspectives of Performative Pedagogy and how it is relevant to their development as teachers.
2. Methodology.
Performative Pedagogy provides participant-led, authentic content to generate solution oriented, embodied interventions, reflection, and dialogue of lived experience as well as offering a safe dramatic, fictional distance to encourage personal disclosure and multiple perspectives.
3. Pedagogic
Participants identified numerous performative and meta-performative skills that emerged primarily through the workshop activities. The methodology provides participants opportunities to develop performative skills of raising their awareness of self, others and their context and reflect on their beliefs, behaviour and feelings while performing the activities (meta-performative).
4. Transformational
There is a need for training in performative methods and for educational practices to understand the potential of the arts in transforming consciousness, refining the senses, and enlarging the imagination, and requiring teachers with awareness of performative skills. Performative Pedagogy introduces teachers to a range of techniques to raise awareness of the performative and reveal a fresh landscape of creative embodied expression, enjoyment and gratification.
References
Allwright, R, 2001. Three major processes of teacher development and the appropriate design criteria for developing and using them, in: Research and Practice in Language Teacher Education: Voices from the Field. CARLA, Minneapolis, pp. 115–134.
Schewe, M., 2013. Taking Stock and Looking Ahead: Drama Pedagogy as a Gateway to a Performative Teaching and Learning Culture. Scenario 2013.
Yates, R., Muchisky, D., 2003. On Reconceptualizing Teacher Education. TESOL Quarterly 37, 135.
Wahl, S., 2011. Learning to teach by treading the boards. In Key Concepts in Theatre/Drama Education (pp. 19-22).
This is a blog for teachers interested in teacher education, teacher training and development, teaching and learning and related topics. We will be inviting a variety of people to share their experiences on a regular basis – so keep coming back!.
The latest post is by Galina an ITI DELTA student working in Samara, Russia. She describes the three-day ITI Master Classes held at her University. Liz and I had a wonderful time and thank Galina for inviting us and also writing it up for our blog.
I have written the first two posts to get the ball rolling. My first post is about ‘whole person learning’ and explains my personal philosophy that learning should utilise the whole person in terms of stimulating the mind, body and emotions.
My second post is also personal and describes my experiences over the last two years facing cancer. Like staring down from a precipice, confronting our fragile mortality is terrifying, and yet, at the same time by confronting the inevitable, it provides a unique opportunity to perceive from a new and sharper perspective and to learn valuable lessons about the nature of learning and life.
Diverse people join hands in a glowing circle, celebrating connection and collective energy.
If performative skills matter, the next question is obvious: how can they be developed?
This is particularly important because discussions of presence, charisma, rapport or creativity can easily become unhelpful. They can make good teaching sound like a personality trait. Some teachers “have it”; others do not.
I do not believe this is true.
Of course, teachers bring different temperaments, histories and dispositions into the classroom. Some are naturally more outgoing; others are quieter. Some enjoy playful improvisation; others prefer careful structure. But performative pedagogy is not about making all teachers behave in the same way. It is about helping teachers become more aware of how they use themselves in the classroom.
The teacher’s self is part of the teaching situation: voice, body, attention, emotion, imagination, presence, choices, habits and responses. These can be explored and developed.
One way to do this is through carefully sequenced drama-informed activities.
For example, a simple counting game can reveal a great deal. Two people count “1, 2, 3” repeatedly, taking turns. Then one number is replaced by an action. Then another is replaced by a sound. The task is simple, playful and often funny. But beneath the game, important human skills are being practised: concentration, timing, eye contact, shared rhythm, repair, laughter, risk and responsiveness.
This kind of activity helps us see the difference between completing a sequence and learning with another person. An AI bot may be able to follow a pattern, but it does not experience hesitation, embarrassment, trust, playfulness or shared attention in the same way. Human learning happens in the relationship.
Other activities develop different dimensions of performative skill.
Passing the breath or passing a clap around a circle can develop concentration, focus and group rhythm. These activities require participants to attend closely to others, to anticipate, to receive and to pass on energy. They are deceptively simple, but they make visible the quality of attention in a group.
A group walk can develop ensemble awareness. Participants move through the space together, changing direction, speed or level without verbal instruction. The task requires peripheral vision, sensitivity, leadership, following and collective adjustment. It helps teachers experience what it means to be part of a learning group rather than standing outside it.
Blind magnets, or similar trust-based activities, can develop body awareness, responsibility and relational sensitivity. One participant leads another non-verbally or with limited visual information. The activity foregrounds trust, care, clarity, consent and responsiveness. These are not abstract values; they become embodied experiences.
Still image work can help teachers explore meaning, identity and emotional resonance. Participants create frozen images with their bodies to represent ideas, classroom moments, tensions or memories. This can lead into personal disclosure, reflection and discussion. It allows complex experiences to be seen before they are explained.
These activities are not only useful for language learners. They are powerful tools for teacher education.
They allow teachers and trainees to experience the human skills of teaching from the inside. They create a shared vocabulary for reflection. They make visible what is often hidden. They also provide a practical alternative to feedback that remains too general.
Instead of saying, “You need to be more confident,” a trainer might ask:
Where was your attention during that stage? What did your body communicate? How did you use the space? What happened to the group energy? When did you notice learners becoming more or less engaged? How did you respond to hesitation? What choices did you make with your voice? Where could you have paused? How did you build trust before asking learners to take a risk?
These questions are more useful because they turn presence into practice.
Performative skills can also be developed through micro-teaching and rehearsal. Teachers can rehearse instructions, transitions, storytelling, boardwork, gesture, silence, grouping, feedback and classroom movement. This does not make teaching artificial. On the contrary, rehearsal can free teachers to be more responsive because they are less trapped by anxiety or procedural uncertainty.
Observation can also be reframed. Instead of observing only task design, interaction patterns or error correction, we can observe performative dimensions of the lesson: rhythm, pace, spatial relationships, emotional climate, teacher positioning, use of voice, learner attention, group cohesion and moments of shared engagement.
