I. Topic Overview

 
This instructional module will guide learners to explore the ways in which sociocultural contexts inform the creation and reception of performances. The broader course surrounding this project studies the fine performing arts: music, dance, theatre, circus, spoken word, puppetry, mime, etc. The topic of this project, though, will encourage a broader consideration of the values and qualities that constitute performances, including sports, popular arts, and rhetorical speeches as different forms of performance.
 

A. Centrality to Domain:

This lesson module will be used in the context of a General Education undergraduate level course. As such, most enrolled students do not seek to enter the professional world of the performing arts as artists, producers, technical crew, or journalists. Instead, they may have an interest in attending and learning more about performing arts events as average audience members.

The instructional topic, then, is not explicitly intended to teach students the practices of the performing arts domain, though the language and norms of practice in that community will likely be covered as a byproduct of the instruction. Instead, it will address a broader goal of General Education: to prepare students with the critical thinking skills to act as culturally-aware citizens in the domain of a diverse and quickly changing society. The module will ask students to combine introspection with exposure to and analysis of different values, cultural traditions, and perspectives. This combination will contribute to students’ development of high-level intellectual skills including cultural awareness and critical thinking. The overall goal is to help students to become critical and context-aware thinkers.
 

B. Accessible and Interesting to Students:

 
This module will start at the level of the learners by asking them to reflect on their favorite performing artists. Students will consider the following questions: What qualities make those artists successful to you? To society at large? What is the goal of their performance? What societal values does that artist represent in their work? Students will use their personal favorites as the starting point for comparison to other performance genres, cultural contexts, and time periods. Many undergraduate students find pleasure in engaging with performances in the context of pop art, so this can serve as an accessible starting point on which the exploration is based.
 

C. Interesting to the Teacher:

 
This module will present teachers with an opportunity to learn about their students as whole people. Beyond revealing students’ personal preferences in art, the instruction’s frequent opportunities for feedback will show teachers the level at which students are currently engaging in critical thinking. The teacher will bring his or her own understandings and assumptions to the learning environment as he or she too works with students to explore these ideas of art in society. Linking performing arts theory with real-world examples will help to excite and engage at least this performing arts teacher, leading to energized planning and instruction (Perkins & Unger, 101).
 

D. Connections:

 
The ability to think critically about how any artifact is informed by its sociocultural context can be applied to most disciplines, including business, journalism, and law. While this module’s focus on the performing arts ties most directly to application in the arts and humanities, the underlying critical analysis and cultural awareness skills can be of use in most domains of contemporary life.

II. Context

 
The target audience for this learning module is undergraduate students enrolled in a General Education performing arts course. The design is suited to work for either an asynchronous online course or as a supplemental project in a traditional in-person or flipped classroom. It is not expected that students have any prior experience with the fine performing arts, though the lesson design assumes some general exposure to performance as a broader discipline.

The instruction is flexible enough to be adapted to any cultural context, and indeed it is hinged on a reflective look at the cultural context in which it takes place. The lesson design assumes that learners will conduct independent research and analysis outside of the classroom and make use of online Web 2.0 tools to share and collaborate on their work. While the general framework could be adapted to a K-12 setting, additional attention to privacy and appropriateness of materials would be required.

III. Design Components

A. Understanding Goals

1. Focus on Understanding:

The overarching goal for this project is for students to develop an understanding of the ways that performance choices and sociocultural context together influence how a performance is created and received.

The specific understanding goals are:

• Students will develop an understanding of their personal preferences with regard to the performing arts.
• Students will appreciate how performers make choices to achieve desired results.
• Students will understand how sociocultural values influence how and why performing arts are made and received.
• Students will understand how to identify and analyze the goals, choices, values, and cultural contexts involved in a performance.

2. Explicit and Public:

These four primary understanding goals will be explicitly stated as the primary course objectives on the syllabus presented to students at the start of the semester. They will also be listed on the homepage of the course website as a visual reminder throughout the term. As students move through the module and access individual lessons and units, each lesson will begin with a statement of the targeted understanding goal. Keeping the goals explicit will help to keep the instructional agenda in focus and help students to make sense of their activities as part of a coherent process (Perkins & Unger, 103).
 

