Tag: film school pedagogy

A philosophical-theoretical perspective on teaching in practice-based film school

This is a very rough draft of an article I’m working on. It still needs a re-write (or two) but as I like working in the open, I thought getting a version online would be in keeping with my intent. Feel free to comment and point out weaknesses and inconsistencies (but be kind!). Praise is also always appreciated, but only if warranted…

Introduction

Most classical film schools harbour an intuitive aversion to the term ‘pedagogy’. It has too much of a ring of kindergarten circle time and school lessons with good behaviour and right and wrong answers, contrasted with the ideal of an artistic process of creation that is essentially irrational, unpredictable, personal and uncompromising.[1]

This quote, by former head of the Danish National Film School Vinca Wiedeman, addresses the challenge of developing a pedagogical framework for a practice-based film school. In fact, the book in which her chapter appears, The 21st Century Film, TV & Media School: Challenges, Clashes, Changes, is illustrative of the issue. There are 18 chapters over 472 pages, and they cover a large variety of approaches to curriculum and teaching—but almost completely overlook educational theory and philosophy.

The only other chapter in that volume to delve into pedagogical theory is the contribution from Nicholas Oughton and Jean-Paul Jarry.[2] Here the authors apply theories of experiential learning as articulated by David Kolb to argue for the continued use of celluloid as the primary medium used in cinematography education.

Similarly, in their influential Educating Film-makers: Past, Present and Future, Duncan Petrie and Rod Stoneman[3] discuss in depth the relationship between film theory and filmmaking practice. But despite analysing different film school models and teaching approaches, they do not discuss film school pedagogy in the light of educational theory and practice. Other publications[4] show similar biases.

These are not failings of the referenced publications. As a body of work, they represent invaluable insights into the inner workings of film schools since VGIK in Moscow opened its doors in 1919. Much of what has been written is in the form of “how to”, and aimed at filmmakers a toolkit to use for transforming their experience into classroom instruction for the next generation, or in the form of surveys, examining the different approaches different film schools have had over the decades.

In my career working at film schools, which spans nearly 30 years and 3 different schools,[5] I have found, however, that the methods, structures, and forms of teaching we do can benefit from being related to existing bodies of pedagogical theory and educational philosophy. Filmmaking is both a highly technical and skilled craft and a complex and collaborative art form, and prospective filmmakers need to learn to balance the two in a way that will make sense for their own visions, careers, and ambitions. In schools like the three I have worked at, and many of the schools the Norwegian Film School compares itself to, the teaching staff are themselves primarily filmmakers who come from outside academics, and seldom identify themselves as primarily teachers or researchers.

In such an environment, with a wealth of experience and expertise, the challenge becomes to enable the teaching staff to have at their disposal the tools to turn their own artistry and tacit knowledge into educational situations for the students. In some cases, this means teacher-filmmakers must combat their own instincts to “make the day” at all costs and provide opportunities for students to test themselves and their own limits, even at the cost of failure.

My approach has been to attempt to answer the questions that are articulated in the Sourcebook of Experiential Education:

  1. “What is learning” and “how do people learn?”
  2. “What is teaching” and “how should teachers teach?”
  3. “What is the purpose of education” and “what is worth knowing and studying?”
  4. “What is the relationship of the schools to society at large and to the world?”[6]

While all 4 of these questions are interconnected, for the purposes of this paper I’ll be concentrating on the first two.

Experience as teacher

In his 1910 work, How We Think, John Dewey writes,

Eagerness for experience, for new and varied contacts, is found where wonder is found. Such curiosity is the only sure guarantee of the acquisition of the primary facts upon which inference must base itself.[7]

For Dewey, and subsequently those of us who work with hands-on, practice-based education, experience, and the motivation to have experience, is the very core of learning and growth. From the very start of Dewey’s career, he emphasized the connection between experience, knowledge, and learning as summarized in the well-known maxim, “Learn to know by doing, and to do by knowing.”[8]

For filmmakers, this seems intuitive. Filmmaking, like any art form that requires physical interaction with the world,[9] is learned through practice. While the approaches to practice may vary from film school to film school—in some cases driven by ideology, in others by available resources—the basic premise holds true. One learns to make film through making film and through practical exercises designed to introduce different aspects of filmmaking, in what Ben Gibson calls the “conservatory” model for filmmaking education.[10] While Gibson primarily writes about conservatory schools outside of universities, there are also schools inside universities—like the Norwegian Film School at the University of Inland Norway—that follow a conservatory model and are “… structured, like working studios, in departments of practice that bring those charged with ‘technical support’ or ‘equipment instruction’ into units with shared cultures of endeavour, led by senior teachers of that specialization.”[11]

While far from the only way of organizing filmmaking education, this conservatory model most closely mimics the professional film industry. This way of structuring education places the emphasis on practical work, and learning to apply the various tools and methods of filmmaking in situations that the teaching staff, who (as Gibson observes) come primarily from the industry, have created based on their own professional experience. And works such as Training the Trainers[12] give filmmakers practical advice on how to construct workshops that will enable filmmakers to turn their own professional experience into workshops for students.

Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger describe this form of education, where experienced practitioners consciously and deliberately introduce less experienced ones to the norms, processes, and methods of the field as a community of practice.[13] In a community of practice, the “…practice of the community creates the potential ‘curriculum’ in the broadest sense—that which may be learned by newcomers with legitimate peripheral access.”[14] Not only does this notion of legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice emphasize the experiential nature of learning, it also removes it from the realm of individualism and anchors it in a community.[15]

Elkjær also ties this to Dewey’s notion of experience and reflection, and makes the point that, “… Dewey’s notion of experience is both a way of being in the world and experiencing the world, and knowledge is just one part of experience alongside emotion, aesthetics and ethics”,[16] and in this way “connects persons and worlds, action and thinking”.[17] In a film school constructed after the conservatory model, or, more specifically, a “six pack” model[18] like the Norwegian Film School, both the Deweyan idea of experience and the community of practice emphasized by Lave and Wenger are central.

In Democracy and Education, Dewey writes,

We analyze to see just what lies between so as to bind together cause and effect, activity and consequence. This extension of our insight makes foresight more accurate and comprehensive. The action which rests simply upon the trial and error method is at the mercy of circumstances; they may change so that the act performed does not operate in the way it was expected to. But if we know in detail upon what the result depends, we can look to see whether the required conditions are there. The method extends our practical control.[19]

In this section, he highlights the necessary connection between experience as learning and the conscious act of reflection or thinking about the elements of the experience and how they relate to an intended outcome. This, for him, is the difference between the experience and mere activity.[20] His points will resonate with anyone involved in practice-based arts education, especially when he writes,

To “learn from experience” is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes instruction—discovery of the connection of things.
Two conclusions important for education follow. (1) Experience is primarily an active-passive affair; it is not primarily cognitive. But (2) the measure of the value of an experience lies in the perception of relationships or continuities to which it leads up. It includes cognition in the degree in which it is cumulative or amounts to something, or has meaning.[21]

This approach is in part illustrated by Donald Schön, when he writes,

When practitioners respond to the indeterminate zones of practice by holding a reflective conversation with the material of their situations, they remake a part of their practice world and thereby reveal the usually tacit processes of worldmaking that underlie all of their practice.[22]

Not only is this descriptive of filmmaking education; it is also prescriptive. The challenge for film educators is to create learning experiences where students are able to make the backward and forward connections Dewey writes about as they engage with the materials and conditions of their practice. As both Dewey and Schön point out, this engagement is reflective. It requires a progression where the challenges and situations that emerge build on the ones that have passed, and at the same time allow the students to consciously engage in controlled experimentation and discovery.

Lave and Wenger touch on this when they write, “[M]astery resides not in the master but in the organization of the community of practice where the master is part”[23] and go on to point out that the teacher/master “is, after all, as much a product of the conventional, centered theory of learning as is the individual learner.”[24] This too is a reminder to both educators and learners that in an education like industry-focussed, practice-based filmmaking, there exists both a large community of practice the educators are part of and this community of practice has norms and traditions the students need to understand—even should they go on to challenge them—as they emerge from their education. Furthermore, the educators are themselves a product of education, training, and apprenticeships leading to their professional careers, and cannot separate themselves from this personal history.

The nature of this challenge is multi-faceted. Not only must film educators use their professional and pedagogic experience to create learning situations that will challenge the students and stimulate experimentation; they must also understand and interpret the “powers, interests, and habits”[25] of their students in order to create learning experiences that challenge and motivate their students where they are at. (I will return to this in the next section.) And finally, they must be aware of their own path into a professional filmmaking practice and make this transparent enough that their students will be able to gain their own experiences and chose their own path.

Scaffolding the emergent professional

Lebert and Vilarroya define scaffolding as,

derived from Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, which is a learning zone where a more knowledgeable person’s guidance can enhance learning. The term scaffolding was originally used as a metaphor to explain the role that adults can play in joint problem-solving activities with children, and now it is applied to mean temporary support provided for the completion of a task that learners otherwise might not be able to complete.[26]

This definition of scaffolding has its origin in a 1976 article by Wood, Bruner, and Ross which examines the role of tutoring in the development and education of children.[27] And it further refers to Lev Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, which he developed to describe “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.”[28]

While both Vygotsky and Wood, Bruner, and Ross focussed primarily on young children, and how their learning can be facilitated by the conscious application of timely support or tutoring, many have since taken the step illustrated by Lebert and Vilarroya above, and applied the same principles to different age groups—including adults. In their 2010 review of scaffolding literature, van de Pol et.al. highlight scaffolding at many levels, and show that effective scaffolding involves a gradual withdrawal of teachers’ instruction as students gradually gain expertise and independence.[29] They also point out that “for scaffolding to occur, the teacher must apply scaffolding strategies that are clearly contingent (i.e., based upon student responses)”[30] which evokes Dewey’s emphasis on the “powers, interests, and habits” of students (see above). In their review, van de Pol et.al. do point to the correlation between different scaffolding methods and approaches and the ultimate effectiveness of the scaffolding, although they also point out that “studying scaffolding in a rigorous and systematic way appears to be especially complex probably because of the complexity of a dynamic concept such as scaffolding.”[31]

The practice of scaffolding in film schools was first identified by Danish researcher Heidi Philipsen, in her landmark study of the Danish National Film School in the late 1990s / early 2000s.[32] Philipsen identifies three categories of scaffolding from her study:

  1. Institutional scaffolding
  2. Team scaffolding
  3. Individual scaffolding[33]

She discusses limits her discussion of scaffolding to the constraints placed on the students as a method of stimulating creativity, and elaborates; “creativity is often defined as a talent to be able to think “outside the box.” I would like to stress that in order to be able to think outside the box, it actually helps to have a metaphorical box (constraints).”[34] A full discussion of creativity in filmmaking education is outside the scope of this article, but the three categories of scaffolding nonetheless warrant closer examination.

