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Ethnography and Education

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College hats or lecture trousers? Stage

fright and performance anxiety in
university teachers
a
Susie Scott
a
University of Sussex , UK
Published online: 05 Jun 2007.

To cite this article: Susie Scott (2007) College hats or lecture trousers? Stage fright and
performance anxiety in university teachers, Ethnography and Education, 2:2, 191-207, DOI:
10.1080/17457820701350582

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17457820701350582

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 Ethnography and Education
Vol. 2, No. 2, June 2007, pp. 191207

College hats or lecture trousers? Stage

fright and performance anxiety in
university teachers
Susie Scott*
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University of Sussex, UK

This article examines the experience of ‘stage fright’ in teachers in higher education, drawing on
the dramaturgical perspective from sociology. Interviews were conducted with 10 ‘novice’ and
‘expert’ lecturers, alongside focus groups with undergraduate students, to compare their
perceptions and expectations. The students defined a good lecturer as one who communicated
well and was friendly and approachable; this was not related to nervousness. The two groups of
lecturers reported different strategies for coping with stage fright, which can be broadly categorised
in Goffman’s terms as ‘cynical’ (written scripts, backstage rehearsals, and dressing up) or ‘sincere’
(acknowledging nervousness, viewing students as team-mates, and reneging perfectionism). There
was a general shift from cynical to sincere performances as teachers gained experience, suggesting
that while feelings of stage fright may attenuate over time, we can also devise more effective ways of
managing them.

Introduction
It has long been argued that social life is organised like a theatrical performance.
From the dramaturgical theory of Goffman (1959, 1967, 1971), to the ensuing
wealth of studies in the symbolic interactionist tradition (Becker, 1963; Rock, 1979;
Plummer, 1991), we learn that microsocial interaction inevitably involves identity
performance, characters, actors and their audiences. An oft-cited criticism of this
perspective, however, is that it over-emphasises the smooth flow of interaction and
focuses on co-operation rather than conflict (Meltzer et al., 1975). Aside from
studies of embarrassment (Goffman, 1956; Miller, 1996), little has been said about
what happens when performances go wrong, or when self-presentation is compro-
mised. The sociology of shyness (Scott, 2007) goes some way towards filling this
gap, pointing to the anxiety social actors feel in anticipation of certain interaction
contexts, and the dramaturgical dilemmas this presents. The present article
examines how this can affect one particular setting*the university classroom*in
/ /

the form of lecturers’ experiences of ‘stage fright’ (performance anxiety) before

*Department of Sociology, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9SN, UK. Email:
s.scott@sussex.ac.uk
ISSN 1745-7823 (print)/ISSN 1745-7831 (online)/07/020191-17
# 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17457820701350582
 192 S. Scott

teaching. Using data from a small scale, exploratory, qualitative study, I compare
these actors’ fears with the actual perceptions of their audience (students), and
question how realistic it is to anticipate conflict in this setting. The views of novice
and experienced lecturers are then compared, to explore how and why feelings of
stage fright might attenuate over time, as teachers learn new strategies of self-
presentation. I use the metaphor of clothing to illustrate the varying degrees of
continuity that teachers perceive between this role performance and their ‘real’ self-
identities. Do they feel as if they are taking on an entirely different character, dressed
up in an unconvincing costume (‘lecture shoes’ and ‘lecture trousers’), or can they
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incorporate the performance into their existing repertoire, donning the ‘college hat’
as a mere accessory?

Teaching as performance
The performative aspect of teaching is one that is often overlooked, and yet nowhere
does the dramaturgical metaphor seem more apt. On the one hand, Atkinson (2006)
argues that there are parallels between the role of the pedagogue and that of the
operatic director, insofar as they both aim to elicit and evaluate the performances of
others. On the other hand, teachers are actors too, playing their roles to an audience
of students: the activity is both a mundane part of their everyday lives and a
consciously contrived performance. In higher education, academics are under
constant pressure to perform their professionalism by appearing competent and
knowledgeable, however they might feel inside. Lecturing can be particularly intense
in this regard, because it requires teachers to adopt an ‘authoritative’ role
(Heron, 1989) with great social presence (Garrison & Anderson, 2003). Lectures
are delivered quite literally in a theatre, whose design and spatial layout represents a
hierarchy of presumed expertise: teachers stand upon a ‘stage’ to face their audience
of students, who gaze out expectantly from tiered seats. In the terms of Goffman
(1959), the lecturer moves from backstage (home or office) to frontstage (class-
room), and the curtain rises as they take the floor. Remaining under the spotlight for
an hour or so, it is the lecturer’s responsibility to ‘entertain’ their students with a solo
performance, which this audience can critically review.
It is hardly surprising, then, that under these circumstances, some teachers
experience stage fright: a fear of ‘messing up’ the show by forgetting lines or moves,
delivering them wrongly, or losing one’s place within the script, which results in
physical, mental or emotional symptoms of anxiety (Havas, 1973). This ultimately
suggests a fear of being ‘unmasked’ as the actor behind the character one is trying
to project (Aaron, 1986), and, thus, of disappointing the audience. As a form of
social anxiety, stage fright involves self-presentational concerns about one’s ability
to carry off the performance convincingly and create the right impression
(Schlenker & Leary, 1982; Marshall, 1994), coupled with a fear of being ‘exposed’
for one’s perceived incompetence (Scott, 2007). Novice lecturers, in particular,
 College hats or lecture trousers? 193

