Mia works in the intersections of contemporary cultural practices, community and youth studies, and education. She is interested in the pedagogical affordances of making and witnessing arts and culture, the relationships (human and non-human) inherent in every learning engagement, and a perspective on those engagements that accounts for more than the representable signifiers.
... 41. O'Brien, D. (2005). 'At... more ... 41. O'Brien, D. (2005). 'At-risk' adolescents: Redefining competence through the multiliteracies of intermediality, visual arts, and representation. Reading Online ... J. 1994. Cultural studies goes to school , Bristol: Taylor & Francis. View ...
The field of literacy education encompasses many different modalities of reading and writing the ... more The field of literacy education encompasses many different modalities of reading and writing the world, including those of drama, theatre, and performance practiced in both school and community settings. As contemporary theatre practices have broadened performance creation approaches available to literacy and arts educators working with youth and adults, playbuilding and devising offer two modes of creating student-authored collective performance. Although the processes of playbuilding and devising overlap, they differ in both intention and practice. Both approaches include important frameworks and possibilities for work across literacy education. Following a discussion on the connections between literacy and drama in education, this paper introduces the forms of playbuilding and devising, followed by step-by-step illustrations of the practices at work in classrooms. This article, then, acts as an invitation to explore these two vehicles of performance creation in educational and literacy contexts.
This article is a product of qualitative analyses followed by a collaboration and conversation am... more This article is a product of qualitative analyses followed by a collaboration and conversation amongst critical friends. Three methodologies (social semiotic/sociocultural, ethnomethodology, and rhizomatic analysis) were used to analyze the same piece of interview data. An inquiry into
the various characteristics, commonalities, and distinctions of these diverse approaches to analysis was then undertaken through extended conversations. Authors worked through the kinds of questions that could be asked and the answers that might be possible given particular
theoretical and methodological stances and choices. Analysis of the ensuing inquiry suggests the possibility of deeper reflexivity and new understandings in talking across paradigms. Struggles over representation and compromises in the process created tensions and questions that could not be easily resolved.
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, May 2013
Taking up drama, scene creation, or performance building in literacy education is a rich area of ... more Taking up drama, scene creation, or performance building in literacy education is a rich area of possibility. This article describes two engaging methods in practice and theory.
This paper investigates the possibilities of embodied inquiry and representation as occurring thr... more This paper investigates the possibilities of embodied inquiry and representation as occurring through a theatre devising process with youth. Contemporary theatre methods, along with poststructural and performance theory, inform an alternative approach to dominant constructions of drama and theatre practices in education. The student in this project is considered a learning self in motion (Ellsworth, 2005); the process and analysis taken up acknowledges the body as an emerging, phenomenological, and relational corporeality. Exploring a sensational and rhizomatic approach to practice and research, this project loosens the body from the representational paradigm dominating applied theatre research, and brings it to the centre of the pedagogical and analytical endeavour.
In this study, we consider experiential learning in relation to embodiment and performative pract... more In this study, we consider experiential learning in relation to embodiment and performative practices. We address the need for a method of analysis to examine the role of the body in space, as text, and as experience. In order to develop our analysis, we draw on the fields of embodiment and performative pedagogy. Through an examination of theories of the body and concepts of the performative in pedagogy, we explore how bodies are constructed and understood within the “experience of learning” (Ellsworth, 2005), and situate performative pedagogy in relation to that. Using a framework rooted in poststructural theories of inquiry, we investigate data from a drama education classroom to illustrate how the body can be considered in analysis and can reveal complex and informative notions about teaching and learning, as well as bodies and performance practices in the classroom.
With an overarching intention to explore the pedagogical possibilities within devised theatre, th... more With an overarching intention to explore the pedagogical possibilities within devised theatre, this paper considers how the creative process, performance event and spectator emerge within this genre. Although the field of arts based education is becoming ever more prevalent in educational theory, contemporary theatre practices in the context of pedagogy and social impact are largely undertheorized. Considering the history and the practices of devised theatre alongside those of critical pedagogy, I argue that devised theatre offers a site for productive critical pedagogies. I use the practice of Forced Entertainment to illustrate this argument.
