THEATRE EDUCATION, DIGITAL MEDIA, AND INCLUSION: FOSTERING PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY AND SELF-AWARENESS IN TEACHER’S EDUCATION

Besides literacy, languages and digital competence the European Commission names “personal, social and learning competences” as well as “cultural awareness and expression” as basic skills in its Council Recommendation on the Key competences for Lifelong Learning (Council of the European Union 2018). These competences as well as self-awareness and thereby being able to reflect one’s own actions and behaviors are fundamental not only for students, but also for teachers, for successful social interaction at all. An especially applicable way to train the named skills is acting, as it “awakens the individual process of self-education”, “opens up the possibility to sense the own and the other perspective” and “calls upon social responsibility”. (Czerny 2010)

The following project will start with the academic year of 2018/19: Named ISoLDE (Inklusion, SpieL, DigitalE Medien), it is a newly developed supplementary certificate addressing teachers’ students of German Language and Literature (all school levels). Being situated at the TU Dortmund University (Germany) it will be a collaboration of experts on German Language and Literature Studies, Digital Media and Literacy, Theatre Studies and Rehabilitation Sciences.

In order to achieve the certificate, students will have to attend nine seminars altogether, organized in a spiral curriculum with both theoretical and practical components: Six seminars take place during the bachelor’s degree, three seminars will have to be attended during the master’s degree. The first class of ISoLDE taking place for the students during the Bachelor’s degree e.g. is designed as a blended learning course, working with peer reviews and teaching basic knowledge of inclusive education, mediatization and applied theatre. One of the three courses taking place during the Master’s Degree e.g. will focus on digital learning and acting within heterogeneous learning environments and includes working and practicing with video vignettes.

Prior goals of the certificate are e.g.:
I. Foster digital competences and knowledge
II. Train students in working with acting (digital and analog) in inclusive education
III. Support future teachers’ professional identity and development, taking into consideration that not only students in school, for whom John M. Richardson pointed it out, do have an “hybrid […] inline/offline iDentity” (Richardson 2016), but also their teachers

The certificate wants to react on the challenges of 21st century learning by training the future teachers via acting to increase their capacity of reflection and to enable them to teach these skills to their prospective own students. It will be evaluated with DBR (Design-Based Research).

This paper will present the concept of ISoLDE at an early stage and discuss the preparations and methods being used.