may be prone to what Clance (1985) calls the Impostor Phenomenon: a sense of
having been mistakenly or fraudulently appointed to one’s job, and therefore being
ill-equipped to do it.
This then begs the question of why, if people have a tendency for nervousness,
they would pursue a career in teaching? It seems almost masochistic to choose to
put oneself into situations that evoke such anxiety. The answer may lie in what I
have called the paradox of shy performativity (Scott, 2007): some people who are
chronically shy in everyday life take to the stage as performing artists, and thereby
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gain in confidence. Many famous actors, musicians and comedians have admitted
to feeling secretly shy beneath their extroverted stage personae; these include
Victoria Wood, David Jason and Michael Stipe. Others, such as Lawrence Olivier
(1982) and Barbra Streisand (Marchesani, 2001), have written frank accounts of
how they overcame the paralysing fear of stage fright to pursue their love of acting.
This suggests that there is something about performing that gives actors an
incredible ‘buzz’, and compensates for the fear felt beforehand. For shy actors, it
can also feel liberating to express aspects of oneself through characters that are
ostensibly ‘not me’. While teaching may lack the glamour and celebrity of
professional performance art, a similar emotional ‘high’ can be evoked when
classes run successfully.
However, this can only occur when feelings of stage fright are banished, and the
actor loses himself or herself in a role: it is difficult to feel elated and uncomfortably
self-conscious at the same time. In the terms of Hayman (1969), the most convincing
actors stand ‘inside’ rather than ‘outside’ the characters they are playing: ‘finding the
role in oneself’ as opposed to ‘finding oneself in a role’. This echoes the distinction
between two classic theories of acting: Stanislavski’s (1948) ‘Method’ of immersing
oneself in the character and Brecht’s technique of critically reflecting on it (Willett,
1992). Moreover, since teachers are projecting versions of themselves rather than
adopting fictional characters, they must also attend to matters of self-presentation
whilst on stage. The equivalent process in everyday life is shown by the distinction of
Goffman (1959) between ‘sincere’ and ‘cynical’ performances, which are defined by
the extent to which a social actor believes in the part that they are playing. We might
then surmise that the confident teacher is one who performs sincerely, blurring the
distinction between actor and character, whereas the nervous lecturer performs
cynically, struggling to convey the impression of competence and feeling fraudulent
inside. Stage fright occurs in this latter case, when one perceives a split between the
actor-person whom one ‘really’ is, and the character one might fail to convey. A
pertinent question, then, is whether the distinction between cynical and sincere
lecturers reflects essential differences of personality or just a process of ‘drift’ from
one role status to another (cf. Matza, 1964). In other words, is the teacher who
appears confident really such a ‘natural performer’, or simply one who has devised
new techniques of self-presentation?
 194 S. Scott

Methods
These questions were addressed through a small scale, qualitative study, based on
semi-structured interviews with lecturers and focus groups with students. The
research was conducted in the context of a PGCertHE course I was taking; this is a
postgraduate certificate in teacher training for new lecturers, offered by most British
universities and intended to encourage self-reflexive practice (Biggs, 2003). As such,
the sample was selected from the students I was teaching on a particular course, and
colleagues within one British university. Although this created an inevitable sample
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bias, some of the more experienced lecturers had taught at other institutions before
taking up their current posts, and in any case, one might argue that their comments
about teaching are generic, insofar as they related to concerns about addressing large
groups of students, pitching material at the correct level, and so on.
The focus group participants were nine undergraduate Sociology students who
had volunteered to take part; these were seven women and two men, all white and
aged, on average, 2023, although one mature student was 40. This reflects the
demographic profile of students taking Sociology degrees, although there was, of
course, a volunteer bias to this sample. The focus groups were intended to uncover
students’ perceptions and expectations of lecturers, in terms of confidence and
intellectual expertise, in order to ‘reality test’ the fears of new lecturers. Could
students tell if their tutor was nervous, and did this matter? Was it necessary to give
a flawless performance in the classroom to be perceived as a good lecturer? Using
focus groups also allowed me to get closer to the meanings and values held in
common by the students as a social group: as they knew each other well from the
course, they felt relatively at ease about talking to and challenging each other
(Kitzinger, 1994). The students were divided into two focus groups of four and five
participants, which were conducted in a university lecture theatre and seminar
room, respectively. They lasted one hour each, and I was involved as a facilitator of
the discussions.
The interviewees were divided into a ‘novice’ group of five new lecturers who taken
part in the PGCertHE course with me, and an ‘expert’ group of five more
experienced lecturers, who had been teaching for an average of 10 years and had
won prestigious teaching awards. The ‘novice’ group comprised three men and two
women, all of whom were white, middle class and aged approximately 3045. They
were interviewed just over halfway through their two-year course, in January to April
2006, and so had been teaching for an average of one and a half years. I knew them
through our shared experience of the course, in which many of us had confessed to
feeling nervous about teaching and expressed a wish to change. The ‘expert’ group
comprised four women and one man, with similar demographic characteristics, but a
wider age range, from approximately 3060. These interviewees taught in a range of
arts and science departments across the university.
The aim of the interviews was to find out whether feelings of stage fright
attenuated over time as lecturers gained in experience, or whether the alleged
‘expert’ group had simply devised better ways of managing the feelings. Raffo and
 College hats or lecture trousers? 195