Reflection then becomes richer. Teachers begin to ask not only “Did the activity work?” but “What kind of human event did we create?”
This matters deeply in the age of AI.
If teacher education focuses only on planning, content, explanation and feedback, AI will increasingly appear to compete with teachers. But if we attend to presence, relationship, embodiment, creativity and responsiveness, AI can help us see more clearly what teachers uniquely bring.
The future of teacher education should not be a retreat into nostalgia or a rejection of technology. It should be a renewed commitment to the human craft of teaching.
Performative skills give us one way to name that craft.
They remind us that teachers do not simply deliver lessons.
Part 2: Understanding Performative Skills in Education
If we want to defend the importance of the human teacher, it is not enough to say that teaching is “human”, “relational” or “creative”. These words matter, but they can also remain vague. We need to be more specific.
What exactly does a human embodied teacher do?
What are the skills involved?
And how can we make these skills visible in teacher education?
This is where I have started using the term performative skills.
Performative skills are the embodied, relational and responsive abilities teachers use to create learning as a live event. They are the skills through which teachers animate content, build trust, shape attention and respond to the unpredictable reality of classroom life.
They include, for example, presence.
Presence is not simply “confidence”. It is the ability to be fully there with learners: grounded, attentive, open and available. A teacher with presence does not need to dominate the room. Presence can be quiet. It can be calm. It can be playful. It is the sense that the teacher is genuinely with the group rather than merely moving through a plan.
They include attunement.
Attunement is the ability to sense what is happening in the room and adjust accordingly. It involves noticing mood, rhythm, energy, anxiety, confusion, resistance and engagement. It is what allows a teacher to slow down, move on, pause, reframe, encourage, challenge or simply wait.
They include timing.
Timing is central to teaching, but we rarely talk about it explicitly. When do you intervene? When do you hold back? How long do you allow silence? When does an activity need more time, and when has its energy gone? When is a joke helpful, and when does it distract? Teaching depends on thousands of small timing decisions.
They include voice.
Teachers use voice not only to explain, but to shape atmosphere. Voice can energise, calm, invite, signal seriousness, create suspense, offer reassurance or mark transition. Tone, pace, volume, pause and emphasis all affect how learners experience the classroom.
They include gesture and body awareness.
A teacher’s body communicates constantly. Where we stand, how we move, how we use our hands, whether we sit or stand, how close we are to learners, whether we seem open or closed — all of these shape classroom interaction. Body awareness is not about performing a role; it is about becoming conscious of the messages we send.
They include spatial awareness.
Classrooms are not neutral containers. They are social spaces. The arrangement of chairs, the teacher’s position, movement patterns, grouping, distance and orientation all influence participation. A performative teacher understands that space can include or exclude, energise or inhibit.
They include responsiveness.
Responsiveness is the ability to work with what emerges. Learners misunderstand, laugh, resist, surprise us, ask unexpected questions, make emotional disclosures, take activities in new directions. Teaching is never fully scripted. The human teacher has to improvise.
They include playfulness.
Playfulness is not the same as being unserious. It is the willingness to explore, experiment and create a temporary world in which learners can take risks. Drama activities, role play, games and imaginative tasks depend on this quality, but so does much effective classroom interaction.
They include ensemble-building.
A class is not just a collection of individuals. It is a group with its own energy, relationships and patterns of participation. Teachers help build the ensemble. They create conditions in which learners listen to each other, respond to each other and begin to feel responsible for the shared learning space.
They include emotional and relational awareness.
Teachers work with human vulnerability. Learners may feel embarrassed, anxious, exposed, bored, excited, resistant or proud. Language learning in particular often involves risk: speaking in a new language, making mistakes, being heard by others. Performative skills help teachers hold this emotional complexity.
None of these skills exists separately from teaching knowledge. They do not replace planning, language awareness, methodology or assessment. But they bring these things to life.
A perfectly planned lesson can still fail if the teacher cannot read the room. A useful activity can fall flat if the timing is wrong. A clear explanation can be ignored if the teacher has not established attention. A communicative task can feel unsafe if the group has not developed trust.
This is why performative skills matter.
They are not decorative extras. They are part of the craft of teaching.
The problem is that teacher education often treats them indirectly. We may comment that a trainee needs “more presence”, “better rapport”, “clearer instructions” or “more confidence”, but we do not always break these qualities down into teachable components. As a result, trainees may experience them as personality judgments rather than developable skills.
A performative framework can help change that.
It allows us to say: presence can be practised. Voice can be explored. Gesture can be noticed. Timing can be rehearsed. Spatial choices can be analysed. Responsiveness can be developed. Trust can be built through carefully sequenced activity. Group energy can be shaped.
In other words, the human dimensions of teaching can become part of teacher education.
Teaching Presence in the Age of AI: Developing Performative Skills in Teacher Education
Over the last couple of years, many conversations about AI and education have focused on what AI can do.
It can generate lesson plans. It can produce explanations. It can write comprehension questions. It can suggest feedback. It can create role cards, discussion prompts, grammar practice, vocabulary quizzes and course outlines.
For teachers and teacher educators, this is both exciting and unsettling. If AI can produce so much of the visible “content” of teaching, then what remains for the teacher? What is distinctively human about teaching? And what kinds of teacher ability should we now be paying more attention to?
These questions have led me back to something I have been researching and working with for many years: the performative dimension of teaching.
By “performative”, I do not mean theatrical in the sense of artificial, exaggerated or entertaining. I mean the embodied, relational and responsive work teachers do when they are physically and emotionally present with learners. Teaching is not simply the delivery of information. It is a live human event.
A teacher notices.
A teacher feels the energy in the room.
A teacher senses when learners are confused, anxious, playful, resistant, tired or ready.
A teacher adjusts timing, voice, space, gesture, silence and pace.
A teacher creates trust.
A teacher invites participation.
A teacher holds attention.
A teacher repairs moments of uncertainty.
A teacher responds to what is happening between people.
These things are easy to overlook because they are often not written down in lesson plans. They are not always assessed explicitly on teacher-training courses. They do not fit neatly into categories such as aims, procedures, interaction patterns or anticipated problems. Yet they often determine whether a lesson feels alive or flat, safe or tense, mechanical or meaningful.
