As a student in the tutorial, I loved the sense of sponteneity and freedom that came with donning the mantle of the expert. I felt like I had the freedom to express whatever crazy ideas I came up with, no matter how bizarre, because everyone was in role (including the teacher!) and so nobody could tell me I was wrong.
In chapter 4 of Beyond the Script, we are warned that this sort of lesson requires careful planning. A lot of this planning comes from knowing your class, what they're interested in, how they'll behave in certain circumstances etc. This isn't exactly something I can think about just yet, as I don't have a class :)
But other parts of the planning come from setting the scene appropriately in a way that clearly defines the teacher's role, sets up the setting and the problem, and gives the students an idea of their roles.
This week, we saw two examples of scene-setting. The contaminated spaceship and the DEC advertising campagin. Each of these examples
- Gave us (the students) a context: Where are we? When are we?
- Gave us a problem: What are we doing here? What do we care about? Where is this all going?
- Gave the teacher a role.
- Gave us a role - but an open-ended role, so that we know what type of person we are (someone who works at an advertising company) but are free to fill out the specific details.
The green children
I want to let you all know that the Sunday Times really appreciates you all coming here. We're hoping to publish a special edition focusing on the mystery of the green children and I know all of you have something to offer. Some of you have been intimately involved with those poor green children, and I'm really looking forward to hearing what you have to say. I've also invited some scientisits, folk-lore experts, priests and historians to this meeting. The head editor is hoping that by the end of today we'll have gotten to the heart of the matter, and the Sunday Times will be able to let the world know all about what's really going on.
As the representative of _______ school I'd really like to thank Zing Design for taking on our project. We've been wanting to have our school uniform re-designed for a while now and we're delighted to be working with such talented fashion designers! The school principle asked me to pass the following on to you all:
- We want both a summer and a winter uniform.
- The uniform should be modern and trendy.
- But, the principle can be a bit old-fashioned, so the uniform also needs to look like a standard, traditional uniform and needs to use the school colours (blue and yelllow).
- We want the overall cost of the uniform to remain as low as possible, so please keep this in mind when choosing materials.
By the end of today I'd like to have five draft designs to take back and show to the school community.
I'm afraid I have bad news. This blizzard is so strong that we've completely lost all outside communication. I haven't been able to contact the main base at all. So I guess we'll just have to wait the storm out. We all knew there was a risk of this when we came to the inland Antarctic outpost. I'll be spending my time trying to get the communications system back online, which means that everything else will be up to you guys. You're all scientists, and all specialists in the field, so I'm sure you can work out how to make our food and water supplies last. We'll also have to sort out how to generate enough heat and electricity until the storm is over. Perhaps the best way to start would be to compile a list of supplies. I'll be heading back to the communications room, best of luck to all of us.
Local council members, we've gathered here today to vote on Cole's proposed new shopping centre. I'm sure you've all seen the proposed plans [perhaps a sheet with the details may be handed out as part of the drama] but just to summarize - Coles is seeking development approval to build a new, five-level shopping centre in the area that is currently Queen Elizabeth Park. They've proposed to include a children's play area as part of the shopping centre, though they have no plans to replant the trees they will have to cut down.
After discussing Coles' proposal, we'll hold a vote at the end of this meeting. We can either vote to accept the proposal, to reject it outright, or to reject it and suggest some changes. There's no need to write anything down during the meeting as I will be taking minutes.
Final note
Both of the examples of mantle of the expert that I've seen this week have been structured as discussion forums, where the students get to take on a role and speak with authority about a certain subject, possibly arguing for a certain point of view. I am not sure if there are other ways to give students the mantle of the expert, and to challenge them by taking some authority away from the teacher. A quick google finds me mantleoftheexpert.com but it currently appears to be down. I also found this website, which has ideas for using mantle of the expert as the scaffold around which an integrated unit of work is planned. This looks really interesting and is something that I'd love to try implementing in the classroom.