In institutional scaffolding, Philipsen specifically refers to the rules that the school sets for a particular film exercise. She uses examples like “the natural story”,[35] time constraints, conditions using actors, camera, thematic constraints, etc.[36] She quotes one of her interview subjects, a screenwriter, who argues that “the use of constraints in a writing process actually produces a feeling of relief because he has been partly relieved of the responsibility, which apparently frees up energy enabling him to use his imagination in new ways.”[37]

Team scaffolding, for Philipsen, refers to the support and learning that happens between students, both in a cohort as a whole and in the various constellations they find themselves in.[38] One might also connect it with one of the features of a community of practice, where Lave and Wenger observe that often “apprentices learn mostly in relation with other apprentices. There is anecdotal evidence that where the circulation of knowledge between peers and near-peers is possible, it spreads exceedingly rapidly and effectively.”[39] This also references Vygotsky, who “suggested that through the process of working with others, learners create an environment of shared meanings with peers.”[40] My observations of intra-student dynamics at the Norwegian Film School support these claims, even extending to alumni welcoming new graduates into the industry.

Philipsens third category of scaffolding, individual scaffolding, is perhaps more problematic. She identifies this as occuring “when filmmakers define their own rules for a film process and product.”[41] The fact that individual filmmakers can—and do—impose their own rules and constraints on their own artistic processes and creative work, however, hardly seems to meet an approach to scaffolding “construed as support given by a teacher to a student when performing a task that the student might otherwise not be able to accomplish.”[42] As van de Pol et.al. observe, while definitions of scaffolding can vary, a relationship between teacher (or more experienced peer) and student / learner is common for all,[43] starting with scaffolding as a method for supporting Vygotskys zone of proximal development.

Without getting in to a broad discussion of creativity, it is worth emphasising that one purpose of educational scaffolding in filmmaking education is to foster the students’ development of their creativity and imagination. If one accepts that “everything the imagination creates is always based on elements taken from reality, from a person’s previous experience”,[44] and that “imagination draws on and co-operates with cognitive processes that arise from and span our physical and sociocultural resources and environments”[45] then creative education can be based on “design principles that could guide the crafting of creative experiences in education and beyond, e.g., repositioning and perspective taking, sustaining uncertainty, making the familiar unfamiliar, tinkering and embodied experimentation, use of analogies and metaphors, “as if” and “what if” thinking, pretend play, and so on.”[46] I will return to this in the conclusion.

4E and the phenomenological understanding of cognition

In his 2013 book Making, anthropologist Tim Ingold writes, “the drawing is not the visible shadow of a mental event; it is a process of of thinking, not the projection of a thought.”[47] In this, he also refers to the “active externalism” as developed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers in their 1998 essay, “The Extended Mind”. Active externalism, they claim, means that,

the relevant external features are active, playing a crucial role in the here-and-now. Because they are coupled with the human organism, they have a direct impact on the organism and on its behaviour. In these cases, the relevant parts of the world are in the loop, not dangling at the other end of a long causal chain.[48]

Lebert and Vilarroya further elaborate on this,

the extended-mind approach proposes that cognition is a process that is distributed across the individual and their environment, including objects, tools, and other individuals. By focusing on the ways in which external resources and environmental factors contribute to a concrete experience, the extended-mind feature seeks to provide a more expansive and inclusive view of a concrete experience, one that recognizes the complex interplay between the individual, their environment, and their tools and resources.[49]

This understanding of cognition is also crucial for educators, as it highlights that students do not only learn through rational understanding, logical thinking, and application of knowledge. Rather, learning is an holistic activity that acknowledges the students place in an environment that includes their bodies, the physical surroundings, the tools they use, and their classmates and peers.

The extended mind theory is part of a broader movement in cognitive—and thus also educational—sciences that collect under the term “4E cognition”.[50] 4E refers to cognition being extended, embodied, embedded, and enactive, and collectively they are framed as a response and in opposition to a Cartesian mind-body dualism or separation.[51] In their summary of the “Philosophical and Psychological Influences on Embodied Cognition”, Macrine and Fugate cite a number of influences, including John Dewey’s suggestion “that higher-order cognitive functions are adaptations generated by interactions with the world.”[52] They also emphasise the connection to Phenomenology, specifically to Merleau-Ponty who “maintained that thinking was a fully embodied event: people perceive the world first and foremost through their bodies. [Merleau-Ponty] argued that cognition cannot be understood without the body’s engagement with the world.”[53] Finally, they draw on James Gibson’s ‘ecological theory’ which claimed “argued that perception was direct and the environment meaningful […], Gibson suggested that there was no mind between perception and action, and that action was based in the body, supported through evolution and the environment.”[54]

In making these connections, Macrine and Fugate draw on the book that introduced the concept of embodiment to cognitive theory, The Embodied Mind from 1991. Here the authors write,

We hold with Merleau-Ponty that Western scientific culture requires that we see our bodies both as physical structures and as lived, experiential structures—in short, as both “outer” and “inner”, biological and phenomenological. These two sides of embodiment are obviously not opposed. Instead, we continuously circulate back and forth between them. […] For Merleau-Ponty, as for us, embodiment has this double sense: it encompasses both the body as a lived, experiential structure and the body as the context or milieu of cognitive mechanisms.[55]

This emphasis on the ‘body as a lived, experiential structure’ will resonate with filmmakers and most artistic practitioners. Ingold picks up on this when he observes,

In the act of making, the artisan couples his own movements and gestures—indeed his very life—with the becoming of his materials, joining with and following the forces and flows that bring his work to fruition. It is the artisan’s desire to see what the material can do, by contrast to the scientist’s desire to know what it is, that […] enables the former to discern a life in the material and thus, ultimately, to ‘collaborate more productively’ with it.[56]

Miranda Anderson connects this directly to the arts and artistic practice, by examining the connections between the artist, the body, and materials when describing a work by Nikolaus Gansterer from 2017:

His hands forming and reforming of physical materials, linguistic concepts and diagrammatic symbols, all amidst the random interruptions of living creatures, show the fluidly diverse concert of conceptual and diagrammatic, and embodied and environmental processes in action, and explore the interplay of structured patterns and chance in thinking.[57]

The challenge for education in any practice-based art form is that the students often do not yet have the experience to engage with the materials of their art in an embodied, extended way. Filmmaking, particularly, is (most often) a highly technical art form that combines complex and advanced technologies with logistical puzzles, challenging teamwork and collaboration, restrictions involving time, budget, etc., and the gap between the imagined result and the resources available to achieve it. Filmmakers-turned-educators are faced with the challenge of creating learning situations for students where they will gain the experience and expertise necessary to work in professional productions after graduation. This involves acknowledging that, “Deep and meaningful learning indeed involves the integration of cognitive processes, social interactions, and affective dimensions, fostering active engagement and personal relevance in knowledge acquisition.”[58]

Implications for filmmaking education

In this article, I have attempted to highlight some of the key elements of Dewey’s notion of experiential learning, illuminate some aspects of scaffolding in education, and introduce the concept of 4E cognition as it relates to education. Each of these is, in isolation, worthy of a more in-depth analysis. At this point, it seems most relevant to have lifted them into the consciousness of film schools, and I will now make som concluding observations on how filmmaker-educators can use some of the concepts in a discourse around their own teaching practice.

A core issue for film schools is that we are teaching both a highly technical craft and creativity, and we are doing so in a setting where the individual cannot work in isolation but is part of an extended cognitive reality. Bruce Sheridan sums it up as consisting of

three key points: 1) collaboration is the default process by which individual creative vision is realized in screen arts, 2) collaboration will be central to the work our students undertake beyond graduation, and 3) discrete individual contributions to screen art are rendered porous through, and ineluctably modified by, dynamic and contingent interactions amongst individuals and creative sub-groups, such as teams dedicated to writing, design, cinematography, editing, sound etc..[59]

Further to this, “experiences are not just based on abstract, decontextualized information but are also deeply influenced by the specific social, cultural, and environmental contexts in which they occur”[60] and it necessitates an awareness of these contexts by planners and educators at film schools. The key to a successful practice-based arts education like a film school is to create opportunities for the students to have concrete learning experiences. Here, a “concrete experience refers to an embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive engagement of an individual with their environment”,[61] where the environment includes the physical surroundings, the analogue and digital tools used, the constraints placed by the institution, other students and collaborators, as well as the student’s own prior knowledge and experiences, goals and ambitions, fears and uncertainties, and emotional state.

Dewey highlights the social, extended and enactive aspects of this when he writes,

not only does social life demand teaching and learning for its own permanence, but the very process of living together educates. It enlarges and enlightens experience; it stimulates and enriches imagination; it creates responsibility for accuracy and vividness of statement and thought.[62]

This is also well-summarised by Elkjær,

Experience occurs when habitual action and thinking are disturbed and calls for inquiry. Inquiry begins with emotion, but may develop into new experience and knowledge when language (ideas, concepts and theories) is used to define and resolve the disruption. This process may be supported by education and teaching. The process of inquiry concerns the consequences of different ways to define and resolve uncertainties. Inquiry is an experimental process in which ideas, hypotheses, concepts and theories are used instrumentally as ‘tools to think with’, and are as such a playful, creative and potentially innovative process. The result of inquiry, the new experience or ‘warranted assertibilities’ (knowledge), is therefore open-ended (fallible) and can be re-interpreted in light of new experiences.[63]

And so, to return to the questions in the introduction: 1. How do people learn? has been the focus of this article. There is no single answer, but the key is that we learn through the conscious, reflective interpretation of embodied, extended, enactive, and embedded experiences. We make films, we find ways to collaborate with others in achieving a common vision, we reflect on the relationship between the film we wanted to make, the film we ended up with, and the process and decisions that led us there, and, at the Norwegian Film School at least, we watch the films and reflect on these things together so the experiences of one can be shared and understood by all.

And 2. How do we teach? As best we can to create a positive and scaffolded environment for students to have and reflect on the experiences they have while in our care.

