Why have a curriculum for an experiential practice?
The ASO Newsletter - 31st Edition
Helping you stay connected to research on the Alexander Technique
Introduction
(12 min read)
Historically, Alexander lessons have usually been taught without an explicit curriculum. Based on my experience of teaching the Alexander Technique (AT), and involvement in several AT teaching research studies, in this two-part blog post I’m going to provide reasons why I think that creating a curriculum can be very useful for Alexander teaching in both group and individual settings.
I want to make it clear from the start that a curriculum can have flexibility and be the starting point of a collaboration between the teacher and their students rather than a fixed syllabus. In the first section I am going to begin by explaining what I understand by the term ‘curriculum’, and outline a number of ways that I think having a curriculum can benefit AT teaching.
Defining curriculum broadly
One of the main challenges when thinking about, having a curriculum when teaching an experiential practice like the Alexander Technique, is how difficult it is to put experience into words. To quote FM Alexander:
‘It must always be clearly understood that the correct sensory experiences to be acquired by means of this technique cannot be described in writing or by the spoken word in such a way as to be of practical value. As a friend of mine, a well-known scientific man, replied to a query in this connection, "We cannot write a kinesthesia, any more than we can write the sense of sound. We can only write the symbols of sound, notes of music, for instance’. (Alexander 1910, 76-77)
This has a lot of truth in it as any Alexander teacher knows from their hands-on work in lessons. However, experience shows me that it is also true that discussion, movement, anatomy, reading and many forms of thinking, looking at pictures, diagrams and images about the work can help facilitate and underpin psychophysical connections and understandings.
Another reason for questioning the value of curriculum in AT teaching perhaps lies in the idea of curriculum as being too restrictive, of not taking account of the fact that people learn in different ways and at different rates. Because everyone learns slightly differently, we need to think of the curriculum as more than just the content we aim to convey. Kelly (2009) in his examination of curriculum theory defines curriculum as ‘the totality of experiences the pupil has as the result of provision made’ (p13). This contemporary, broad definition puts the learner’s experience at its heart. It implies explicit attention both to the content to be conveyed and to the process, or means whereby, knowledge and skills are acquired by the student.
Curriculum content
In terms of teaching content, AT teachers understand how important it is to make the work relevant from moment to moment to our students' lives, age, interests, experience and so on. However, I firmly believe that, beyond that, having an overview of necessary content is useful to make sure this or that aspect of the work will be covered. I imagine that, like me, other teachers have had the experience of teaching and being surprised that some important aspect of the AT appears to have been left out of a student's understanding.
Regardless of format and formality, a curriculum represents an explicit intention to cover certain elements in our teaching. Having an intent to cover specific content enables the teacher to see where things might need to be expanded upon, clarified and perhaps reframed for that student or group without information or practices being left out of the learning journey.
Curriculum content can also be tailored thoughtfully to how many lessons we expect to have with our student or students, and we can then find best practice for the delivery of the work in different settings and the timescales we teach in. In the context of a music college, for example, we can tailor our curricula to reflect the academic year. For musicians this might include finding the best times for discussing intelligent practice, working with the stimulus of exam pressure and performance anxiety for final recitals and grades, and holding group classes to help people find poise under pressure while practicing performing.
There are no hard and fast rules about how curriculum content is categorised, but, in teaching AT, a simple set might include knowledge, skills, and mindsets. In terms of knowledge, though how we label them will vary, most AT teachers would be able to agree on the basic principles of the technique that can act as a starting point (inhibition, direction, psychophysical unity etc.). These will be essential elements of knowledge for students to grapple with and deepen over time.
In terms of skills, an important aim in my teaching is to help my students be able to bring greater balance their lives and choose their reactions and responses to stimulus and life's ups and downs. I have found working with clear curriculum content means we do not need to rely only on the student’s ability to understand the work as transferable skills for life. Instead, we can create a syllabus where this is made clear. Not everyone can understand the skill of getting in and out of a chair as a metaphor for everything we do. Skills are built incrementally in the teaching room on a weekly basis, by working with constructive rest, directed activities and application work. Students grow their ability to make choices through having practices to take away. We might call these practices a ‘toolkit for self-regulation’.