This paper addresses how the urban is imagined and troubled through performances of youth engaged... more This paper addresses how the urban is imagined and troubled through performances of youth engaged in a devised theatre project. These youth, situated next to a particular and storied urban place, reshaped the discourses of ‘The Downtown Eastside’ (DTES) in a classroom based performance project. Drawing on the work of Elizabeth Ellsworth (2005), who argues for the pedagogical power of considering the student who is in motion and performing in relation to an outside world, we describe how the youth in this study accessed their lived experiences to reconfigure common representations of young women in the DTES. Through devised theatre methods, the youth explored and created more complex and proximal representations of lives and circumstances otherwise steeped in taboo and stereotype. The theatre process used in this school-based project evolved from the meeting of contemporary devising practices with more traditional drama education expectations. This paper describes the circumstances and process of this work and focuses on the analysis of one scene from a final performance of the work.
This study investigates the forces and affects of contemporary devised theatre practices in educa... more This study investigates the forces and affects of contemporary devised theatre practices in education. Inquiries at two sites form the basis of research: an analysis of professional contemporary devising practice with regard to educational applications and implications within it; and an analysis of a devising process in a secondary school program to consider the benefits and limitations of this approach in the context of education.
This work is situated within a poststructural perspective on embodied pedagogy (Davies, 2000; Ellsworth, 2005; St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000), and within the theory of nomadic thought, as developed by Giles Deleuze (1990; 1994) and his collaborations with Felix Guattari (1983; 1987). Taking up pedagogy in this light, I consider the student as a body/mind/self in motion (Ellsworth, 2005) and focus on a non-representational perspective of analysis, understanding pedagogy to be lived and experienced by means of forces of affect, sensation and interrelation. Accordingly, this study challenges the dominant perspective on pedagogy, as occurring and evaluated according to representational logic, reliant on semiotic systems.
This study asks: What can be gained from a new lens through which to understand the construction of theatre and drama in education? And, what are the connections and crevices between theatre practices today and theatre and drama in education?
... 41. O'Brien, D. (2005). 'At... more ... 41. O'Brien, D. (2005). 'At-risk' adolescents: Redefining competence through the multiliteracies of intermediality, visual arts, and representation. Reading Online ... J. 1994. Cultural studies goes to school , Bristol: Taylor & Francis. View ...
Canadian Journal of Education/Revue canadienne de l …, Jan 1, 2006
... Leicester, UK: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE). 250 pages. ISBN: 1-8... more ... Leicester, UK: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE). 250 pages. ISBN: 1-86201-242-3 Mia Perry, doctoral student, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia Can humankind learn from its mistakes? Can we change the course of ...
This volume is dedicated to exploring and exposing the challenges, the possibilities, and the pro... more This volume is dedicated to exploring and exposing the challenges, the possibilities, and the processes of empirical work in embodiment. Grounded in qualitative inquiry in the humanities and social sciences, the chapters describe perspectives and contexts of embodied research, but focus on the methodologies, methods, and analytic frames taken up to grapple with this ever-more theorised aspect of qualitative inquiry. The authors drawn together in this volume share an investment in the ways in which the body inscribes and is inscribed within research that foregrounds the cultural, social, affective, and political discourses that are at the core of how bodies act and are acted upon.
The essays, research studies, and pedagogical examples in this book provide a window into the emb... more The essays, research studies, and pedagogical examples in this book provide a window into the embodied dimensions of literacy and a toolbox for interpreting, building on, and inquiring into the range of ways people communicate and express themselves as literate beings. The contributors investigate and reflect on the complexities of embodied literacies, honoring literacy learners and teachers as they holistically engage with texts in complex sociopolitical, historical, and cultural contexts. Considering these issues within a multiplicity of education spaces and literacy events inside and outside of institutional contexts, the book offers a fresh lens and rhetoric with which to address literacy education policies, giving readers a discursive repertoire necessary to develop and defend responsive curricula within an increasingly high-stakes, standardized schooling climate.
