Video: The Drama in School Leadership
Dr. Jerome Cranston, Acting Associate Dean (Undergraduate Programs) & Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at University of Manitoba & Ms. Kristin Kusanovich, Senior Lecturer in the Theatre and Dance Department at Santa Clara University facilitated an intensive, interdisciplinary ethnotheatre research workshop for educational leaders titled “The drama in school leadership” on November 17 & 18, 2011. A brief representation of the session can be viewed here.
Drawing on a highly charged work of creative fiction focused on educational leadership, an interdisciplinary arts-based approach was used to develop new notions of what it means to creatively expand one’s identity and abilities as a leader. The workshop took a critical look at how “role-play” is traditionally done to enact case studies in many of the social sciences and proposed that an “ethnotheatre” approach might be more effective as an overall transformative experience for adult learners. The preliminary findings of the study suggest that developing, studying and experiencing cases, as ethnotheatre is an effective pedagogical approach because it prepares educational leaders through simulation of leadership inaction.
The research project was financially supported through a Research Fellowship awarded by Centre of Professional & Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, and supported, in part, by the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Education and Santa Clara University’s Markulla Center for Ethics.