Mantle of the Expert

Mantle of the expert is considered a revolutionary approach to education.  A drama guru Dorothy Heathcote developed this approach for nearly half of a century, from the 1960’s onwards. Heathcote has had many careers from a university lecturer to a well- known author of how drama can be used to benefit and deepen the knowledge within the classroom.  

‘Classroom drama, at its simplest, harnesses our human ability to play together for curriculum purposes’ (Edmiston, n.d).

Why use it?

The mantle of expert technique can be used to explore topics across the curriculum by using creative methods like drama, which empowers the pupils by allowing them the opportunity to undertake specific roles which highlight responsible roles and decision making skills. Currently, many schools are adopting the Mantle of Expert approach to teaching.

Treating children as responsible experts within a field is one of the key aspects of the Mantle of the expert. Enabling children to initiate their own learning will increase their confidence and engagement with the activity. These ‘fields’ provide the children with the knowledge and skills that can be applied to their everyday lives. The mantle of Expert encourages the pupils to be creative, communicate, think critically and compromise.

 http://dramaresource.com/images/stories/videos/StepByStep.flv

The children will become a team of leading experts on a specific subject using imaginative role- play in order to explore the issues within their enterprise. The children will be involved in role- play type activities, research, discussions in which will lead to the success of the enterprise. It can lead to real outcomes of writing letters, selling products and creating leaflets or posters, which ensures that the children are still learning the three ‘R’s’; reading, writing and arithmetic. The role of the teacher is to guide the ‘drama’,delivering encouragement and positive feedback to the experts of the field (Farmer 2013).

The purpose of inquiry is seeing that the curriculum has more to explore and offer than to just deliver. Children are active agents in the curriculum process, they need to work together and explore with other children and adults in order to fully develop their knowledge skills and understanding. The didactic approach to teaching will never be enough to fully develop their minds. Drama for learning is about using theatre’s view and story to create a new and exciting way of learning in a classroom. Both pupils and teachers work in unison to invent scenarios that ‘give meaning’ to the curriculum. Using drama in learning allows the children to make up rules and invent what will happen next. Thirdly the mantel of expert is an approach of teaching and learning whrre the class create a scenario and adopt an expert point of view. The mantle is the different responsibilities, roles and duties which lie within the scenario, (Wordpress, 2014).

References 

Wordpress (2014) Retrieved 30th of April from http://www.imaginative-inquiry.co.uk/what-is-imaginative-inquiry/

David Farmer (2013) Retrieved april 30th from http://dramaresource.com/strategies/mantle-of-the-expert

Dr, Brian Edmiston, (n.d)

http://www.mantleoftheexpert.com/studying/articles/BE%20-%20The%20MoE%20Approach%20to%20Education.pdf