S5 E39: Perspective-Taking in the Classroom

In this episode of Keystone Concepts in Teaching, Ana Farnham and Kristin Johnsen-Neshati from the College of Visual and Performing Arts at George Mason University share how perspective-taking can deepen teaching and learning across disciplines. Drawing on examples from graphic design and theater, they discuss how helping students consider audience, interpretation, and intent can deepen students’ thinking about how their work is experienced by others. The conversation also explores Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and other accessible, multimodal teaching practices that support student engagement by making room for different ways of learning and demonstrating understanding. With thoughtful examples and practical insight, this episode offers faculty an inspiring reminder that when we design courses around experience, curiosity, and access, we create more impactful learning environments for all.

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Rachel 0:08

Hello, and welcome to the Keystone Concepts in Teaching podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Yoho, and I'm excited to be joined by two colleagues from the College of Visual and Performing Arts at George Mason University, and I'll ask them to introduce themselves.

Kristin 0:23

Thank you, Rachel. My name's Kristin Johnsen-Neshati, and I work in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. My home unit is the School of Theater, and I also work as Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs and International Programs. I teach courses in dramatic theory and criticism and also translation and adaptation for the stage and I co-direct 1,001 Plays with my colleague Nick Horner.

Ana 0:53

I'm Ana Farnham. I'm an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design in the School of Art here at Mason. I teach a couple of different classes. I teach motion, package design, senior project. And my research focuses on experiential graphic design with accessibility at its core, particularly neurodivergent accessibility, as I'm neurodivergent.

Rachel 1:14

Yeah, well, thank you so much for sharing. Thank you for sharing about what you teach as well. All right, so one of the things that we want to talk about in this episode is really helping students take perspectives, and I think that's really where we wanna start our conversation for today is that aspect of perspective-taking. So can each of you maybe expand on this a little bit as far as what you see for the importance of helping students navigate perspective-taking educationally and professionally, and how you enact that? Or maybe even before we get there, what we're talking about when we talk about perspective-taking to each of you?

Kristin 1:52

Well, my background is in dramaturgy. In particular, I've worked as a production dramaturg in professional theater and in academic theater. And dramaturgy is devoted to thinking through what is gonna land for audiences, and that pertains to live production. It also pertains to writing. It pertains to messaging and all sorts of things, whatever could be the experience that an audience member has as they're coming to the theater or even considering going to the theater. So when I'm in the classroom, I work with students on thinking about how the audience would respond to whatever it is they're trying to share. And I do this with student theater critics as well. I ask them, "How are you going to convey what you saw to the audience?" In that case, you know, your readership. And so, I try to guide them to think not just what was the end result that they saw if they went to the theater, but to lay it out for the audience.

Rachel 2:57

Yeah, that's such a great point. I appreciate your sharing. And we might even be thinking about things that might come up in other disciplines too. I mean, some areas might be talking a little bit about positionality, so we talk about here perspective-taking, but very similar to positionality in some disciplines or the times that other disciplines might be talking about, you know, client relationships or patients or something like that. Yeah, what else are we thinking about here?

Ana 3:24

I think, like Kristin mentioned, how she puts students, like, in the audience's seat. I think with graphic design we try and do that. We try and put students in the seat of, like, who's gonna be viewing their work. So I mean, it is essentially like visual communications, and they're communicating to a wide variety of people. So, like, trying to get students to understand that not everyone is gonna see their work the same way because not everyone thinks the same way, not everyone has the same lived experiences. So always trying to get them to expand who they're designing for. So considering all different people with different abilities and different lived experiences. So trying to teach kind of in a way that incorporates some of those accessible practices, so that they consider them when they're designing in the future.

