Synopsis
Citation: Dr Tracey Sanders. For empowering and creative teaching practices that enhance student
learning through collaborative and community partnerships on the Brisbane ACU campus.
Dr Sanders has a well-deserved long-term reputation for promoting the use of the Brisbane campus for
community activities, especially in relation to drama, and for developing activities which connect her drama
students to the local community. Her passion for her subject, the ACU Mission and her students is the key
to her success in enhancing student learning.
Citation: Dr Tracey Sanders. For empowering and creative teaching practices that enhance student
learning through collaborative and community partnerships on the Brisbane ACU campus.
Summary and context
To educate is to guide students on an inner journey toward more truthful ways of seeing and being in the
world. (Parker Palmer 1997.)
Over my 21 years as a full-time lecturer at Australian Catholic University, I have been fervently committed to
providing learning opportunities and activities to students that not only activate and generate a love of
learning and the acquisition of skills but that also challenge them to look more deeply at their contributions
to society. I have developed approaches to learning and teaching in the Bachelor of Arts program that not
only scaffold student knowledge and skill acquisition through unique experiential learning, but that also
attend specifically to the University’s Graduate Attribute commitment to evoke responsibility, equity,
tolerance and stewardship in students’ lives.
Of particular importance have been my efforts to explore how community engagement in higher education
can help my students learn at a deeper, more enduring level, whilst forging rich relationships between them
and local community groups, particularly those groups that may be marginalised or disempowered. Like
Palmer (1997), I consider learning to be an unravelling journey for students, an uncovering of what it means
to be alive and human and to know intrinsically the role we play as stewards and citizens in our wider
society.
Criterion 1: Approaches to learning and teaching support that influence, motivate and inspire
students to learn.
The discipline of Drama, offered in the Bachelor of Arts program, affords students opportunities to study the
human context through theatre texts and performances across a wide spectrum of historical periods, style
and conventions. It is a particularly exciting field to teach in, because it allows a ‘looking glass’ into the
human condition and offers the added opportunity for students to immerse themselves into dramatic roles
and ‘step into the shoes’ of someone else for a period.
For the last two decades, I have taught Drama across every year level of the Bachelor of Arts program, and
at times my classes are a mix of students with diverse discipline backgrounds, skills and experiences.
Whilst discipline content is essential, I am deeply committed to the Australian Catholic University’s Graduate
Attributes that seek also to develop the ‘whole’ person, to cultivate an ethical and moral conscience in
students and to help them understand that learning never occurs in a vacuum but in a dynamic macrocosm
of society and culture. My teaching approach challenges students to ‘Be more’ in their learning journey and
to ‘Know more’ by challenging them to take risks, to ask questions, to listen to and share stories and to find
resonances between real life in the community with the knowledge they acquire in the classroom. Students
respond well to the challenges set for them in my classes:
Tracey Sanders inspires all her students to reach beyond what they consider to be their
potential. She is a teacher who taught me to be strong, to keep moving, to embrace life and
believe in myself and others. She teaches, by allowing us to do, not just by passively listening. I
have been given ‘power’ to learn in an exciting learning medium. (Michelle 2010)
I have developed experiential semester long ‘immersion’ approaches in drama that embed collaborative
student learning, not only in the classroom context, but in the wider Brisbane community. Students are
involved in ethnographic and immersion style experiences where they research in teams and as individuals,
interviewing, recording, analysing and synthesising information in the ‘field’ or in specific social contexts.
Essentially, the ‘classroom’ becomes homeless shelters, aged facilities, refugee claimant centres, hostels,
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drop-in centres, other community venues or simulated social or historical ‘backdrops’ (such as a Medieval
village). There are no desks or technology in the ‘field’ but rather real people with stories and experiences
who become our muses, our mentors and our colleagues. They also become sources of inspiration and
collaborate actively in role play situations and script writing.
