Researching the Performative

I would like to invite you to join an ongoing practitioner-led research project within the Performative ELT community. The project explores remembered learning experiences and what they reveal about teaching as an embodied, relational, and performative practice.

Why this Research?

When people reflect on their education, they rarely remember lesson plans, materials, or objectives. What stays with them are moments: a teacher’s tone, a reaction to a mistake, an invitation to speak, or a moment of public exposure or care. These moments shape confidence, identity, and long-term relationships with learning.

What are we researching?

Working with thousands of short learning narratives written by teachers, the research asks:
• What teaching moments are remembered most vividly?
• What do these memories reveal about teacher presence, authority, and emotional climate?
• How do embodied and relational aspects of teaching shape learning experiences?

How the research works

Rather than starting with a predefined framework, members of the Research Circle read and discuss real learning narratives together. Through collective sense-making, recurring patterns begin to emerge. These patterns are then named provisionally and tested against further data.

What is beginning to emerge?

Early discussions suggest that remembered learning experiences are strongly shaped by how teachers use voice, respond to emotion, exercise authority, and create (or restrict) psychological safety. These insights are forming the basis of a provisional Teaching Artistry lens.

Get involved

This research is collaborative, open, and ongoing. You are very welcome to follow the project, join discussions, or take part in future research activities through the Performative ELT community.

Join Performative ELT to:
• Read follow-up posts and reflections
• Take part in future Research Circle meetings
• Contribute to practitioner-led inquiry into teaching as performance

Visit the Performative ELT community to learn more and get involved.