When we remember teachers who had an impact on us, we do not usually remember their worksheets. We remember how they made us feel. We remember their presence, their humour, their attention, their patience, their confidence, their way of inviting us into the learning. We remember moments when they saw us, challenged us, encouraged us or created a classroom atmosphere in which something became possible.
This is where the AI question becomes useful. AI may be able to produce impressive educational content, but it cannot fully enter the shared embodied space of a classroom. It cannot feel the hesitation before a learner speaks. It cannot sense the fragile moment when a group begins to trust each other. It cannot use silence, eye contact, proximity, humour or vulnerability in the way a human teacher can. It cannot participate in the emotional life of the room.
Of course, this does not mean AI has no place in education. It may become a powerful tool for planning, materials design, language support, feedback and reflection. But the rise of AI should make us more interested, not less interested, in the human dimensions of teaching.
The danger is that we respond to AI by becoming more mechanical ourselves: more efficient, more content-driven, more output-focused. The opportunity is different. We can use this moment to ask what teaching really is when it is not reduced to information transfer.
This is where I think performative pedagogy has something important to offer teacher education.
It gives us a language for talking about the teacher as an embodied presence. It helps us notice the role of voice, body, timing, rhythm, space, gesture, attention, imagination, emotional attunement and relationship. It reminds us that learning is not only cognitive; it is social, affective, physical and aesthetic.
Most importantly, it suggests that these human skills are not simply personal qualities. They are not mysterious gifts possessed only by naturally charismatic teachers. They can be identified. They can be practised. They can be developed.
If AI is forcing us to ask what human teachers are for, then one possible answer is this:
Human teachers create the conditions in which learning becomes a shared, embodied and meaningful experience.
That is not a small thing. It may be the heart of the work.
What does the ITI Train the Trainer course involve?
It is an eight-week, part-time online course for experienced English language teachers who want to begin supporting the development of other teachers.
Participants:
• complete practical weekly tasks; • attend two live Zoom sessions; • develop skills in training-session design, observation and feedback; • have opportunities to deliver live training workshops; • receive constructive feedback on their training practice.
There is no formal examination or lengthy final written assignment. Participants who complete the compulsory requirements receive an ITI Certificate of Completion.
The course begins on 24 August, and applications close on 21 August.
More than 240 people registered for ITI’s recent From Teacher to Trainer webinar, with over 70 teachers joining us live. The level of interest suggested that many experienced teachers are thinking about how they might begin supporting the development of their colleagues.
Moving into teacher training can seem like a natural progression. Experienced teachers possess classroom knowledge, practical ideas and a considerable repertoire of teaching techniques. However, being an effective teacher does not automatically make someone an effective teacher trainer. Training requires a shift in our role, our relationships and, perhaps most importantly, the way we use our experience.
Teaching and training are different
When we teach learners, we usually work within a structure created by a curriculum, syllabus or coursebook. We make many decisions on the learners’ behalf: what they need to learn, which activities they will complete and how their progress will be assessed.
When we work with teachers, our role is less directive. Teacher development cannot simply be delivered to someone. Teachers bring their own experience, beliefs, knowledge, personalities and professional identities to the process. The trainer’s role is to create the conditions in which they can examine their teaching, identify their needs and make informed decisions about their development.
This means moving from giving answers to facilitating thinking.
Some people prefer the term teacher educator, while others describe themselves as trainers, mentors, coaches, academic managers or Directors of Studies. These roles are not identical, but they share an important purpose: helping teachers understand and develop their practice.
What do teacher trainers do?
Teacher trainers generally work in three interconnected areas.
1. Designing and facilitating workshops
Training workshops provide structured opportunities for teachers to encounter new ideas, examine their existing beliefs and share their experiences.
An effective workshop is not simply a lecture about teaching. It should model good learning by involving participants actively, drawing on their knowledge and giving them opportunities to apply ideas to their own contexts.
2. Observing teaching
Observation helps trainers and teachers gather evidence about what happens in the classroom. It can reveal patterns that may be difficult for a teacher to notice while managing a lesson.
Observation should not be treated simply as inspection or evaluation. Used developmentally, it provides a focus for reflection and a starting point for professional dialogue.
3. Facilitating feedback
Feedback is not merely a trainer telling a teacher what was good or bad about a lesson. Its purpose is to help the teacher understand what happened, consider the effect on learning and decide what to do next.
Unless feedback leads to reflection and purposeful action, it is unlikely to produce lasting development.
Four temptations facing new trainers
When experienced teachers become trainers, their knowledge can sometimes become an obstacle. We naturally want to be helpful, but being helpful does not always mean providing an immediate solution.
There are four common temptations.
1. Giving the answer too quickly
A teacher describes a problem and we immediately explain what they should do. The advice may be sensible, but the teacher has not necessarily understood the problem or developed a solution they believe in.
Advice is more likely to be remembered and applied when the teacher has participated in creating it.
This does not mean that trainers should never offer ideas. It means that we should not give an answer before allowing the teacher to think.
2. Demonstrating our own solution
Experienced trainers often have a large collection of successful activities and techniques. It is tempting to say, “This is what I did with my class last week.”
Sharing experience can be useful, but our solution was developed for our learners, personality and teaching context. It may not transfer successfully to another teacher’s classroom.
Instead of presenting our approach as the answer, we can offer it as one possibility and invite the teacher to evaluate or adapt it.
3. Beginning with an evaluation
Imagine beginning a feedback meeting by saying:
“Your teacher talking time was too high.”
Even if the observation is accurate, the statement invites the teacher either to agree or disagree. If the teacher responds, “I don’t think it was,” the conversation can quickly become an argument between two opinions.
A more productive starting point is to explore what happened:
What were the learners doing during that stage?
What opportunities did they have to speak?
How long did the explanation take?
What effect did this have on their participation?
These questions establish a shared account of the lesson before either person evaluates it.
