PECULIARITIES OF CONDUCTING FORUM THEATRE AS A METHOD OF DEVELOPING CONFLICTOLOGICAL COMPETENCY OF PROSPECTIVE SPECIALISTS IN ADVERTISING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS (REVIEW)

• Main Author: Olena Fomenko
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Consilium LLC 2017-05-01
• Series: European Cooperation
• Online Access: http://we.clmconsulting.pl/index.php/we/article/view/303
• ISSN: 2449-7320; 2449-8726

<p>The article “Peculiarities of Conducting Forum Theatre as a Method of Developing Conflictological Competency of Prospective Specialists in Advertising and Public Relations” addresses the important issue of developing university students’ conflict management and resolution skills. In particular, it describes how the Forum Theatre strategies can be applied in teaching effective ways of resolving conflicts to advertising and public relations majors and, consequently, building their conflict competence skills essential for effective communication in future professional setting.</p><p>Previous studies indicate that Forum Theatre is a valuable teaching tool for conflict resolution within various groups and organizations. Its methodology has been utilized in many applications such as encouraging dialogue between protagonists in the audience, raising awareness of other groups’ needs and wants (Newell, Carmichael, Morgan 2006), addressing conflict and bullying management in schools (Burton, O’Toole 2015), preventing gender violence (Mitchell, Freitag 2011) and others. Similarly, the Forum Theatre strategies proved to be useful in providing practical, pedagogically effective approach to teaching and learning effective communication skills in education, in particular, in exploring classroom management with pre-service teachers (Hewson 2007) and in healthcare education (Middlewick, Kettle, Wilson 2012). Furthermore, Forum Theatre and drama-based pedagogy in general, used as part of integrated, school-based programme, proved efficient in teaching students to manage their own conflict experiences across different domains of their lives (Malm, Löfgren 2007). For these reasons, including the Forum Theatre strategies in programmes designed for prospective advertising and public relations experts may prove a valuable teaching tool for managing and resolving conflicts.</p><p>The objective of the current study is two-fold: 1) to increase students’ awareness of conflict, and 2) to develop their practical skills in conflict management and resolution. The paper provides a detailed description of how Forum Theatre was used to teach advertising and public relations students to manage and resolve conflicts. The study claims this method is an effective tool for building conflict competence that will empower students and help them resolve conflicts in future professional career.</p><p>The paper is organized as follows: Introduction, Analysis of studies and formulation of the objective, Research findings and Conclusion. The Introduction draws attention to the fact that advertising and public relations majors lack fundamental knowledge of conflict, its management and resolution; therefore, this issue should be adequately addressed in classroom curricula, namely via activities raising students’ awareness of conflict and helping improve their conflict competence skills. One of the available teaching tools helping to achieve this goal is Forum Theatre – a technique created by Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal and used to promote social and political change.</p><p>The section devoted to analysis of previous research into applying Forum Theatre strategies in education provides a brief account of the method’s origin and its use in pedagogy. It also describes the Forum Theatre’ main functions in learning process, namely its training, educational, developmental, motivational and stimulating, communicative and compensatory, and relaxation functions. Finally, the section states the main objective of the study.</p><p>The section devoted to research findings provides a thorough, step-by-step account of how the Forum Theatre methodology was applied in improving students’ conflict competence skills. In particular, it describes all the phases of conducting Forum Theatre (warm-up, forum, preventive information, and feedback) and gives a detailed account of how it was carried out. This section describes the methodology used in each of the stages. Besides that, it gives a detailed account of all the students’ activities, describes the degree of their involvement into Forum Theatre, and provides the students’ feedback upon its completion.</p><p>The Conclusion section summarizes the results of this work and draws conclusions. It also suggests further research into drama pedagogy teaching tools to build students’ conflict competence skills.</p><p>The study has successfully confirmed the relevance and effectiveness of Forum Theatre for raising students’ awareness of conflict, its management and resolution. It has also proved that Forum Theatre is a valuable tool for building students’ conflict competence skills and, therefore, it can be integrated in classroom curricula. Despite these valuable findings, it is necessary to mention the limitations of the paper. A key limitation of the study is that it draws upon works by Ukrainian and Russian scholars only and does not take into account the research into the use of Forum Theatre in education carried out in other countries. Western scholars pioneered in drama-instruction and, in particular, in using Forum Theatre as pedagogical tool, therefore, their findings should be taken into account. Also, while the study mentions positive feedback from students upon Forum Theatre completion, it does not provide any quantitative data. The students’ feedback could have been more valid had the study conducted the second poll after completing Forum Theatre similar to the one it did before its application.</p>The paper “Peculiarities of Conducting Forum Theatre as a Method of Developing Conflictological Competency of Prospective Specialists in Advertising and Public Relations” proves Forum Theatre is a valuable teaching tool for improving conflict competence of students. Thus, this method, along with other drama instruction tools, could be effectively integrated in classroom curricula.