Rachel 4:09

That's a great point. We might be thinking a little bit about how this shows up in a lot of aspects of communication. So it could be verbal, how people take in information. It could be for writers, who is their audience? How do they define their audience? How do you connect with your audience? And I think here, your examples from each of you from these different settings are really, really impactful in this space. And so can you give us some examples of how you help students do this? That's kind of a big hurdle. It seems like maybe a small topic, even though it's perhaps not, but it's a big challenge to get students to be able to think outside themselves, part of their audience, part of the consumer, part of the viewer, part of the whatever that might be.

Kristin 4:52

I think that's really true. It is a challenge. I'd also say that in the arts, and I know this is true in theater, but I suspect it's true more broadly through the arts, part of our job is storytelling. And so we are thinking about audience. And it's just like any good story, it's not just laying out facts. It's the way the information is shared and how creatively and originally it can be shared. I often think of this with students when I'm talking with them about a design choice, for instance, or a directorial choice. Why did you choose, for instance, a navy blue chiffon dress for the character? And to bring this out of the frame of reference of personal preference, but into how this helps to support the storyline. And in the same way I ask writers to think beyond what they liked and didn't like or what they thought was, you know, brilliant or amazing or something like that and to give the reader a sense of why that was, and kind of share a few moments of that experience with the reader instead of just giving them a verdict.

Ana 6:01

I think, for me, there's a couple different ways of doing this. One is critique. I mean, like, it's a big part of any visual art. You do a lot of critiques, so you're really running your work by people all the time and getting different perspectives from people. One person might understand what you're trying to say, while another one doesn't, which means you kinda need to adjust something in your design. So that's one way. Another way is just teaching accessibility practices so they understand who they're designing for. So there's a lot of accessibility practices built into exhibition design and UX/UI design, which is app design. But there's not as many built into just traditional print design and some of the other forms of design, 'cause design's really broad, like motion, things like that. So just bringing those practices into making sure they know what they are and how to use them and how to incorporate those into their work. And I think the third thing is asking them a lot of questions along the way. So in senior project, we have a couple exercises leading up to their project where we're like, "Why do you wanna do this? Why is it important? Why does this need to be made?" Like, "How can you replicate that in design?" And "Who is this for?" So we have a lot of questions about that, so they really understand who they're designing for and why they're designing this thing. So I think those are kind of some of the main ways that we do it in design. Well, me in particular, but a lot of designers, I think. So, yeah.

Kristin 7:25

I really love what you said, Ana. It points to the importance of intentionality and helping students think through that lens. I'm thinking about intentionality in the decisions that we encourage our students to ponder really. You know, you were talking about why something is important to them to convey. I think another challenge that I discuss with them sometimes with season planning is that, for instance, if you're choosing a season for a theater, you might have five slots you have to fill. And so, it might be tempting to think, "What are my five favorite plays? Let me just put them up there," you know? But really in making that decision, you're also deciding what is not gonna get produced, what is not gonna be chosen for that year. And so, I've described it as not just going to the bookstore and choosing five plays, but if the library is on fire, which of the five plays you're gonna run in and save? You know? Which ones are the ones that are so urgent, so pressing that they need to be done now and they need to be done by you for this particular audience.

Rachel 8:37

Yeah, I think that sounds really good. I think this is really very thoughtful when we're thinking about connecting. I mean, we started our conversation with, you know, taking perspectives, like perspective taking or connections obviously to positionality. But I think here, the conversation around the intentionality, how do we do something with intention? But even when we do something, we're also not doing something else, and I think that's really important. And the ideas connect really well across disciplines because we might be thinking about clients or customers or collaborators or many different aspects of communication. And so no matter if we're writing something or if we're creating something or for research or some other sort of presentation, thinking about the audience, thinking about who's taking it in, and also what are we choosing to do and where we're putting our effort because there's other things that aren't getting the time and attention that I think is really, really very relevant in our conversation. And so we've also touched on just briefly some bigger topics that, I know we'd like to expand a little bit on, such as universal design and neurodiversity. So where do you see these connections in your efforts? Or maybe expanding a little bit on these connections in your efforts in your teaching or your research.

