In recent years, there has been growing interest in ideas such as teacher presence, embodied teaching, performative pedagogy, and social and emotional learning. While these concepts are frequently discussed, they are often described in abstract terms. What is much less clear is how these qualities actually show up in lived classroom experience — and how learners remember them.
This question sits at the heart of a new, practitioner-led research project emerging from the Performative ELT community.
The central research question
At its core, the project asks:
What do learners actually remember about teaching — and what does this reveal about teaching as a performative, embodied, and relational act?
Rather than starting with predefined competencies or frameworks, the project works from the ground up, using remembered learning experiences as its primary data source.
Why remembered learning experiences?
Research and lived experience both suggest that people rarely remember lesson aims, materials, or even content in detail. What they do remember are moments:
- when they felt encouraged or humiliated
- when they felt seen, ignored, safe, or exposed
- when a teacher’s voice, reaction, or response shaped their confidence
- when learning felt possible — or impossible
These moments are often deeply embodied and emotional. They reveal not just what was taught, but how teaching was performed and how it was experienced.
The data: teachers as learners
The wider dataset for this project consists of 20,000+ short essays written by teachers, describing positive, negative, and mixed learning experiences from their own lives as students.
This means:
- the voices are reflective and experienced
- the memories are filtered through years of teaching practice
- the data is rich in emotional and relational detail
Before working at that scale, however, the research group has deliberately slowed the process down.
Phase 1: Learning how to see the data together
In the first phase, members of the Research Circle were invited to code a small set of 15 short extracts. They were not given a fixed framework. Instead, they were asked to notice:
- emotions present in the experience
- teacher behaviours or attitudes
- learner responses or reactions
- striking or expressive language
- possible themes and short codes
Participants submitted their observations via a Google Form.
The responses were then carefully reorganised so that:
- each coder’s observations remained intact and visible
- all comments relating to the same extract could be compared side by side
This allowed the group to see where people independently noticed similar things — and where interpretations diverged.
What began to emerge
Across multiple extracts, consistent patterns started to appear. Coders repeatedly focused on things such as:
- how teachers used their voice (tone, volume, humour, patience)
- how authority was exercised (supportively or punitively)
- how teachers responded to learner emotion and vulnerability
- moments of public exposure, comparison, or safety
- whether learners felt rushed, silenced, or given time to think
Importantly, these patterns were not imposed in advance. They emerged from what practitioners actually noticed when reading the same experiences.
From this, a provisional Teaching Artistry lens began to take shape — describing teaching not just as technique or methodology, but as an embodied, relational performance with lasting emotional impact.
Where the research is now
At the current stage, the lens is:
- draft
- open to challenge
- collectively owned
The Research Circle is now engaged in testing, refining, and questioning this lens before it is applied to the larger dataset. Nothing is finalised. Disagreement and uncertainty are treated as productive.
This slow, collaborative process is intentional. The aim is not to produce a neat model quickly, but to arrive at something that genuinely reflects lived teaching and learning experience.
Why this matters for teacher development
Many teachers recognise that how they are in the classroom matters — their presence, tone, responsiveness, and emotional stance — but struggle to articulate this in concrete, professional language.
This research aims to:
- make those often invisible dimensions of teaching more visible
- provide a shared vocabulary grounded in experience
- support reflection, observation, and development beyond checklists and techniques
- contribute to a more humane, embodied understanding of teaching quality
Want to get involved?
The research is open, collaborative, and practitioner-led. You do not need to be an academic researcher to take part — only curious, reflective, and willing to engage thoughtfully with data and discussion.
If you would like to:
- join the Research Circle
- take part in future coding rounds
- or follow the project as it develops
👉 You can register your interest here:
https://forms.gle/rB9aBC6woWYSMfGK9
Participation levels are flexible, and all contributions are valued.
Tom Godfrey 