4. Prescribing a technique
Telling a teacher to use group work, change an activity or adopt a particular technique may appear practical. However, teaching decisions are influenced by deeply held beliefs.
A teacher may believe that group work is unsuitable because learners use their first language. Simply instructing the teacher to use group work is unlikely to change that belief. The trainer needs to understand it, explore the evidence behind it and help the teacher identify a manageable experiment.
Professional development involves more than collecting techniques. It often requires us to examine the beliefs that shape our decisions.
A three-stage framework for developmental feedback
A useful feedback conversation can move through three stages: evidence, analysis and action.
Stage 1: Evidence—what happened?
Begin by establishing a description of the lesson.
Questions might include:
What instructions did you give?
How did you organise the groups?
What did the learners do next?
What evidence suggested that they understood the task?
Who participated and who did not?
This stage keeps the discussion grounded in observable events rather than judgments.
For example, imagine that a role play did not work successfully. Some groups were uneven, learners read their role cards aloud and much of the discussion took place in their first language.
Beginning with “Your instructions were unclear” is an evaluation. Asking “What instructions did you give?” allows the teacher to reconstruct the lesson and begin noticing possible causes.
Stage 2: Analysis—why did it happen?
Once trainer and teacher have established what happened, they can explore why it happened and what effect it had on learning.
Questions might include:
Which parts of the activity worked as you expected?
Where did the learners experience difficulty?
Why do you think that happened?
What effect did the groupings have?
What helped or prevented learners from completing the task?
What would you change if you taught the lesson again?
The trainer’s job is not to lead the teacher towards a predetermined answer. It is to remain genuinely curious. Our initial interpretation may be incomplete or wrong.
Stage 3: Action—what could happen next?
Reflection becomes developmental when it results in action.
The final stage helps the teacher identify alternatives and decide what to try:
How could you set up the activity differently?
What could you do to check that the instructions are understood?
Which alternative would be realistic with this class?
What will you try in your next lesson?
What evidence will show you whether it worked?
The teacher remains the decision-maker. The trainer can contribute ideas, but these are possibilities to consider rather than instructions to follow.
A simple way to remember the framework is:
What happened? → Why did it happen? → What will you try next?
Relationships come before techniques
Questioning frameworks are useful, but teacher development is not a mechanical process. The success of a feedback conversation depends heavily on the relationship between the trainer and the teacher.
Effective trainers need presence, empathy, active listening and genuine curiosity. They also need the courage to raise difficult issues when necessary.
Different teachers require different kinds of support. A new teacher may need encouragement and greater structure. A highly experienced teacher may expect a more equal, exploratory conversation. A teacher who appears resistant may have had previous experiences of observation that felt judgmental or threatening.
There is no single feedback formula that will work with everyone. Trainers need to respond to the person in front of them.
Trust does not mean avoiding difficult feedback. It creates the conditions in which difficult issues can be explored productively.
Development requires experimentation
Teaching is complex, and it is rarely useful to ask a teacher to reflect on an entire lesson at once. Reflection becomes more productive when it has a clear focus.
The teacher might examine instructions, learner participation, questioning, group organisation or responses to learner errors. They can then:
identify what happened;
consider its effect on learning;
explore possible alternatives;
try something different;
gather evidence and reflect again.
Professional learning therefore involves experimentation. Not every new approach will work immediately, but an unsuccessful experiment can still provide valuable information.
The aim is not to produce teachers who depend on trainers for answers. It is to help teachers become increasingly able to analyse their own classrooms, make informed decisions and take responsibility for their continuing development.
Are you ready to move from teacher to trainer?
ITI’s Train the Trainer course is an eight-week, part-time online professional-development programme for experienced English language teachers who want to support less experienced colleagues.
Participants learn how to identify teachers’ development needs, plan and facilitate training sessions, observe lessons and conduct developmental feedback. The course includes guided online study, compulsory practical tasks, two live Zoom sessions and opportunities to deliver live workshops and receive feedback on their training.
There is no formal examination or final written assessment. Participants who complete the compulsory tasks receive an ITI Certificate of Completion and are qualified to train teachers on selected ITI courses, subject to the requirements of the particular course.
The next course begins on 24 August 2026.
Duration: Eight weeks
Study commitment: Approximately four to six hours per week
Course fee: £385
Application deadline: 21 August 2026
If you are ready to move beyond developing learners and begin developing teachers, the Train the Trainer course will help you build the practical skills, confidence and reflective approach you need.
Wake Up the Room, Wake Up Your Voice: Breathing Activities for Teachers
Teaching needs energy. Energy comes through breathing.
There are moments when a class needs lifting: the point after lunch, the final hour of the day, a difficult transition between tasks, or that familiar moment when attention begins to drift and the room seems to lose momentum.
There are also moments when we need lifting.
Teachers use their voices continuously. Our voice is our most useful tool. Yet we rarely give our voices the same preparation that we give our materials.
This Teaching Artistry Tip introduces three simple breath-based activities. The first can be used as a short energiser with learners. The other two are primarily for teachers who want to develop greater awareness of airflow, vocal control and projection.
1. Dragon’s Breath: an energiser for the classroom
Dragon’s Breath is a quick, physical activity for raising energy and bringing attention back into the room.
Stand with your feet comfortably apart. As you breathe in through your nose, shoot both arms upwards. As you breathe out, bring your arms down again. Repeat with a lively rhythm.
The movement is deliberately larger than everyday movement. It gives learners permission to wake up physically, breathe more fully and reconnect with the group.
Try ten to twenty repetitions, depending on the age, energy and needs of the group. Keep the breaths light and comfortable rather than forced. The aim is not to take the biggest possible breath. It is to create movement, rhythm and renewed alertness.
This can work particularly well:
after a long period of seated work;
at the beginning of an early-morning or late-afternoon lesson;
after a break;
before a speaking activity;
when learners seem tired, distracted or low in energy.
You might frame it simply:
“Let’s wake up our bodies and our attention before we begin.”
The activity is also a useful reminder that classroom energy is not only created through entertaining materials or increasingly busy tasks. Sometimes learners need a brief physical reset.