Ana 9:56

Well, just in case anyone doesn't know what universal design is, it's basically like a framework that means products, environments, and experiences are designed to be usable by all people. So there's no need for accessibility or adaptation. A common example is the curb cut effect. They were created for people with wheelchairs, but they benefit everyone. If you're at the grocery store and you have a shopping cart, you can just go off the curb. If you're a new mom like I am, I need them for my stroller, you know? So that's a good example of universal design. So I think my research focuses a lot on that. It's all about accessibility practices and my teaching as well. So I try to teach accessibility in an accessible way, if that makes sense. So I do that through a variety of ways. I do universal design. I use a lot of interactivity in my teaching and a lot of multimodality and also just asking students how they learn best. An example of this is my package design class. I have this one lesson where it's it's about hierarchy and package design, typographic hierarchy. So I give a quick lecture on typographic hierarchy and package design, and then I made this little game where they get a bunch of pictures of different products, and they have to match those different categories from the hierarchy with the images of these different products. And then I pass out candy to the class, and they look at the candy in small groups, and then they have to stand up and tell the whole class what the hierarchy is. Then they get to eat the candy for fun. And then after that, they go and apply that in the project. They're designing pet food packaging usually in this project. So then they go do that on their own project that they're working on. And that is a way of bringing in a bunch of different ways of learning into one thing. So some people might be auditory learners, while some people might be more visual. Some people might need that more experiential learning. So it's giving them a couple of different avenues to learn the same thing. So if one of them doesn't work, maybe another one does for them. So that's kind of how I try to incorporate a lot of those accessibility practices, and multimodality is very important in neurodivergence. So I think that's, like, the biggest one I really try to put in there.

Rachel 11:58

Yeah, that's really a great example, 'cause we see a lot of how people prefer to learn when we talk about how people want to engage with content, and having a little bit of choice can be really useful. I mean, just to go off what you were talking about there, you know, of having these different ways to engage, one of the things I like to talk about when I'm doing faculty workshops is how students take in information and how they demonstrate their learning. Asking yourself questions, just like you're showing here. Are there different ways to take in the information? And then are there different ways to demonstrate their learning? When we think about this, it's how we're taking in information, how we're demonstrating our learning. And so there's opportunities not only to have some options, some flexibility, some choices, just like you were just talking about here in that lesson. So in some cases, maybe there's an article to read or an episode of a podcast to listen to or a video to watch, something like that. And then the other side we often talk about is are there places, you know, not every assignment, but are there a couple of assignments in the course where students could have a little bit more choice? Could they make an infographic, or could they write a paper of a certain length? Obviously everything needs good bounds and structure, but are there different ways to bring in and personalize a little bit? And I think this is such a great example you shared. I really like that. Thank you.

Kristin 13:17

One thing I really like about offering so many choices is that when you do that, you show, not only many different ports of entry for the student, but you also show how the concepts that you're teaching them can apply to so many different facets of their experience or their lives. So I like that a lot. And in the theater, because we've got students who connect to theater through reading plays, and others who connect through performing, and others who really want to design, people are gonna come with different strengths and weaknesses. And the important thing is that everybody has a way to engage, and that it is honored in the classroom, and that they can show what they know. They can show what they've learned, rather than being tested on certain particular ways of learning material. They can instead demonstrate how they've used their project and their originality and curiosity to meet the outcomes, in their own way I think that often comes into play when I have conversations with students who say, "What's the right answer to this?" You know, "Tell, tell me what this play means," or How do I get the A for this?" I really wanna bring them back and ask them to engage their curiosity and their originality with that kind of encouragement to be themselves. Because some are gonna be very comfortable in front of an audience giving a presentation. Some are gonna be even more comfortable going into character in front of an audience, you know, their classmates, let's say, and others would rather write something. So using theater as an example, a really special aspect of that is that we ask people in scene study or when they're working on a monologue or something, "How did that feel?" Their own experience--their own bodily experience, their own sensory experience-- is engaged in helping them learn something. I think that's very different from a different kind of learning they engage in a classroom where there are facts or there are computations and they need to be completely understood, and they need to be completed accurately. But accuracy is not the end goal in something like theater. We're not saying that, you know, one production of a play is the right one and all the others are wrong. You know? It's always, uh, comparative. Relative, I guess.

