Re-imaging and Re-imagining Curriculum Through the Theater Rehearsal Process
Open Access
- Author:
- Krempa, Jennifer Katherine
- Graduate Program:
- Art Education
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- December 14, 2017
- Committee Members:
- Christine Marmé Thompson, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Christine Marmé Thompson, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Kimberly Powell, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Curriculum
Theater
Rehearsal - Abstract:
- Over the last twenty years, the examination-driven and standards-based concepts of curriculum that dominate the American educational landscape have been challenged and disrupted by curriculum scholars who have provided new ways of understanding curriculum. However, these reconceputalized understandings of curriculum have not been broadly adopted by policy makers, school districts, and the public alike, and scholars and educators are still looking for ways to effectively translate expanded ideas of curriculum into concepts that are accepted more broadly and that are embodied in school practice and curricular reform. In this thesis, I attempt to help bridge this gap by offering an image of and model for reconceptualized ideas of curriculum in the form of the theater rehearsal process. By understanding rehearsal—a rich space of play and participation—as an image of a curriculum, I argue that we not only open up the possibilities for what curriculum is and could be, but we also increase the accessibility of such an understanding. In order to develop this robust image, I show how rehearsal embodies and enacts many of the primary characteristics of reconceptualized ideas of curriculum and then expand on this foundation to explore how rehearsal integrates numerous and diverse theoretical and pedagogical approaches into its flexible structure. Lastly, I show how these elements come together in lived-experience of rehearsal by using a narrative, phenomenological approach to reflect on and describe my experience as a participant in the rehearsal process. By offering this image and challenging myself and others to not only see rehearsal as curriculum, but also to imagine curriculum as rehearsal, I hope to invite stakeholders—from scholars to the general public—to envision curriculum in a new way that sparks the desire for change and inspires students, educators, and community members alike to re-encounter their entrenched ideas of what curriculum is and ought to be.