Through stories of youth using their many voices in and out of school to explore and express thei... more Through stories of youth using their many voices in and out of school to explore and express their ideas about the world, this book brings to the forefront the reality of lived literacy experiences of adolescents in today’s culture in which literacy practices reflect important cultural messages about the interplay of local and global civic engagement. The focus is on three areas of youth civic engagement and cultural critique: homelessness, violence, and performing adolescence. The authors explore how youth appropriate the arts, media, and literacy as resources and how this enables them to express their identities and engage in social and cultural engagement and critique. The book describes how the youth in the various projects represented entered the public sphere; the claims they made; the ways readers might think about pedagogical engagements, practice, and goals as forms of civic engagement; and implications for critical and arts and media-based literacy pedagogies in schools that forward democratic citizenship in a time when we are losing sight of issues of equity and social justice in our communities and nations.
... 41. O'Brien, D. (2005). 'At... more ... 41. O'Brien, D. (2005). 'At-risk' adolescents: Redefining competence through the multiliteracies of intermediality, visual arts, and representation. Reading Online ... J. 1994. Cultural studies goes to school , Bristol: Taylor & Francis. View ...
The field of literacy education encompasses many different modalities of reading and writing the ... more The field of literacy education encompasses many different modalities of reading and writing the world, including those of drama, theatre, and performance practiced in both school and community settings. As contemporary theatre practices have broadened performance creation approaches available to literacy and arts educators working with youth and adults, playbuilding and devising offer two modes of creating student-authored collective performance. Although the processes of playbuilding and devising overlap, they differ in both intention and practice. Both approaches include important frameworks and possibilities for work across literacy education. Following a discussion on the connections between literacy and drama in education, this paper introduces the forms of playbuilding and devising, followed by step-by-step illustrations of the practices at work in classrooms. This article, then, acts as an invitation to explore these two vehicles of performance creation in educational and literacy contexts.
This article is a product of qualitative analyses followed by a collaboration and conversation am... more This article is a product of qualitative analyses followed by a collaboration and conversation amongst critical friends. Three methodologies (social semiotic/sociocultural, ethnomethodology, and rhizomatic analysis) were used to analyze the same piece of interview data. An inquiry into
the various characteristics, commonalities, and distinctions of these diverse approaches to analysis was then undertaken through extended conversations. Authors worked through the kinds of questions that could be asked and the answers that might be possible given particular
theoretical and methodological stances and choices. Analysis of the ensuing inquiry suggests the possibility of deeper reflexivity and new understandings in talking across paradigms. Struggles over representation and compromises in the process created tensions and questions that could not be easily resolved.
Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, May 2013
Taking up drama, scene creation, or performance building in literacy education is a rich area of ... more Taking up drama, scene creation, or performance building in literacy education is a rich area of possibility. This article describes two engaging methods in practice and theory.
This paper investigates the possibilities of embodied inquiry and representation as occurring thr... more This paper investigates the possibilities of embodied inquiry and representation as occurring through a theatre devising process with youth. Contemporary theatre methods, along with poststructural and performance theory, inform an alternative approach to dominant constructions of drama and theatre practices in education. The student in this project is considered a learning self in motion (Ellsworth, 2005); the process and analysis taken up acknowledges the body as an emerging, phenomenological, and relational corporeality. Exploring a sensational and rhizomatic approach to practice and research, this project loosens the body from the representational paradigm dominating applied theatre research, and brings it to the centre of the pedagogical and analytical endeavour.
In this study, we consider experiential learning in relation to embodiment and performative pract... more In this study, we consider experiential learning in relation to embodiment and performative practices. We address the need for a method of analysis to examine the role of the body in space, as text, and as experience. In order to develop our analysis, we draw on the fields of embodiment and performative pedagogy. Through an examination of theories of the body and concepts of the performative in pedagogy, we explore how bodies are constructed and understood within the “experience of learning” (Ellsworth, 2005), and situate performative pedagogy in relation to that. Using a framework rooted in poststructural theories of inquiry, we investigate data from a drama education classroom to illustrate how the body can be considered in analysis and can reveal complex and informative notions about teaching and learning, as well as bodies and performance practices in the classroom.