Mindsets are highly relevant to learning the AT, and teachers will be familiar with the types of thinking that their students can cultivate through the work: non-judgement, not trying to get things right, or worrying about getting things wrong, openness and curiosity. These are approaches that might usefully feature in curriculum content.
To encourage these approaches to thinking, I find it helpful to frame AT curriculum content in the form of questions to be explored, rather than milestones to be reached.
Do you have strategies for when you are under pressure?
Can you identify what puts you under pressure?
Are you good at bringing your attention to what you are doing or does your mind wander?
Do you have strategies for this?
Do you worry about making mistakes or getting things wrong?
Do you have an approach that helps you deal with this?
This can help promote the openness and curiosity in learning needed to put the student in the driving seat. This is very much in line with Dewey's thoughts in Democracy in Education, “Education is not an affair of telling and being told, but an active and constructive process.” (Dewey 1916, 32).
Learning processes
As well as content areas, a flexible curriculum will include thinking about the how of teaching, the different processes by which learning takes place, so that we can adapt our approach. Pierce-Jones (1968) emphasises that one of the most important aspects of AT work is that it gives us the ability to be able to adapt and change when needed. This is not always easy, but this is also fundamental to AT teaching.
The introduction of new ideas within the curriculum will need to be structured in such a way that the understanding developed over time is not just abstract knowledge but is psychophysical. Too much purely informational content can overwhelm a student. But if we don’t give them enough information, they can become bored, or think the lesson is all about getting the experience from the teacher or that there is something to ‘get right’. A flexible curriculum will allow for different learning approaches to suit different learners and different stages of learning.
An example might be teaching about the primary control. Different approaches might include: 1) Hands-on being compared to the student seeing an image, then 2) identifying the location of the atlanto-occipital joint through touch and the embodiment of body mapping or 3) seeing a diagram or picture or 4) a video of Fred Astaire dancing perhaps.
The teacher can reflect on how much repetition is required. As Alexander teachers know, intelligent repetition can be the mother of skills! They can decide when to repeat information in the same way, or when to try an alternative approach. All these different ways of conveying and unpacking the primary control can deepen our understanding of the concept of the Head/Neck/Back relationship in all its aspects.
Curriculum and difference
Because everyone learns slightly differently, thinking about curriculum includes giving explicit attention to this fact. Ken Robinson says of intelligence “It's diverse. We think about the world in all the ways that we experience it. We think visually; we think in sound; We think aesthetically; we think in abstract terms; we think in movement.” (Ken Robinson, 2010)
As well as different preferences in terms of processing information (for example kinesthetic, aural and visual modes), students may be dyslexic, or have Aspergers, or other factors that shape the way they process information and learn. And, of course, students also differ in many other ways, such as age, state of health, traditions, background and first language.
Understanding and accommodating difference is given much more attention in education and in other fields these days. Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity (EDI) are guiding principles in many institutional settings. Many of our students at the Royal College of Music now have learning agreements. These are formal agreements a student makes with an institution that clarifies the way they need to learn, and what provision should be made for this based on their requirements and challenges. But even when teaching individual lessons at home, as well as through applying AT principles, we can try to support diversity in learning preferences by consciously experimenting with different ways of conveying information and getting our students’ reactions.
Although the Alexander Technique needs to be understood as including hands-on work, as Ted Dimon recently said, it also needs to be known as an “awareness and kinesiology discipline’ where people begin with the intention to apply these tools and skills for themselves” (Dimon 2022). While the hands-on work in the lessons is extremely valuable in conveying the experience of the Alexander technique, it can be slow in getting the students to practice and experiment with applying the principles, thinking in activity and the questioning that the work requires from them.
Teaching AT with curriculum topics and principles thoroughly explored via different approaches, facilitates the student’s agency and self-discovery. We can build into lessons techniques that explore kinesthetic experience through games and directed activities, discussions, and visual learning. We can also ask students to read and explore the ideas and report back, helping us to see if there are any gaps in their understanding. With a structured curriculum that encourages self-reflection, the student or students can feel a sense of their learning journey: they can see where they are going, and maybe where they’ve come from, so they can chart their progress.
Curriculum and collaboration
Having a repertoire of useful topics and questions included in a curriculum can be useful to encourage spoken communication both with individuals and groups. Within a group, this can hold the sense of a group learning together as a ‘community of learning’. We can balance the confident students with the less confident ones within the group and have plans and strategies to balance the lesson for everyone, so that everyone is heard and feels fairness is part of the process. Finding out about translations of resources and books can be useful if we have students whose first language is not English.
