Teaching As a Performing Art [Paperback]

Seymour Bernard Sarason (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0807738905 | ISBN-13: 978-0807738900 | Publication Date: October 1, 1999

This work probes the topic of teaching as a performing art, focusing on the role of teachers in galvanizing an audience - their students. It argues that teachers will better engage learners if they are prepared in the "artistry" of doing so. The author sees teachers as actors and thus uses the traditions of stage performance to inspire ways to foster connections between teachers and students. Sarason elucidates how the rehearsal processes actors undergo and the direction they receive, for example, would be similarly beneficial for educators. Recognizing that implementing his ideas would require a profound rethinking of teacher training programmes, Sarason urges why they are crucial to excellence in education.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Seymour Sarason is Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Yale University. In 1962, he founded and directed the Yale Psycho-Educational Clinic, one of the first research and training sites in community psychology. Fields in which he has made special contributions include mental retardation, culture and personality, projective techniques, teacher training, anxiety in children, and school reform. His numerous books and articles reflect his broad interests. He has received awards from the American Psychological Association and the American Association on Mental Deficiency.

Product Details

• Paperback: 171 pages
• Publisher: Teachers College Press (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807738905
• ISBN-13: 978-0807738900
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #629,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tour de Force by a Uniquely Accomplished Observer, December 3, 1999

By 

Kenneth G. Wilson (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teaching As a Performing Art (Paperback)

This remarkable book explains that teachers need to be just as accomplished performers as are successful artists - actors, orchestra conductors, dancers, or singers. It discusses how this need could be dealt with in teacher preparation programs. It will be heartwarming for teachers who already know this; it will be an eyeopener for anyone who believes that teachers require only knowledge of the subject to be taught. I believe that the problems of teacher quality will not be resolved until the observations in this book are widely understood and acted upon. Moreover, this book is very timely. The issue of teacher preparation and teacher quality has now become central to education reform nationally, thanks to pressures from teachers themselves, from their unions, from the existence of the National Board on Professional Teaching Standards, and from a growing political focus on teacher quality. Another eyeopener is "The Teaching Gap" by James Stigler and Jmaes Hiebert, which explains how and why teaching is different in Japan from what it is here. (The differences are partly due to a visit to Japan by John Dewey early in this century.)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take A Bow, August 2, 2009

By 

a gentle sound (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teaching As a Performing Art (Paperback)

One of the books I started LAST summer, and finished THIS SUMMER, (with plans to re-read all that I've already FORGOTTEN) is this book.
Teaching, and I say this from my 27 years trying it, is really so much about performing. And in a sense one has to have a repertoire ready to deploy in the moment, this book more fully addresses and discusses something often not exposed in teacher ed programs-or at least not so well in mine-that performance enhancing repertoire and what it can do for the learner.

However luckily for me, I had an art ed teacher, Bill Thomas at WVU, he did in fact address teaching as art form, as did my father- master teachers (both really in similar questioning-discovery vein). Often I've thought about how designing effective lessons is about your artful communication skill, and watching peers often I realize how many in the field, too many, are very uncomfortable just within that communication. Some hide behind content, duller than anything, while others simply bore your socks off lacking knowing anything to say. Or do. Or have you do.
It's a very good book to start to consider the actual "act" of teaching, and to try to gain some better understandings for carrying it out.

Maxine Greene in her foreword captured me with her supportive comments that allude to this book as conversation on the art of teaching. Very interesting.

One thing that I've felt over these last few mandated curriculum years was that active engagement of students seemed as politically anemic words, just words, peppered through trainings that duncified how to achieve it with Kagan strategies and other fumbling, bumbling artificial methods-turn to your partner, hoedown, mix and shout, over the top and so many seemingly idiotic types of devices to try to get students to be engaged and to feel they are active participants in the process. Maybe it is because I came out of art and art education into my own teaching where after a topic, idea, project, theme was stated everyone went into making art work as a "response" along with dialog, it might be that early on I realized that you are as Carl Rogers so brilliantly taught, the facilitator in a dialog.Often the all of it is a process of finding your path to understanding. It maybe that you make artifacts, work in models, create something, use projects, but what is happening is you are creating as a process of discussion, a basis for a group to interact and think together. Dad called it Socratic teaching. And in that way I think performance as teaching is very old indeed. It may be that. I don't know. I do know I learn more in the process of working than I teach. I've called it constructivism, how I approach the work. But as a piece to add to my understanding this book focuses on what the teacher specifically is saying, doing, and observes situations to dialog about that and its effect on learners.

It is a bit "drier" because it has academic and research basis. It's well worth the time and has given me quite a lot of help in considering the art I practice and developing my language to share it.

2 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Weak performance, November 18, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Teaching As a Performing Art (Paperback)

This book is dull. For a potentially interesting topic, it was like chewing grits without salt, little substance and no flavor. It was a waste of time and money. I threw it into the recycle sack where it could be put to better use.