3. Nested:

The understanding goals are structured in a progression moving upward along Gagné’s hierarchy of intellectual skills (Gagné, 1985). Students move from:

• Perception (recognizing that one performance is more successful than another) to
• Classification (grouping successful and unsuccessful performances) to
• Rules (understanding that choices and contextual values determine the success of a performance)

Individual lesson goals are nested within these overarching understanding goals, as detailed in the following understanding performances.
 

4. Central to Domain:

The above understanding goals ask students to reflect on performance choices in style, content, and delivery, central elements of the performing arts discipline, both for performers and audience members alike. Inquiry in the arts is generally conducted through a careful, informed observation of a performance supported by outside contextual research if needed. Analysis is typically written in the form of a persuasive or exploratory critique, rather than a graphical or formal report. In this sense, the understanding goals reflect the content knowledge, methods, and forms of expression standard in the performing arts domain (Perkins and Unger, 104). In the broader domain of informed, critical thinkers in contemporary society, the ability to express oneself clearly in writing with strong supporting evidence is a fundamental skill.
 

B. Understanding Performances

 
The understanding performances in this instructional module are the main events of learning for understanding. They will guide students from an introspective practice to a more rigorous, structured analysis of diverse artifacts. Students will first consider the performing artists that they listen to, watch, and appreciate in their daily lives. This will help them to engage and externalize their preexisting knowledge and understanding of effective performances (Perkins & Unger, 104). Students can see their peers’ preferences and consider if and how they align or diverge.

The understanding performances will begin analysis with familiar subjects – learners’ favorite performers and performances – and gradually ask them to apply this new method of analysis to unfamiliar forms of performance, advancing their understanding at a reasonable pace (Perkins & Unger, 104). These activities will ask students to post their work on blogs, which will progress through a ongoing rounds of peer feedback. This feedback will help students to learn from their peers and reflect on the qualities that make a strong analysis, which they can then use to better their own work. Students will be asked to engage in the following understanding performances:
 

Unit 1: Exploration (Foolin’ Around)

Learners will reflect on their personal favorite performing artists and performances and consider the qualities that make those artists and performances successful. They will gain experience manipulating and exploring Youtube, as this will be one of the primary tools they will use in later performances (104).

Students make a list of their favorite performing artists and performances, choosing those that represent more than one genre of performing arts.

• Students browse Youtube and curate a channel of 3-5 performances that they think are effective.
• Students browse Youtube and curate a channel of 3-5 performances that they think are not successful.
• Students share their Youtube channel on their blog.

Unit 2: Guided Inquiry (Movin’ On Up)

Students will consider the goals of the performances and categorize the qualities of the performance into two groups: performance choices and sociocultural factors. By creating public blog posts, students apply their understanding of performance choices and sociocultural values to practicing analyzing different performances. The blog format allows students to engage in multiple learning styles and forms of expression, using different forms of media as they choose. The nature of analytical thinking promotes reflective engagement, while exploration of new and unfamiliar performance styles makes the tasks challenging, but approachable. Sharing their blogs with peers (and families or communities if desired) allows students to publicly demonstrate their understanding and invite feedback (Perkins & Unger, 105).

a. For each performance, students create a blog post that will:

• Identify the performer’s goal:
  • e.g. Educating, emoting, entertaining, persuading, provoking, arousing, etc.
• Identify the qualities of that performance that are performance choices:
  • e.g. Stage design, amplification, audiovisual supplements, body posture, movements, costuming, tempo, etc.
• Identify the sociocultural context of the performance:
  • e.g. What is the intended audience? In what country? What age group? What racial makeup? What religious values
• Reflect on how the performance choices and socio cultural context led the performance to succeed or fail in reaching its goal.

b. Learners submit this list of performance choices and sociocultural contextual considerations to a Google Form. The teacher will compile a list or infographic of the suggestions from all students, adding to those if needed, to create a course repository that can be used as a starting point for later analysis.