I have been fortunate to be involved in various formal studies, which has involved collaboration with colleagues from various disciplines, for example the Healthy Young Musician project at the junior Royal Academy of Music. This involvement has been a real spur to updating our curricula to showcase that in the Alexander world we are keeping up to date with movements in neuroscience, pedagogical practice and research. This has meant adapting the language we use and catering thoughtfully for neurodiverse students in our lessons, resources and handouts. We have been able to show flexibility in our teaching without losing sight of what Alexander has to offer that is specific to our work.
Discussion of curriculum when collaborating with people from different modalities and disciplines has made it clear how an Alexander approach to different subjects is distinctive, and this can really help each contribution shine rather than be diminished. For example, working with music psychologists there are often discussions on mindset with students on practice and performance strategies. This gives us the chance to reflect on how these attitudes are held in the body, mind and breath and how an understanding of psychophysical unity can really help alongside other approaches.
Research, development, and dissemination
I have really learnt the value of curriculum over the years being involved in different research trials. The research process requires a systematic approach and for relevant information to be made explicit and accessible so it can be analysed. Research is about finding out, about understanding better, and goes hand-in-hand with development. In studies of teaching and learning, teachers have to strive for transparency and ‘up their game’ in terms of their practice. Students meanwhile benefit from this transparency in being able to articulate what they have learnt and develop skills and resources to take away.
Not everything we teach is easily measurable but that doesn’t mean we should avoid engaging with research. Evidence-based work is increasingly required in different fields. In music education it may now be needed for a particular discipline to be included in the institution's offerings, and for them to find funding for it.
Curriculum documentation in all its forms, along with the work produced by students in an institutional setting, provide rich resources for systematic study. Since developing more organised curricula through involvement with various music education studies, I have used more PowerPoint presentations and written more material for students to take away. I have highlighted the works of other teachers and asked students to do reading and research of their own.
At the Royal College of Music, students do assignments as part of their undergraduate degree and masters programs. These assignments have become a very useful way for the students to deepen their connection to how Alexander principles can be useful for change and development of not just their instrumental skill but their lives in general. These assignments are also very valuable for us teachers to see whether ‘the way we teach is the way they learn’, and whether our students are feeling confident about applying the work to their practice, performance and lives.
Curriculum documentation and learning assignments also provide convenient ways that we can share the hard-won knowledge we have acquired with colleagues both within the AT community and beyond. This final stage of the research process – dissemination – is one that is sometimes given little attention, but it is the only way to make the most of what we learn from research and to feed into developments in the wider profession.
One example of international dissemination is The Developing Self, which I stared with Sue Merry. Not all AT teachers will feel comfortable with using curricula, and we were keen to create courses and mentoring schemes within the Developing Self Training, to help AT teachers and trainees see this approach in action.
A nice result of creating our Developing Self training courses is the international community of teachers which has developed by having a like-minded and similar approach to the work. The approach to having a curriculum is creating a lot of interest and helping Alexander to be thought of as a subject itself but also a discipline that can work as part of an overall curriculum for a school or a college and work in harmony with research projects and other modalities and subjects.
It's a long time ago now that Wilfred Barlow did his research at Central School of Speech and Drama and at The Royal College of Music, this could be some of the earliest research on bridging the gap between the world of ‘Wellbeing and Education’. Details about this research of 70 years ago can be found on our RCM website www.alexandernow.org. Alongside that research there are also a lot of examples of our RCM students' work on this site including some Alexander Technique research projects at undergraduate and postgraduate level.
Conclusion
I believe my teaching has improved through working with the structure of curricula, giving me a bigger repertoire of lesson content and resources. This applies to teaching individuals at home; to my work with young adult musicians at the Royal College of Music where the work is part of the degree; when teaching teenagers at the junior department of the Royal Academy of Music; and when working with adults at LCATT training school.
In all these different learning situations it has been valuable to have an idea of creating a journey and an incremental building of information alongside the experience of AT work. Giving students a readily accessible collection of memorable ideas, handouts, reading and resources to take away and study between lessons is invaluable. It has also meant that I, like other AT teachers, am updating and refreshing not just my skills and knowledge about the Alexander Technique, but also the “how’, the way I convey it to my students, including the repertoire of resources, language and skills that I use.