Hall (2006) suggest that trainee teachers are an interesting group to study because
they undergo such a rapid identity transition, but we can also consider the ways in
which teachers are socialised into professional identities in the longer term (Flores &
Day, 2006). Accordingly, respondents were asked to reflect upon their experiences of
anxiety in the classroom and any coping strategies they had developed over time.
I conducted individual interviews in order to explore in depth the meanings each
person gave to their experiences, and to allow them to reflect on and account
for these experiences in their own words (Spradley, 1979). The interviews lasted
around 40 minutes each and took the form of ‘conversations with a purpose’
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(Burgess, 1984), whereby a loose schedule of topics was adapted to suit each
interviewee (Rubin & Rubin, 1995). The interviews and focus groups were
conducted in accordance with the British Sociological Association’s code of ethical
practice (BSA, 2006), and were tape recorded and transcribed verbatim. All of the
names in this report are pseudonyms.

Lecturers’ experiences of stage fright

All of the lecturers had experienced performance anxiety about teaching at some
stage in their career, and this is arguably normal. As Roberts and Ivall Smith (2002)
suggest, it is not only students, but also teachers, who must learn to manage their
emotions in the classroom; the emergent ‘teaching self’ is shaped by the institutional
culture in which they work, and has a profound effect upon the actor’s self-identity
(Freese, 2006). However, by its very nature, stage fright makes individuals feel as if
they alone are ill-equipped for the role, and so it is difficult to brush the feelings
aside. My interviewees spoke of classic symptoms of anxiety, as for example Katie
recalled, ‘I can remember being very hot and sweaty . . . it’s [still] a little bit heart-
thumpy as I walk down the corridor towards the room’. This nervousness related to
both the content and the style of their delivery. In the first case, lecturers worried
about whether they were communicating the material effectively, insofar as this
affected their ‘Me’, the image of themselves through the eyes of the other (Mead,
1934). As Patrick said, his priority was to ensure that students were ‘not just going to
be looking at you, thinking ‘‘I don’t understand what this guy’s saying’’’. Amber
concurred that she
worried about them being disappointed in me for not being able to set the record
straight and present things in a clear, comprehensible way to them. They’ll come out
thinking, ‘This lecturer’s just making us more confused’, you know, ‘we’re better off
without her!’

Secondly, the lecturers were concerned with managing the practical logistics of the
sessions, insofar as this affected the impressions they ‘gave off’ (Goffman, 1959)
under the spotlight. Could they avoid fluffing their lines, get the timings right and
play their role convincingly, or would their anxiety ‘leak’ out through embodied
symptoms of incompetence (Goffman, 1971; Scott, 2007)? Katie admitted that
before entering the classroom, she would
 196 S. Scott

have to go to the loos and have a quick look in the mirror, to check I haven’t got spinach
in my teeth, or something wrong with my hair, or my skirt tucked in or something! ’Cos
you realise that any sort of minor hitch is going to be open to scrutiny.

