[00:00]
Performance and Portfolios.
We’re here to talk about performance and portfolios. Our focus is on performance in the classroom. We want to emphasize physical performances, what might be called embodied learning. The hope is the performing offers an alternative to class activities that constrain us.
[00:30]
We need to think about what it means to embody learning. For one, this embodiment opens pathways for transformation as it brings together our minds and our bodies. But we want to extend these possibilities, to suggest that performance can be embodied in other ways, especially through learning portfolios.
[01:02]
Much has been published about the performative nature of writing. We want to show that portfolios can be similarly performative as they enact learning stories. And performative portfolios can challenge constraints as they embody new modes for collecting and representing knowledge.
[01:30]
We also want to be clear about what's at stake. Performed portfolios don't just offer a pleasant means of integrating mind and body. Performance can capture the stories of those who are excluded from institutional memory. And performance can make known concerns that remain unheard in our discussions of learning. We can't just file away what we know. We need to perform to bring to light what we don't know.
[02:00]
The recovery of missing stories can be had when we extend performance to portfolios. And these instantiations of learning can also participate in transformative embodiment. Especially when created through activities like online communal composing, new media meaning making, or other forms of digital performance.
[02:30]
We get lots of stories about teaching. We're hearing one right now. The stories correlate to the hierarchies we all know. Portfolios pave the way for alternative stories, stories performed by students rather than distilled by teachers.
[02:50]
We're all bound by the familiar approaches. What we need are performances of learning. And what we need is to push the contention that unheard stories matter. Teachers often look back and say, this is what I did in my class. It, too, is a recovery move. A performance of learning. Portfolios extend the gesture to students. These stories need to be heard. They count not only as performed learning, but as enacted instances of embodied scholarship.
[03:30]
In that spirit, this is what we did in our class.