The Practical Turn in Theatre Research[번역] 연극연구에 나타난 실기 지향의 새로운 연구 경향

In all domains of knowledge, the recent decades have seen moves to reassess the roles and possible interactions between the types of knowledge validated by academic research and forms of knowledge acquired through practical experience. Across a wide spectrum of disciplines, positivist epistemologies which assume that knowledge is only admissible as knowledge if it is founded on empirical evidence, rationally analysed, have been challenged – not necessarily in order to replace them but to assert the equivalence of other categories of knowledge. The new epistemological paradigms – variously referred to as action research, reflective practice, reflection-in-action, embodied knowledge, practical knowledge, tacit knowing – recognise that experienced practitioners in any field possess knowledge which may not be conventionally articulated. They assert that practice is not merely the application of theoretical knowledge to instrumental ends (its traditional function in positivist epistemology) but a form of knowledge in its own right, a knowledge which might be called art, intuition, creativity or skill, all terms denoting a kind of knowing which does not derive from a prior cognitive operation. The extent to which such epistemologies have acquired legitimacy in research and teaching in medicine, education, architecture, management and so on, is evident from the proliferation of practice-orientated journal titles from academic publishers: Action Learning: Research and Practice (Taylor & Francis), Action Research (Sage), Action Research International (SCIAR), Educational Action Research (Taylor & Francis), Psychodynamic Practice (Taylor & Francis), Journal of Media Practice (Intellect), etc. Inevitably these developments are inseparable from the ways in which the production and transmission of knowledge are organised within institutions. Any shift in the perceived value of a particular category of knowledge implies a shift in the status of those who produce it. All the traditional disciplines are taught in institutional contexts where the producers of ‘pure’ knowledge (the core disciplinary ‘truths’) have historically enjoyed higher status than those who apply it instrumentally. In medicine, for example, the curriculum is not only organised sequentially (pre-clinical, then clinical) but also delivered in different places, with core knowledge (chemistry, anatomy, physiology, etc.) being taught in university medical schools, and applied skills acquired in teaching hospitals. Similar stratifications are found in mathematics, engineering, architecture, town planning, psychotherapy, management, education etc. In all these disciplines, even though pure and applied branches of the subject might be taught within a single institution or a single department, science-based knowledge is seen as the disciplinary foundation, and its acquisition not only precedes the acquisition of skills-based knowledge but is taught by different personnel. The division of labour which assures this arrangement is at the same time a hierarchy of labour, tacitly reflecting the hierarchy of different categories of knowledge. Donald Schön, in his classic work on cognition The Reflective Practitioner, describes universities as “institutions committed to a particular epistemology [which] fosters selective inattention to practical competence and professional artistry”. His description will resonate with practitioners in