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On Monday 15 September, Hanke Drop will defend her PhD dissertation 'Playing in a Jazz Quartet or Marching in a Brass Band? Exploring Practices of Teacher Artistry'. In her thesis, Drop explores how teachers can invite pupils and students to be present in this world, empathising, improvising and experimenting, expressing themselves, and collaborating.

Making the inexpressible imaginable

We often lack the language to speak or write meaningfully about people’s experiences, Drop writes. Especially when it comes to disruptive events such as having to flee, violence, poverty, and loneliness. In her dissertation, she states that the arts can make the invisible and inexpressible visible and imaginable. Through a photograph, movement, story, film, or poem, it is possible to empathise with the experiences of others (at least partly).

This is important for education, Drop points out, because the flourishing of many pupils and students is under pressure due to disruptive events in their lives and in the world. There is little room in education for these experiences and the feelings that accompany them when there is a one-sided emphasis on cognition (as if young people are ‘walking heads’). Moreover, Drop argues, pupils, students, and teachers also have bodies with which they experience, learn, feel, and express themselves.

According to Drop, education is not only about developing knowledge and (social) skills, but also about becoming a person and community development. Thanks to the arts, which are always world-centred and involve the body, teachers can offer a pedagogical space for ‘creating something together’ from experiences, such as a rap, image, or essay. This requires teacher artistry, Drop argues.

Prior to her defence, Drop will give a layman’s talk starting at 16:00.