Scientists Study How Theater Can Affect Teenage Learning and Education
The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow stands illuminated at night.
Researchers from the Moscow State University of Psychology and Education (MSUPE) have proved that school theater can be an effective means of teaching and learning, as well as developing meta-disciplinary competencies among teenage students.According to specialists of the Moscow State University of Psychology and Education (MSUPE), school theater is usually run along the lines of the teacher choosing a work or writing a script to be performed and the pupils’ involvement is confined to acting. However, a unique technology for organizing school theater has developed under the framework of the project “Multimedia Theater”.The uniqueness of this theater lies in involving teenagers in a variety of activities at all stages of creating a theatrical production: from coming up with a concept to performing the play. Schoolchildren work on the script, cast it, create the scenery, are responsible for sound and light design and special effects.“In our theater, teenagers are not just actors who are given roles and told what to act and how to act. They are the creators of the play, the authors of the script, actors, directors, and lighting specialists, and we are only ‘co-participants’ in this amazing process,” Olga Rubtsova, associate professor, head of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research of Contemporary Childhood at MSUPE, said.As part of the study, the specialists have developed and tested a unique program of theatrical activities (30 lessons of 45 minutes each). The study was conducted at MBOU Starogorodkovskaya secondary school in Moscow and children aged 13 and 14 took part in the project.According to the authors of the study, they were able to show that school theater, organized on the principle of role-playing experimentation, is an extremely promising form of education for teenagers. The results of their study were published in the Psychological Science and Education journal.“We saw that teenagers who participated in our projects in different schools have really changed. They recorded improvements in various objective indicators related, for example, to their involvement in the learning process and their level of learning motivation,” Rubtsova said.According to her, pupils showed improvement in personal learning achievements, development of meta-competencies (ability to apply knowledge and skills in one or more subject area, as well as in real-life situations). They registered positive changes in group dynamics – conflicts in the team were smoothed out, and bullying was overcome. All these changes were visible to others – teachers, psychologists, parents.According to the scientists, the practical significance of the MSUPE project is related to two aspects. First, the developed technology allows solving urgent problems of teenagers and creating conditions for different types of experimentation – above all, role-playing. Second, the proposed approach integrates supplementary and basic education.The proposed approach also allows teachers to overcome the subject-oriented nature of school education. According to scientists, the issue of transition from studying specific disciplines to learning in a cross-disciplinary space is now welcome. Theater activities can successfully accomplish this.The experience of applying theater practices in Russian education today is rather limited and understood in only a stereotypical way, the university’s specialists explained. Because of this, the researchers suggest organizing theatrical activities according to different types of project activities. This could open up new opportunities.Therefore, one can teach different subjects, provide different educational content, and solve educational tasks, all in a way that is attractive to schoolchildren. Teenagers perceive theater as a non-obtrusive learning strategy, which is very important at this age, according to the MSUPE researchers.