In my second blog post on this subject, I will talk further about curriculum content and how teaching in different scenarios with different age groups has helped me, and the groups of teachers I work alongside, to find a variety of approaches, resources and starting points to introduce the work and take it to the next level.
Judith Kleinman teaches Alexander at the Royal College of Music, and the Junior Royal Academy of Music. She is co-head of training at the London Centre for Alexander Technique Training. Judith has collaborated with Sue Merry, creating ‘The Developing Self’ and ‘The Ready List’ projects. She has co-written ‘The Alexander Technique for Musicians’ (Bloomsbury), ‘The Alexander Technique for Young Musicians’ and recently published ‘Finding Quiet Strength’ (quickthornbooks).
References
Alexander, F.M. 1910. Constructive Conscious Control. London: Methuen,
Dewey, John. 1916. Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan.
Dimon, Theodore. 2022 Instagram Post on October 22 2022. https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkBHD5yDzmP/ .
Kelly, A.V. 2009. The Curriculum, Theory and Practice. London: Sage.
Pierce-Jones, Frank. 1968. A Technique for Musicians. London: Sheldrake Press.
Robinson, Ken. 2010.RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigms.Youtube Video uploaded on October 14th 2010.https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U.
Presenter Bio
Judith Kleinman: Originally training to be a musician at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Judith went on to be a member of the English National Opera and performed with the LSO, London Classical Players. The mind-body connection involved in practising and performing music fascinated her. In order to explore this connection more deeply, Judith trained to be an Alexander teacher with Mr. Macdonald and Shoshanna Kaminitz qualifying in 1989 and went on to train to be a Tai Chi and Yoga teacher in London. Judith’s career as an Alexander teacher has been focused on integrating the work into educational and performance practices. She is part of the Alexander team at the Royal College of Music and head of department at the Junior Royal Academy of Music. She is also an assistant head of training at LCATT. Recently she has been a visiting teacher at The London School of Musical Theatre. For the last twenty-five years, Judith has collaborated with Sue Merry to build connections between the worlds of Alexander and Education. Together they created a thoughtful training for AT teachers interested in working with children of all ages in schools and colleges. This project, known as 'The Developing Self' held its first conference at Regents Park College in 2000, they presented the STAT memorial Lecture that year. The Developing Self has become a platform for videos and discussions about Alexander in Education. These, including the talks of their virtual Alexander conference's 2020/21 that can be found at www.thedevelopingself.net .
They have recently started a project known as The Ready List for the general public and the Education world, with a website www.thereadylist.com, and are now running workshops and making videos for schools on ``The well-being Hub”, taking AT work to hundreds of school children. Judith has been an active part of the STAT. She sat on the STAT council for 10 years and coordinated the STAT Education Special Interest group for many years.She directed the group that created the Education satellite section of the STAT website and has produced several short films on different aspects of Alexander in Education. Judith gave the Memorial lecture for STAT in 2014.
Judith has written several books including ‘The Alexander Technique for Musicians’ with Peter Buckoke, published by Bloomsbury in 2014, and The Alexander Technique for Young Musicians a reference book aimed at key stage 3 students. They have also written a chapter on the Alexander Technique in The Oxford Handbook of Music Performance. Further publications include Alexander in Secondary and Tertiary Education a book for teachers looking to integrate Alexander Principles in their teaching and a. This year Judith’s new book Finding Quiet Strength was published by Quickthornbooks, highlighting the aspect of creativity, self-regulations and the emotional Intelligence and embodied awareness the work of conscious choice can develop. Continuing in her work to create dialogues between different modalities, Judith programmes the Interesting Talks series of lectures and workshops which brings other disciplines in dialogue with the Alexander Technique. She regularly writes articles and gives workshops and talks on Alexander in Education in Europe, the USA, and the UK both to the wider public and the Education world.
Thank You
Thank you for being here and supporting research on the Alexander Technique and its teaching. Special thanks to Judith Kleinman for her generous contribution to this post. Also to Charlotte Woods and Erica Donnison for their supportive efforts. To all community members who have contributed so far, thank you! Your work is appreciated and making a difference.
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