Ana 15:45

I, yeah, the arts are so interesting because it's like there almost never is one right answer. It's about your perspective and your expression of creativity. And yeah, some people might not take that well. Some people might, you know? But there's always gonna be somebody who does enjoy it, you know? Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Rachel 16:02

Yeah. But I think that's very fair, though. I mean, when we're looking at this, how did someone experience something, does resonate across many different areas. Or what was your engagement as you were doing something? Even in the fields that have maybe the computation, the right answer, the yes, we need to know all of these things A through E. We do also wanna be having our students think about their thinking and think about their engagement. And so I really like what we were just talking about here because it brings us really back into even topics like metacognition. So when we're talking about metacognition, we're basically thinking about our own thinking or thinking about our own learning. And so to build off of this a little bit, what are some of the recommendations or maybe a little bit more in the experiences that you can share that might give some ideas to, you know, maybe to our listeners, to people coming from different disciplines in particular?

Ana 16:56

I think in thinking about metacognition, I know I always bring things back to neurodivergence just 'cause that's my kind of research area and I'm always thinking about it. But so I have several learning disabilities, so my entire life I had to figure out how to learn basically. So there's this metaphor with neurodivergent people where you can't take the most straightforward path to learning like somebody who's neurotypical. You have to take your own detours and figure things out your own way, and sometimes you discover new and interesting things while you do that. So, for me, I was always figuring out how to learn that was probably not the standard way my teacher taught me. And I think now with my students, I'm always trying to help them figure out how they learn best, 'cause for me it was difficult, and I know for them everybody's a little bit different. So I think that's why the multimodality I mentioned before is really big, so I wanna give them the choice to discover what it is that helps them learn best and what way they learn best.

Rachel 17:49

Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's a great point when we're thinking about how we engage with the material. That is really thinking about not only our thinking on the topic, but how we're engaging with the topic is really interesting there.

Kristin 18:02

I love that story, Ana. It's really great, and you're reminding me of things that I haven't thought of for a long time, but they have to do with my own experience as a young student. So, I'm really thinking elementary school. I didn't know that I had ADHD at the time, but I did know that my friends were able to read long books, and I just couldn't. And there was a requirement that we get through X number of books, per quarter or trimester or whatever. And I would look for ways around that, so I would read the dictionary, and that, that piqued my interest and kept me stimulated, and I think it led to a real love of words. But also it brought me to study plays, less from the stage, but more from reading plays, because I figured out that I could read two plays in probably fewer pages than many of my friends were reading novels. So I fell in love with plays that way. So it's interesting. I think it's great to encourage students to find their workarounds and find their clever ways into things, because all of it is learning. There's nothing that's really off the table. And I also think about teaching theater criticism. For one thing, I work hard to persuade students that criticism is not just about saying mean things but it's an art form in and of itself, and it has an important role to play in keeping the memory of a performance alive, not through a recording, but through a kind of human pathway, a kind of human perception of performance. And I was so happy a couple of weeks ago when I read a student paper, the student wrote, I didn't enjoy the play, but I did enjoy watching it." And it really brought home to me this thing that I try to remind students of, which is you don't have to like something to enjoy watching it. If you start to think about how you're responding to it, what that work is stirring up inside of you, in what ways you're resisting it, in what ways you're critiquing it, it's just like being engaged in another game, and that can be really fulfilling too.