A note of care
Because Dragon’s Breath involves quicker breathing, it should remain short, light and optional. Encourage learners to work at a comfortable pace and return to normal breathing afterwards. Anyone who feels dizzy, uncomfortable or self-conscious can simply use slower movements or observe.
2. The Balloon: practising slow, controlled airflow
The Balloon activity is designed to help teachers notice and practise a long, steady out-breath.
Begin by breathing in gently through your nose. Then breathe out slowly through your mouth, as though you are allowing a balloon to deflate gradually.
Repeat the exercise. This time, make a long, gentle “ssssss” sound as you breathe out.
Try to keep the sound even. Do not push or strain. Notice whether the hiss begins strongly and then collapses, whether your shoulders lift, or whether tension appears in your throat, jaw or neck.
The purpose is not to produce the longest possible sound. It is to explore steady airflow.
Teachers often lose vocal clarity or begin to sound strained when they try to say too much on one breath, push their voice across a noisy room or speak at speed for a long period. This activity can help develop awareness of how breath supports the voice.
3. The Pump: varying the release of breath
The Pump develops the Balloon activity further.
Breathe in gently through your nose. On the out-breath, make four short “ss, ss, ss, ss” sounds, followed by one longer “ssssss.”
Repeat the pattern a few times:
Short, short, short, short, long.
Keep the sound easy and controlled. Think of it as practising different ways of releasing air, rather than forcing it out.
From breath to classroom presence
These activities are not about becoming a different kind of teacher or performing a polished version of yourself.
They are about choice.
When you are aware of your breath, you are more able to notice when your voice is becoming rushed, flat, tight or overly loud. You can pause before repeating an instruction. You can slow down when learners look uncertain. You can use silence rather than filling every moment with talk.
Breath supports voice, but it also supports presence.
A teacher who is physically alert and vocally available is more able to respond to the room: to notice learner energy, to listen, to adapt, and to guide the class without relying only on louder speech or more explanation.
Reflect after your next lesson
After trying one of these activities, ask yourself:
When did the energy of the room need lifting?
How did I respond: through my voice, my movement, my instructions or my presence?
Did I speak with steady breath and clear phrasing?
When did I push my voice unnecessarily?
What changed when I paused before speaking?
Small physical practices can have a surprising effect on the atmosphere of a lesson.
Before your next class, try Dragon’s Breath to wake up the room. Before a demanding teaching day, try the Balloon and the Pump to reconnect with your voice.
Teaching Artistry begins by noticing that the teacher’s body, breath and voice are not separate from the lesson. They are part of how learning feels.
When you enter a classroom breathless, tense or rushed, that appears in your voice. You may speak too quickly, over-explain, raise your volume unnecessarily, or sound less available to learners.
Most teachers know the feeling. You have moved quickly between lessons, dealt with an unexpected problem, answered messages, prepared materials, and then suddenly it is time to teach. Your body may have arrived in the classroom, but your attention has not quite caught up.
Before teaching, take a few minutes to settle your breathing and warm up your voice.
This is a small practice, but it can change the way you begin a lesson.
Try this breathing pattern
Breathe in through your nose for a count of four.
Hold the breath for a count of four.
Breathe out through your mouth for a count of four, making a gentle sound.
Hold for a count of four.
Repeat several times.
The gentle sound on the out-breath helps connect breath and voice. It also gives you a chance to notice what is happening physically.
Does your voice feel tight or forced? Does the sound come easily? Are your shoulders raised? Is your jaw tense? Are you rushing the out-breath?
The aim is not to produce a perfect sound. The aim is simply to arrive more fully in your body before you begin teaching.
As well as warming the voice and making you more calm, grounded and present, but it is also a classroom-management exercise.
A teacher who breathes well is more likely to pause, listen and respond calmly. They are more able to use their voice deliberately rather than reactively.
When we are tense, our teaching can become faster and louder. We may repeat instructions because learners have not understood them, but without noticing that we are speaking too quickly. We may fill every silence because pauses feel uncomfortable. We may use volume to gain attention when a calmer pause, a look or a change in physical position would be more effective.
Breath creates space.
That space can help you choose how to respond when learners look confused, when a task is not working, when someone gives an unexpected answer, or when the energy in the room changes.
Develop awareness of your own voice
Try recording yourself during a lesson. Choose a short moment when you are giving instructions, explaining a task or responding to learners’ questions.
Listen to the recording twice.
The first time, listen for clarity.
Was I speaking too fast?
Did I pause between steps?
Did I emphasise the key words?
Did I give learners time to process?
The second time, listen for emotional tone.
Did I sound calm?
Did I sound impatient?
Did my voice invite learners into the task?
Did I sound rushed or grounded?
Did my tone suggest that learners could ask for help?
Teachers are often trained to focus on what they say: the language point, the instruction, the question, the feedback. Teaching Artistry also asks us to notice how we say it.
This is an exercise in noticing.
Our breath, pace, volume, pauses, facial expression and physical presence all communicate something to learners.
Choose one small vocal habit
After listening to yourself, choose one small habit to work on for a week.
It might be:
pausing before giving instructions;
lowering your volume when you want attention;
breathing before responding;
slowing down when learners look uncertain;
allowing a few seconds of silence after asking a question;
finishing an instruction before moving on to the next one.
Do not try to change everything at once. Small, repeated adjustments are more likely to become part of your teaching presence.
A learner’s perspective
Learners may not remember every word a teacher says, but they often remember how the teacher’s voice made them feel.
A calm, patient voice can communicate safety and confidence. A flat, hurried or irritated voice may create distance, even when the teacher’s words are supportive.
Learners are constantly interpreting tone. They may hear whether the teacher sounds interested, disappointed, bored, angry, rushed or available. They may also decide whether it feels safe to take a risk, ask a question or admit that they have not understood.
Reflect after your next lesson
After teaching, ask yourself:
When did my voice help learners feel calm, focused or interested?
When might my voice have added pressure?
Did I use volume, pause, pace and breath deliberately?
