Exploring ‘Teaching Excellence’ in Vocational Theatre Training: What Role Does It Play in Enabling Student Success?

Abstract

Theatre training establishments in the UK have long prided themselves on educating the ‘elite’ talents in the fields of performance, design and production. This study aims to explore the notion of ‘teaching excellence’ within technical theatre training, through interviews with both students and teachers at Guildford School of Acting. Participants noted that excellence was an important aim of teaching and fitted well with the industry facing and professional focus of the drama school, and that excellence should be measured and improved. However, our research found that excellence is a hard term to define meaningfully and difficult to measure fairly. We believe that further research is needed to move closer to defining, planning, implementing and measuring teaching excellence in this sector.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Student Interview Questions

What does ‘teaching excellence’ mean to you?

Do you consider it to be subjective or objective? Why?

Can teaching excellence be improved through staff self-reflection and critical evaluation?

Can teaching excellence be measured and if so how?

Is learning excellence and teaching excellence the same thing? If not, how would you differentiate them?

Do teachers need to use ICT to achieve excellence? Is so how?

What are some practical examples of teaching excellence?

To achieve teaching excellence, do teachers need to have done a course in university lecturing?

How does teaching excellence differ from ordinary teaching?

Is teaching excellence an individual or institutional concern?

Is teaching excellence ‘common sense’ to teachers?

Do teacher to student ratios have an impact on teaching excellence?

What mechanisms can we put in place to either reward or attract teaching excellence at GSA?

How important is it for teachers to have a professional development at GSA, or is it more important to have specialist knowledge?

Does teaching excellence mean the same to everyone; for example, teachers, students, managers and employers?

Appendix 2: Teacher Questionnaire

Please consider either answering all the questions or (as in some cases there is some overlap between questions) write a page or so exploring your views of teaching excellence at GSA, referring to the points that the questions raise.

What does ‘teaching excellence’ mean to you?

How helpful is a focus on ‘teaching excellence’ for students within a vocational training?

How should ‘teaching excellence’ be measured? How should it be rewarded?

What do you know about the ‘Teaching Excellence Framework’?

In what ways does the TEF impact your daily routine?

Does the learning and teaching environment within GSA technical theatre promote ‘teaching excellence’?

‘A key aim of TEF is to drive enhancement of teaching and learning ’. Is this statement relevant to your own experience of teaching and learning within GSA?

Has your learning/teaching experience been enhanced by TEF?

Would you say that the teaching/learning environment at GSA is conventional or innovative, and how do you think this might influence how GSA is measured by the TEF?

Would you say that teaching in a vocational training course is helped or hindered by TEF?

Appendix 3: Research Guide

Discipline: technical theatre arts: the study of the production disciplines of theatre, including lighting, sound, stage management and scenic arts.

Research question: What role does the concept of teaching excellence play in enabling student success in vocational theatre training?

Rationale: To examine how the idea and concept of ‘excellence’ is understood and manifests itself in the context of technical theatre education within UK drama schools, how teachers’ practice is or can become excellent and how this might relate to employer understanding of excellence in graduates.

Link to topic of teaching excellence: In the light of the increasing use of the term ‘excellent’ as related to teaching and learning in Higher Education, particularly in the context of the Teaching Excellence Framework, it was timely to consider how this might fit with the traditional ‘excellence’ agenda in drama schools.

Methods: Focus groups with students, facilitated by the student author and a written questionnaire for teachers, facilitated by the staff author. All questions were open-ended to elicit a broad qualitative response. All participants interacted with a peer investigator, with the aim of encouraging open and honest discussion.

Ethical considerations: The researchers completed the Surrey University’s self-assessment for ethical considerations. Participants signed a consent form and were assured of anonymity; the staff author did not know the identity of the student participants and vice versa.

Challenges: The main challenges were encouraging students to take part, as they were unsure of the meaning or significance of teaching excellence and getting a response from teachers due to workload pressures.

Solutions: This was overcome by direct peer-to-peer approaches, time limited focus groups within a normal university work day and short questionnaires with flexibility on how they were completed.