Teaching is a performative act demanding reciprocal audience engagement.
Evidence
Teaching is a performative act. And it is that aspect of our work that offers the space for change, invention, spontaneous shifts, that can serve as a catalyst drawing out the unique elements in each classroom. To embrace the performative aspect of teaching we are compelled to engage “audiences,” to consider issues of reciprocity. Teachers are not performers in the traditional sense of the word in that our work is not meant to be a spectacle. Yet it is meant to serve as a catalyst that calls everyone to become more and more engaged, to become active participants in learning. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 32
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines teaching-as-performance as catalyst and reciprocity rather than spectacle.
- XREF: Echoes the catalyst-and-engagement framing seen in Deep Listening on group participation; testable against hooks’s later essays. — connects to: Teachers should exploit the opening-week excitement rather than settle for mere learning; An engaged teaching voice must shift with its audience and context — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 33; Effective teaching functions as a performative catalyst, not a spectacle (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Effective teaching functions as a performative catalyst, not a spectacle
#expands(0.88) - An engaged teaching voice must shift with its audience and context
#expands(0.85) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 33 - Transformative teaching requires teachers to become learners in dialogue with students
#expands(0.80) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 685 - Accountability-driven evaluation forces teachers into fabricated performances that erode their sense of self
#complicates(0.80) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 675 - Compulsory education makes students a captive audience whose attention can be monetized
#complicates(0.78) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 9 - Liberating educators dialogue with people rather than explain action to them
#qualifies(0.78) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 127