Embodied Discourse: Using Tableau to Explore Preservice Teachers’ Reflections and Activist Stances

In the context of an arts-integration course in an elementary education program, preservice teachers used tableaux (i.e. frozen scenes) to portray field experience moments in two ways: (1) as remembered events, and (2) as projected possibilities. Using video and photographs of the tableaux, we traced the students’ enactment of activist stances and analyzed their positions within dramatic frames. Specifically we focused on the affordances of drama to the practice of reflecting and we also explored the use of tableau as a conduit for researchers’ provocation of additional meaning through examinations from various multimodal approaches.