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Hong Kong preschool teachers have long been portrayed as ineffective reform implementers entrenched in the Confucian educational practices. This study, conducted in an award-winning drama partnersh...

This response to COVID-19 introduces a Hong Kong drama education project that aims to support teachers' and children's return to school after the easing of COVID-19 pandemic. A pilot workshop has b...

This reflection will offer insights into the methodology of process drama as a tool for intergenerational connection, co-intentional pedagogy, and playfulness for children collaborating with older ...

The teaching of drama in Sri Lanka is presently only conducted by the traditional lecture method, which is not conducive to preparing students for the modern globalised world. To ascertain whether teaching by process drama techniques improved creativity in secondary school students, a non-randomised control group design with an intervention group, a control group and an active control group, was conducted. This article describes the perceptions of teachers in the intervention group who taught process drama. We describe the obstacles which the teachers experienced when teaching process drama and the challenge to bring changes to drama education in Sri Lanka.

This paper focuses on the professional development of primary school teachers using drama to develop creative writing across the curriculum. Sponsored by the United Kingdom Literacy Association, the two-term project involved four teachers working with theatre educators to use process drama. The collaborative approach was supported by learning conversations, which took place after each lesson, involving Higher Education academics. Data were collected by academics observing the lessons, taking notes during learning conversations and undertaking interviews with the teachers in order to capture experiences of the landscape of education as they were encouraged to cross boundaries of practice. Data were analysed using Clarke’s model (2009) of teacher identity and this demonstrates how three of the four teachers resisted boundary crossing as a result of the landscape of performativity, which is seen to prohibit child-centred approaches. One teacher was able to cross boundaries and this is seen to be a result of the substance and telos of his identity. His boundary crossing emphasised the theatre educators’ reluctance to change their self practices - the paper concludes by highlighting the importance of all partners being involved in practice, learning conversations and data collection in order to create the ideal conditions for boundary crossing.

In this article, two mid-career drama education researchers use duoethnography to reflect on Professor Dorothy Heathcote’s legacy in Australia and New Zealand. Drawing on personal artefacts and a s...

This article offers a discussion of two interactive museum installations, ‘Remembering the Children: Daniel’s Story’at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and the main exhibit at the Humanity House Museum in the Hague, Netherlands. Both are examples of what I term self-guided dramas, taking the viewer/participant on an interactive journey through which they will experience a story or event that follows a dramatic narrative structure. These exhibits take as their subject the experiences and perspective of a protagonist forced into refugee status and turn the act of witnessing into a performative engagement for the museumgoer.

This article explores the interplay of the ‘live’ experience of drama learning in the classroom and curated digital content on learner meaning making, collaborative creation and subjectivities. It examines a case study conducted in an inner-city secondary school in Sydney, Australia, as part of a larger innovative international collaborative drama exercise entitled ‘The Water Reckoning Project’ (http://www.water-reckoning.net) which focussed on sustainability education. Data collected and analysed included ethnographic observations, video documentation and digital curation of students’ creative work, focus groups, and pre- and post-surveys. Findings of this study reveal the importance of the aesthetically charged, embodied experience of drama as the key driver of learning when integrating drama with digital technologies. This unique project enabled students to critically and creatively engage with significant real and fictional contexts, as well as issues of local and global relevance.

Dorothy Heathcote’s perspectives concerning ‘role-shifted discourse’ within what she latterly called ‘Model 1: Drama used to explore people’ exhibits a strong alignment with the didactic purposes o...

For some time, I have been thinking about the concept of drama literacy and what it might mean to be drama literate. I have to admit to some discomfort about the term. Perhaps, that is because ‘literacy’ in the traditional English teaching sense is often reduced to the discrete teaching of the component parts of the field in isolation, e.g., phonics or grammar. In drama, this might equate to teaching the elements of drama in isolation, or the ‘paint-by-numbers’ approach often applied to the use of dramatic conventions within process drama. So, the term ‘drama literacy’ causes some ambiva-lence and discomfort. However, it is frequently the case that what makes us feel uncomfortable or uncertain is the same thing that is most worth exploring. Hence, drawing on the expert knowledge in and of our field, this article begins a conversation about what drama literacy might mean.