Endnotes

  1. Wiedeman, Vinca. ‘Educating for Innovation: Ten Tips for (Future) Film-School Heads’. The 21st Century Film, TV & Media School: Challenges, Clashes, Changes, edited by Maria-Dora Mourão et al., CILECT – The International Association of Film and Television Schools, 2016, pp. 95-96.↩︎
  2. Oughton, Nicholas, and Jean-Paul Jarry. ‘Learning Cinematography at Film School: Old Ways, New Directions’. The 21st Century Film, TV & Media School: Challenges, Clashes, Changes, edited by Maria-Dora Mourão et al., CILECT – The International Association of Film and Television Schools, 2016, pp. 280–315. 21st Century Film, TV & Media School 1.↩︎
  3. Petrie, Duncan, and Rod Stoneman. Educating Film-Makers: Past, Present and Future. Intellect Ltd, 2014, https://www.intellectbooks.com/educating-film-makers.↩︎
  4. See, for example, the newsletter archive kept by CILECT (The International Association of Cinema, Audiovisual and Media Schools) at https://cilect.org/archives/newsletter/ and the CILECT-supported publication: Ross, Dick. Training the Trainers. The Norwegian Film School, 2005.↩︎
  5. I have worked at Vancouver Film School (1997-2001), the Canadian Film Centre (2002-2006), and the Norwegian Film School (2009 – present day).↩︎
  6. Smith, Thomas E., Clifford E. Knapp, ´Part I: Philosophers and Educational Theorists´. In Smith, Thomas E and Clifford E. Knapp (eds.), Sourcebook of Experiential Education. Routledge, 2011. p. 13.↩︎
  7. Dewey, John. How We Think. D.C. Heath & Co., 1910. Reprint, Anson Street Press, 2025. p. 24.↩︎
  8. McLellan, J. A., and John Dewey. Applied Psychology: An Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Education. Archive.org digital facsimile. Educational Publishing Company, 1889. https://archive.org/details/appliedpsycholog00mclerich/. p. 182. In fact, the maxim is so central to McLellan and Dewey that they include it on the title page.↩︎
  9. Whether or not this would also hold true for AI filmmaking is a subject for a different discussion. For the context of this paper, I am talking about traditional filmmaking with physical cameras, sound recording equipment, lights, sets, actors, crew, etc.↩︎
  10. Gibson, Ben. ‘What Is “Conservatory Training” for Film and Television?’ In The 21st Century Film, TV & Media School: Challenges, Clashes, Changes, edited by Maria-Dora Mourão, Stanislav Semerdjiev, Cecília Mello, and Alan Taylor. 21st Century Film, TV & Media School Project 1. CILECT – The International Association of Film and Television Schools, 2016.↩︎
  11. Ibid.↩︎
  12. Ross, Dick. Training the Trainers. The Norwegian Film School, 2005.↩︎
  13. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press, 1991. See especially chapter 4.↩︎
  14. Ibid. p. 93.↩︎
  15. See Elkjær, Bente. ‘Pragmatism: Learning as Creative Imagination’. In Contemporary Theories of Learning: Learning Theorists … in Their Own Words, 2nd edn, edited by Knud Illeris. Routledge, 2018. p. 67↩︎
  16. Ibid. p. 70.↩︎
  17. Ibid. p. 71.↩︎
  18. The six pack model grew out of a desire to create a film school structure where the different heads of department are empowered to be artists and storytellers in their own right, rather than playing a supporting role for an auteur director. At the Norwegian Film School, the six pack consisted 6 specializations—screenwriting, directing, producing, cinematography, editing, and sound (subsequently expanded to include production design)—with 6 students in each. This means that whenever the students make a film exercise, the team will consist of 1 student from each specialization. In between the film exercises, the students of each specialization receive discipline-specific education designed to increase their skill and artistry.↩︎
  19. Dewey, John. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. The MacMillan Company, 1916. E-Book. Standard Ebooks, 2023. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/john-dewey/democracy-and-education. Chpt. 11, “Experience and Thinking”.↩︎
  20. Ibid.↩︎
  21. Ibid. Emphasis in original.↩︎
  22. Schön, Donald A. Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. The Josey-Bass Higher Education Series. Jossey-Bass, 1987. p. 36.↩︎
  23. Lave and Wenger, 1991. p 94.↩︎
  24. Ibid, ibid.↩︎
  25. Dewey, John. ‘My Pedagogic Creed’. School Journal 54 (January 1897). 2009 Digital edition released under a Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration on archive.org.↩︎
  26. Lebert, Angélique, and Óscar Vilarroya. ‘The Links between Experiential Learning and 4E Cognition’. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1541, no. 1 (2024): 37–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15238. p. 44.↩︎
  27. Wood, David, Jerome Bruner, and Gail Ross. ‘The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving’. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 17 (1976): 89–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1976.tb00381.x.↩︎
  28. Vygotsky, L. S. Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Edited by Michael Cole, Vera John-Steiner, Sylvia Scribner, and Ellen Souberman. Harvard University Press, 1978. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hilhmr-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301299. p. 86.↩︎
  29. van de Pol, Janneke, Monique Volman, and Jos Beishuizen. ‘Scaffolding in Teacher—Student Interaction: A Decade of Research’. Educational Psychology Review 22, no. 3 (2010): 271–96. p. 275.↩︎
  30. Ibid. ibid.↩︎
  31. Ibid. p. 282.↩︎
  32. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Dansk films nye bølge: Afsæt og aftryk fra Den Danske Filmskole’. Syddansk Universitet (SDU), 2004. https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/da/publications/dansk-films-nye-b%C3%B8lge-afs%C3%A6t-og-aftryk-fra-den-danske-filmskole/.↩︎
  33. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Constraints in Film Making Processes Offer an Exercise to the Imagination – A Pleading Based on Experiences from Denmark’. Seminar.Net 5, no. 1 (2009). https://doi.org/10.7577/seminar.2470.↩︎
  34. Ibid, p. 3.↩︎
  35. Ibid. p. 5↩︎
  36. Ibid. pp. 4-5↩︎
  37. Ibid. p. 5↩︎
  38. Ibid. p. 6↩︎
  39. Lave and Wenger, 1991. p. 93.↩︎
  40. Lebert and Vilarroya, 2024. p. 38.↩︎
  41. Philipsen, 2009. p. 3.↩︎
  42. van de Pol et.al., 2010. p. 274.↩︎
  43. Ibid.↩︎
  44. Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich. ‘Imagination and Creativity in Childhood’. Translated by M. E. Sharpe. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology 42, no. 1 (2004): 7–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/10610405.2004.11059210. p. 13.↩︎
  45. Anderson, Miranda. ‘4E Cognition and the Mind-Expanding Arts’. European Journal of Philosophy in Arts Education 7, no. 02 (2024): 7–64. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7451462. p. 51↩︎
  46. Glăveanu, Vlad P., and Ronald A. Beghetto. ‘Creative Experience: A Non-Standard Definition of Creativity’. Creativity Research Journal 33, no. 2 (2021): 75–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2020.1827606. p. 79↩︎
  47. Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055. p. 128.↩︎
  48. Clark, Andy, and David Chalmers. ‘The Extended Mind’. Analysis 58, no. 1 (1998): 7–19. p. 9.↩︎
  49. Lebert and Vilarroya, 2024. p. 46.↩︎
  50. A good introduction to the breadth and scope of 4E can be found in Newen, Albert, Shaun Gallagher, and Leon De Bruin. ‘4E Cognition: Historical Roots, Key Concepts, and Central Issues’. In The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition, edited by Albert Newen, Leon De Bruin, and Shaun Gallagher. Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198735410.013.1.↩︎
  51. Ibid. This claim can be found in all the literature I have come across on 4E cognition.↩︎
  52. Macrine, Sheila L., and Jennifer M. B. Fugate. ‘Embodied Cognition and Its Educational Significance’. In Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning, edited by Sheila L. Macrine and Jennifer M. B. Fugate. The MIT Press, 2022. https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5306/Movement-MattersHow-Embodied-Cognition-Informs. p. 16↩︎
  53. Ibid. ibid.↩︎
  54. Ibid. ibid.↩︎
  55. Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. 1991. Revised edition. The MIT Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262529365.001.0001. pp. lxi-lxii.↩︎
  56. Ingold, 2013. p. 31.↩︎
  57. Anderson, 2024. p. 18.↩︎
  58. Lebert and Vilarroya, 2024. p. 43.↩︎
  59. Sheridan, Bruce. ‘Creativity, Physical Space, and Teaching Screen Directors’. In The 21st Century Film, TV & Media School: Directing the Future, edited by Maria-Dora Mourão, Stanislav Semerdjiev, Cecília Mello, and Alan Taylor. 21st Century Film, TV & Media School Project 2. CILECT – The International Association of Film and Television Schools, 2019. p. 203.↩︎
  60. Lebert and Vilarroya, 2024. p. 46.↩︎
  61. Ibid. ibid.↩︎
  62. Dewey, 1916 / 2023, Chpt. 2 “Education as a Social Function”.↩︎
  63. Elkjær, 2018. p. 79.↩︎

Review of my research into a philosophy of film and media arts pedagogy so far

These are notes from a talk i gave at a one-day conference at the University of Inland Norway, “INN-puf” (pedagogisk utvikling og filosofi / pedagogical development and philosophy). The audience was primarily teaching faculty from the departments of film, TV, and games, and I tried to pitch it so it would be accessible to practitioners who do not necessarily have a background in either pedagogy or philosophy.

These notes will form the core of an article I am writing, and hope to have done before the summer. This talk was loosely chronological; I am not sure if I will keep that in the artcle, structure it another way.

Film school pedagogy

  • My research has showed there is material on «how to»—for example, Training the Trainers from 2005 (Dick Ross, published by the Norwegian Film School & CILECT).
  • There is a great deal of material written about the content of what is taught to the students but very little material that related film school teaching to educational theory in general.
  • My intro to film school pedagogy: Danish researcher Heidi Philipsen conducted pedagogy lectures for staff at NFS in 2010.
  • Her study of the Danish Film School of the late 1990s and early 2000s revealed the key role of scaffolding and constraints in their teaching model.

Areas of investigation

  • Vygotsky and the Zone of proximal development and Dewey’s focus on the connection between experience, reflection, and learning.
  • 4E Cognition: the embodied, extended, and enactive mind.
  • Phenomenology and perceptual learning give us a better understanding our sensory interactions with the world.
  • Situated learning examines how learners are integrated into professional fellowships.
  • The nature of imagination, emotion, and creativity. And the role of art in human evolution…
  • From tacit to explicit…micro-phenomenology, focussing and deep analysis of the particular, specific experience.

Experiential learning–Dewey

  • John Dewey (1859-1952) was an American philosopher and psychologist, and the originator of modern theories of experiential learning.
  • For Dewey, experience was essential to understanding ourselves and to how philosophy is done. Experience is the result of us engaging with the world, of living.

Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results. (Democracy and Education, 1916)

  • Believed that we learn “…to know by doing, and to do by knowing.” (An Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Education, 1889)
  • Many of his ideas continue to resonate in contemporary theories of enactive cognition.

