Texte de Pilar LABRANDERO LORENTE, Pays : Espagne. Thème : Apprentissage des langues, médiation culturelle et formation à la dimension européenne. Texte intégral Descripteurs :

This study is presented by the Teachers Association "Proyecto Europa". The aim of the Association is to stimulate the introduction of the European Dimension, to favour the teacher training for co-operation in a multicultural Europe and to encourage the teaching of community languages into the Education System of the Autonomous Region of Valencia in Spain. In this direction we collaborate with our School Administration and other institutions with the same targets. As teachers we work in a practical way to make real the idea of a democratic, tolerant and multicultural education, where the students can find the necessary orientation and formation for understanding the social, scientific and technical changes, for respecting women, other cultures, languages and being also able to co-operate with European colleagues and friends.

We have chosen this project because it represents one possibility to answer to some of the problems we have met in the previous collaboration : the problem of communication in only one vehicular language and the need to be more creative and less conventional in a multicultural pedagogic co-operation.

The basic ideas of this particular innovation are : to hear and speak different European languages and to encourage creativity by working on a common theatre-project, with the aims to enrich the communication among people of different countries and to introduce more European languages into the curriculum.

Important criteria used for selection of this innovation was to make possible the participation of different students and specialists from school and theatre in a common team. Their participation should not depend on the knowledge of only one of the European languages. Further more, we aimed to encourage creativity and sensibility of the young people and of the teachers themselves by dramatisation, play-acting and using passively as actively different European languages together. The initiative was taken by the team of teachers of the Instituto "Cid Campeador" (Valencia, Spain) under the assessment of the Proyecto Europa and accepted by the „Gemeentelijk Gymnasium" (Hilversum) and a little later by the "Instituto Scientifico Galileo Galilei" from Alessandria-Italy. The development and overcoming of differences and problems took part mainly in the three seminars : November 1995 in Valencia; February 1996 in Alessandria and November 1996 in Hilversum, all sponsored by the European SOCRATES / COMENIUS Programme. The agreed organisation says that the drama-director of the host school or receiving group will be responsible of the choice of the play; but the play text has to be available in each of the three languages at the beginning. The three national groups start from one and the same play at the beginning of each school year.

For the first year the preparative work in every school was based on the commonly chosen theatre play of Luigi Pirandello : " Six characters looking for an author ". The meeting and common theatre work was prepared and interpreted in every participating school separately, in the own language. The first meeting for the co-operative work took place in Valencia from 18 of April to 1 of May 1997.

The drama as subject :

The overall theme of the project is "Languages can communicate before to be understood" (according to T.S. Eliot), and the drama was the chosen way or method for working. Each language-group presents in their own language the performance of one and the same play - in this case : Pirandello : " Six characters looking for an author ". In other words : the same theatre play is interpreted in three presentations in three different languages. In this way the various groups confront each other with very different interpretations of the same text, at the same time confronting each other with various-culturally (possibly nationally) conditioned preconceptions and prejudices. Out of this confrontation and the co-operation for developing a final common representation of that play, the three groups-identities find a ground to emerge. The confrontation, the following discussions and evaluations by students and educators will deal with and resolve some of the reciprocal miss-understandings and prejudice, so that the three teams will be able to co-operate in a mutual performance of the same play at the end of the meeting. This play will be staged again in the three different languages on the basis of a selection from all three casts by the leading director : in this way the three group-identities expressed in the three interpretations of the play will be integrated in the one common "meltingpot" type of end-performance.

The underlying principle to come from identity to integration has different steps. First the confrontation of the three groups with each other´s conception of the play worked out separately in the own school. This is interpreted as the confrontation of three different identities that may result in a "culture-shock", in this sense that the others theatrical conventions are seen and believed to be strange. Conversely, the final performance, this common effort by all three groups, may turn out to be a reserve "culture-shock". The various groups may conceive of their own theatrical convention mirrored as they are in the eyes of the others as strange or may be ridiculous ("positive hilarity"). In this way, the common final performance will hopefully result in a kind of "hilarious shock of recognition" of individuals own misconceptions that is, a recognition of the qualities of the different interpretations.

The evaluation confirmed us that the students working nearly two weeks in multinational teams and using different languages have avoided the continuous reference to their countries. No language was dominating or under or above the others. Teachers and students have spoken Dutch, Italian, Spanish, French and English in the common meetings. But some times some teachers or students have spoken their own language or French, although there was an English translator present in order to help to solve organisational as well as linguistic problems if necessary.

The impact and meaning of this theatre project in relation to the Valencian context is important. In the schools of Valencia students speak two languages : Spanish (Castellano) and Valenciano. (An important political polemic is furthermore interfering : Are Valenciano and Catalan the same language ?) Many teachers are making a great effort in the way that the minority language(s) have the same right to survive. At a small scale we have in Valencia similar language problems as Europe. In this way this kind of projects are very interesting because different kinds of languages are taking part : the majority and minority languages.

© Innova : Observatoire européen des innovations en éducation et en formation / European Observatory for Innovation in Education and Training, juin 1998.