Narrative and story play a central role in cognitive and cultural development of children. In this article, I explore a narrative-centred pedagogy used to address the teaching and learning concerns of my pupils from Helena infant school, Zimbabwe. I document how, as a novice teacher, I deployed narrative learning in my teaching of English as a second language and I discuss both story and narrative as a methodology that offers a curriculum relevant for my learners. As well as outlining the features of narrative as constructivist learning, the article draws from African education theories in order to argue for narrative pedagogy as a method that is very responsive to African oral-based teaching and learning approaches and behavioural styles. I explore how our enactment of story and narrative pedagogy in the classroom offered an opportunity for adequate education and language acquisition in my class. The fundamental hypothesis is that by focusing on narrative and story-centred learning we can foster ...

In 1979, Gavin Bolton posed a question that is still fundamental to the development of process drama: ‘Is it possible to steer a course that does not come down in support of any particular point of view but causes children to examine and re-examine their own views and values?’ Inspired by Bakhtinian theory, Brian Edmiston developed a solution to this in the 1990s: the principle of ‘dialogic sequencing’. Aiming to escape the conflict between relativism and absolutism, we present an alternative to Edmiston’s approach, based on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of ‘operational closure’: operational sequencing. The principle is presented in the context of the previous debate between Edmiston and Joe Winston, and its application is demonstrated and assessed in our prototype process drama, Fertility Miracles.

International audience; This paper tests a new method of teaching vocabulary to young second language learners through the medium of drama, specifically the effect of drama teaching techniques on vocabulary acquisition among primary school learners of Welsh. Vocabulary Acquisition via Drama (VAD) is based on principles derived from both process drama and communicative and task-based approaches to language teaching, and involves three phases: pre-drama, drama and post-drama activities. The research design involves two experimental and one control group, and a pre-post-retention test format on three measures of vocabulary acquisition: picture naming, sentence formulation and improvisation tasks. Results show a beneficial effect for VAD. The discussion section of the paper addresses the potential contribution of this approach to teaching second/foreign language vocabulary.

This paper reflects on issues arising from a research-informed learning and teaching project intended to enable student teachers of Modern Languages to experiment with the use of unscripted ‘process drama’ in their classroom practice. The idea that process drama could become part of the language teacher’s repertoire has been in circulation for some time [Kao, S. M., and C. O’Neill. 1998. Words into Worlds: Learning a Second Language Through Process Drama. Edited by G. Brauer. Stamford: Ablex]; yet there is little evidence to suggest that it has become widespread in schools in England. The aim of the project was to enable student teachers to acquire drama teaching techniques which they could incorporate into their own practice in order to enrich the learning experiences with their students through creative and imaginative use of the foreign language in the classroom. The research was undertaken by two teacher educators on a secondary initial teacher education programme in a university in England. T...

‘Je voudrais un cafe au lait’ you nervously utter to your classmate, who listens carefully while wearing his best haughty French expression. Role play has long been popular in Additional Language (AL) classes for practising and rehearsing daily conversations. Subsequently other forms of drama education have garnered interest from the Language learning community for their ability to provide purposeful and engaging contexts for learning. This paper critiques the work of two language educators, who have adapted Cecily O’Neill’s The Seal Wife for an AL learning context. It critically examines the two dramas focusing upon several key features of process drama and discusses potential issues which may arise from borrowing and altering existing drama works.

Literary criticism of children’s literature asserts a one-directional view of power, with the adult writer constructing the child reader. Using ‘aetonormativity’– adult perceptions of normal patterning children’s literature – this paper explores what happens to aetonormativity when children co-construct publishable fiction (Nikolajeva 2010). We analyse drama and creative writing workshops run with 8 to 11-year-old children by Story Makers Press, a University-based publishing company representing marginalised children’s voices by involving them in writing processes. Our analysis shows how whilst we were interested in developing the story of the protagonist, the children drew upon their “funds of knowledge” (Moll 1992) to develop a gaming narrative. The effect was twofold: we constructed a “hybrid” text (Bakhtin 1986) which, unlike GameLit, explores the relationship between the protagonist and gaming; and a discourse counter to negative adult portrayals of gaming. As the children became invested in the fiction, they became effective editors and revisions were taken on board by the editorial team. The paper concludes that involving children in writing children’s literature can result in texts which disrupt aetonormativity by representing lived experiences. The paper also acknowledges that that further research is needed into how other children read and respond to texts co-constructed with children.

