developing a peer-based training programme for film school teachers
background
Film Schools in the Nordic countries, like in most other parts of the world, face a particular challenge in ensuring a highly qualified teaching staff. Most film school teachers come from the ranks of the film industry, where they have been active artists in their field. Their background may or may not have included a formal education, and their selection as teaching staff is most often based on their professional and artistic qualifications.
A teaching staff with artistic and professional qualifications is a core value for these film schools. In order to train the next generation of filmmakers and storytellers, it is necessary to give the students constant exposure to active professionals who bring the latest developments and impulses into the classroom.
The nature of filmmaking being what it is, it is difficult if not impossible to combine filmmaking with the kind of academic preparation that is normal in other forms of higher education. This, combined with the imposition of requirements for qualifications demanded under the European Bologna Agreements, creates a need for a new, specialised form of teacher training for filmmakers.
Today this need is met through a variety of more or less adequate means, ranging from more traditional academic pedagogic training to informal discussion groups and peer networks. However, due to the fragmented nature of this training, there is a great deal of duplication and lost effort – a situation the project “From artist to teacher” will endeavour to improve.
the project
The idea of a training programme for film school teachers is not new. In 2005, The Norwegian Film School published, with the support of CILECT, the package Training the Trainers by Dick Ross. The final booklet in this series, “Back to the future”, outlined a proposal for a European Teachers Training Institute, a proposal which has not (yet) come to fruition. The new proposal “From artist to teacher” has a similar ambition, but aims to start on a somewhat smaller scale and will take advantage of recent developments in communication technology and digital pedagogy.
This project also indends to build on the longstanding relationship between the Nordic film schools, through NORDICIL, to further improve the quality of teaching at all the schools. All the institutions face a common challenge: how to ensure that the teaching staff, who primarily come from the professional film industries in the Nordic countries, are prepared in the best possible way for using their expertise to develop the next generation of filmmakers.
The project goal is to develop a peer-based training for film school teachers, which will give them the practical and theoretical tools to effectively guide the development of student filmmakers. The intent is to use the principles of peeragogy to combine face-to-face gatherings with digital technology for both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. The course will consist of a general section, that focuses on ideas and concepts that are common to all the member institutions and an institution-specific section where the particular and unique needs of the individual institution can be addressed.
The first phase of the project involves, in addition to developing the course, choosing the digital tools to be used for the on-line components, creating a syllabus, the creation of the institution-specific components of the course, using online collaboration tools for the follow-up of the planning and prepare the final course plan for approval. The outcome will be a formally approved course of the Film School Pedagogy, including both the common and institution-specific parts, ready to start in August, 2016.
overarching principles
Film schools draw primarily upon the ranks of working filmmakers for their teaching staff. It is not unusual that filmmakers have very limited experience in academia, and also little or no experience with teaching. Often they will have started working in film in assistant roles, and worked their way through the ranks while learning and honing their skills and artistic sensibilities on the job.
Given this situation, planning a heavily theoretical/academic training programme would be counterproductive. Many filmmakers, like the students they are teaching, often have a practical background and are neither interested in, nor necessarily prepared for, a heavily academic-theoretical course of study. A course in film school pedagogy will have to take this into account and give the participants a practical experience while also introducing them to the theoretical tools necessary to develop their pedagogical skills.
Any course in film school pedagogy will also necessarily be directed towards the needs of a particular school. Even within a small area like the Nordic countries there is quite a wide divergence of tradition and practise at the different film schools; a shared course in film school pedagogy will need to build on the shared challenges while also allowing each school to form parts of the course for it’s particular needs. The challenge when developing a course to be used by the various NORDICIL schools will be to find the common challenges and approaches while balancing that with ensuring the course still allows each particular school to maintain its identity.
In any film school, there are a wide variety of teachers with different experiences and expertise in teaching. This fact, combined with the lack of trained pedagogues among filmmakers in teaching position, is one of the primary reasons for utilising the principles of peeragogy – a situation where the primary instruction and coaching participants receive is from each other.
The working group may find inspiration in the existing pedagogical training at art schools across the Nordic countries and Europe, but will in the end develop a training programme that is specifically tailored for filmmakers becoming/working as film school teachers.
basic structure and learning outcomes
Finding a functional structure will be one of the major challenges. Coordinating film school teachers, many of whom juggle teaching with an active professional career as filmmakers, across four countries and five institutions with very different timetables is not a task to be taken lightly. At the same time, for a course of this nature to be successful there must be ongoing participation from as many teachers as possible. It is not unreasonable to expect those taking the course for credit have an attendance requirement, through a combination of ftf and online gatherings, of 80%.
The distributed nature of the course depends on a significant online component, both synchronous and asynchronous. In addition, given the different institutions presently use different, and in some cases incompatible, LMS-platforms, the tools chosen need to be open, accessible and (preferably) free. They should combine the possibility of video and audio conferencing, discussion fora, file upload/download, commenting and sharing, etc. These things can be achieved either through the utilisation of a variety of tools, or the selection of a common provider such as Google (with G+ communities, hangouts, documents/drive, etc.).
Another structural consideration comes from the different pedagogical approaches and needs at the various schools. An important aspect of the mandate for the working group will be establishing a division between the common topics all participants will find useful and the specialisation focussed on the approaches that are unique to certain schools or group of schools.
A possible foundation for the learning outcomes of this course is:
In the end, the working group will develop specific learning outcomes that satisfy the needs of formal evaluation for the award of ects credits for the successful completion of the course.
- participants will gain an increased facility in planning and executing lessons and workshops
- participants will gain increased insight into how students learn, and how different pedagogical approaches to teaching, mentoring and feedback will effect their learning
- participants will be exposed to different teaching styles and approaches, and from this be able to develop an approach of their own
- participants will develop an peer network across the Nordic countries, and feel comfortable utilising this network even after the conclusion of the course.
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