Pantomime and Body Expression in Education
The Art of Pantomime
Pantomime is a performance in which actors express actions, emotions, and characters through gestures, movements, and body attitudes, without using spoken words. It primarily consists of arm and hand movements. While mime focuses on purely emotional expression, pantomime conveys specific ideas. A complete performance often integrates three arts: singing (choir), music (orchestra), and mimicry (actor).
Advantages and Disadvantages of Pantomime
Advantages:
- Uses a universal language.
- Provides a means for transmitting instruction.
- Develops imagination and promotes creativity.
- Excellent for ministry with the deaf.
Disadvantages:
- Not all subjects can be represented.
- Developing pantomimes requires significant imagination.
- Not all viewers possess the same ability to understand the message.
The Role of the Teacher
The teacher plays a catalytic role in student learning. They must be knowledgeable about the learning process and the variables that can affect it. A teacher should:
- Possess the necessary knowledge to impart.
- Have the ability to structure knowledge consistently.
- Be able to use teaching and methodological procedures that facilitate student assimilation.
The teacher will sometimes be the class authority and, at other times, encourage student autonomy. Two key requirements are:
- Achieving significant learning.
- Encouraging the student.
Methods for Teaching Practice
Teaching styles are used in relation to the content. We use:
- “Proof” or “reproduction of models” when tasks require visual information from the teacher or student, enabling the student to adjust their motor pattern and have precise knowledge of the movement.
- “Reciprocal teaching” to introduce the student to the role of observer.
- “Problem-solving” for open-ended motor tasks, stimulating the student’s perceptual mechanisms and decision-making.
In Body Expression (EC), we believe it is necessary to use “guided discovery” to achieve the objectives of self-awareness, speech, communication, and basic skills.
The Necessity of Teaching Body Expression
Didactics is the scientific study of organizing learning situations experienced by a learner to achieve a cognitive, affective, or motor objective. The teacher is responsible for planning and creating useful learning situations to achieve the desired objectives. Physical Education is movement education.
Taxonomic Framework
Taxonomy is the science that studies the laws of classification. It involves classifying simple elements arranged in motor action. A taxonomy helps classify objects, establishing useful relationships between them (Pieron, 1988).
Bloom’s Taxonomy:
- The teaching principle
- The psychological principle
- The logical principle
- The objective principle
Benilde Vázquez (1989) proposed taxonomies based on biomechanics, neurophysiology, and the foundations of motor learning and psychomotor domain theories.
Taxonomies Based on Neurophysiology
These refer to the neurophysiological characteristics of human movement and their level of organization. Guilford (1958), Konorski (1969), and Kibler established a developmental criterion for the appearance of movement. Nonverbal communication behaviors include: Mime, Gestures, and Body Expression.
Taxonomies Based on Motor Learning Theories
These include works by Simpson (1966-67), A. Jewett (1974), Alvarez Manila (1971), and Sánchez Bañuelos (1984). None of them specifically refer to expressive movement.
“Taxonomy of the Psychomotor Domain”
A. Harrow (1972) and Jacqueline Gangey (1986) developed a hierarchy of human movement, from the simplest (reflexes) to the most complex (creative movement), which is distinctly human. A. Harrow’s taxonomy parallels Bloom’s in using increasing complexity as the basis for movement management and Kibler’s in considering the basic evolutionary approach to all educational activities.
Nicholas Garrote’s classification places expressive movement in category four, with the same name as A. Harrow:
IV. Non-discursive communication.
- IV. 1. Expressive movement.
- IV. 2. Interpretive movement.
Several authors include expressive movement at a higher level in their classifications. This expressive and interpretive movement presupposes a mastery of movement.