This paper argues that process drama is a productive pedagogy with multiple affordances for multiliteracies. We describe an exploratory study in which two teachers from a rural New Zealand primary school used process drama pedagogy in the literacy programme. Analysis of the initial and exit teacher interviews, lesson transcripts and transcripts of the teacher-researcher meetings demonstrated the power of using process drama. When the teachers used process drama, we found that students developed their text user, meaning maker and text analyst practices through greater engagement, more detailed writing and an enhanced depth of thinking. Importantly, students who often struggled to make contributions in the class were included. In order to realise the potential of process drama pedagogy for multiliteracies, we found that the teachers needed a great deal of support to build their confidence to use process drama due to their limited professional experiences of the arts. This study encourages further us...

Process drama is a highly engaging participatory form that is capable of generating rich opportunities for learning. This is especially the case when the drama experiences are built upon pretexts that are aesthetically charged and when the work itself is structured and facilitated by educators with a deep understanding of its true nature. However, in spite of a strong research base that supports its value both in the drama classroom and beyond, a number of myths relating to its use and value appear to be limiting its application. In addition, while many drama teachers make use of the strategies associated with process drama, far fewer offer their learners opportunities to engage in the cohesive and sequenced experiences that this form requires. These myths and misunderstandings are explored within this keynote, while examples drawn from three different learning contexts are used to demystify this important form and provide greater clarity around its nature, purpose, application and value.

This article examines how one educator embraced Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) while using drama to scaffold learning about Dr. Seuss's The Lorax for first-grade students. This learning event is interpreted with reference to the ZPD and the New London Group's pedagogy of -multiliteracies. The author asserts the importance of considering both old and new pedagogical -theories when approaching present practice.

This article examines how the training in and use of Drama in Education (DiE) affects the development of teachers’ professional skills. The article draws on data from broader empirical qualitative research about the impact of DiE on personal, social and professional development of Greek secondary school teachers. The research was carried out using focus groups and focused semi-structured interviews with 27 secondary school teachers who had all been trained in DiE and had already integrated it into their instructional practice. As the findings clearly show, DiE has been decisive in the development of teachers’ professional profiles. Since its initial use, DiE has strengthened their professional identity, improved their instructional and organizational skills, enhanced the achievement of learning goals for all stakeholders – teachers and learners alike – reinforced their belief in the necessity of lifelong learning, and helped them develop cooperation and effective interaction in and out of the school envir...

The aim of this article is to provide primary teachers with effective ways of engaging in drama processes to affirm diversity and to promote inclusive education in regard to cultural and linguistic diversity. It is informed by, and a response to, the ‘cultural and linguistic’ section within the recently revised version of the Drama Australia Equity and Diversity Guidelines to which both authors contributed. It examines some ways in which recommendations and advice provided within the document can be enacted in primary schools through the use of drama education methods, in particular dramatic storytelling and process drama. Through their work the authors have found that drama techniques and processes can be highly effective in developing understandings of cultural and linguistic diversity within primary schools. By way of illustration this paper also focuses on the findings of a recent PhD project conducted by one of the authors, which focused on the education of pre-service primary teachers in the...

For more than four decades, process drama has been acknowledged as critical, quality pedagogy especially in improving English and literacy outcomes. However many primary teachers do not use drama for any substantive activity within their classrooms. The School Drama Project (SDP), a program developed in 2009 through a partnership between the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and the Faculty of Education and Social Work (FESW), University of Sydney, was established in response to these concerns. The program is dependent on a partnership not just between STC and the FESW but also between an educator and a teaching artist working towards student academic achievement in this instance, English and literacy outcomes. It also seeks to develop primary teacher’s professional knowledge of and expertise in the use of process drama with the literature. This article reports on the pre- and post-findings of the 2012 SDP involving 39 teachers, more than 960 students from Early Stage 1 (5 year olds) to Stage 3 (11–12 ...

