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SecondaryMusicThe Arts

On With The Show – Are Schools Overlooking The Importance Of Performance Skills?

While literacy and numeracy take centre-stage in today’s curriculum, performance skills are often neglected - are schools missing a trick, asks Katie Masters

Katie Masters
by Katie Masters
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SecondaryMusic

Maths unlocks the universal language of numbers. English gives us access to the ideas of great thinkers. Science helps us understand the fabric of the universe (and the nature of life).

With so many riches to explore in such a short school day, is there really an argument to say that teachers should also be making time to teach performance skills?

Yes, says Professor David Hargreaves, one-time chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. Emphatically, yes.

‘Performance skills are too often undervalued,’ David elaborates. ‘There’s a lot of emphasis on academic standards but we should be talking about educational standards: developing students as well-rounded people who can express themselves. Performance skills are a key way of achieving that. They allow self-expression, which isn’t a virtue that’s found in every subject. Self-expression produces self-confidence.’

Express yourself

David Hargreaves isn’t the only person to highlight this link between explicitly-taught performance skills, self-expression and self-confidence. It lies at the heart of School 21’s oracy programme. If you haven’t yet come across School 21, it’s a state-funded, non-selective school in Stratford, East London that opened in 2012. It’s a free school, with a clear vision of what 21st century education should be about.

High on its list of priorities is to give speaking the same status as reading and writing – and it has developed its own oracy programme, Voice 21, designed to teach students how to talk effectively and eloquently – a key performance skill.

Having seen proof of the value of oracy, School 21 is now rolling out its curriculum and assessment tools to be shared with schools across the country. ‘We want students to leave school having confidence in their own voice and being able to use their own voice,’ explains Rebecca Earnshaw, director of Voice 21. ‘When you’re confident about expressing yourself you feel that your ideas have value. Oracy also teaches students to listen to – and build on – the ideas of other people.’

School 21 actively teaches students how to talk in different situations, how to tailor what they’re saying to different audiences and how to justify their point of view. These skills are used and taught across subjects. ‘The students are taught skills like how to challenge someone else’s ideas politely, how to give constructive feedback, how to move a conversation on by offering new insights or building on a point someone else has made,’ confirms Rebecca.

Learning for life

These are life skills. This year the World Economic Forum asked chief human resources officers and strategy officers from leading global employers to list the top ten skills that will be needed for employment in 2020. The answers were:

1. Complex problem solving 2. Critical thinking 3. Creativity 4. People management 5. Coordinating with others 6. Emotional intelligence 7. Judgment and decision making. 8. Service orientation 9. Negotiation 10. Cognitive flexibility.

For most of these skills, people will need an amassed body of knowledge, but it’s the way they use and communicate their knowledge that is going to be crucial. Oracy supports many of those skills (critical thinking; creativity; coordinating with others) and also develops another vital talent – the ability to process information quickly.

‘When you’re talking about a subject you need to have the information to hand and to make connections quickly,’ says Rebecca. ‘And academic research shows that learning through talk develops critical thinking and reasoning skills.’

Ask the audience

All performance-based subjects teach students to communicate and help to develop the social skills that are rooted in teamwork and group cohesion. David Hargreaves believes that a key factor that distinguishes these subjects from other subjects is that they are often geared towards a performance that will be watched by an audience. ‘Performing’ brings the rewards of attention, recognition and admiration.

‘Sport, music, drama, dance: these subjects aim at developing skills and then turning them into a performance,’ he says. ‘You embark on a project – a play or a concert – you craft it, you improve it, you polish it and then you perform it. And when you perform it you see the effect it has on an audience.

‘It’s memorable because you work hard to create something and it brings a tremendous sense of achievement. It teaches a really important lesson: that to do something that other people value means hard work. Many of the most rewarding jobs in our society consist of hard work and developing skills in order to create or achieve something that others appreciate.’ It’s stating the blindingly obvious to say that few students will get the same buzz of satisfaction from completing and handing in their math homework.

‘Working up to a performance encourages students to try things out,’ says private singing teacher Hannah Marie Gatt. ‘That willingness to try means a willingness to make mistakes – so it teaches students that mistakes are necessary to grow. It’s a process that cultivates maturity because students have to confront their anxieties.

‘In a group setting, like a choir, performance is a bonding experience: students tend to support one another and think of one another’s needs – be empathetic, rather than competitive.’

Team effort

In addition, performance subjects teach genuine teamwork. ‘They involve working as an individual and as part of an ensemble,’ says Matt Yeoman, lead practitioner in teaching and learning at Queen’s Park High School, in Chester. ‘And what the individual brings to the team effort is absolutely clear.’

This year, Queen’s Park High School is planning to dedicate time to actively teaching all students performance skills: verbal and nonverbal ways of communicating, posture, gesture, eye contact, expression. The goal is to give their students greater confidence in the way they speak and interact with others and to have the self-belief to stand up in front of an audience and perform.

Life skills. Can any school afford not to invest in performance?

Five ways to nurture performance

1. Link up with external ‘audiences’ At Clacton Coastal Academy in Essex Year 9 students were challenged to come up with a redesign for the Essex County Cricket Ground. The ‘performance’ was a trip to the ground to formally present their ideas to the officials. They then had to meet with the officials in a more informal, lunch setting, and chat through the ideas.

2. Understand students’ inhibitions Lorna Lafford, the literacy coordinator at Clacton Coastal Academy says, ‘Students have a variety of reasons for being reluctant to perform. It may be feeling that they have nothing to say. It may be feeling physically uncomfortable. It may be that they don’t like the sound of their voice. If you can understand the things that hold them back, you can find ways of supporting them to overcome those barriers’

3. Give performers a story to tell ‘To connect with an audience you need to tell a story: that’s true of drama, dance and musical performance,’ says Hannah Marie Gatt. ‘If you tell students to look at the emotions and intent behind a piece of music or a series of dance steps and to try and convey that to an audience, it helps them to think about the main aim of performing: communication.

‘It also takes the pressure off their ‘ability’, because they realise they’re not simply being watched to see how technically ‘good’ they are. They’re being watched because the audience wants to know the story.’

4. Analyse great performances Matt Yeoman at Queen’s Park High School is planning to show his students great actors giving performances, as a prelude to discussing what makes a good performance – use of movement/stillness; voice; gesture; expression. At the end of Year 7 in School 21, all students prepare a five-minute speech about something they’re passionate about, presented without notes to their peers.

Part of the preparation is analysing the physical, linguistic and cognitive components of great speeches and discussing what makes them so effective.

5. Raise the bar Debate is another area in which students learn to perform. At School 21. students were invited to debate the question ‘Is it ever justified to drop bombs on civilians?’ The history teacher then informed the students that a survivor of Hiroshima would be watching the debate.

‘That heightened their awareness of the audience and made it even more important that the points being made were well-justified and thought through,’ says Rebecca.

Skills with benefits

Dance may be useful as a tool for tackling bullying Researchers from Oxford University have found that performing simple synchronised dance moves together helps bonding – even when children have initially voiced negative feelings towards one another.

Group singing can reduce stress In 2013, researchers from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found that choral singing regulates breathing and heart rate, leading to a heightened sense of calm.

Acting improves the social ability of students with autism Blythe Corbett, an associate professor at Vanderbilt University in the US, has described acting as, ‘Therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder‘ – an interactive and social process that helped said students improve their ability to identify and remember faces.

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