Milli mála - 01.01.2010, Side 175

and concrete context, as students could explore and reflect, and also
share and discuss in the rehearsals what they regarded as relevant
and interesting for them, and receive critical feedback from the
group or from me. also of interest in relation to context-oriented
learning and the reflective practice in portfolios is Lave and
Wenger’s45 idea of the “negotiation of meaning”, which means,
according to Bräuer46, that in a learning process one has to negotiate
how “the way I do something has anything to do with me”.
4. Conclusion
In this article we provided two examples of theatre courses within
the foreign language curricula (in French and german) at the
university of Iceland, and described how the inclusion of a per-
formance in such a project influences the aims of a course, the
meth od of working, and the commitment required of participants.
We discussed, though not exhaustively, the role of ‘oral expres -
sion’ and ‘creative and reflective writing’ within interdisciplinary
theatre projects to demonstrate the variety of aims, tasks, and inter -
ests that can be integrated into courses that incorporate artistic
activities. These examples are in no way meant to be prescriptive
but are rather designed to inspire other teachers to consider inte-
grating drama or other arts into their teaching. With this discussion
and insight into our practice, we demonstrate that it is important for
us to create an environment – a space – in which we will be able to
stimulate students to be creative, to get involved in the process, and
to be able to realise their own ideas. We regard the use of drama in
foreign languages as interesting and useful for teachers and stu -
dents, regardless of whether a performance is staged outside the
classroom or not. It seems to us, judging from what we have found
in the students’ feedback and in our own observations, that the per-
formance experience has a strong impact on the students’ learning
experience, which students describe as surprising for them.
anDrEa MILDE anD ÁSTa IngIBJarTSDÓTTIr
175
45 Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation,
new York: Cambridge university Press, 1991, cited in: gerd Bräuer, Schreibberatung in der
Schule, Studium und Lehrerberuf, p. 1.
46 gerd Bräuer, Schreibberatung in der Schule, p. 1.
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