During the performance itself, Jack would worry about such questions as
‘Am I obviously flustered?’ and doing all the gabbling and waving my arms and
sweating? (laughs) . . . so yes, I think there’s an element of ‘Will they believe that I know
substantially more about it than they do, and therefore have some right to stand up at
the front and talk about it?’
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This comment also reflects the ‘Impostor Phenomenon’ described above, and was
echoed by other interviewees. As I have noted elsewhere (Scott, 2007), shy actors
may feel more comfortable when situations are controlled and predictable, for there
is less perceived risk of exposure and humiliation; conversely, the requirement to
improvise makes social performances more worrying. Hazel said that she dreaded
being challenged by a student with a question, ‘especially when I can’t answer
immediately . . . I wonder if they’re going to think I’m stupid’, and Ellen agreed that
when she first started teaching, ‘I was trying to keep a very tight control over the
proceedings . . . the most important thing [was] that I didn’t look an idiot!’ Joanne
summarised the ‘impostor’ feeling clearly when she recalled that, ‘my worst fear was
not having enough to say, or not having anything to say, or someone asking me
something that I didn’t know the answer to’.
But how realistic are these fears? There is much debate about what constitutes a
‘good’ teacher, and this may be perceived differently by teachers and their students.
While subject knowledge and relative expertise are clearly important, it is easy to
overestimate the extent to which students question these markers of a teacher’s
credibility. Constructivist theories of learning (Biggs, 2003) suggest that educational
experiences are shaped more by what the student does to construct their own
knowledge base, having been provided with the raw materials. Similarly, theories
such as Kolb’s (1984), of adult experiential learning, suggest that learning is a cycle
of digesting information, interpreting and using it, and then reflecting on its
implications. If students see themselves involved as interactive team-mates rather
than mere audience members, they may have more modest expectations of the
lecturer: as a facilitator rather than a director of their learning.

Students’ perceptions and expectations

The first thing that became evident from the focus groups was that students do
experience the classroom in theatrical terms, and perceive lectures in particular as
performances. As Max (FG1) explained, the Goffmanesque ‘setting and scenery’ of
the lecture hall, with its symbolic spatial divisions between teachers and learners, can
reinforce the assumption that the teacher is a knowledgeable expert who can deliver a
smooth performance:
the environment of the lecture theatre makes it*/you’re sitting here, the big audience,
and then there’s one person standing at the front, (Others: Yeah) and telling you as
 College hats or lecture trousers? 197

you’re taking it in*/whereas*/I think that makes you feel a bit like ‘we are the crowd’
and ‘you are the God’. (laughter)
Interestingly, this seems to be something that students enjoy, insofar as it forms
part of their own social identity work. Going to university and playing the ‘student’
role can be an important rite of passage, and students want to feel as if they have
participated in the drama of college life (Becker et al., 1968). Perhaps there is
something about the ritualistic aspects of attending a formal lecture*seeing one’s /

lecturer ‘in character’, being introduced to some new ideas and coming away with a
set of notes or a handout*that is oddly comforting, and makes the student feel as if
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they have undergone a pedagogic transformation.

Consequently, we might expect that any nervousness on the part of the lecturer
would be interpreted by students as a sign of incompetence, casting doubt on their
ability to teach. As Hargreaves (2000) argues, the emotional experience of teaching
can be intense, reflecting presumed or implicit relations of power between teachers
and students. However, it was reassuring to find that this was not the case, for what
these audiences felt was empathy for the performer, and a willingness to overlook
their flaws. As Goffman (1956) argued, displays of embarrassment tend to evoke
‘repair work’ from team-mates that keeps the individual in face, preventing
disruption to the interaction order. Thus, when I asked the students how they felt
towards a lecturer who was visibly flustered, a typical response was:
Sympathy, really, You just feel really sorry for them*/I sit here thinking ‘aaah!’ Cos I
know how hard it is, from doing presentations. (Linda, FG1)

Furthermore, the students did not seem to equate stage fright with incompetence.
When asked to describe a ‘bad’ lecturer, they referred not to nervousness, but to
teachers being too wrapped up in their own theoretical ideas, pitching the lecture too
highly and using poor visual aids*and these were things of which even the most
/

highly esteemed professors were accused. Meanwhile, in answer to the question,

‘What makes a good lecturer?’ they were unanimous in identifying two key criteria:
the ability to explain material clearly, and a willingness to make time for students
outside of the classroom. As Jenny (FG2) put it,
I don’t think I personally expect all that much, or maybe as much as you’d think, but you
know, just to be able to understand basic ideas, and then to be able to do more on a topic
[by myself].
With hindsight, it seems obvious that students would be less concerned with
critically evaluating their lecturer’s performance than with their own instrumental
need to understand the material, in order to be able to write their essays and pass
exams. As McKinney (2005) reports, students are primarily concerned with
managing their reading and assignments, and seek out positive experiences with
teachers. Moreover, they are often preoccupied with non-academic events in their
personal lives anyway (Noble & Torsten Lund, 1951). However, as new lecturers, it
is easy to forget this and to overestimate the extent to which students question our
ability. While we may anticipate great humiliation if we cannot answer a technical
 198 S. Scott

question or forget the finer points of a theory, students do not expect infallible
wisdom from us or expect a poised and confident performance.
Furthermore, students seem to be aware of the distinction between a lecturer’s
staged persona and the actor behind that character. Although they like their tutors to
remain in role within the theatrical context of a lecture, in seminars, office hours and
spontaneous encounters outside the classroom, they appreciate being able to ask
questions, seek guidance, and discuss ideas informally. In these contexts, the
respondents said they liked to catch glimpses of the ‘real person’ behind the
character who taught them, but, at the same time, they remained slightly in awe of
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the lecturer as belonging to another, academic world.

