The Impact of Theatre Pedagogy on Student Teachers' Development of Beliefs about Good Teaching and their Pedagogical Ethos: An Exploratory Case Study

Abstract

The development of student teachers' beliefs about good teaching needs to be integral to their education programmes. This study attempts to scrutinise the contribution of a theatre education course to the conceptualisation of a group of eight student primary teachers' notion of good teaching and a teacher's ethos. The findings reveal that, within the coursework, student teachers' learning experiences are interwoven with the ethics of the beautiful, the ethics of the dialogue and the ethics of the will. This nexus of learning experiences enabled them to identify three internal goods of good teaching: the awakening of learners' positive emotions; the activation of their learning energy through play; and the strengthening of their embodied understanding by using theatre semiotics. Concerning a teacher's pedagogical dispositions in good teaching, they consider trust, respect, empathy, open-mindedness, vigilance and playfulness as pivotal for the ethos of a teacher connected to both teaching and their pupils.