c. Using this database of elements for analysis as a guideline, students read and reply to at least 3 other student postings. Peer feedback should expand on the original poster’s ideas, whether adding to their argument or presenting evidence to the contrary. Peer feedback will ideally raise further questions for consideration. Teacher intervention in commenting will be minimal and only as needed to correct serious misunderstandings.

d. Every week, the teacher will present the class with new, rich, and challenging examples of performances from diverse genres and cultural and historical backgrounds through videos, live-streaming sites, or in-person performances. Students will reflect on these targeted performances using the above criteria in weekly blog posts. The peer feedback process will be applied to these posts.

e. Over the course of the semester, while working on the above understanding performances, students will work independently on their culminating performance projects. Further information about the culminating performance can be found below.
 

C. Culminating Performances

 
Over the course of the semester, students will work to design a performing arts season of five events for a sociocultural context of their choice. Their culminating project will take the form of a persuasive proposal to a performing arts venue in their chosen context. Students will attempt to persuade that venue to book their selected acts for a performing arts season.

As they analyze performances suggested by the teacher over the course of the instructional module, students independently seek out new performances online, on campus, or in their local communities. In a format of their choice — blog, Google document, Powerpoint slide, Prezi — students will present a culminating performance that consists of:

• An analysis of the sociocultural context they have chosen, looking at the values, expectations, taboos, and norms embedded in that culture.
• A series of five performances that would succeed in that context.
• An analysis of the performance choices and values that would lead that performance to be successful.

To encourage diversity of exploration, students will be required to consider at least three different forms of the performing arts in their season. Those students who have chosen contemporary sociocultural contexts will send their proposal to the booking agent or production manager at the venue they have targeted.
 

D. Resources

As this particular iteration of the instructional module is designed for a primarily online course environment, students will use several Web 2.0 browser-based resources to complete their assignments.

• Computers: Students will access the course content, tools, and deliverables via the Internet, either on their personal computers or in a school-based computer lab.
• Youtube: Students will use Youtube to find performances to analyze.
• WordPress or Sites@PSU: Students will post their ongoing understanding performances and culminating performances on a blog or otherwise publicly accessible medium.

IV. Ongoing Assessment

 
Ongoing feedback in this course will primarily take the form of peer assessment on the weekly understanding performances. Allowing for weekly feedback ensures that assessment comes “early and often” (Perkins & Unger, 106). Peer comments will be added within three days of the original post to create a more timely assessment environment that better allows for rapid adjustment if needed.

While the teacher will establish clear and explicit expectations of student content and feedback in the beginning of the semester, intervention after that point will be limited in an effort to encourage learners’ autonomy in directing their own learning processes. As needed, teachers will raise pointed or guiding questions to lead students to a deeper understanding. Instructors may also ask that students diversify the performances they are studying to expand their analysis beyond their initial zone of comfort.

V. Reflection

 
My greatest challenge in designing this Teaching for Understanding blueprint was striking a balance between the structure of an appropriate level of scaffolding and the flexibility of learner-guided inquiry. While I hoped to present a clear and comprehensive plan with enough detail that another designer could put the module into practice, I also hoped to allow for some room for course to unfold organically based on learner input, interest, and needs.

I also have some concern that this instruction does not provide a great enough diversity of feedback sources. While teacher and peer feedback can certainly be useful, this module does not authentically link to a broader community. One possible solution could be to have students post their analyses as Youtube comments, giving broader exposure to real communities of practice. However, Youtube commenters often fail to be constructive, considerate, and educational in their feedback. Further efforts to link student understanding performances to real-world communities of practice could help to diversify the forms of assessment that students receive on their work.

Overall, I found the systematic structure of the Teaching for Understanding framework a useful tool for instructional design. In working with a generative topic, the potential for broad applications was thrilling, but presented additional challenges in determining the size and scope of the module given the “maze of opportunities” that arose (Perkins & Unger, 102). Implementing the lesson and revising based on actual student results will help me to refine the blueprint so that I can most effectively create a learning environment for true understanding.