As long as our activity glides smoothly along from one thing to another, or as long as we permit our imagination to entertain fancies at pleasure, there is no call for reflection. Difficulty or obstruction in the way of reaching a belief brings us, however, to a pause. In the suspense of uncertainty, we metaphorically climb a tree; we try to find some standpoint from which we may survey additional facts and, getting a more commanding view of the situation, may decide how the facts stand related to one another. (How We Think, 1910)

Experiential learning

  • David Kolb (1939- ) — see Kolbs learning cycle. A useful model, but also limited in the way it separates thinking / reflecting from action and experience, rather than integrating them.
  • Donald Schön (1939-1997) wrote extensively about reflection-in-action: the ability to reflect while in a situation, showing experiential learning as a continuous process—what can be colloquially called “thinking on our feet”.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

  • Paolo Freire (1921-1997). Brazilian educator who conceived of education as a process of liberation. For education to function as a liberating force, there must be a democratic relationship between the students and teacher.
  • Very critical of the “banking model of education”, where teachers “deposit” knowledge in the student, that the student will utilise later. This perpetuates a rigid power dynamic, with the teacher cast as the infallible expert.

For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970)

Engaged pedagogy

  • bell hooks (Gloria Watkins, 1952-2021) was an American writer, feminist, activist, and educator. Inspired by Freire and education as a tool for liberation.

To enter classroom settings in colleges and universities with the will to share the desire to encourage excitement, was to transgress. Not only did it require movement beyond accepted boundaries, but excitement could not be generated without a full recognition of the fact that there could never be an absolute set agenda governing teaching practices. Agendas had to be flexible, had to allow for spontaneous shifts in direction. Students had to be seen in their particularity as individuals […] and interacted with according to their needs. (Teaching to Transgress, 1994)

Experiential learning and art

  • Maxine Greene (1917-2014) was a pioneer for women in the field of philosophy of education.
  • Wrote about the connection between artistic practice and experiential learning; focussed on the arts as a method for us to find our own voice in society.
  • Pioneered the concept, “wide-awakeness”.

Informed encounters with works of art are always new beginnings. New perspectives open in experience; new possibilities of seeing, hearing, feeling are revealed. When individuals are released to be personally present to paintings or poems or sonatas, when they learn how to let their energies go out to the works in an enlarging perception and a focusing of attention, the fields over which their imaginations can play deepen, diversify, and expand. (“The Spaces of Aesthetic Education”, 1986)

Scaffolding – Vygotsky

  • Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Soviet psychologist who worked extensively with children’s development.
  • Fell out of favour with Stalin, and his works were suppressed until 1956; not well known in the west until the 1970s.
  • Did extensive studies of how we learn language.
  • Best known for the “Zone of proximal development” (ZPD).
  • ZPD emphasises the social aspect of learning.
  • The term “scaffolding” was coined by Jerome Bruner, David Wood, and Gail Ross in 1976 as a metaphor for what educators do to enable the ZPD.
  • A scaffold is a temporary structure that is adjusted and adapted to serve the needs of the construction—analogous to what educators do to support the students appropriate to their skill level.
  • 5 criteria for effective scaffolding:
    • Student ownership of the learning event
    • Appropriateness of the instructional task
    • A structured learning environment
    • Shared responsibility
    • Transfer of control
    • (Applebee, A. N. 1986. ‘Problems in process approaches: Towards a reconceptualization of process instruction’)

Phenomenology

  • Examines our perceptions and how they inform our experience of and interaction with the world we inhabit.
  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61), wrote, “Perception is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking up of a position; it is the background from which all acts stand out, and is presupposed by them.” (Phenomenology of Perception, 1945/1962)
  • Wrote about the overlapping and intertwining between the artist and the world and the artwork as the representation of this relationship.

Cognitive science

  • 4E Cognition: Embodied, Enactive, Embedded, Extended—emerged from psychology and philosophy in the 1990s as a response to computational theories of mind.
    • Embodied cognition is the claim that cognition is routinely shaped in fundamental ways by bodily forms, movements, states and processes.
    • Enactivism claims that cognition is enacted (unfolds) through looping sensorimotor interactions between the agent and its environment, implying both a close relationship between perception and action, and that there is continuity between the properties of life and of mind. (ref. Dewey)
    • Embedded cognition is the claim that external factors (such as resources or environments) act as noncognitive aids to an internal thinking system located in the brain; so, while the external factors enable cognition, they are not themselves counted as cognitive.
    • Extended cognition instead argues that cognition can involve a coupled system of brain, bodily and external factors: all of which count as cognitive.
    • (Definitions from “4E Cognition and the Mind-Expanding Arts”, Miranda Anderson, 2022)
  • 4E cognition gained prominence after the publication of The Embodied mind (1991 / 2017) (Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch).
  • Further developed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers in their article “The Extended Mind” (1998), which introduced the concept of the tools we use being part of our cognition as well.
  • The notion of “embodiment” comes naturally for the arts. Using 4E cognition as a framework for understanding how to teach artists has particularly been prevalent in music teaching.

[We] are thoroughly permeated by emotion and by readiness for action. Emotion, cognition, and preparation for action here form a single whole, self-organized around precision weighted, prediction-error minimizing interactions that span cortical and sub-cortical circuits. These interactions couple the active body to the predictive brain. (Miller, Mark and Andy Clark, «Happily entangled: prediction, emotion, and the embodied mind», 2018)

4E and the arts

[…] embracing enactivism in the idea that embodiment and culture are integrated to form a whole, [we] propose to regard aesthetic experience as a “double attunement” toward the objects: immediate and affective, re-organisational and reflective at once. [W]ithin a 4E perspective “[b]ody, brain and environment form one system in which aesthetic experience can be simultaneously and variously characterized as sensory-motor, affective, cultural, and cognitive” (Batisti, Filippo & Elena Valeri, “Embodiment and Aesthetics: Cognition Going Wider”, 2020)

  • Anthropologist Tim Ingold invokes Clark and Chalmers’ extended mind theory and describes making (sketching, for example) as thinking, not just the product of thinking.
  • Shows how art and creativity are an essential part of humanity throughout history and across cultures.

Perception

  • 3rd Century Greek philosopher Diogenes Laertius wrote about how a lay person will see something different than a sculptor will when looking at a statue.
  • Perceptual Learning (developed by psychologist Eleanor J. Gibson, 1910-2002) describes long-term changes in our perception—our senses—as a result of practice or experience.
  • Classic example: the sommelier, who has trained their sense of taste to perceive details of grapes, terroir, vintage, etc. that the ordinary wine-loving amateur cannot sense. These changes in perception are significant, permanent, and the result of practice.

Micro-phenomenology

  • Micro-phenomenology builds on the phenomenological idea of the relationship of the consciousness, the body, and the world and applies it to a particular experience.

The specificity of the micro-phenomenological interview method is that it focuses on a singular experience. […] This act enables us to leave our “natural attitude” of absorption into the content of experience (the “what”), to reorient our attention towards the way this experience appears to us (the “how”), and notably towards the usually prereflective micro-acts through which this appearance is constituted. (Claire Petitmengin, ‘Discovering the Structures of Lived Experience’. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, vol. 18, no. 4, Sept. 2019)

  • Can be used as a technique for helping the individual understand what happens in the moment of intuition, inspiration, or creation and thus learn to both anticipate the moment as well as more reliably create the conditions for these moments in the future.

Embodied critical thinking

  • Arises both from micro-phenomenology and from the American philosopher and psychologist Eugene Gendlin, who wrote about “focussing” and the “felt sense”.

Focusing is an experiential, embodied and evidence-based practice of self-reflection. During Focusing , your attention will open up to multiple layers and aspects of living.  It’s called Focusing because it requires a special kind of focus to notice what is not yet clear, fuzzy and vague, implicit in how you interact with your situations and environment.  This fuzzy dimension of experience is called the “felt sense.”  Focusing on the felt sense allows an in-depth clarification process to happen. (‘What Is Focusing?’ The International Focusing Institute, https://focusing.org/felt-sense/what-focusing)

  • There is currently an international research project on embodied critical thinking coordinated by the University of Iceland, involving several European institutions: Training embodied critical thinking and understanding. (https://www.trainingect.com/)

Draft overview: Dewey, Vygotsky, Micro-phenomenology

‘Film needs theory’ said Alan Parker, ‘like it needs a scratch on the negative.’[1]

The origin of this project is my experience with the training and education provided for filmmakers who become film educators within the confines of a formal educational programme. And the Alan Parker quote above is representative of filmmakers (no, not all filmmakers…) both in their artistic and educational practice. And no, this is not a case of anti-intellectualism but rather a distrust of any theory[2] that might distract filmmakers from focussing on both their craft and their intuition.

Perhaps as a result of this, or perhaps because of other traditions, filmmakers tend not to look for the theoretical basis for their teaching, but are more preoccupied with learning “how to”. Nowhere is this more clear, perhaps, than in the groundbreaking guide Training the Trainers (2005)[3], which, in a series of 10 booklets and accompanying DVD, gives filmmakers a step-by-step guide on how to use their own practice, understand students, structure workshops, assignments, and grading, and so on — all very practical and useful. And all presented without reference to extant educational theory and philosophy.

Around the same time as Training the Trainers was being completed, a Danish researcher was completing her PhD thesis, which analysed the Danish Film School of the late 1990s and early 2000s.[4] In her research, Heidi Philipsen studied teaching methods at the Danish Film School in the late90, also conducting interviews with students, teachers, and colleagues from affiliated film schools. Presenting her work at a conference in 2008, Philipsen states, “My research has illustrated, that the terms ’scaffolding’ (Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976) and ’the zone of proximal development’ (Vygotsky, 1935) are indeed very useful in explaining for instance the methods used at the National Film School in Denmark.”[5]

In her thesis and other writings, Philipsen elaborates on the role and meaning of educational scaffolding DFS with reference to both Wood et.al. and to Vygotsky, and shows how the teaching methods at the school led to the emergence of Dogma ’95, the radical renewal of Danish film of the 1990s. In the process, she highlights the importance of constraints for creativity[6] and goes on to argue that “…to be able to think out of the box (= to be creative) it helps you to have a box.”[7]

Philipsen’s work has been crucial for understanding the mechanisms of how scaffolding can support the development of unique artistic talents in a film school setting. But understanding the role of scaffolding and the function of the zone of proximal development are not sufficient for understanding film school pedagogy. In the following paragraphs, I’ll try to show how a variety of educational theories and philosophies can combine to provide a more complete picture of how film education works.

While many philosophers through the ages have engaged with education and attempted to explain how children and adults learn, for my purposes here the story begins with John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky.

Dewey and experience

Dewey developed formative theories of education and the role of education in society, and showed the close relationship between knowledge, reflection, and experience. Already in 1889, Dewey had formulated one of the idioms he became best known for: “Learn to do by knowing and to know by doing”[8] In his later work, How We Think, (first published in 1910; revised and re-released in 1933) he specified, “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.”[9]

While Dewey was not the first philosopher to examine the importance of experience, and many have built on his work since[10], he remains the key figure in contemporary educational theory for understanding this. There is also no end of material written that references Dewey and his influence on education.