Without wanting to harbour delusions of grandeur, this attitude is something akin
to the reverence with which fans regard celebrities during staged or unstaged
encounters (Ferris, 2001). On the one hand, there is a fascination with the mundane,
everyday aspects of the ‘person behind the persona’, whilst on the other hand, we like
to keep our celebrities on a pedestal, safely contained within another world. Thus,
one focus group considered whether students liked to see their lecturers in character
or out of it, and how much social distance they preferred to keep from them. What
was the best impression for a lecturer to create?
Linda: Oh, friendly and approachable, definitely. I always really like it when they talk
about their lives outside of this [academia], cos I find it really interesting. When I’m
sitting here listening [in lectures], I’m always wondering what they’re like as people, you
know, in real life, and what they’re like outside of this.
George: I disagree. I think it’s better when there is that distance, cos I want to be able to
think of my lecturer as someone knowledgeable, someone who’s an expert, not just one
of us. I think respect is a big thing*/I want to be able to respect them.
Deborah: Yes, I like to keep a little bit of distance*/not too much, but it’s easier when
there is some degree of formality.
Helen: Yes, I always think of them within that role, as the lecturer, and I think I’d find it
funny if*/I don’t really think of them as being like one of the students!

‘Novice’ lecturers’ coping strategies

The lecturers reported a number of techniques they used for dealing with stage
fright, and there was a distinct, although not absolute, difference between the types
used by novice and experienced teachers. These can be understood in relation to
Goffman’s distinction between ‘cynical’ and ‘sincere’ performances, respectively.
The cynical actor keeps a Brechtian distance from the part that they are playing,
aware that it is merely a performance; there is a clear boundary between the character
one attempts to project and the actor whom one ‘really’ is inside. Meanwhile, the
sincere actor is completely immersed in their performance, believing in the part that
they are playing so much that the boundary between character and actor becomes
blurred.
Looking first at the novice lecturers, we find that they view teaching with a
fatalistic cynicism, which exacerbates their stage fright. Finding themselves ‘within a
 College hats or lecture trousers? 199

role’, in Hayman’s terms, they feel out of their depth, and doubt their ability to carry
off the performance convincingly. As a fraudulent impostor, the best that one can
hope for is to ‘pass’ undetected, concealing the real self beneath this virtual identity
(cf. Goffman, 1963). Consequently, novice lecturers see teaching as a precarious,
intimidating feat of impression management, in which their main concern is to avoid
being ‘found out’. They cynically surmise that however nervous they might feel
inside, as long as they can appear poised and confident, they might fool the audience
into believing them. These actors’ coping strategies are focused on controlling the
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stylistic aspects of their own performances and the impressions they give off within
the classroom: if they can give a smooth and polished presentation, the students will
infer that they are knowledgeable experts.
Perhaps the most commonly reported technique from these interviewees, and
certainly one that I have used myself, was to over-prepare one’s material before a
teaching session. As outlined above, this helps to reduce feelings of dramaturgical
stress by making it easier to control and predict the situation. By following a basic
‘script’ of lines and moves, these actors can avoid ‘improvising’ most of their
performance, which circumvents the risk of exposure and humiliation. For example,
Amber confessed that she would stay up very late the night before a lecture, writing
and rewriting her PowerPoint slides to ensure that she delivered a polished
performance:
I really want to be well prepared, make sure I know exactly what and how much I
intend to cover in a presentation or in a lecture. I try to anticipate the questions; I try
to make sure I know the background material of what I intend to present to my
audience . . . if there are any specific problems that I intend to give out during a
workshop or a lecture or whatever, I want to make sure that I really know how to solve
them myself . . . if I am that well prepared, then I can usually cope, because I can stay
calm and keep my cool.

Related to this was a second technique of conducting ‘backstage rehearsals’ to perfect

the delivery of scripted lines. For example, Jack said,
when I think I’ve got an idea of how it’s going to flow, and the sequence of slides, the
sequence of points, verbally, then I would take myself off into the kitchen and use the
dining table, and stand up and talk . . . [or] give the presentation in the mirror.
Even Ellen, who was an ‘expert’ teacher in most regards, said that she still felt
nervous about giving formal presentations. She had devised a form of backstage
rehearsal to control the practical ‘moves’ of her performance, particularly to avoid
exposing her anxiety through the leakage of non-verbal symptoms:
I can’t pick up a glass without my hand [shaking] . . . I mark on my script where I can
actually change the PowerPoint [slide], and at that point I’ll drink, because I know
people aren’t looking at me; they’re looking at the screen. So you see I’ve worked it out;
I have this wonderful ploy now!