Students are encouraged to dialogue and form relationships with the community members so reciprocal
learning partnerships are established. One major teaching emphasis is to give students learning
experiences that offer them, as Prosser and Trigwell (1999) describe, deeper levels of learning that involve
critical analysis of new ideas, links to established concepts and principles, and an understanding and longterm retention of knowledge adaptable to problem solving in unfamiliar contexts. Extensive research plays a
major component in scaffolding this form of student experience.
This relationship with community groups and individuals facilitates the formation of classroom learning
teams which offer feedback and creative ideas. I work closely with community facilitators in semester
planning, mapping out week by week teaching processes that address knowledge acquisition, assessment
and evolving learning experiences that link content to real life. I mentor the students throughout the
research and writing processes, offering a hybrid learning framework that incorporates lectures, rehearsals
and debriefing classroom and community sessions. The debriefing sessions not only clarify and consolidate
content and skills acquired but also actively identify, through in-depth discussion and journal entries, social
justice issues, possible inequities, concerns, micro- and macro-societal practices that students have gained
from working with the community. As much of this work forms part of student assessment, I work with
students on reflective writing skills, ethnographic techniques of interviewing and transcribing, ethnic
constraints and limitations, playwriting, writing in role and reporting.
These performance stories, known as Personal Histories and Testimonios (Denzin 2001) form part of a
much wider body of knowledge known as ‘Performance Ethnography’. In my teaching, this has been an
established pedagogical approach over the last decade and themes and community groups involved have
included: youth culture (Blackrock Project 2002, 2003, 2005); refugees with the Brisbane Wilston Claimant
Centre (Project: The Lost People 2005/Scattered People 2006); the Brisbane homeless with St. Vincent de
Paul (Projects: Cold Comfort 2004, The Big Issue 2007); marginalised and homeless groups with Mission
Australia (Project: Kin 2008/2009); the aged and ‘The Golden Years’ Seniors Centre, Nundah (Project:
Skating on Sandgate Road, 2007-2009), Earnshaw College (The McAuley Medical Fayre conducted
annually for the past eight years).
Students have commented positively on the value of this form of learning:
My life has been changed forever from just hearing about the hardships of being homeless. I just
did not realise. This form of learning really deepened my understanding and appreciation for
drama and those around me and also opened my eyes to how much I really had learnt through
the course. I have realised that I can do more. (Bernie 2008)
and
Tracey is simply a wonderful teacher. Not only does she only teach us content, but her classes
also teach life lessons. I have learnt so much from Tracey in the past two years – more lessons
about life and being a decent human being than I ever thought possible. Tracey teaches
students to be bold, compassionate and collaborative, to enjoy every moment and to savour their
experiences. Empowering is just a word, but with Tracey, it is a lived experience. (Sarah 2009)
I have found this community immersion approach to be invaluable for students to learn about the discipline
of drama and the stories of their own and others’ communities. This form of teaching has provided students
with opportunities to interact personally with groups that they might never otherwise encounter. It allows
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them to widen their ‘lens of learning’, to question, challenge, compare, affirm and advocate values and
ideals that exist beyond the textbook and enter into alternative sociocultural discourses. Every semester, I
work with one community group which has need of a ‘voice’ and stories they want told. This includes the
local school Earnshaw College (a lower socio-economic community) where the children are involved in what
is now know in the university and local community as the ‘McAuley Medieval Fayre’. This Fayre is a
reproduction of medieval life and unpacks through role play, dance, song and other forms, the life and times
of those who lived in a specific medieval period. It offers cross-disciplinary contribution with nurses exploring
health issues, education students investigating levels of education, and literacy and arts students
showcasing ways of making meanings through music, drama and dance. My students work with the children
in storytelling, history discussions and teach them song and dance from the medieval period. I was awarded
an ACU Teaching Grant (see Criterion 2 below) for my work in this area. The students and I designed a
website called ‘The Medieval Classroom’ (www.themedievalclassroom.com.au) which acts as a teaching
and learning resource about medieval times at a local, national and international level.