For the purposes of a practice-based film school education, the key is the combination of reflection and experience. Dewey examines this closer in his Art As Experience, where he observes, “The artist does his thinking in the very qualitative media he works in, and the terms lie so dose to the object that he is producing that they merge directly into it.”[11] This observation is echoed by Tim Ingold in his description of sketching and drawing in Making, where he writes, “… the drawing is not the visible shadow of a mental event; it is a process of thinking, not the projection of a thought.”[12] (emphasis in original)

This means that in the context of practice-based fine arts education, the emphasis is just as much on developing reflection during experience as it is on developing reflection on experience. The latter half of that formulation—reflecting on experience—is a staple of education everywhere. Teachers give an assignment of some form, and when it is complete, lead an assessment of this assignment. Ideally, this assessment will include a great deal of emphasis on the process—why did this result end up as it did, and what steps and decisions did you, the student, undertake that led to this result. Properly done, the realizations gained through this sort of assessment will enable the student to make choices next time that can lead to a better result.

Reflection in or during experience is what Donald Schön called “reflection in action”,[13] where the emphasis is on the ability of the practitioner to reflect while in the middle of experiencing, and use their previously acquired knowledge and expertise to make decisions and adjust course while in activity. This is something we all do, every day, but that is absolutely essential for artists and professionals who are constantly facing the unexpected where they have to rely on their best judgement in order to achieve a desired goal.

And back to scaffolding

The question of how to teach students to reflect while in activity, and to use their previous experience and developed skills to make qualified decisions on how to handle a new or unexpected situation is a key question for film schools. And it brings us back to the description of scaffolding from Philipsen (above).

In her research, Philipsen identified 3 levels of scaffolding: institutional scaffolding, team scaffolding, and individual scaffolding.[14] For her, these connect closely to the constraints the Danish Film School set for the students in their “pen test” film exercises, and, in fact, the key element in the institutional scaffolding is the set of rules, or constraints, the school presented the students with for their films.

Institutional scaffolding

Institutional scaffolding is more than this, however. Some constraints are easy to see, and they consist of things like budgets, physical facilities and equipment, availability of permanent and temporary teaching staff, dates for start and end of term, etc. These will be constraints that are common to all film schools, even though the details will vary. All of these will affect how the curriculum is organized, including the placement and design of film production exercises.

These are imposed constraints, that come from outside the film school itself. They affect how the school is organized and provide the limits to the freedom of the school—and they in turn are passed on to the students through the way their classes are planned, teaching and mentoring are organized, the budgetary and time limits placed on the film exercises, and so on.

In terms of the film production exercises, institutional scaffolding is the way in which the school—through academic leadership, pedagogical traditions, and staff input—creates constraints for specific exercises. The Norwegian Film School has some general constraints that apply to all exercises; these have to do with the pedagogical approach to the exercises as vehicles for learning and not as finished films. One consequence of this is that the school will set budgets, the amount of time allocated to development, production, and post-production, the length of the final projects, the balance between studio and location, the date for final screenings, and so on.

In addition to these general constraints, the teaching staff will design constraints that aim to challenge the students skills and creativity. This is an application of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD)[15]; a framework he developed to show that in every educational situation, the learner comes in with existing skills and knowledge, and the challenge of the educator is to create a learning situation where they have to stretch beyond what they already know but not so far as to make the task of learning insurmountable. ZPD is the “sweet spot”, where the challenge is achievable but requires effort and new learning.

In their article “The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving”, Wood, Bruner, and Ross introduced the term scaffolding[16] as the metaphor for what tutors and teachers do in order to create and maintain the ZPD. At the Norwegian Film School, the scaffolding elements include the teaching the students have had before they start an exercise and the mentoring / tutoring they receive during their work, the specific creative challenges given to the group and the individual for the exercise in question, the limits placed on which production challenges they should focus on, and so on. The students are actively followed up through the entire process, and the constraints they work under become less and less visible as they become more expert and confident as filmmakers.

Team scaffolding

The structure of the Norwegian Film School determines the composition of the teams in film production exercises. The school accepts students into 7 disciplines at the BFA-level: screenwriting, directing, producing, cinematography, production design, editing, and sound. Each discipline has 6 students, meaning that every production exercise consists of 6 teams with 7 members (one from each discipline) of each team. As the student group progresses through their studies, they gain more influence over who they work with, but initially this is wholly decided by the teaching staff. Even on the final examination projects, the teaching staff have the final word in order to ensure each of the 42 students will have a satisfactory learning experience.

These teams of 7 people who may or may not have wanted to work together are where the students become practitioners, where they have an opportunity to test their creativity, the skills and techniques they’ve learned along the way, and to experience their role as an artist working in a defined field in a team working towards a common artistic goal.

Team scaffolding here works in several ways. There are the constraints the team set for themselves, in terms genre and story, visual style, locations and settings, characters, editing style (which will affect how the film i shot), sound design, etc. They will also determine if they are going to work along traditional roles or if they will—within the constraints of their disciplines—challenge traditional ways of working and explore alternative hierarchies. In short, the team has some leeway to set their own rules. In this process, they will explore the balance between their own ambitions and abilities, and create a form of scaffolding for themselves where they become each other others peer support (i.e. scaffold each other). In high-functioning teams, this is very effective.

Another function for the team scaffolding is in the creative process itself. In most processes, there will come a time when students enter a state of flow. Csikszentmihalyi describes a number of psychological, sensory, and experiential conditions for entering flow, which revolve around enjoyment of an activity, understanding the purpose of that activity, having the desire to enter into the activity, and the challenge being presented by the activity being beyond current abilities but not so far as to make achieving a result frustrating or impossible.[17]

In a collective artistic process such filmmaking, this may also develop into a state of group flow, where the individuals function as a cohesive group while in the state of flow. Keith Sawyer examined group flow in 2015 through a study of jazz improv ensembles, and concluded that an added element for groups is that the group members is that the group must know each other well enough to be comfortable experimenting together, but not so well as to be predicable to each other. There needs to be an element of uncertainty for flow to exist.[18] In his study of group flow in the bands Black Sabbath and Joy Division, Steve Taylor found that in these groups, which were defined by fairly rigid rules around the sound and structure of their music (unlike improv jazz), a highly cooperative creative process and a lack of conscious deliberation were also key factors.[19]

Because group flow is so dependent on the interplay between individuals and the creative “contract” they have made with each other, team scaffolding is essential to enable the students to enter this state in their team exercises. They must both agree on a set of constraints or common rules for their projects, and be willing and able to enter into a collaborative and experimental state together.

Individual scaffolding

In her article, “Constraints in film making processes…”, Heidi Philipsen defines individual scaffolding as “…the level at which the filmmaker dictates his/her own rules for the film process.”[20] and gives some examples of filmmakers continuing to apply rules and constraints to their own work after they started their professional careers (with the most obvious example being Lars von Trier). And that filmmakers (and other artists) set themselves constraints is a well-known phenomenon. One can make an argument that individual artists in this way create the conditions for their own ZPD, by defining their own conditions that will challenge them.

At the Norwegian Film School, a tool for this kind of individual-centred scaffolding is called a statement of intent (intensjonserklæring in Norwegian). This is primarily used in film production exercises, but some instructors use them in other settings too. The description of this statement is that in it the student defines their personal learning outcomes and artistic ambitions for the given exercise, within the given constraints of the exercise.[21] Ideally, this document should function as a set of self-imposed constraints, designed by the student to be personal ZPD that also can be conducive to flow.

Another set of methods and tools are described by the Thinking at the edge approach to embodied critical thinking described by a number of researchers from the TECTU (Training Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding) project.[22] Among the techniques examined in this project are focusing, as developed by the psychologist Eugene Gendlin and described as, “…an experiential, embodied and evidence-based practice of self-reflection. […] It’s called Focusing because it requires a special kind of focus to notice what is not yet clear, fuzzy and vague, implicit in how you interact with your situations and environment.  This fuzzy dimension of experience is called the “felt sense.”  Focusing on the felt sense allows an in-depth clarification process to happen.”[23] Several of the researchers and educators involved in the TECTU project describe how they applied focussing as a tool for self-scaffolding and teaching others how to self-scaffold.[24]

Micro-phenomenology

Related to this, and also touched on by the TECTU researchers, is the method called “micro-phenomenology”. This is, among other things, an interview method described as follows,

The specificity of the micro-phenomenological interview method is that it focuses on a singular experience. The premise of the method is indeed that only the exploration of a singular concrete experience makes it possible to practice an épochè: to “bracket” or suspend our preconceptions and theorizations about experience, and notably our implicit belief in the existence of an objective world independent of experience. This act enables us to leave our “natural attitude” of absorption into the content of experience (the “what”), to reorient our attention towards the way this experience appears to us (the “how”), and notably towards the usually prereflective micro-acts through which this appearance is constituted.[25]

In the same article, she goes on to state,

[… A]t the core of singular experiences, what we discover is not private features proper to the history and peculiarities of each individual, but the shared intimate structures through which the world appears to us, as well as the shared intimate processes through which these structures arise, and eventually vanish. Surprisingly, if universal structures were to be discovered, it seems that it would be in the most invisible and the most intimate.

Petitmengin also applied micro-phenomenology in a study of intuition, in an effort to see if the subjects would become able to describe and understand the moment of “immediate” knowledge, where the insight or inspiration arrived as if by magic.[26]

One of the challenges for filmmakers, and thus those who teach filmmakers, is the challenge of how to mine the deeply personal and intimate to create stories that feel universal. For those who succeed, this is often an intuitive process. As Petitmengin and others have observed, the intuitive is usually characterized by tacit knowledge, the kind of embodied and sensory knowledge that seems to transcend words and explanation.

Micro-phenomenological interview techniques that illuminate the intensely subjective and enable the exploration of very specific experiences can work especially well to illuminate tacit knowledge and give the subject the language to explain what was tacit.[27] As such, teaching these interview techniques to students (and staff!) can enable a much more precise and illuminating dialogue around the process of artistic creation.

