Collaborative Questioning
21st December 2018
By Tim Taylor Questioning is the lifeblood of teaching. As Morgan and Saxton observed, “Education is a process of inquiry and questions are the chief agents by which meanings are mediated.” [Asking Better Questions, 2006] Being able to ask a perceptive question, followed by one that probes a little deeper, and another that gets to the heart of the matter, while at the same time bringing the students along with no feelings of anxiety or of being interrogated – this is the art of great teaching. In collaborative teaching, the teacher endeavours to work with the students, developing lines of...Managing classroom behaviour in Mantle of the Expert
20th December 2018
By Tim Taylor Behaviour is one of the biggest concerns for teachers new to Mantle of the Expert. The three most frequently asked questions are: “How can I control my class if I’m treating them as experts?” “Doesn’t this approach mean I have to follow everything the children say?” “What can I do if the children misbehave?” Let’s look at each in turn. “How will I be able to control my class if I’m treating them as experts?” Remember, they are only experts in the fiction. In the real world they are still themselves. So if your class is one...Learning through dramatic experiences
23rd November 2018
By Luke Abbott An account of a reworked Heathcotian experiment conducted in Birmingham in 1982. A short paper by Luke Abbott for students in year 1 Qattan Drama Summer School 2015 Jaresh Jordan. [Dear Colleagues, In this paper I outline the structure we used for our experiments into process drama and the long term mantle of the expert plan deployed with you as year 1 students this summer. In doing so, I am attempting to tackle some of the misconceptions you raised regarding MoE and process drama practices in learning environments that span long term goals, as well as short...Mind your language – High Challenge, Low Threat
5th October 2018
Mind your language - Using language to reduce threat and increase participation in the classroom Tim Taylor In her book ‘High Challenge, Low Threat’ Mary Myatt talks about the paradox of safety, that is the safer people feel the more likely they are to take reasonable risks and act reasonably. And, conversely, the less safe they feel the more defensive they become and the less likely they are to stick their neck out. The truth of this observation is everywhere we look and evident in our own lives. Without having to search my mind vault for long, I can recall...Generating student concern for learning
29th September 2018
Tim Taylor In my mid-twenties I spent some time working in Madrid. The job, like many that young people do with an itch to live abroad, was teaching English as a foreign language. On the whole it was pretty dull, I spent most of my time travelling across the city to teach one-to-one tutorials with lawyers, accountants, and executives who wanted to brush up on their conversational English. But one session stood out unlike any of the others and I found myself looking forward to it every week. The session was on a Saturday morning with a small group of...Child’s play: a way into learning
14th August 2018
This blog was first published as Chapter 5 - Imaginary Worlds in 'A Beginner's Guide to Mantle of the Expert' This chapter is about how imaginary play, something children seem to do universally, can be adapted and applied to create engaging contexts for learning. In particular, we will look at the way language operates as the primary mechanism in this process, and how shifting in and out of the fiction can be used to generate student interest in curriculum activities and a sense of purpose to their learning. When I first started using Mantle of the Expert I struggled to...Planning for concern
23rd June 2018
By Chris Frame - Year 4/5 teacher at Dogmersfield Primary, Hampshire. In co-constructing an island kingdom, we captured the interest of the children in my class. It was their island and they have taken ownership of the stories that are told on it. The paranoid Queen captured their attention and they wanted to find out what she would do. They were motivated by the intrigue that had been created and they wanted to know what the Queen would do and what stories would be told. The aim is to discuss the nature of obedience. Should you obey a Queen whose decrees are based...Exploration – A metaphor for curriculum study
7th April 2018
For many years in education the dominant metaphor for describing curriculum study has been ‘coverage’. But coverage is the wrong way to talk about how learning happens, and it fails to grasp the long (and sometimes arduous) process of studying, assimilating, and meaning-making that is required by students to develop a genuine understanding of curriculum content. Covering is easy, but learning is hard. It takes time and effort and requires purposeful application on the part of the learner. Simply doing something is not enough: purposeful learning requires effort and dedication. is doesn’t mean it has to be boring (plenty of...Mantle of the Expert in Brazil: Developments and Future Plans