Criterion 2: How the contribution has influenced student learning and engagement, and has been
recognised by the institution and the broader community.
In 2006, I received an ACU Teaching and Learning Enhancement Grant for my collaborative community
work in the Bachelor of Arts program (The McAuley Medival Fayre). I have been asked to teach on a regular
basis in the Mission Australia Catalyst Program for marginalised adults undertaking a Certificate in Liberal
Studies and students in this course have commented on the effectiveness of my creative experiential
approaches to scaffold their learning experiences after years in institutions or life on the streets:
Thank you Tracey. You have helped change my life. You gave me an incredible creative
experience that helped me to tap into who I was again. It has meant the world to me to be
involved this way with the community. You taught me how to learn again and gave me back my
dignity. (Terry. Catalyst Program. 2007/2008)
My contributions to learning and teaching were recognised by Australian Catholic University in 2007 when I
was awarded an Excellence in Teaching Award. In the same year, I was invited to represent ACU at the
ALTC Fellowship project The Creativity Showcase for Higher Education, a one-day National Forum that was
held at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. My nomination was the result of ACU recognition
by my peers of my community drama work. My presentation on this day is now part of an archival DVD
produced by QUT and serves as a resource for other academics in creative arts disciplines.
In 2008, I was invited by the manager of ‘The Golden Years Seniors Centre’ who had heard of my students'
work with community groups, to be a part of project involving aged citizens from the centre aged 82-94. The
Centre had been awarded a grant from the Queensland 150th Community Funding Program to celebrate and
commemorate Queensland’s 150th anniversary through creative community projects. The Centre wanted to
tell the stories of its local aged citizens who had lived in the district, adjacent to ACU’s campus, all their
lives. My task was to involve students in a full scale research project that would gather stories from
interviews and other data and to collate them into a drama performance. The result, Skating on Sandgate
Road, awarded students learning experiences that encompassed research, linked past and present social
and historical contexts, developed information literacy, communication and interpersonal skills, and helped
evoke a spirit of service to the community. Playing to over 400 people, and opened by the Brisbane Lord
Major, Campbell Newman, this learning project attracted media and government attention:
How many times do young people get a chance to tell the stories of their elders? This wonderful
learning project has brought together...our senior citizens and students from the Australian
Catholic University to create a wonderful piece of theatre that celebrates life in a typical
Queensland suburb. Special thanks must be given to Dr. Tracey Sanders from ACU. (Premier of
Queensland,
Anna
Bligh.
2009)
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In 2009, the Sisters of St Joseph (Australia) approached the Australian Catholic University with a project to
celebrate the 100th anniversary of the death of Blessed Mary MacKillop. I was invited to be drama director
and work with advanced drama students to produce the life of Mary MacKillop on stage through song and
drama to over 1500 people at Brisbane’s City Hall. This particular project has now been acknowledged with
an invitation from the ACU leaders and the Sisters of St. Joseph (Australia) to be drama director of a team
of staff and students who will perform in Rome in October 2010 to 1700 people at the canonisation of Mary
MacKillop. I will work with students from all six campuses of Australian Catholic University in this exciting
learning and teaching experience. Student learning will be contextualised within a broad understanding of
globalisation.
One of my students summed up her work with me over the last three years in the following way:
Tracey Sanders is an inspiration, and the past two years of my life and her teachings will not be
forgotten. I will be very lucky to ever encounter such an extraordinary teacher again. My learning
experiences freed me from being so locked inside myself. (Tiffany 2010)
In such accolades, I am achieving Palmer's goal for educators.
References
Denzin, N. K. (2003). Performance ethnography: Critical pedagogy and the politics of culture. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Palmer, P (2004). A hidden wholeness: The journey toward an undivided life. San Francisco: Wiley & Sons.
Prosser, M. and Trigwell, K. (1999). Understanding Learning and Teaching, on Deep and Surface Learning,
Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press, chapter 4.
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