A third coping strategy was to dress in smarter clothes than normal, and carry
other ‘props’ that give the impression of professionalism. Wearing the ‘costume’ of a
 200 S. Scott

lecturer can form part of the mental preparations that actors go through to get
themselves into character, and it seems to reduce feelings of performance anxiety.
Perhaps by donning the attire of competent professionals, we feel that we are leaving
to one side our nervous ‘real selves’, which allows us to perform as if we are the
characters we are playing. I have used this strategy myself, and it was frequently cited
by the respondents. Jack’s remarks were typical:
I do think of it a little bit as a performance, and I do tend to dress one notch smarter
than I would on any other day. So a slightly less scruffy pair of jeans, and a pair of shoes
rather than trainers, and a shirt . . . I used to wear a jacket and trousers.
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Hazel also said that ‘dressing up’ helped her to feel more confident, although she
suspected that it had no real effect upon her students’ learning:
It makes me feel more confident to dress up . . . on a lecture day I would wear my new
trousers, that I hardly ever wear (laughing) . . . my ‘lecture trousers’, and my ‘lecture
shoes’ . . . I try and look a bit more professional.
These strategies of preparing backstage and getting oneself into role seem to work
as a placebo effect: if teachers believe that they are well prepared and look the part,
then they will feel more confident about delivering a successful performance. As
Amber put it, ‘the better prepared I am, the less aware I am of myself as a performer.’
In some cases, this results in an elaborate set of superstitious rituals that have to be
conducted backstage before the actor feels prepared to go before the audience: there
is an underlying worry that if these rituals are not carried out correctly, the
performance will go wrong. For example, Jack confessed,
I seem to have a little routine of making sure everything’s in the box . . . my laptop and
my adaptor for the data projector, and power supply, and something to write on in case I
need to make some notes. And things like making sure I go to the toilet beforehand
(laughs) and that sort of thing.

‘Expert’ lecturers’ coping strategies

Turning now to the more experienced university teachers, it was apparent that the
coping strategies they used reflected the Goffman (1959) attitude of ‘sincere’
performer. This is someone who believes so earnestly in the part they are playing that
they regard it as an extension of their ‘real’ self, blurring the boundary between
character and actor. Sincere actors find the role within themselves (Hayman, 1969),
drawing on their own life experiences to authenticate the performance, and see self-
consciousness as a strength rather than an impediment. Whereas the novice lecturers
felt that they were fraudulently acting out a character, the experts saw this ‘teacher’
identity as an expression of who they really were. They did not think of their stage
personae as something separate from their ‘real’ selves, for the two were intertwined.
As Ellen explained,
I think they’re part and parcel of the same thing, because you can’t be a teacher if you
don’t know who you are.
 College hats or lecture trousers? 201

Paul agreed:
I suppose you do put on, if you like, a university hat, but I think your character still
comes out through it, in the way you do it.
Many of the ‘expert’ lecturers said that they now rarely experienced stage fright,
but that it did make an occasional appearance. As Halmos (1994) reported, the
feeling can persist throughout a long teaching career, despite gains in experience and
ability, and so perhaps it is just something that has to be managed emotionally. The
experienced lecturer may then not try to ‘overcome’ their stage fright, but simply
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accept it as a normal stage in the process of preparing to perform. For example, some
respondents said that although they still felt nervous ‘backstage’ in the moments
leading up to a teaching session, upon entering the classroom, these nerves would
disappear. This makes sense insofar as social anxiety anticipates what could go wrong
in a situation, rather than reacting to what actually takes place. Thus, providing they
could immerse themselves in the ‘teacher’ role during the performance, blurring
character and actor, the expert lecturers were able to forget how they had felt before.
As Katie said,
. . . it’s a bit like going on stage. Like you can be really nervous, but as soon as you get
thrust through the door in front of them, especially in lecturing, where you have to keep
up your, keep your monologue going*/that doesn’t really give you much time to think
about being nervous, so it tends to be ok once I’m there.
This contrasts with the way in which novice lecturers remained detached from
their roles throughout the performance, and were constantly aware of what might
go wrong next. Perhaps novice lecturer can incorporate the anxious parts of their
actor self into the character they are playing, but not the rest of their more
confident self, while the expert lecturer manages to put their whole self into the
character, acknowledging but bracketing out the part that had been nervous. This
reminds us of the paradox of shy performativity, which might explain why people
persevere as artists, musicians, comics and teachers, despite the initial feelings of
stage fright. Somewhere in between the statuses of novice and expert lecturer,
there must be a turning point at which one realises that stage fright can be
managed, and here we find some overlap between the two groups’ experiences. For
example, Patrick was a novice lecturer, but was nonetheless gaining confidence in
teaching seminars. Although he thought of himself as a shy person in general, he
would feel his nervousness disappear as he entered the classroom, making the
transition from backstage to frontstage. The shy actor was subsumed beneath the
character thus:
there’s just something in me that just kind of does it, when I get into the room. And my
nerves kind of*/they just go, really . . . even though I am nervous, I think I come across
as quite confident . . . it seems quite natural. And yet my nerves seemed quite natural
before it as well, so it’s a contradiction really.