Footnotes

  1. Lapsley, Robert, and Michael Westlake. Film Theory: An Introduction. 2nd edn, Manchester University Press, 2006, JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.inn.no/stable/jj.17842197. p.iv
  2. Whether that distrust has any basis in reality is a question far beyond what I am examining here. Film theorists have written volumes attempting to show that film does need theory, but the distrust and distancing remains. Even at (some) film schools. Also, this distrust is not universal. The French novelle vague grew out of a group of filmmakers who were very interested in film criticism (or critics who were also interested in filmmaking, depending on which director one studies).
  3. Ross, Dick. Training the Trainers. The Norwegian Film School, 2005.
  4. Philipsen, Heidi. Dansk films nye bølge: Afsæt og aftryk fra Den Danske Filmskole. 2004, https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/da/publications/dansk-films-nye-b%C3%B8lge-afs%C3%A6t-og-aftryk-fra-den-danske-filmskole/. Syddansk Universitet (SDU).
  5. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Rules Can Inspire Creative Processes’. 2008, Digital Content Creation.
  6. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Constraints in Film Making Processes Offer an Exercise to the Imagination – A Pleading Based on Experiences from Denmark’. Seminar.Net, vol. 5, no. 1, Nov. 2009, https://doi.org/10.7577/seminar.2470.
  7. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Rules Can Inspire Creative Processes’. 2008, Digital Content Creation.
  8. McLellan, J.A., and John Dewey. An Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Education. Educational Publishing Company, 1889. Applied Psychology.
  9. Dewey, John. How We Think. 2025 edn, Creative Media Partners, LLC, 1933.
  10. A small handful of relevant educational theorists to further examine the relationship between experience, reflection, and learning are David Kolb, Paolo Freire, bell hooks, Maxine Greene, Donald Schön. I’ll be be touching on many of them in later writings.
  11. Dewey, John. Art As Experience. Perigree Trade Paperback, The Berkley Publishing Group, 1934.
  12. Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2013, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203559055.
  13. Introduced in Schön, Donald A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Routledge, 1983, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315237473.
  14. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Constraints in Film Making Processes Offer an Exercise to the Imagination – A Pleading Based on Experiences from Denmark’. Seminar.Net, vol. 5, no. 1, Nov. 2009, https://doi.org/10.7577/seminar.2470.
  15. See the chapter “Interaction between learning and development” in Vygotsky, L. S. Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Edited by Michael Cole et al., Harvard University Press, 1978. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/hilhmr-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301299.
  16. Wood, David, et al. ‘The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving’. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, vol. 17, 1976, pp. 89–100. ResearchGate, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1976.tb00381.x.
  17. See Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Pyschology of Happiness. Rider, 1992.
  18. Sawyer, Keith. ‘Group Flow and Group Genius’. NAMTA Journal, vol. 40, no. 3, 2015, pp. 29–52.
  19. Taylor, Steve. ‘Channelling the Darkness: Group Flow and Environmental Expression in the Music of Black Sabbath and Joy Division’. Metal Music Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, Mar. 2020, pp. 85–102.https://doi.org/10.1386/mms_00033_1.
  20. Philipsen, Heidi. ‘Constraints in Film Making Processes Offer an Exercise to the Imagination – A Pleading Based on Experiences from Denmark’. Seminar.Net, vol. 5, no. 1, Nov. 2009, https://doi.org/10.7577/seminar.2470.
  21. Summarized and translated from an internal document at the Norwegian Film School written by the author in 2018.
  22. Schoeller, Donata, et al., editors. Practicing Embodied Thinking in Research and Learning. Routledge, 2024, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003397939.
  23. ‘What Is Focusing?’ The International Focusing Institute, https://focusing.org/felt-sense/what-focusing. Accessed 14 Jan. 2026.
  24. See, for example, Jóhannesdóttir, Guðbjörg R. ‘Sensing and Thinking from within: Aesthetic Perception and Embodied Thinking’. ; Sandberg, Ole Martin. ‘Focusing on Emotions in Climate Education: A Felt Sense of the Climate’.; Sauka, Anne. ‘Embodied Critical Thinking and Environmental Embeddedness: The Sensed Knots of Knowledge’.; and Eisenberg, Ramio. ‘Focusing in the School of Architecture’. All in Practicing Embodied Thinking in Research and Learning, Routledge, 2024.
  25. Petitmengin, Claire, et al. ‘Discovering the Structures of Lived Experience’. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, vol. 18, no. 4, Sept. 2019, pp. 691–730. Springer Link, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-018-9597-4.
  26. Petitmengin-Peugeot, Claire. ‘The Intuitive Experience’. Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 6, nos 2–3, 1999, pp. 2–3.
  27. See Petitmengin, Claire. ‘Micro-Phenomenology as Coming into Contact with Experience: Subtilisation, Surprises, and Liberation’. Practicing Embodied Thinking in Research and Learning, Routledge, 2024.

Exploring Situated Learning

I no longer remember when I first came across the term «situated learning» — likely it was in connection to my exploration of theories of experiential learning, starting with Dewey, and continuing through Kolb and Schön & Argyris. But in the past few days I’ve been reading more closely, starting with the excellent introduction on Infed, Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger and communities of practice.

The notion that learning occurs when the learner is placed in situations that closely resemble the situations where the learning is later to be applied, and that this furthermore is part of bringing the learner into a community of practice resonates with my approach to film school education. Effective education at any practice-based film school will always create situations for the students to learn different aspects of filmmaking through practical work in real-world problems. Furthermore, a school such as ours, where the faculty are also active filmmakers, will ensure the students are not only learning through instruction but also by being included in what is most definitely a community of practice.

One question I am wanting to explore further is how this relates to the other educational theories and pedagogical approaches we employ at the school.

[image from “Situated Learning Theory” by Sandra P. Mina Herrera, https://opentext.wsu.edu/theoreticalmodelsforteachingandresearch/chapter/situated-learning-theory/]

Picking up some threads — film school pedagogy

I’ve got some time on my hands these days, and it’s time to pick up the film school pedagogy thread again. As I’ve posted earlier, I worked with a group of faculty from Nordic film schools in 2015 & 16 to develop a training programme for filmmakers teaching at film schools. Subsequently, I translated this to Norwegian, and completed a first cohort among our own staff in the school year 2018-19. I am now working on taking that experience and developing a curriculum for a second cohort.

The intro module from the Nordic version is still a good starting point, and so I’m posting it here and will endeavour to follow up with some thoughts and new ideas.

The intro module looked like this:

The Artist as (Film School) Teacher

Pedagogical development for filmmakers teaching in higher education

MODULE 1

Introduction to the training programme
mandatory for all participants
1,5 ECTS – 5 weeks – approx. time usage (including own time) is 8-10 hrs. per week.

Introduction

This module will introduce all the participants in the “The Artist as (Film School) Teacher” pedagogical course to several aspects of film school pedagogy, basics of online learning, principles of peeragogy, and to the approaches to teaching practiced at the participating Nordic film schools. The module will combine video hangouts and webconferencing, synchronous and asynchronous online discussions with readings, videos and reflection assignments.

Module 1 is not a standalone course, but serves as the introduction for all the filmmakers working at the NORDICIL schools who need – either due to formal requirements or personal interest – insight into and practice with pedagogy and didactic methods designed for film schools. This first module will introduce the series of modules that make up “The Artist as (Film School) Teacher” and, most importantly, ensure that all the participants have the same level of comfort with the online environments, the vocabulary of film school pedagogy, and the principles of peeragogy.

Completion of this module is a prerequisite for participating in further modules.

Learning outcomes.

By the conclusion of the module, the candidates will have achieved the following learning outcomes:

Knowledge: The candidates will have attained

  • An overview of the approaches to pedagogy practiced at the participating film schools
  • An overview of various tools for online learning and interaction
  • An understanding of peeragogy and the importance of personal learning networks in online instruction.
  • A good understanding of “pedagogy” and “didactics”, “scaffolding”, pragmatist educational practice, constructivist educational practice, other commonly used educational practices.

Skills: The candidates will be able to:

  • Critically reflect over and place own personal approach to education and training within a larger context
  • Choose, setup, and maintain online identities for use in future training modules
  • Build and use a personal learning network (PLN) and personal learning environment (PLE)
  • Support other participants in a PLN
  • Understand the uses of pedagogy and didactics.

General competence:

At the conclusion of this first module, the participants will be prepared for further participation in “The Artist as (Film School) Teacher” by both enabling them to attain a level of comfort with the online tools and environments that will be used and helping them gain insight into the role of the educator as distinct from the filmmaker.

Course Structure

WEEK 1 – Introductions

In week one, the participants will receive an email with instructions on how to create an online account with the chosen PLE for this module[4] . At each of the 8 participating schools there will also be a designated resource person[1] the participants can go to for assistance getting online. Once logged in to the PLE, participants will see the syllabus for the course, will be able to download list of fundamental definitions, and will have access to some readings and videos.

Tasks for the week:

  • Log into the PLE and create a full profile
  • Read and reflect on pedagogical approaches from the different schools
  • Share reflections on own approach to teaching in the PLE
  • Read and reflect on “What is peeragogy?”
  • View and reflect on selected videos (TBA)
WEEK 2 – Environments

In week two, participants will start to become familiar with the various online tools that will be used throughout this and future modules. Several tools will be presented with both pros and cons, and the facilitators will explain why some have been chosen at this point and how they will be used. These include tools for online discussions (eg. Slack, Google+, Twitter, etc.), for video interaction and webinars (eg. Skype, Google Hangouts), and for creating and sharing documents (such as Google Drive, Dropbox, blog tools such as Blogger & WordPress).

In addition, week two will see the introduction of basic learning theories and their application to the training of creative talents in filmmaking. Key questions include “What does it mean to be be developing creative talent and how does this differ from professional training?”, “What is an experience-based educational approach?”, and “To what extent does training artists /filmmakers rely on tacit knowledge, and what are the educational implications of this?” These questions are introduced at this point, but developing answers to them is a project for several modules.

Tasks for the week:

  • Participate in the first video hangout
  • Participate in a synchronous online discussion using Slack, Twitter, or Google+.
  • Comment on reflections from week 1; if necessary update own reflection based on feedback
  • Read selected readings introducing basics of Pragmatism (Dewey), Constructivism (Piaget), and Social Constructivism (Vygotsky). Max. 20 pages total.
  • Start a self-reflection/criticism of the selected readings.
WEEK 3 – The Personal Learning Network

Peeragogy depends, as the name suggests, on interaction with and support from peers, and in this course the peers are film school teachers spread across 4 countries with different languages, representing 8 schools with different approaches in 6 cities. Reliance on online tools for building and supporting a peer network is absolutely necessary and a primary goal for week three is to help all the participants become more familiar and comfortable with using interactive online tools for establishing and building relationships in a learning network.

Tasks for the week:

  • Participate in a video hangout
  • Participate in a synchronous online discussion using Slack, Twitter, or Google+.
  • Search for useful resources related to the week 2 readings and share any found to a central repository.
  • Read selected sections of the Peeragogy Handbook and participate in an online discussion of peeragogy.
  • Continue self-reflection/criticism of the selected readings, and begin referring to the additional resources found by module participants.
WEEK 4 – Towards developing a film school pedagogy

In week one
of the module, participants were asked to read and reflect on the pedagogical approaches of all the participating NORDICIL schools. At this point, they should feel comfortable enough to reflect critically on the approach of their own school and compare it with the other schools. In week four, the expectation is that participants will start to place their own pedagogical practices and thoughts within this larger context and engage in discussions with other participants in order to exchange thoughts and reflections.

