Art to Be a Teacher: A Role to Play

Abstract

This chapter explores the performative perspective of theatre as a framework for rethinking teacher identity, presence, and professional becoming. Drawing on dialogical self-theory, emphasis is placed on the teacher’s entry into a creative state in which presence, reflection, and responsiveness to students coexist. The lived experience expressed in three reflective accounts condensates a movement into becoming, where multiple inner voices are negotiated and reconfigured in the act of teaching. The role of teaching is interpreted as authorial emergence in encounter – with students, the self, and the unpredictability of classroom life. This approach calls for teacher education practices that support the poetic dimensions of pedagogical presence.