With an overarching intention to explore the pedagogical possibilities within devised theatre, th... more With an overarching intention to explore the pedagogical possibilities within devised theatre, this paper considers how the creative process, performance event and spectator emerge within this genre. Although the field of arts based education is becoming ever more prevalent in educational theory, contemporary theatre practices in the context of pedagogy and social impact are largely undertheorized. Considering the history and the practices of devised theatre alongside those of critical pedagogy, I argue that devised theatre offers a site for productive critical pedagogies. I use the practice of Forced Entertainment to illustrate this argument.
This paper addresses how the urban is imagined and troubled through performances of youth engaged... more This paper addresses how the urban is imagined and troubled through performances of youth engaged in a devised theatre project. These youth, situated next to a particular and storied urban place, reshaped the discourses of ‘The Downtown Eastside’ (DTES) in a classroom based performance project. Drawing on the work of Elizabeth Ellsworth (2005), who argues for the pedagogical power of considering the student who is in motion and performing in relation to an outside world, we describe how the youth in this study accessed their lived experiences to reconfigure common representations of young women in the DTES. Through devised theatre methods, the youth explored and created more complex and proximal representations of lives and circumstances otherwise steeped in taboo and stereotype. The theatre process used in this school-based project evolved from the meeting of contemporary devising practices with more traditional drama education expectations. This paper describes the circumstances and process of this work and focuses on the analysis of one scene from a final performance of the work.
This study investigates the forces and affects of contemporary devised theatre practices in educa... more This study investigates the forces and affects of contemporary devised theatre practices in education. Inquiries at two sites form the basis of research: an analysis of professional contemporary devising practice with regard to educational applications and implications within it; and an analysis of a devising process in a secondary school program to consider the benefits and limitations of this approach in the context of education.
This work is situated within a poststructural perspective on embodied pedagogy (Davies, 2000; Ellsworth, 2005; St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000), and within the theory of nomadic thought, as developed by Giles Deleuze (1990; 1994) and his collaborations with Felix Guattari (1983; 1987). Taking up pedagogy in this light, I consider the student as a body/mind/self in motion (Ellsworth, 2005) and focus on a non-representational perspective of analysis, understanding pedagogy to be lived and experienced by means of forces of affect, sensation and interrelation. Accordingly, this study challenges the dominant perspective on pedagogy, as occurring and evaluated according to representational logic, reliant on semiotic systems.
This study asks: What can be gained from a new lens through which to understand the construction of theatre and drama in education? And, what are the connections and crevices between theatre practices today and theatre and drama in education?
... 41. O'Brien, D. (2005). 'At... more ... 41. O'Brien, D. (2005). 'At-risk' adolescents: Redefining competence through the multiliteracies of intermediality, visual arts, and representation. Reading Online ... J. 1994. Cultural studies goes to school , Bristol: Taylor & Francis. View ...
Canadian Journal of Education/Revue canadienne de l …, Jan 1, 2006
... Leicester, UK: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE). 250 pages. ISBN: 1-8... more ... Leicester, UK: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE). 250 pages. ISBN: 1-86201-242-3 Mia Perry, doctoral student, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia Can humankind learn from its mistakes? Can we change the course of ...
This volume is dedicated to exploring and exposing the challenges, the possibilities, and the pro... more This volume is dedicated to exploring and exposing the challenges, the possibilities, and the processes of empirical work in embodiment. Grounded in qualitative inquiry in the humanities and social sciences, the chapters describe perspectives and contexts of embodied research, but focus on the methodologies, methods, and analytic frames taken up to grapple with this ever-more theorised aspect of qualitative inquiry. The authors drawn together in this volume share an investment in the ways in which the body inscribes and is inscribed within research that foregrounds the cultural, social, affective, and political discourses that are at the core of how bodies act and are acted upon.