The first coping strategy reported by this group was somewhat paradoxical, and
suggested again the ‘sincere’ attitude of the expert teacher. Marie and Ellen both said
 202 S. Scott

that, rather than attempting to eradicate the feelings of stage fright, they would
publicly acknowledge them. They viewed nervousness as a normal and inevitable
part of teaching, and felt that by giving themselves permission not to feel confident,
they were able to manage the feelings more effectively. Marie explained how this
technique of ‘owning’ the anxiety ironically allowed her to put it aside:
a strategy that works for me, is to say, ‘Ok, this is who I am and this is how I am, and I’m
feeling nervous about this’. . . . I put it out there, and it helps me manage it, and I can
move on from that.
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A second strategy was to circumvent the risk of stage fright by redesigning the
format of a teaching session so that it became more informal and interactive. Those
who taught seminars, workshops and computer labs (both novices and experts)
reported that these settings demanded much less of a contrived theatrical
performance than the traditional lecture, and so were much less stressful. It is
acceptable in a seminar, for example, to talk in a less polished manner, invite lively
debate, make jokes and create an atmosphere of informality: it is actually quite
difficult to make a performative blunder because the format is already rather ‘rough
around the edges’.
This was a technique that could be performed either cynically or sincerely,
depending on the teacher’s level of experience and contextual features of the
situation. In the first case, making classes more interactive served to shift the
spotlight away from the teacher and onto the students, which helped to reduce
feelings of self-consciousness. For example, Ellen said that despite her expertise, she
would still sometimes feel nervous about meeting new groups of students, and dealt
with this by asking them a question: ‘because then they’ll talk to each other, [and]
everybody’ll be looking at that person who’s answering the question, so I can quickly
have a drink.’ Similarly, Jack was a novice lecturer who nevertheless found that
teaching in computer labs, when he could walk around the room giving ‘private’ help
to individuals, was much less conducive to stage fright:
because it’s very informal and one to one, and quite practical, I don’t worry so much
about that . . . it isn’t a public thing in the same way.
When performed sincerely, this technique was intended to put the students, rather
than the lecturers, at ease. For example, Paul said that he used humour to make the
sessions more enjoyable, which created a rapport with his students. With a similar
aim, Ian broke down his two-hour lectures into several smaller tasks, involving group
work, discussion and practical exercises. He felt that this narrowed the social distance
between himself and the students, demystifying the idea of the ‘expert’ teacher, and
helped them to feel more involved than they would in a traditional lecture. Ian did
not see this primarily as a strategy to disguise nervousness, but rather felt that it gave
the students a better learning experience:
as lecturers, we think that if we’re not standing there spouting for forty-five minutes or
an hour, we’re not doing our job. And that’s a load of old nonsense.
 College hats or lecture trousers? 203

Ellen agreed, reflecting on how her attitude towards her own role in the classroom,
and with it her level of confidence, had changed over the years. Her comments echo
those of Blase (1986), who argued that students can have a ‘humanizing’ effect upon
teachers’ identities:
it’s not just about you showing off in front of a group of people how much you know.
Which I think, for me, for a while, it was. Now it feels more like we’re sharing this, we’re
sharing how we find out about this.

Whereas the novices would anxiously over-prepare, planning every line and move in
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their performance, the experts were more confident about letting classes unfold
‘naturally’. They saw their students as collaborators in staging the performance:
dramaturgical team-mates rather than an audience of critics. Consequently, the
expert teachers felt confident about letting students take control of ‘directing’ the
performance at times (cf. Goffman, 1959; Atkinson, 2006), for example by raising
questions that went ‘off at a tangent’. Teaching then became less of a precarious solo
performance and more of a team performance, in which every actor had some
expertise to contribute. Improvisation was, thus, seen as something to celebrate
rather than to dread, as Paul explained:
some of the best sessions also, are ones where a student will come up with something
different. An idea, or sometimes a slight tangent, but that is relevant.

Joanne held a similar view of the teacher-student relationship as a collaborative,

‘negotiated order’ (Strauss, 1978). Her account of this echoed both Ellen and Paul,
as she explained how this confidence had developed with time and experience:
[Now I can] allow it to be a bit more interactive and bit more fluid and dynamic, and be
prompted more by things they might say or questions they might ask . . . it doesn’t
become so much of a ‘me and them’ thing. So it’s more of a ‘we’re sitting round
discussing this in a group, and here are some things I’d like to ask . . . ’ I think my
perception of my role’s probably changed quite a bit, in terms of having to be all-
knowing . . . it’s not all down to you; it’s also down to the students putting something in.