For me, it seems obvious that in the youth theatre education of today, there is a need for embodied alternatives for conventional paradigms of acting, such as the predominance of delivering the lines and concentrating on the supposed feelings of the character, perceived through analysis of the play. To seek alternatives means challenging dominant discourses around youth theatre education as well as acting in general. Contemporary forms of performance such as process drama and devising have proved to be remarkable options for conventional theatre making, but they need to be reinforced by embodied, workable, and ethically sustainable methods of acting/actor training—that is, realization of embodied pedagogy within the practice of acting in youth theatre performances. What should this kind of embodied acting pedagogy look like? In which terms could it operate? In this article, I shall discuss embodiment in student actors’ methods of acting at an upper secondary school level, and present one application of em...

For teachers to embrace process drama as a teaching strategy, they may need support. This study chronicles more than 3 years of a researcher working with teachers interested in learning how to incorporate process drama into their social studies and science curricula. The codes that emerged were a tremendous enthusiasm for process drama, scheduling difficulties, attempts to increase teacher ownership, and assessment.

This article describes the drama-based research strategy ‘researcher-in-role’, developed during the two-year Connecting Curriculum, Connecting Learning project, based in New Zealand. First, a definition of researcher-in-role is offered along with a survey of relevant literature. Then the evolution and implementation of the strategy within the project is described, and the importance of clear signalling and implications for notions of ‘informed consent’ are explored. Next, the paper shares the data generated where researcher-in-role was used during learning conversations with students. Responses to the researcher-in-role are compared to data generated by a traditional researcher in the same three classrooms. It is shown how the researcher-in-role strategy resulted in data of a different, more complex discursive quality than that generated by the traditional researcher. The data arising, and the strategy itself, are considered through the lens of positioning theory. It is argued that the researcher-in-role ...

Museums have been employing theatre activities in their educational programmes to outreach youngsters for more than three decades all over the world since the late 1980s; however, it is still quite a new experience for eastern and south-eastern Asian countries. In the past 3 years, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan started to use different forms of museum theatre in educational programmes to represent their multiple histories and cultural identities through various projects and showcases. Among these praxes, process drama have been most widely employed by teacher–facilitators for youngsters to reconstruct their own interpretations of historical events and narratives through chosen and rediscovered historical fragments, often neglected and even forgotten in the past. I argue that these process drama projects help the youngsters to reconstruct their own ever-changing cultural identities of these places which are under enormous change day by day in their current postcolonial and postmodern conditions. I also t...

This article explores the outcomes of a research project conducted in a classroom of ten year olds by their class teacher. Conducted over a period of three months, this qualitative case study was aimed at gaining a better understanding of how drama pedagogy can affect science learning in a middle school classroom. The study concluded that drama pedagogy, when employed in science learning, can have a dynamic effect on the learners. Three major themes were identified: engagement (including fun; the use of relevant and reflective learning situations; active and inquiry-based learning), empowerment for students through choice and freedom; and the development of a sense of belonging. The findings also suggest that a range of conditions are required for optimal learning which include: teacher efficacy; a change in the role of the teacher; the development of a well-structured drama driven by a sufficient level of dramatic tension; the building of a safe environment and the effective use of props.

This article examines drama in relation to girls' education, and considers some of the ways in which drama might be applied in schools to challenge limiting hegemonic narratives about gender and support the emerging understandings and performances of femininities of adolescent girls. It reports on case study research conducted with a Year 9 Drama class (14–15-year olds) at an Australian girls' school, where curriculum-based drama was used to investigate the complexities of twenty-first century girlhood. The study aimed to deliberately create work for/with/by girls, where in a supportive environment girls could use their girl know-how to inform the drama. Working simultaneously both inside and beyond the curriculum, the project used Shaun Tan's book The Red Tree as a core focus for a girl-centred process drama. The research study examined the ways in which the girls' gendered knowledge was both dynamised and problematised through the dramatic processes, as the drama invited them to explore issues and inter...

