Ringsfield Hall Mantle of the Expert

Ringsfield and MoE are currently looking at the possibilities for working together at training teachers along with their classes at the centre.

The Mantle of the Expert system (MoE) is an approach to education that is rooted in enquiry, community, and dramatic imagination. Children and teachers investigate aspects of the curriculum through shared, focused, and extended enquiry in contexts for learning and teaching that are purposeful, authentic, and meaningful to everyone. The classroom community supports and sustains the creation of imaginary communities where children learn collaboratively as they take on the role of experts and their clients. The dramatic imagination of children, apparent in children’s pretend play, is harnessed and extended through adult participation alongside children as they explore curriculum topics (.Taylor)

As a result of our ethos being made known in various places, Ringsfield Hall has for some years come to be the home of Mantle of the Expert’s residential training for teachers from beginners to Master’s level. This is a revolutionary approach to education developed by Dorothy Heathcote, a lecturer, teacher and the author of how drama can be used to deepen and extend any educational project. Heathcote has spent over 40 years developing her ideas, latterly as Senior Tutor at the University of Newcastle on Tyne. Her ideas have made those who control schooling look at how children learn best and what is the learning and teaching that go with it?

The training is run by Like Abbot and Tim Taylor. Luke trained for many years with Dorothy Heathcote, and Mantle of the Expert took off in this country when he became the Senior Lead Advisor for Essex Education Authority. This enabled him to put MoE into the framework of the National Curriculum in a whole school context in many cases, providing research opportunities and evidence.

In MoE Teachers engage their children in acts of the imagination that have deep and significant value to the emotional terrain using the imaginative possibilities and conventions that are opened up through drama, and of course play.