Rachel 20:11

Absolutely. We've touched on a number of topics, that it brings us back to our keystone concept to me seems like experience. When we're thinking about the experience of learning, we're thinking about the experience of our audience, our consumer, our whoever might be taking in whatever thing that our students or we are creating. And we're also thinking about the experience of engaging with the topics. So not just the learning, but how we interact and how those topics interact with us as well. And so even for us, when we think about our experience as instructors, you know, how do we do this? How do we interact with students? How do we help them interact with the material? Even some of the things we were talking about, like universal design for learning or help- helping the students take a little bit more ownership, it's also good for us I mean, if we just think about that baseline level, it's a lot better to, you know, grade 50 really interesting different projects that students really took the time and built their own experiences in or thought about it in their own ways, rather than 50 of the exact same sounding paper, you know, something like that. So even these things that are good for our students are also good for us in many different ways as well. We want our students to succeed. We want our students to do these things, but we even want to think about our own, you know, Friday afternoon grading or something like that as well. So yeah, I think we're really coming back to that place of looking at these in terms of experiences. How are our students experiencing the content? How do they interact? And even what are they producing? How do they communicate with others? Any last thoughts? Any final things that you'd like to share as we wrap up?

Ana 21:55

Yeah, I just thought it was kind of interesting listening to Kristin talk about the way she teaches and how many overlaps there are. I think it's just like the arts, I guess, in general. They're very interactive. They're very experiential. Teaching theater or design or dance or music, like, they all have that element to them, so... And I don't know, we don't cross as much as we should, so it was, like, interesting listening to your perspective. So.

Kristin 22:18

Oh, likewise. I love hearing you talk about universal design and the different ways that you implement it in your research and in your work with students in the classroom. It's really exciting. So yeah, we do need to cross paths more, Ana.

Ana 22:32

We do. Yeah,

Rachel 22:33

Yeah,

Kristin 22:34

I was thinking of one other example that I thought might be relevant here, and that is in 1,001 Plays, the theater exchange I was talking about earlier, what we do with that is to bring student playwrights from one country, one part of the world, into contact with theater artists from elsewhere in the world, also students. So one set of students will write a 10-minute play, often on a theme, and the theme might be water or truth or trust. These are some of the themes we've had. And a student playwright will write a 10-minute play on that theme, and that student's work is then given a staged reading by students in another part of the world, in a different culture, often working through a different language. And after a rehearsal process, we hear the staged reading, we watch it, and then we have a talk back afterwards. And one of my favorite parts is hearing playwrights talk about how their work was interpreted by another team of students from another part of the world with a totally different perspective. And I can't tell you how often I hear them say, That's not at all what I was thinking when I wrote the play, but I really like it." And it is a way of helping students see, first of all, that their stories matter, and second, that their stories can be interpreted in multiple ways. And it's also a way for the students who are interpreting those plays to lean into what that playwright really wanted, and not try to take it over and make it their own, but really think about the playwright's intent. So I think all of these things go back to some of what we talked about with intentionality and different ways of sharing work and sharing creative output. And so yeah, all of this reminded me of that too.

Ana 24:27

That's such a cool exercise in perspective taking and seeing how your work is perceived. Yeah.

Rachel 24:32

Yeah, absolutely.

Kristin 24:34

Thank you.

Rachel 24:34

Yeah, that's great. I think we see a lot of really good examples there of that, like you were saying, you know, the perspective taking, the communication, even things across maybe cultures or language or other experiences. So that's really great. Well, thank you so much to both of you for joining us. I really enjoyed our conversation. I enjoyed the examples and the things that we can think about, the ideas especially that resonate so much from each of your examples. I really appreciate seeing how you each bring that teaching and bring those experiences not only to your students, but help them see themselves in the work as well. So thank you both so much for joining the podcast episode.

Kristin 25:12

It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Ana 25:14

Yeah, and it's been a pleasure hearing all about your work and teaching Kristin as well.

Kristin 25:19

And yours too, Ana. Thank you.

Rachel 25:21

Yeah. All right, well catch the Keystone Concepts in Teaching podcast every two weeks. We're posting during the fall and spring semesters, so check us out on your favorite podcast platform or stream directly from the Stearns Center website. So thank you so much!