Did I speak from intention, or from tension?
Teaching Artistry begins with small moments of awareness.
Before your next class, take one minute to breathe. Notice your voice. Then enter the room with a little more space, choice and presence.
What AI Can Replace: The Human Encounter at the Heart of Teaching
A glowing cybernetic hand with intricate digital circuits illuminated in a dark setting
One of the buzz questions in education today is whether generative AI will replace human teachers.
For me, the answer is obvious.
AI will transform teaching. It will generate lesson plans, explanations, worksheets, quizzes, reading texts, feedback and assessment materials at remarkable speed. It may take over many of the technical and administrative tasks that currently consume teachers’ time.
But teaching is not, at its core, a technical process.
It is a human encounter.
The theatre director Peter Brook in his book The Empty Space wanted to identify what theatre was at its core. He stripped away the scripts, stages, costumes, lights, theatre buildings and all the usual paraphernalia until he was left with the core: an encounter between actor and spectator.
Everything else could change or disappear. But without that encounter, there was no theatre.
We can carry out the same experiment with education.
Remove the curriculum documents, assessment tools, lesson plans, coursebooks, interactive whiteboards, worksheets and digital platforms. Remove, even, the AI-generated materials that are now becoming part of everyday teaching.
What remains?
A teacher and learners in relationship.
Of course, resources, planning and technology can support learning but they are support mechanisms. They are not the essence of education itself.
At its core, education is an encounter between people.
Think back to a teacher who changed the direction of your life.
Perhaps they changed how you saw a subject, sparked an interest you did not know you had, challenged you at the right moment, or gave you confidence when you doubted yourself.
What do you remember?
Not a worksheet.
Not a lesson plan.
Not an assessment rubric.
What endures is the quality of the encounter: being noticed, being given time, being challenged with care, being protected from humiliation, or being helped to imagine a wider possibility for yourself.
And the opposite is true too.
Many people remember classrooms in which they felt invisible, controlled, dismissed or unable to speak. These memories are not about content. They are about how it felt to be in the room.
That is why the question of AI and teaching cannot be answered simply by comparing what AI can produce with what teachers can produce.
AI can generate content.
But education is not only content.
A simple game, and a crucial difference
Take a very simple activity called “1, 2, 3”.
Two people count to three together, taking turns:
“One.” “Two.” “Three.” “One.” “Two.” “Three.”
It sounds easy.
But when people first try it, someone almost always says “four” instead of returning to “one”. Counting onwards is so deeply built into our habits that it is difficult to override.
This usually produces laughter.
The game feels deceptively simple, but it requires attention, concentration and coordination. Then the numbers can be replaced with sounds, gestures or actions, making the task more challenging and playful.
Now imagine teaching the same game to two AI bots.
They would make no mistakes.
They would play rapidly, accurately and perfectly.
But what would be missing?
There would be no surprised laughter when someone says “four”.
No moment of eye contact when one person realises they have made an error.
No smile of encouragement.
No shared frustration.
No praise.
No sense of achievement.
No emotional charge at all.
The AI bots might complete the task perfectly, but they would not experience the learning.
Human learning is not simply the successful processing of information. It is embodied, social, emotional and relational. It involves risk, uncertainty, attention, confidence, embarrassment, play, trust and recognition.
This is where human teachers remain irreplaceable.
The performative skills of teaching
I refer to these distinctly human capacities as performative skills.
Teaching is inherently performative because it is enacted in real time, in relationship with other people.
Teachers’ voices, timing, attention, use of space, body language, responses and relationships all shape how learning is experienced.
The same correction technique can communicate confidence in a learner’s potential — or public judgement.
The same question can invite thought — or create exposure.
The same task can stimulate curiosity — or feel coercive.
The same silence can create thinking space — or anxiety.
None of these things are determined by the activity itself. They depend on how the teacher brings the activity to life.
This is why technical competence is not enough.
Teacher education has emphasised the importance of well-designed tasks, clear explanations, accurate language analysis and carefully staged activities. Increasingly, AI can support — and outperform — teachers in producing these things efficiently.
But pedagogy is never received in a vacuum.
A lesson is not simply a sequence of procedures.
It is experienced through the teacher’s presence.
The teacher is not merely the person who delivers the material.
The teacher is part of how the material is felt, interpreted and remembered.
What AI cannot fully do
AI may be able to explain grammar and produce better worksheets.
Learners are not simply information processors. They are speaking with incomplete resources. They are risking mistakes, accents, identities and social judgement. They are trying to express themselves in a language they do not yet fully control.
That makes the language classroom a vulnerable space.
And vulnerable spaces need human presence.
The future of teaching is more human, not less
The future of teaching is not a competition between teachers and AI.
AI can become a powerful partner. It can free teachers from repetitive work, generate resources, offer ideas and create more time for the parts of teaching that matter most.
But the more AI can do technically, the more important the human dimension of teaching becomes.
The future of education is not simply better content.
AI will give us more content than we could ever use.
The future of education is creating classrooms where learners feel safe enough to try, recognised enough to contribute and agentive enough to grow.
A computer screen displaying AI data analysis beside a teacher reading to children in a classroom.
AI can already do many things that used to sit at the centre of teaching.
It can explain grammar.
It can generate reading texts.
It can create discussion questions.
It can design worksheets.
It can correct writing.
It can give examples.
It can suggest lesson plans.
It can produce quizzes, summaries, dialogues, feedback and practice tasks in seconds.
For teachers, this can feel exciting.
It can also feel unsettling.
If AI can explain, correct, generate and personalise, what is left for the teacher?
My answer is this:
Presence.
Not presence as charisma.
Not presence as performance.
Not presence as being loud, entertaining or impressive.
I mean teaching presence as the human capacity to notice, respond, connect, reassure, challenge, include and create the emotional conditions in which learning becomes possible.
In the age of AI, this matters more, not less.
AI can generate content. It cannot fully read the room.
A digital tool can produce a beautifully staged grammar explanation.
But it cannot always know when a learner feels embarrassed.
