The Classroom as a Stage: Commedia dell’Arte as Multilingual Pedagogy for International Business School Students at the University of South Australia

Abstract

This chapter describes a case study of a multidisciplinary approach to the complex social issue of teaching English to multilingual tertiary students in a pluralistic context. It does this by advancing an innovative multilingual pedagogy combining specific aspects of Commedia dell’Arte (Di Niro) and translanguaging (Viljoen) to cross boundaries between languages and cultures for effectively teaching. This is achieved through an examination of Di Niro’s course structure, written reflections and observations of teaching students “English for Business Studies” at the University of South Australia (UniSA). Reflections are arranged and interpreted around three themes: multilingualism, game play, and physicality/embodied learning. Following O’Neill and Viljoen (2021, p. 1), the authors argue that “such reflection is not simply contemplative, but involves dynamic, transforming and reflexive processes of accessing” the lived-experience of language and culture of the teacher and students in an engaged and responsive learning dialogue. Commedia dell’Arte includes multilingualism, improvisation, gesture, role-play and extending students to develop socio-political dialogue. Translanguaging involves foregrounding and affirming the home language of multilingual students of English while also developing their English. Blending these methodologies and methods enables the authors to simultaneously address practical and theoretical aspects of teaching in a multilingual classroom.

Citation

Di Niro, C. and Viljoen, J.-M. (2022), "The Classroom as a Stage: Commedia dell’Arte as Multilingual Pedagogy for International Business School Students at the University of South Australia", Sengupta, E. and Blessinger, P. (Ed.) Changing the Conventional University Classroom (Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, Vol. 44), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 83-97. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055-364120220000044006