Restricted Access
Reason: Under embargo until October 2020. After this date a copy can be supplied under Section 51 (2) of the Australian Copyright Act 1968 by submitting a document delivery request through your library, or by emailing document.delivery@monash.edu
Learning Labour
thesis
posted on 2017-10-04, 22:30 authored by Kym MaxwellLearning
Labour explores the ethical and aesthetic realm where my teaching and art
practice intersect. Whilst employed as Performance Arts Teacher at Collingwood
College I formed the Collingwood College Theatre Troupe, which became the case
study for this research. Through the research I contemplate agonistic
approaches to formal and informal learning, on the part of both teacher and
students, through an ethical lens. As a result, an ‘exhibition project’ is
created, which looks closely at the production of a theatrical work, its
context and delivery, processes, aesthetics, its politics and its motivations.
The research has involved observing, and at times challenging, the parameters of student and teacher behaviours within the state education system. This has entailed navigating the tension between ethics and creative determination, and transgressing conventions of teaching by situating the project in a field of cultural production outside the educational setting.
The project draws into focus the agonistic learning that can happen within schools as a positive outcome of criticality in education. Through the production of a socially-engaged theatrical work, this research evaluates the child and indeed the education system as political subjects; the social hierarchies of the pedagogical that are learnt implicitly or explicitly through the ‘hidden curriculum’; how self-organised and anti-democratic processes engender agonism and antagonism within an educational setting; and the complexity of the ethics of representing co-authored work in a University research context.
The research has involved observing, and at times challenging, the parameters of student and teacher behaviours within the state education system. This has entailed navigating the tension between ethics and creative determination, and transgressing conventions of teaching by situating the project in a field of cultural production outside the educational setting.
The project draws into focus the agonistic learning that can happen within schools as a positive outcome of criticality in education. Through the production of a socially-engaged theatrical work, this research evaluates the child and indeed the education system as political subjects; the social hierarchies of the pedagogical that are learnt implicitly or explicitly through the ‘hidden curriculum’; how self-organised and anti-democratic processes engender agonism and antagonism within an educational setting; and the complexity of the ethics of representing co-authored work in a University research context.