Tasks for the week:

  • Post own self-reflection/criticism in a public forum where the other participants can read and comment on it.
  • Read, reflect and comment on the self-reflections of other participants, both from one’s own institution and from other institutions.
  • Participate in online discussions (possible video hangout may be organised).
  • Fill out self-assessment of course progress to date
WEEK 5 – Conclusions and final reflections

Module 1 is the launching pad for the subsequent modules, and a key metric for success is ensuring the participants are comfortable with both the technological environment and the foundational philosophies of peeragogy and film school pedagogy. The contents of week 5 will be very much determined by the results of the self-assessment survey completed at the end of week 4.

The goal for week 5 is to ensure the participants are familiar with their PLN and the tools for interaction and communication, and have developed a critical awareness of their own pedagogical practice and how it relates to a larger community of practice at the Nordic film schools. These are the key competencies that will form the foundation of the further modules in the course.

Tasks for the week:

  • Participate in online discussions summarising the key takeaways from the module
  • Update own self-reflection/criticism based on total feedback from others
  • Complete online skills assessment
  • Identify gaps in skills and knowledge and share a plan for filling these gaps
  • Where applicable, offer peer support to others who share their learning gaps
  • Complete final self-assessment and sign up for next module.

Organisation

Each of the
eight participating institutions has provided a participant in the NORDICIL working group that has developed “The Artist as (Film School) Teacher”. These 8 individuals are also the peer facilitators for Module 1, and will support each other in leading the various elements of the module.

There is no grade, and at the completion of the course participants will receive either a “completed” or “not completed” based on their active participation in all facets of the course over the 5-week period. A mark of “completed” is required in order to continue to the next module.

Three thoughts as I transition from reading to writing…

At some point one has to stop reading and start writing… This is a hard one for me, as I – as a “non-academic” academic – do not have the training for this.

However, the time alloted for the NORDICIL working group to develop a film school pedagogy course is nearing a temporary end, and now is the time to produce. I have managed to create a draft outline for an introductory module (2.5 ects, 5 weeks) which I hope to receive some feedback on at our meeting in Stockholm at the start of April. The next module to tackle is the one on assesment I was assigned at our last meeting.

In addition to this, it’s time to review the descriptions of our BFA programmes and introduce several new teachers to the arcane business of teaching at the Norwegian Film School.

So, what I have I learned in all my reading the past months (well, years)?

1. While no one has really written about film school pedagogy specifically, there are many resources out there

An obvious place to start is John Dewey. The pragmatist approach, so well summarized in the quote “Learning to know by doing, and to do by knowing” is very apt for our programmes.

Experiential learning is another key for us. The Kolb learning cycle (or spiral, as it is also described) is naturally a simplified model of learning but it is a good model to illustrate how we want our students to learn.

In addition, both constructivism and social constructivism provide useful tools for understanding our own pedagogical approach. Also valuable is Danish learning theorist Knud Illeris’ work on developing a comprehensive and contemporary theory of learning.

2. Measuring artistic development is challenging

Which is probably why we do not measure it at all! Central to this is that we are working with tacit rather than explicit knowledge. While many forms of explicit knowledge indeed are necessary for filmmakers, especially when it comes to the technical aspects of the different disciplines, we are not a technical school and do not measure technical aptitude.

I would contend that what we do “measure” – how the students develop and reflect on their own artistic expression – is very much in the field covered by tacit knowledge.

3. Continual feedback and assessment is key.

We spend a very large amount of time on feedback and formative assessment, and these are integrated into various teaching activites. As an art school we firmly assert that we must constantly check that the activities we plan are in fact having the impact we plan, and the students are developing both their technical skills and their artistic abilities.

This is an area where much has been written in recent year, notably by John Hattie and Paul Ramsden (the latter in his book Learning to Teach in Higher Education)

The connective triangle

At the 2002 CILECT congress in Melbourne there was a panel discussion called «Triangle: Six Years Later». The preamble to the papers presented states:

In 1996, CILECT began to address the issue of communication and collaboration among the creative triangle of writers, directors, and producers. Some viewed the Triangle project as a necessary corrective to the 1960’s auteur ideology that dominated many film schools. Others saw it as diminishing the role of the individual film artist in an increasingly market-oriented system. How has Triangle affected the film and television school curriculum, and what lessons can be learned from the process as well as the outcomes?

Shortly after the original introduction of the Triangle method at CILECT (at a conference in Rome), The Norwegian Film School (NFS) was founded as a film school firmly entrenched in the triangle tradition. This entry will build on a previous article and analyse the way in which the triangle is implimented at NFS, and look at the emerging educational theory of connectivism as a tool for understanding how the learning film school students achieve happens in the connections established within the triangle structure.

The Triangle basics

As can be seen in the transcript of «Triangle: Six Years Later» from the 2002 Melbourne Congress, one of the primary goals of the introduction of the Triangle was to strengthen the role of the producer as a creative partner for the director. The collaboration between these two, in cooperation with the screenwriter, became the focus of this method.

At the Norwegian Film School (and presumeably others as well), this collaboration was taken further, to include all the different departments taught at the school. This has become formalised as the «first» triangle (screenwriter, director and producer), the «second» triangle (cinematographer, production designer, and director and producer; and soon: the digital visual designer), and the «third» triangle (editor, sound designer, and director and producer). All three triangles are used in production exercises as a method for helping the student filmmakers communicate and collaborate.

There are both formal and informal elements in the Triangle; the formal are planned meetings where the members of a given triangle meet with the teachers in the relevant disciplines and discuss their projects. These meetings begin with the students presenting the status of their work at that stage. Depending on the project, this may be very rudimentary or quite advanced. The instuctors then provide feedback and guidance.

The sophistication of the students’ collaboration also increases as they go through the course of studies. In the first semester or two they don’t quite understand how to collaborate, let alone how to maximize each others skills and talents on a common project. It is not uncommon for one or more members of a triangle to complain that they are being ignored and simply used for their labour.

The second year of their studies most often sees a marked increase in the quality of their collaboration, as the students become more confident about their own place and skills, and gain a better understanding of the roles and talents of their teammembers. By the third year the students seek out each other, and and most collaborations work quite well. An observation at the Norwegian Film School has been that at this stage the learn more from each other than from their instructors.

Learning in the the Triangle

The informal aspects of the triangles are more intangible and, in a way, more interesting from a pedagogic point of view. As mentioned above, as the students move through the three years of their programme, they start to learn more and more from each other. And what I observe is that this learning falls in the pattern of

the central claim of connectivism, that the knowledge is found in the connections between people with each other and that learning is the development and traversal of those connections (Downes, Stephen. “E-Learning Generations” in Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. self-published epub, 2012)

The students make many connections as they go through their study. Each discipline (screenwriting, directing, etc.) consists of 6 students, and these students develop close collegial relationships where they support and critique each other. In addition, the students will through the production exercises work in at least 8 different constelleations where each discipline is represented; in these constellations they learn to collaborate and utlise their differing expertises.

Eventally we see that as teams are set and given a creative task, the very act of collaboration gives them the capacity to solve the task the school has given them. They seem to quite naturally find ways of utilising each others skills and expanding their own knowledge. Where the instructors have to cajole and instruct them early on in their studies, now they find their role becomes more traditinal mentoring with an emphasis on encouragement and support where necessary.

None of this is surprising. After all, we expect the students to improve and gain confidence and become more skillful. If they did not, they should not be pursuing this course of study. But what is interesting is examining how it happens, how our pedagogical approach can help (or, in some cases, perhaps hinder?) the students develop faster and emerge from their studies as more confident and interesting artists.

Film school pedagogics

Some initial thoughts about developing a training programme for instructors in film training at the BFA and MFA level

(originally published Nov. 19, 2012)

In Norway today all universities and høgskoler (University Colleges) provide pedagogic instruction for newly-hired teaching and research staff. Typically these courses will run part-time over the course of a year and yield 15 ECTS points. An example is the course in høgskolepedagogikk provided in collaboration between the Lillehammer, Gjøvik and Hedmark University Colleges which can be found here (Norwegian only).
These types of courses are designed to introduce the newly-hired (and anyone who wants a refreshment) staff to some of the issues and challenges facing teaching staff in modern higher education. They cover topics like «dannelse» (derived loosely from European classical education in the Humboldtian tradition), digital tools in education, ethics and so on.

Central to this type of course is a solid foundation in academia and the academic relationship to knowledge.

A question that has arisen for the Norwegian Film School recently is whether this kind of pedagogic training is appropriate for higher arts education in general – and film school education in particular. The reason the question comes up is that the kind of fine arts training offered by the Norwegian Film School does not have a relationship to knowledge in the academic sense. This form of fine arts training is wholly concerned with developing an artistic talent, and while the emerging artists need to develop certain skills within their chosen discipline, their academic knowledge about that discipline is irrelevant in the context of the training they receive.

What does this fine arts training look like?

The current programme at the Norwegian Film School is an intensive three-year training for artists within seven disciplines in filmmaking: screenwriting, directing, producing, cinematography, production design, editing, and sound. Six students are accepted into each discipline every second year, following a rigorous admissions process. the students are selected based on only two criteria:

  1. Does the applicant have talent in the chosen discipline? and
  2. Can that talent benefit from the education offered at the Norwegian Film School?

Once accepted, the students enter an intensive programme where they receive training within their chosen discipline – where there is, among other things, an emphasis on teaching them to become storytellers and artists within their discipline. They also work on production exercises with members of all the other disciplines (in teams chosen by the school), and attend classes in subjects common to all the disciplines, including dramaturgy & storytelling, artistic awareness, and visual storytelling (called «cinematurgy»). There are no elective courses; all workshops, projects, lectures, etc., are obligatory.

All of the education the students receive has one purpose and one purpose only: to guide them towards realising their talent as filmmakers. Any knowledge they might gain from, for example, film history is only interesting if it makes them more aware of the context in which their own artistic production occurs. As a result, there are no tests along the way, only evaluations, and – at the end of the third year – a final examination based on the presentation of both group and individual work.

The school is built around some basic pedagogical principles, including «the right to make mistakes» and «restrictions (or constraints) breed creativity» and filmmaking is a collaborative art. The application of these principles is most visible in the frequent production exercises.

Another tool used in these production exercises is the declaration of intent; a document each student in a film team must write before beginning their main contribution to the film. At the final screenings, the finished productions are measured, not against any subjective standard of quality, but purely as to what extent each individual member of the team was able to carry out his or her intentions.

What effect does this have on teaching?

All the teaching staff at the Norwegian Film School are filmmaking professionals, and none come from an exclusively academic background. Most have never taught before coming to teach at the Film School, but are highly regarded artists within their fields. Some have a background from academia but more do not.

Teaching staff in this form of intensive arts training must ensure that the students are closely followed up constantly; the role is much more like mentoring than traditional teaching. Often specific skills will be taught by external specialists, while the teaching staff guide the students to help them apply these skills in the production of their art.