It cannot always sense when the class has gone quiet because they are thinking, or because they are afraid to be wrong.
It cannot fully recognise the difference between productive struggle and emotional shutdown.
It cannot see the learner who almost speaks, then withdraws.
It cannot notice the small shift in posture after public correction.
It cannot always tell when a joke has reduced tension, or when it has made one learner feel exposed.
Teachers do this work constantly.
Often without naming it.
We read faces.
We notice hesitation.
We hear changes in voice.
We feel when the energy of the room changes.
We know when to pause.
When to move closer.
When to step back.
When to soften.
When to challenge.
When to let silence work.
When to rescue.
When not to rescue.
This is not decoration around the “real” teaching.
This is teaching.
Language learning is deeply human
The need for presence is especially strong in language classrooms.
Language learners are not simply processing information.
They are using a developing linguistic repertoire to express themselves in front of others.
They are speaking with incomplete resources.
They are risking error.
They are risking accent.
They are risking identity.
They may feel less intelligent than they are.
Less fluent than they want to be.
Less adult.
Less funny.
Less precise.
Less themselves.
This makes the language classroom a vulnerable space.
And in vulnerable spaces, the teacher’s presence matters enormously.
A learner does not only need an explanation of the present perfect.
They need to feel safe enough to try using it.
They do not only need vocabulary.
They need to feel that their voice matters.
They do not only need correction.
They need correction that preserves dignity.
They do not only need speaking practice.
They need a room where speaking feels possible.
AI may support the technical side of learning.
But teachers shape the human conditions in which learners dare to participate.
The teacher’s behaviour sends signals
Every teacher action communicates something.
A correction can say:
“You are learning.”
Or:
“You are failing.”
A pause can say:
“You have time to think.”
Or:
“Everyone is watching you struggle.”
A question can say:
“Your thinking matters.”
Or:
“I am testing you publicly.”
A task can say:
“You have agency here.”
Or:
“Follow the instructions and comply.”
A teacher’s response to error can say:
“This is safe.”
Or:
“Be careful.”
These signals shape participation.
They shape confidence.
They shape risk-taking.
They shape how learners see themselves.
That is why teaching presence is not simply about being physically or digitally “there”.
It is about how we show up.
How we listen.
How we respond.
How we use silence.
How we handle error.
How we distribute attention.
How we make learners feel seen.
How we create space for agency.
What AI makes more visible
The rise of AI may force us to ask a question we should have been asking all along:
What is distinctively human about teaching?
If the answer is only “explaining content”, then teachers are in trouble.
If the answer is only “providing practice”, then teachers are in trouble.
If the answer is only “correcting language”, then teachers are in trouble.
But teaching has never only been those things.
Teaching is also relational.
Embodied.
Responsive.
Ethical.
Improvisational.
Emotional.
A teacher works with the unpredictable life of the room.
A teacher senses when learners need clarity and when they need courage.
A teacher knows that the same correction can help one learner and humiliate another.
A teacher understands that participation is not only a methodological aim, but an emotional risk.
A teacher can turn a moment of error into trust.
A teacher can make a learner feel capable before they fully are.
That is not easily automated.
Presence can be developed
The danger is that we talk about presence as if it is a gift.
Some teachers “have it”.
Others do not.
I do not believe that.
Presence is not magic.
It is not personality.
It is not extroversion.
It is a professional capacity.
Teachers can learn to become more aware of what their behaviour communicates.
They can learn to notice when the room is moving towards safety or threat.
They can learn to recognise who is being seen and who is disappearing.
They can learn to create space for learner agency.
They can learn to correct in ways that protect dignity.
They can learn to use silence more skilfully.
They can learn to adjust pace, tone, gaze, space and response.
They can rehearse difficult moments before they happen.
They can reflect not only on what they taught, but on how their teaching was experienced.
This is what I call meta-performative awareness:
the teacher’s ability to notice, interpret and adjust the signals their behaviour may be sending to learners.
In the age of AI, this may become one of the most important skills in teacher education.
The future is not less human
There is a lot of talk about how AI will change education.
It will.
It already is.
But perhaps the most important question is not:
What can AI do?
The more important question may be:
What must teachers now do more consciously?
If AI can help with explanation, materials, practice and feedback, then teachers may have more space to focus on what only humans can do well:
Build trust.
Read the room.
Notice vulnerability.
Invite participation.
Protect dignity.
Respond ethically.
Create belonging.
Support identity.
Make learning feel possible.
The future of teaching should not be less human.
It should be more human.
But that will not happen automatically.
Teacher education needs to take presence seriously.
Not as charisma.
Not as performance.
Not as vague “rapport”.
But as a developable professional skill.
Because learners may use AI for practice.
They may use AI for explanations.
They may use AI for correction.
But they will still need teachers who can create classrooms where they feel safe enough to speak, recognised enough to contribute, and agentive enough to become more than they thought they could be.
That is why teaching presence matters more in the age of AI.
If these questions interest you, I’d love to invite you to join the free Performative ELT community — a space for teachers, teacher educators and trainers interested in presence, rapport, embodied learning, drama, facilitation skills and the performative dimensions of teaching.
Most teacher education programmes help teachers think carefully about planning.
What are the aims?
What language is being taught?
What problems might learners have?
What instructions are needed?
What interaction patterns will be used?
What will the teacher do if the task fails?
All of this matters.
But there is another question we do not ask often enough:
What is my behaviour communicating to learners?
Not just:
What am I teaching?
But:
What am I signalling?
This is the starting point for what I call meta-performative awareness.
Meta-performative awareness is the teacher’s ability to notice, interpret and adjust the meanings their behaviour may be communicating to learners.
It is the ability to ask:
Did that correction communicate support or judgement?
Did that silence give learners time to think, or did it make someone feel exposed?
Did my instructions make the task feel manageable, or did they leave learners guessing?
Did my response to that learner’s idea communicate recognition, or did I move on too quickly?
Did I create space for agency, or did I control the lesson so tightly that learners had little room to think?
This is not about personality or charisma
It is not about performing a role in an artificial way.
