Linking Teaching & Research

Introduction

The aim of this area of the website is to indicate the integral nature of the links between research and teaching through one very practical example, a Case Study of The Text and Playhouse MA taught jointly by King's College London and the Globe Theatre. The site contains an in depth study of the curriculum development of this programme as well as support materials for colleagues who would like to know more about the approach taken or would like to employ a performance approach to the study of Shakespeare themselves.

This initiative forms part of a larger project on this topic sponsored by the LTSN Generic Centre. The Links page directs users to further information about the LTSN Generic Centre Project (now the Higher Education Aacademy) and other resources that look at the relationship between teaching and research. This section of the site also provides links related to the project partners and other online resources that might help develop a performance approach to Shakespeare.

Overview Essay

This essay looks at the way that the King's/Globe MA programme fits within a context of increasing interest across the discipline of English in practical work, on the one hand, and contextual work, on the other. It presents the rationale for choosing just one programme to highlight and argues that the form of the project is as important as its content. In fact the argument put forward is that digital archiving presents a valuable new way to store and disseminate information about pedagogy that could be used to enhance a wider understanding of the study of this discipline.

The Case Study

The Text and Playhouse MA concentrates on Shakespeare's dramatic texts, and the manner of their performance at the Globe theatre. This MA programme combines two areas of scholarly research, textual studies and performance practice, to give students a very practical experience of these two subject areas. By working with a leading theatre company in London the students have a chance not only to learn from practitioners but are given the opportunity to test their own textual theories on the Globe stage. The Case Study presented here involves interviews, conducted by the English Subject Centre, with the convenors of the programme from King's College London and the Globe Theatre, a film of a class taught on the Globe stage and the response of students both past and present. These interviews are both available in full and through an interactive documentary style programme.

Videos

The Videos section contains the full archive of digital video clips from the interviews conducted by the English Subject Centre. This is the raw material for the Case Study which can be used by colleagues to illustrate specific points or topics, independent of the structured pathway presented in the Case Study.

Images of Performance

This section of the site lists the performances at the Globe Theatre that were available to students on the MA programme. It also points the user to useful performance-related resources online. In particular, images of the Globe Season 2000 are presented as an example of the kinds of resources available to colleagues keen to pursue a performance approach to the plays.

3d Globe Theatre

A virtual model of the theatre space, which can be used in class for demonstration, is available by clicking on the 3d Globe Theatre. (If you do not have a VRML plugin you will be prompted to download one. Please be patient if it takes a minute or two to load).

Conclusion

The objectives of this section of the website are to document the development process of an innovative programme, to illustrate the concrete links made between teaching and research and to interrogate the usefulness of this approach for others working in the discipline of English. Therefore the Case Study presented is designed to illustrate in detail the success of one particular programme of bringing the practical application of research into the classroom. The digital dissemination of the Case Study is designed to illustrate a useful way in which research in teaching can be stored and distributed. The support materials are presented to allow colleagues to look at practical ways of using digital resources in their own teaching to encourage a research led approach.