This article explores key aspects of the life and works of Dorothy Heathcote, a cultural innovator and ‘shape-shifter’ within the realms of drama and education. In the wake of her passing, it is timely to reflect upon her life and work and to contribute to interpreting her legacy. This is one of two articles that focus on the work of Dorothy Heathcote and her former student and colleague John Carroll. Both articles use a socio-cultural framework of creativity to develop case studies that profile their personal characteristics and their achievements and consider the impact and relevance of such. This article focuses on Dorothy Heathcote and draws on interviews and conversations with family, friends and colleagues who knew Heathcote as well as published work by and about her. This case study profile reflects on Heathcote's background and personal qualities, her domain development, her collaborators and others in the field and the nature of her innovative contributions. It concludes by considering he...

This article reflects on outcomes of a research project conducted with fourteen to twenty-year-old urban students in Chelsea, MA, in which process drama was utilized as an approach to teaching U.S. labor history and collective action. The project addressed the Ludlow Massacre, a coal strike in Ludlow, CO, in 1914, as an exemplar of the dynamics typical of worker–owner conflicts in the past, and moved into present-day labor situations. The process drama experience was part of a larger research project designed to facilitate students' understandings of the ways in which their own experiences of discrimination are reflected in pervasive inequity at the societal level, and to facilitate the acquisition of skills that would allow them to become agents of social change in those dynamics. Outcomes discussed include the effect of the process on students' emerging understanding of unequal power dynamics as they relate to immigrant status in the past and present, the role of collective action in fostering social ch...

This article explores the intersections between drama and digital gaming and the educational possibilities for literacy of both. The article draws on a model for the educational uses of digital gaming and three case studies from the Australian Research Council funded three and a half year project, Literacy in the digital world of the twenty first century: Learning from computer games. This model theorises the scope of the possibilities for literacy outcomes from the usage of computer games. The article describes how the model works, and then applies the model to drama education, specifying some new ways of thinking about the literacy outcomes from drama education. Process drama is theorised as the creation of text-in-action.

In this article the author draws on classroom video recordings and student commentary to explore ways in which the kinaesthetic elements of a process drama provided the context and the space for beginner additional language learners to engage with intercultural language learning. In the light of student comments in interviews and questionnaires, she justifies the need for learners to experience the bodily aspect of communication as part of authentic, multi-modal interaction and hence a crucial element in intercultural literacy. Drawing on Kress's concept of interest as a motivation to make meaning, she suggests that learner interests are aroused by dramatic conventions whose multi-modal nature affords students access to multiple ways of participating in the narrative. She argues that a more conscious integration of the kinaesthetic mode into the additional language classroom can stimulate, scaffold and authenticate the verbal participation of beginner learners. Finally, given the students’ overwhelmingly ...

For more than 30 years drama has been promoted as a valuable teaching tool for language learning. Recent research results have reinforced this position. However, these and other earlier studies reveal that the overall success of the work is dependent, at least in part, upon the artistry of the teacher and the quality of the pretext materials used to drive the dramatic action. This article interrogates the notion of artistry in relation to drama pedagogy and second/additional language learning. It argues that where the application of drama strategies takes place in isolation, in an ad hoc manner or without a keen understanding of how dramatic forms, conventions and elements interact with one another, the work can become purely functional. In these situations the teaching becomes artless, resulting in approaches that do little to add value to existing practices or to the depth and quality of the experience for learners.

In drama-oriented English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms, teachers often ask questions to shape the story, unveil the details, sequence the scenes, create a beneficial linguistic environment to elicit student output and promote meaning negotiation in the target language. This study investigates how instructional goals were achieved in an intensive summer course with a group of Taiwanese college students. The course aimed to help students with beginning to low-intermediate oral proficiency improve their overall English competence through various drama activities. Eight question functions were used to analyse the classroom data. The analyses show that the teachers raised inform questions extensively to seek new information and content contribution from the students to build up drama scenes. To help students cope with linguistic insufficiency, the teachers also used pseudo, confirming, and clarifying questions to remodel the students’ segmental, inaudible or ungrammatical utterances. Different questi...