It is about recognising that teaching is always enacted.
Through voice.
Through timing.
Through gaze.
Through posture.
Through silence.
Through movement.
Through response.
Through the way we handle uncertainty, error, hesitation, humour, confusion and participation.
Teaching is not only what we plan.
It is what learners experience.
Teachers send signals all the time
Every teacher knows the feeling of finishing a lesson and thinking:
That went well.
Or:
Something did not feel right.
But often we cannot say exactly why.
The plan may have been logical.
The materials may have been appropriate.
The instructions may have been clear.
The language focus may have been useful.
And still, something in the room may have felt flat, tense or cautious.
Why?
Because learners are not only responding to the lesson plan.
They are responding to the signals created by the teacher’s behaviour.
A teacher who waits calmly after a learner hesitates may communicate:
You have time.
A teacher who fills the silence too quickly may communicate:
I do not trust you to get there.
A teacher who builds on a learner’s idea may communicate:
Your contribution matters.
A teacher who says “good” and moves on may communicate:
I heard you, but I did not really like what you said.
A teacher who corrects gently may communicate:
This error is part of learning.
A teacher who corrects abruptly may communicate:
Be careful. You are being judged.
These meanings may not be intended.
But they may still be felt.
The three questions teachers should ask
Meta-performative awareness can begin with three simple questions.
1. Am I creating safety or threat?
Language learning involves risk.
Learners speak before they feel ready.
They make errors publicly.
They search for words.
They reveal gaps.
They may sound less fluent, less intelligent, or less themselves than they want to sound.
So teachers need to ask:
Does my behaviour make participation feel safer or riskier?
This does not mean avoiding challenge.
It means making challenge survivable.
Safety is created when teachers normalise error, give thinking time, respond calmly, frame difficulty as part of learning, and protect learner dignity.
Threat is created when teachers use sarcasm, impatience, public exposure, abrupt correction or hidden expectations.
The difference may be small.
But learners feel it.
2. Am I communicating recognition or dismissal?
Learners notice whether their contributions matter.
Recognition is not just praise.
It is the quality of teacher attention.
A learner feels recognised when the teacher listens carefully, remembers what they said, asks a follow-up question, uses their example, acknowledges effort, or takes their thinking seriously.
Dismissal is not always harsh.
Sometimes it is simply moving on too quickly.
Ignoring a contribution.
Giving formulaic praise.
Always nominating the confident learners.
Failing to notice the quiet learner who is trying to enter the conversation.
The question is:
Who feels seen, heard and valued?
And who may be disappearing?
3. Am I supporting agency or controlling the experience?
Teachers need structure.
A lesson without structure can feel confusing, unsafe or inefficient.
But structure is not the same as control.
Agency means learners have some real space to think, choose, question, contribute, explore and repair.
The teacher still guides.
But the learners are not simply following instructions.
They are participating in meaning-making.
Teachers can ask:
Where did learners make decisions?
Where did they test ideas?
Where did they shape the lesson?
Where did I supply the answer too quickly?
Where did I rescue learners before they had time to think?
Agency does not mean doing less teaching.
It means teaching in a way that makes learner thinking visible.
Why this is missing from teacher education
Teacher education often gives teachers useful language for method.
We can talk about task design.
Staging.
Interaction patterns.
Teacher talking time.
Instruction checking.
Language analysis.
Feedback.
Assessment.
But when it comes to presence, rapport and classroom atmosphere, the language often becomes vague.
“She has good rapport.”
“He needs to be more engaging.”
“The class felt a bit flat.”
“The teacher created a nice atmosphere.”
These comments may be true.
But they do not always help teachers develop.
Meta-performative awareness gives us a more practical language.
Instead of saying:
“You need better rapport.”
We can ask:
What did your response to hesitation communicate?
Instead of saying:
“The class was passive.”
We can ask:
Where did learners have genuine agency?
Instead of saying:
“You were supportive.”
We can ask:
What specific behaviours made participation feel safe?
Instead of saying:
“You dominated the lesson.”
We can ask:
When did your clarity become control?
This is the shift.
From vague impressions to observable behaviour.
From personality to practice.
From “good rapport” to “what did the teacher do that created trust, recognition and participation?”
A simple way to develop it
After your next lesson, do not try to analyse everything.
Choose one moment.
A correction.
A silence.
A learner question.
A moment of confusion.
A time when someone laughed.
A time when learners hesitated.
A moment when you moved on.
Then ask:
What did I intend?
What might learners have interpreted?
What evidence did I notice?
Did this moment communicate safety or threat?
Recognition or dismissal?
Agency or control?
What could I try differently next time?
This is not about blaming yourself.
It is not about overthinking every gesture.
It is about becoming more curious about the human meanings of teaching.
Why it matters now
In an age of digital learning and AI, this matters more than ever.
AI can generate explanations.
AI can produce lesson materials.
AI can suggest activities.
AI can correct language.
AI can provide practice.
But AI cannot fully replace the human presence of a teacher who notices the emotional meaning of a classroom moment.
A teacher who senses when a learner feels exposed.
A teacher who knows when to wait.
A teacher who recognises the quiet contribution.
A teacher who turns an error into a shared learning moment.
A teacher who creates safety without lowering expectations.
A teacher who makes learners feel that participation is possible.
This may become one of the most important roles of the teacher in the years ahead.
Not simply delivering content.
But shaping the human conditions in which learning can happen.
The missing skill
Meta-performative awareness is not an extra.
It is not a luxury.
It is not only for drama teachers, extroverts or charismatic performers.
It is a core teaching skill.
Because every lesson communicates.
Every correction communicates.
Every silence communicates.
Every response communicates.
The question is whether we are aware of what our teaching may be saying.
If these questions interest you, I’d love to invite you to join the free Performative ELT community — a space for teachers, teacher educators and trainers interested in presence, rapport, embodied learning, drama, facilitation skills and the performative dimensions of teaching.
In the next post, I’ll explore why teaching presence matters even more in the age of AI — and why the future of teaching may depend not only on what teachers know, but on how they show up.