17th February 2018
By Roberta Luchini Boschi Since 2010, when I first heard of Mantle of the Expert (MoE) during my Master’s in London, I have been reading, researching, applying and developing skills related to this approach. My background is in education, but theatre and drama have always been a very important part of my daily life. My first training in MoE was with Dorothy Heathcote and, after that, I had another training session with Palestinian teachers in the UK again led by Dorothy. I had the honour of interviewing Dorothy for over two hours for my dissertation and have also followed Luke Abbott...Education should be related with transformation rather than information only
By Jan Buley In her keynote address on creativity for the London Borough of Redbridge in 1999, Heathcote compares the schools to beehives, “and the cells and types of workers which, are many and various”. She continues by elaborating on her concern over the uniformity that seems to prevail in many schools. Heathcote quotes Sir Edward Hall’s belief that “Education should be related with transformation rather than information only.” She laments, as many teachers do, the sheer quantity of a day in a typical classroom, with divided subject materials, divided thinking and divided human brains. In short, Heathcote’s approach to...The Artistic Value of Mantle of the Expert
4th February 2018
Dorothy Heathcote’s dramatic-inquiry approach to teaching and learning – a Belgian Research Project By Bob Selderslaghs ABSTRACT: This article gives an insight on the first results of a Belgian Research Project where Bob Selderslaghs examines the artistic value of the Mantle of the Expert approach in a Flemish primary school. He focuses on artistic roles that students can adopt while studying the curriculum Introduction In Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, we like to show off our international level of education. The government as well as the media tend to announce and emphasize that we belong to the absolute...Mantle of the Expert in Aoteaora New Zealand
28th January 2018
A personal perspective from Viv Aitken Visit the New Zealand Mantle of the Expert website New Zealand has a long association with the work of Dorothy Heathcote, after her visits in the 1980s inspired many to implement her methods in their classrooms. The subject society set up at the time of these visits, now called Drama New Zealand, continues to support and represent teachers today. In New Zealand we have a curriculum framework that was introduced in 2000 with a significant revision in 2007 and further updates in 2017* I think we sometimes forget how liberating it is to be...Mantle of the Expert in Greece
…then Mantle of the Expert came along… English as a foreign language (Efl) has been incorporated in Greek Primary Education since 1985. Working as an Efl teacher for the past twenty four years has given me the opportunity to teach students of various socio cultural backgrounds, age groups, and learning styles in a number of practice contexts. My students have always been learners with unique personalities, eager to communicate in a new language despite their different learning profiles. To my realization over the years, they have always been confronted with school books and teaching practices that deprived them from the...Romans and Us
27th January 2018
By Debra Kidd I taught a Year 4 class yesterday with lots of teachers watching. It’s like Triple-Ofsted. I’d talked the talk with these teachers and Hywel Roberts and now it was time to walk the walk. I was fairly terrified, it’s safe to say. Year 4 were looking at a topic called “Beyond” which was going to incorporate work on the Romans. I sat down on Sunday with a cup of tea and thought about what to do. My teaching has low resourcing. I don’t need much more than a couple of images, masking tape and post it notes....Mantle of the Expert as a route to irresistible learning and transformative teaching
16th January 2018
Luke Abbott This article is an attempt to re-imagine the professional positioning of schooling, learning and teaching by offering an account of approaches adopted by 'Mantle of the Expert' practitioners. In the past decade a new and transformative learning and teaching approach has emerged among those who hold fast to learner-led values within a community of practitioners. The inventor, Professor Dorothy Heathcote, (1) termed the method: ‘Mantle of the Expert’. This title carries a mystical feel, off putting to some. However, it is under the sign of this homey set of words that a counter process can be enabled in...