“I would like my students to feel like that too.” Reflections on engagement in drama-rich pedagogies with community/heritage languages teachers

Abstract

This article explores engagement and group flow in drama-rich pedagogies with community languages (also known as heritage languages) teachers. Flow is usually examined in terms of an individual experience of creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997, 2008, 2014), where autotelic or intrinsically rewarding experiences are associated with a state of flow. Group flow refers to a collective state where attention is equally put on the task and others, because the task requires continuous social interaction (Hackert et al., 2022; Sawyer, 2004, 2007). Teaching Artists working with drama-rich pedagogies must balance individual creative contributions, group dynamics and the demands of the narrative to sustain engagement and bring about the conditions for group flow. This research found that engagement for the purposes of teacher professional development broadened to encompass autotelic engagement. Data also indicated that a deepening sense of autotelic engagement served to extend and reinforce participants’ teacher professional learning goals.