Poetry! Performative Perspectives on Poetry Education

The overarching aim of the project is to strengthen poetry pedagogy in both theory and practice by exploring and developing art-based approaches to poetry teaching with a particular focus on dance and visual arts. In the project, the researchers work in close collaboration with teachers and artists. The project develops and explores poetry in combination with dance and visual arts both at upper secondary school level and in teacher education. Theoretically and methodologically the project is based in a performative research paradigm (Østern et al., 2021). The notion of performativity challenges how learning, teaching, and research are understood in contemporary educational contexts and relates to an ontological turn that addresses the materiality and relationality of learning and teaching. A performative approach suggests that knowledge is created in relations between humans and more-than-humans, and rather than focusing on what learning and teaching are and mean, performativity focuses on what becomes and is set in motion. Through different studies, the project aims to address the following questions: (1) how can art-based approaches to poetry teaching contribute to the (re)making of teaching approaches in poetry education, (2) how does art-based approaches contribute to combining student’s analytical and experiential reading of poetry and (3) how can teacher training make a difference for future and present teachers’ readiness to teach poetry with arts-based approaches?

In both theory and practice, the project contributes with knowledge about arts-based approaches to poetry teaching, which scientifically further research on poetry in educational contexts. Furthermore, the project contributes to the conversation about the role and place of poetry, as well as other art forms, in educational settings.