Another challenge comes from the fact that as many of the teachers are working professionals, and continue to work while teaching, they share the responsibility for the students in their discipline with other part-time teachers. This makes it necessary for them to communicate closely with each other in order to ensure each individual student’s progress is monitored and appropriate feedback is given.

The primary duties of the Norwegian Film School teachers can then be summed up as follows:

  • Identify the emerging talents in the admissions process
  • Map out the existing skill level among the students, and use this to construct a training path appropriate for their skills and artistic development
  • Ensure the students take responsibility for their own development and challenge themselves outside their comfort zone
  • Give feedback which helps the students identify areas needing further development, and design and organise activities that will help the students develop these areas
  • Coordinate with colleagues in other disciplines both to identify and organise collaborative workshops and to ensure the common production exercises present the optimal challenge for all the students
  • Give feedback in the group evaluation sessions of the production exercises
  • Throughout all of the above, be responsible for helping the students realise their own potential as creative artists and storytellers

Things like lecturing, assigning readings, setting and marking written assignments, and the like are conspicuously and deliberately absent. However, the teachers are expected to have a solid grasp on their discipline in the Nordic film industry and be able to bring in guest lecturers and workshop instructors as needed.[1]

What training do these teachers need?

Teaching at an arts education is not a matter of ensuring the students achieve learning outcomes at certain levels of skills, knowledge and understanding, as outlined in the international guidelines relating to the European Qualifications Framework. The learning outcomes are much more intangible, given the primary goal is to develop each given student’s creative abilities. As a result, while there must be standards in use to measure the progress and development of each student, these standards are highly flexible as they are based on the starting point of each individual student rather than a more objective standard laid out in a permanent lesson plan.

At the same time, there must be some permanent standards by which the students are judged to have passed their studies and qualified are qualified to receive their BFA degree. This is done, not by judging the quality of the final films they make in their third year, but by measuring their own intentions for the films up against the final result and also by examine the process that led to the final film.

In order to achieve this, there are four areas in which teachers at the Norwegian Film School must be proficient.

  1. How to use their own experience
  2. Scaffolding the creative artist: theoretical frameworks
  3. The triangle method and connectivism
  4. The role of the mentor: tools, challenges and ethics

All four are naturally closely related, but could still be considered distinct topics of study for the new or potential film school teacher.

1. How to use their own experience

In all arts eduction, teachers are expected to be practitioners of the art they are training emerging talents for. They may or may not have attended some form of formal training at the start of their own careers, but the most important thing they bring with them to the institution is their own practice and experience.

In 2005, the Norwegian Film School published a series of booklets and DVDs by Professor Richard Ross called Training the Trainers (there’s a review of the booklets on p. 11 here). The main thrust of this publication is to assist members of all the key creative disciplines of filmmaking become more effective teachers and communicators of their accumulated experience and knowledge.

This publication is aimed at one of the main challenges facing instructors at film schools: how to take the knowledge and experience gained through a career in the film industry and use it to assist emerging talents start building their own experience and confidence. This is not easy, especially for those who may not have attended film school themselves. There is a world of difference between telling «war stories» and being able to use hard-won experience to guide students through their own process of making mistakes and developing their talent.

This must form the foundation of any pedagogical instruction aimed at helping film artists becoming proficient at teaching emerging talent. At this level, arts teachers must be able to know when to show something, and when to stand back and let the student try (and possibly fail) on their own. In the film world in particular there is an ethic of «getting the film made», where the temptation is to do whatever it takes to get the shots needed for the film. This ethic can lead instructors – particularly when mentoring in production situations, but also in discipline-specific workshops and instruction – to step in and assist the students. Sometimes, however, the students will learn more from not being successful, and the instructors’ challenge is to stand back, allow the mistake to be made, and help the student see what led to the mistake and how to avoid it in the future.

2. Scaffolding the creative artist

In her 2009 article Constraints in Film Making Processes Offer an Exercise to the Imagination, Danish researcher Heidi Philipsen[2] writes,

I would like filmmakers interested in thinking «outside the box» to recognize that they can benefit from being placed «inside a box.» In others words, to work with the help of the didactic tool «scaffolding,» which in short is defined as support through constraints applied at different levels (Wood, Bruner and Ross 1976). The scaffolding employed at The National Film School of Denmark helps the students to cope with the pressure of creating film, find inspiration, and attain a flow experience (Csikszentmihaly 1996).

Like many other film schools, the Norwegian Film School operates with constraints (or restrictions) as a method for promoting creativity. The students are never given an production assignment where there are no constraints, although as they progress through the course of their studies the constraints become fewer and looser. At the most basic level, the constraints are designed to remove the panic of «What shall I do?» from the students, and instead get them thinking about «How do I do this?».

Philipsen has clearly explained how the deliberate use of constraints in a film school can be understood through Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and the further refinements of this through the discussion of scaffolding. Very simplified, the students are given a defined space in which to test their own boundaries, and the teachers act as mentors who assist the students in acquiring abilities and skills they did not have before.

Because these constraints are given to the students in their production exercises, they are tool both for developing the individual and the group; at its very core, filmmaking is a collective activity and all members of the collective must operate under the same restrictions and understanding. This places a special onus on the teaching staff, as they must be unified in their understanding of the constraints placed on any given exercises and able to apply these constraints in a consistent manner.

At the Norwegian Film School, the teaching staff discuss the parameters and constraints of each given exercise before it is given to the students. While there are pre-determined guidelines and themes that are followed from year to year, the exact assignment is determined based on the perceived need of the particular group of students at their particular level of skill. The key is to design a set of constraints and challenges that will fall within the zone of proximal development; that challenge the students to attempt things outside their own comfort zone, but are still achievable.

In order to encourage the students to focus on their own learning, and to test and expand their own boundaries, the Norwegian Film School uses «declarations of intent». For each and every production exercises, each member of the filmmaking team must write her own declaration of intent: «What do I intend to learn / improve / discover / etc. on this particular exercise?» The content of this declaration is worked out by the student in consultation with the head teacher / mentor for her discipline, and is completed and handed in before the primary creative work begins. All teammembers are expected to be familiar with the declaration of intent of all other teammembers.

At the evaluation of the final film projects, when the whole school is assembled, each individual teammember reads his declaration aloud, and feedback and questions must relate only to the declaration of intent. Judgements of taste about the quality of the film are not permitted. This truly places each student’s learning and development in focus.

This unit focussing on the theory behind scaffolding and the zone of proximal development will give the teachers the tools to be effective at this pedagogical approach, and be able to arrive at a common understanding and approach with their colleagues.

3. The triangle method, nodes and connectivism

Many film schools work according to the «Triangle method», a method of working in film that emphasises the collective nature of the filmmaking process.[3] Sometimes misunderstood as a belitteling of the importance of the director, the triangle method focusses on the filmmaking team as a team of creative artists working collaboratively to achieve the creative vision of the director.

Each student, then, is at any given time in the production process (which occupies a great deal of their time at film school), a member of (at least) three different constellations – they are a member of their own discipline along with the other students of the same discipline; they are a member of a film team along with one member of each of the other disciplines; and they are a member of a triangle focussing on one particular aspect of the film. On top of this may come any other cooperative workshops between disciplines that may place the students in other constellations.

In order to understand and guide the learning process the students are in when in these constellations, it is useful to turn to connectivism.[4] While this theory is designed to explain distributed learning through digital networks, there are some useful elements that can help understand how learning is spread among nodes in a network, where the «nodes» can replace the «constellations» referred to above.

A broader discussion of how connectivism relates to film school pedagogics is a subject for another time, but it is clear that much of the learning achieved by film school students is in the nodes and networks in which they are placed throught their time at the Film School. Not only do they learn directly from each other independent of their instructors, they also learn simply from the fact of being in their different node and networks. They are constantly having to adjust to new situations and relationships and find ways of expressing their creative talents within these situations.

The challenge for film school teachers is understanding this type of learning, and being able to identify when and how it is happening; and using the results of this learning to help the students be aware of their own progress.

4. The role of the mentor: tools, challenges and ethics

At the Norwegian Film School, an instructor works closesly with the same group of 6 students over the course of 3 years. This is a completely different scenario than at almost any other regular academic programme, where the instructors have more students and see them less frequently. Combined with the fact that filmmaking, like any creative process, can be very instensive, the personal bonds that develop between teacher and student is much stronger at film school than at most other programmes.

In addition, there are the same issues of confidentiality faced by all educators and the question how to handle critical feedback of (potentially) sensitive artistic students. Both the close relationships that develop and the fact that the work being evaluated can be of an intensly personal nature places makes a focus on professional ethics and an understanding of the role and tools available to a mentor of prime importance.

This final topic area of instruction for film school teachers must give them the tools to handle these situations, and, more importantly, the tools to handle situations for which there can be no set protocoll but that must be handled on a case-by-case basis.

  1. Launching a proposal to train film school teachers is not a new initiative from the Norwegian Film School. In the booklet «Back to the Future: Where to We Go From Here?» in the Training the Trainers package, Professor Richard Ross makes an argument for a European teachers training institute, which would be responsible for training filmmakers who are entering the teaching profession. The challenge is most acutely felt at the film schools where the teachers are recruited from active careers in the film industry, and expect to return to these careers; in other words – teaching, for them, is temporary activity and the training they receive must reflect this fact.  ↩
  2. In 2004 Philipsen published her seminal study of the Danish Film School called Dansk films nye bølge, afsæt og aftryk fra den Danske Filmskole (The New Wave of Danish Film – Influences and Imprints from The National Film School of Denmark), which examined the effect of the pedagogic philosophy of the Danish Film School on the so-called «new wave» of Danish filmmakers. She places this teaching philosophy squarely within the constructivist tradition of Vygotsky, and the definition of scaffolding that has arisen out of that tradition. This study has had great influence on film schools, among them the Norwegian Film School whose current Dean, Danish film producer Thomas Stenderup, also attended the Danish Film School concurrently with some of the leading filmmakers of the new wave.  ↩
  3. The Norwegian Film School works with three «triangles»: what is called the first, or «story» triangle, consisting of the Director, Producer and Screenwriter; the second or «visual» triangle, consisting of the Director, Cinematographer and Production Designer (and Producer); and the third, or «post» triangle, which brings together the Director, Editor and Sound Designer (and Producer). At the Norwegian Film School, each one of these disciplines is trained as a creative artist and storyteller in their own right but they are also taught to collaborate in order to achieve the director’s vision. The challenge of the director, in this situation, is to communicate her vision clearly and to lead the team in such a way that each member is able to make the best possible creative contribution to the film.  ↩
  4. Connectivism as a learning theory was launched in 2005 by Canadians George Siemens and Stephen Downes as a way of understanding how learning is distributed through digital networks. With the subsequent rise of MOOCs in recent years the theory has found increased purchase, although it is not without critics.  ↩
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