A final, and related, strategy adopted by the expert lecturers was to adopt a more
flexible approach to organising the content of their teaching sessions. They ran
sessions that were much more dynamic and activity-based than the traditional,
scripted lecture, and felt more confident about improvising their performances. Ian
described this using the metaphor of a ‘toolkit’: he saw teaching as a matter of
developing a repertoire of practical skills, increasing knowledge of the subject matter,
and pedagogic understanding. This enabled him to gauge the way that students were
responding in each class and adapt his material accordingly:
It’s an all round package, I feel*/that’s what gives me confidence in teaching . . . [Know-
[Knowing] how students learn, in terms of the tricks of the trade . . . one of your tools
should really be to be able to change*/not direction, but to be able to change the
teaching and learning activity.
 204 S. Scott

An example of this came from Katie, who explained how she would prepare for a 50
minute seminar:
I would often have, say about three or four things that I would ideally*/that it would be
good to do. Which might be hearing what everyone’s read, talking about any problems
or interesting points from the lecture, answering these three to six questions in groups,
looking at a quick newspaper article and discussing that . . . but I’ll also have a hierarchy
of importance in my mind. So I’ll think, ‘If they’ve got loads of questions about the
lecture and they’re coming up with some good ideas from the questions, we can drop the
article; that isn’t really important. Or if they’ve been to the lecture but not done any
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reading, we can just concentrate on the article and the questions.’

In teaching, then, as in everyday life, the experienced actor uses repertoires of skills
to deal with the contingencies of interaction. Schütz (1972) argued that we approach
social situations with a stock of background, ‘recipe knowledge’ about how they
normally unfold, which provides the basis on which to improvise the finer details of
behaviour. Perhaps it is this kind of confidence that allows the novice lecturer to
become more adept at managing stage fright: rather than trying to execute their
performance flawlessly, the successful lecturer has more modest expectations, and
can select ‘tools’ or ‘ingredients’ to enhance their basic ‘recipe’. This may not result
in a word perfect delivery, but it promises to be more effective in helping students
learn.

Conclusion
University teaching is theatrical in its appearance to both lecturers and students, but
they interpret its meaning differently. New lecturers, in particular, may experience
‘stage fright’ before teaching, fearing that they will not be able to give the desired
impression of competence, and that their audience will judge them harshly. However,
the focus group data here suggested that students do not have such high expectations
of their lecturers, and feel sympathy rather than hostility towards those who appear
flustered. Rather than expecting a polished, smooth delivery, the students favoured
lecturers who could convey ideas clearly, and who had a friendly, approachable
nature; they appreciated the difference between the teacher as an actor and the
character he or she plays. Thus, while a small dose of stage fright might help lecturers
get into role, the level of anxiety they feel is disproportionate to the actual risk of
criticism.
The lecturers had devised a number of techniques for coping with stage fright,
which could be broadly categorised according to their levels of experience. Following
Goffman, I suggest that novice lecturers tend to perform ‘cynically’, feeling
somewhat out of their depth and critically reflecting on their (in)ability to play the
role. They feel self-consciously aware of the discrepancy between the characters they
play on stage and the actors they really are inside. The cynical teacher dreads being
exposed as an ‘impostor’, and deals with this by controlling the performance as much
 College hats or lecture trousers? 205

as possible: writing scripts, rehearsing backstage, dressing up in the right costume

(‘lecture trousers’) and carrying the right props. There is an almost superstitious
belief that if they manage to adhere to all of these contingencies, they can avoid
detection. Meanwhile, expert lecturers perform ‘sincerely’, being so immersed in the
parts they are playing that they blur the boundary between character and actor. They
may wear a ‘college hat’ when at work, but it is a part of their own self-identity
equipment. As such, they accept stage fright as part of the ‘teacher’ identity, and find
ways of managing it by demystifying the process of teaching. Sincere coping
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strategies include acknowledging one’s nervousness, making sessions more informal

to reduce the social distance between teachers and students, and being flexible in the
organisation of one’s material. These lecturers feel confident because they know that
they have enough tools in their repertoire to be able to adapt the session to the
students’ needs.
However, the distinction between cynical novice and sincere expert is not
absolute. Points of overlap could be found in the data, for instance, when novices
spoke of their shy performativity (Patrick) or their resource ‘toolkit’ (Ian). It was
also the case that some expert lecturers still felt occasional stage fright, when faced
with a new group of students (Katie) or an audience of peers (Ellen). This suggests
that the two groups do not represent essentially different types of person, but rather
socially negotiated roles, to which all teachers have access. On the one hand, they
may ‘drift’ between the two according to the demands of specific teaching contexts,
whilst on the other hand, the movement may occur over time, with the benefit of
experience. Thus, to return to the original research question, it seems both that
feelings of stage fright can attenuate over time, and that lecturers find more
effective ways of dealing with it. The shift from cynical to sincere performer is an
intriguing aspect of teaching, which resurrects intriguing questions about the
parallels between the dramas we see on stage and those we encounter in everyday
life.

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