In May 2022 a group of 12 teachers came together to participate in exploratory workshops to find out what benefits Applied Theatre techniques could bring to Teacher Education. The workshops employed a methodology designed to both enhance participants’ understanding of their situations and facilitate actions to address them. In essence, this methodology served as both the object of research and the means to probe reflection and gather data. The primary objectives of these workshops were fourfold:

Diagnostic: To offer participants an opportunity to engage with Applied Theatre (AT) methods and provide participant-led feedback on their applicability in teacher education.

Methodological: To assess the appropriateness and effectiveness of AT methodology in teacher education settings, ensuring it aligns with its claimed benefits.

Pedagogical: To encourage dialogue and reflection, enabling participants to articulate their learning experiences.

Transformational: To instigate action and change by equipping participants with facilitation skills they can apply in their own educational contexts.

The workshops were structured around two main components:

A. Theatre Games and Activities

We selected theatre games and activities based on specific criteria, including problem-solving activities that promote collaboration, rapport-building activities, exercises focusing on physical self-awareness and concentration, and trust-building activities. These activities were designed to foster personal growth, skills development, and enhance interpersonal relationships among participants. You can access film footage and demonstrations of these activities here.

B. Community Forums

The workshop structure was influenced by Augusto Boal’s Forum Theatre (FT), which has proven to be particularly suitable for teacher education (TE) settings. FT emphasizes active participation and draws on participants’ personal narratives and experiences. This approach aligns with the notion that sharing personal stories can be a potent catalyst for teacher development. Furthermore, FT encourages critical thinking and self-awareness, supporting a “bottom-up” approach to change—a concept well-supported in the literature on educational innovation and transformation (McCabe, 2002; Fullan, 1982, 1993, 2001).

The Forum Theatre was structured over three workshops, and you can view the process here:

Workshop 1 – Tilling the Soil: Participants embarked on a journey of self-disclosure by taking their partners on an imaginary tour of their birthplace. We explored the rewards of teaching and shared stories of positive achievement, which served as the basis for reenacting these stories through image theatre. In the final hour, we repeated the cycle, but this time we brainstormed the challenges, obstacles, difficulties, and concerns faced by ELT teachers.

Workshop 2 – Sowing the Seeds: Participants focused on devising scenes for our Forum theatre scenario. We employed techniques like ‘Step forward if you have…’ to elicit personal narratives. Participants were encouraged to recall moments of stress and challenge, associating them with specific sounds. These stories were shared within their respective groups. By the end of this workshop, we had six scenes, each with a designated facilitator/director.

Workshop 3 – Blooming: This session concentrated on developing facilitation skills and rehearsing the forum scenes. Participants became facilitators/directors for their respective scenes, honing their skills further. The scenarios were later presented to an audience in the Community Forum, aiming to stimulate discussion, reflection, and debate among the participants, who were also invited to contribute solutions to the issues presented.

Approach

Data collection aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of participants’ perspectives on the research questions. We administered written feedback questionnaires and conducted focus group interviews after each workshop. The culmination of the workshops was a performance that depicted the essence of a teacher and explored the primary hopes, fears, and challenges faced by teachers in their personal and professional development. This performance sought to stimulate discussion, reflection, and debate among the audience, who were also invited to complete a reflection questionnaire.

These workshops represent a potential framework and methodology for participant-led, solution-oriented teacher professional development. Applied Theatre, with its participatory approach, offers a means of shared decision-making, fostering dialogue, reflection, and community cohesion. The adaptation of Forum Theatre, termed Community Forums, served as an effective tool for teacher professional development in a series of workshops conducted at our teacher training center in Istanbul.