The essays, research studies, and pedagogical examples in this book provide a window into the emb... more The essays, research studies, and pedagogical examples in this book provide a window into the embodied dimensions of literacy and a toolbox for interpreting, building on, and inquiring into the range of ways people communicate and express themselves as literate beings. The contributors investigate and reflect on the complexities of embodied literacies, honoring literacy learners and teachers as they holistically engage with texts in complex sociopolitical, historical, and cultural contexts. Considering these issues within a multiplicity of education spaces and literacy events inside and outside of institutional contexts, the book offers a fresh lens and rhetoric with which to address literacy education policies, giving readers a discursive repertoire necessary to develop and defend responsive curricula within an increasingly high-stakes, standardized schooling climate.
Through stories of youth using their many voices in and out of school to explore and express thei... more Through stories of youth using their many voices in and out of school to explore and express their ideas about the world, this book brings to the forefront the reality of lived literacy experiences of adolescents in today’s culture in which literacy practices reflect important cultural messages about the interplay of local and global civic engagement. The focus is on three areas of youth civic engagement and cultural critique: homelessness, violence, and performing adolescence. The authors explore how youth appropriate the arts, media, and literacy as resources and how this enables them to express their identities and engage in social and cultural engagement and critique. The book describes how the youth in the various projects represented entered the public sphere; the claims they made; the ways readers might think about pedagogical engagements, practice, and goals as forms of civic engagement; and implications for critical and arts and media-based literacy pedagogies in schools that forward democratic citizenship in a time when we are losing sight of issues of equity and social justice in our communities and nations.
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the various characteristics, commonalities, and distinctions of these diverse approaches to analysis was then undertaken through extended conversations. Authors worked through the kinds of questions that could be asked and the answers that might be possible given particular
theoretical and methodological stances and choices. Analysis of the ensuing inquiry suggests the possibility of deeper reflexivity and new understandings in talking across paradigms. Struggles over representation and compromises in the process created tensions and questions that could not be easily resolved.
This work is situated within a poststructural perspective on embodied pedagogy (Davies, 2000; Ellsworth, 2005; St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000), and within the theory of nomadic thought, as developed by Giles Deleuze (1990; 1994) and his collaborations with Felix Guattari (1983; 1987). Taking up pedagogy in this light, I consider the student as a body/mind/self in motion (Ellsworth, 2005) and focus on a non-representational perspective of analysis, understanding pedagogy to be lived and experienced by means of forces of affect, sensation and interrelation. Accordingly, this study challenges the dominant perspective on pedagogy, as occurring and evaluated according to representational logic, reliant on semiotic systems.
This study asks: What can be gained from a new lens through which to understand the construction of theatre and drama in education? And, what are the connections and crevices between theatre practices today and theatre and drama in education?
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138017450/
the various characteristics, commonalities, and distinctions of these diverse approaches to analysis was then undertaken through extended conversations. Authors worked through the kinds of questions that could be asked and the answers that might be possible given particular
theoretical and methodological stances and choices. Analysis of the ensuing inquiry suggests the possibility of deeper reflexivity and new understandings in talking across paradigms. Struggles over representation and compromises in the process created tensions and questions that could not be easily resolved.
This work is situated within a poststructural perspective on embodied pedagogy (Davies, 2000; Ellsworth, 2005; St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000), and within the theory of nomadic thought, as developed by Giles Deleuze (1990; 1994) and his collaborations with Felix Guattari (1983; 1987). Taking up pedagogy in this light, I consider the student as a body/mind/self in motion (Ellsworth, 2005) and focus on a non-representational perspective of analysis, understanding pedagogy to be lived and experienced by means of forces of affect, sensation and interrelation. Accordingly, this study challenges the dominant perspective on pedagogy, as occurring and evaluated according to representational logic, reliant on semiotic systems.
This study asks: What can be gained from a new lens through which to understand the construction of theatre and drama in education? And, what are the connections and crevices between theatre practices today and theatre and drama in education?
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138017450/