This paper describes a research project designed to find out what happens when process drama strategies are applied to an advanced level of additional language learning. In order to answer this question, the author designed and facilitated six process drama workshops as part of a third-year course of Italian at a university in Brisbane, Australia. Results indicated that through the medium of role, authentic contexts and dramatic tension, participants in the study were able to engage in the target language producing more spontaneous communication. Results also revealed that the affective space generated by process drama was beneficial in reducing a degree of language anxiety in some of the participants.

This article documents the authors’ reflections on a teacher professional development programme conducted in 38 Hong Kong primary schools on the teaching of English through Process Drama. The authors draw upon the views of school principals, subject panel head teachers, English teachers, students and parents in focus group interviews to examine the learning and teaching experiences at the heart of the Programme. These reflections focus on how Process Drama can enhance second language acquisition by accommodating more affective factors in learning, by stressing creativity and by shifting the didactic discourse in the classroom to one that is more authentic and less threatening and which encourages increased amounts of student talk. The authors describe how, based on the focus group interview data, a piece of Verbatim Theatre was created and used as a stimulus to elicit deeper reflective responses to the Programme. They also reflect upon the level of understanding of Process Drama's complex pedagogy and art...

David Buckingham, in a recent article in Media, Culture, and Society (2009), calls into question many claims made by those who inquire into creative educational methods. This is to say that he contests the idea that inquiry into a creative event can yield insight into anything but the socio-cultural complexity of the event itself. What then might scholars inquire into when exploring what applied theatre does? This article looks at two specific moments from a process drama facilitated for use with a group of teacher candidates at a Midwestern U.S. urban university and posits that what might be explored is how certain discourses are made visible through the utterances that emerge within an applied theatre event.

By refocusing traditions preoccupied with stimulating critical reflection, the article seeks to contribute to a rekindling of a socially oriented drama teaching and to add to the reservoir of teacher reflection in the field. A passage of a drama by Dorothy Heathcote is analysed, in which the theme of pollution is the concrete starting point, whilst the governing idea is concerned with a concept of politics: ‘to discourse about why it is that some people seem by right to be able to decide what shall happen to others’ (Heathcote, letter to author, 2007). But the main focus of the article is to investigate the notion of distancing in drama education; the analytical lens is rhetoric theory, and the method of analysis is a close reading of a three-minute video sequence. This article discusses aspects of distancing that can be regarded as rhetorical devices, thus regarding distancing as a more composite aesthetic device than it is commonly considered in drama teaching, where it is seen primarily as a tool for p...

Improvised texts are developed for varied purposes; however, little attention has been given to the way improvisations are spontaneously structured. In this article, a playwright function framework designed for the analysis of a wide range of improvisational contexts is described. This analytical framework draws on an earlier model originally developed to understand the collaborative structuring occurring within preadolescent dramatic play—now extended to make it more applicable across a wider range of improvised forms, including process drama and long-form improvisation. Drawing upon the work of key theorists and practitioners from the field of improvisation, the original framework grows from four playwright functions to nine. Discussion about the value and possible applications for this framework is also included.

This paper begins by raising a question about the purposes of research in drama in education and reflects on aspects of discourse in the past concerning how and why writers about drama in education choose to describe its aesthetic processes. Whilst it recognises the debate about drama in education's place within the umbrella of applied theatre, it goes on to raise particular concern about a current tendency within some quarters of drama in education to explain itself in terms drawn from beyond the discipline, arguing that this is a damaging trend. Finally, the paper urges the field to continue to develop its own explicative vocabulary.

When we speak of quality in drama education, we apply different educational and aesthetic criteria. For example, improvised drama practices such as process drama, are closely associated to John Dewey's constructivist philosophy. What makes a drama qualitatively ‘good’ within such a framework differs radically from criteria that are familiar in conflicting philosophies, such as empiricist epistemology and classicist aesthetics. Dewey offers a cultural theory that does not separate knowing in arts from knowing in education. This implies a link between constructivist epistemology and a corresponding aesthetic theory, which produces a specific set of qualitative criteria. By reporting from a case of drama teaching and research, I examine how constructivist thinking affects the aesthetic, education and research in ways of structure and approach, design and aims. Experiential forms of drama are valued as potential models for constructivist education and a corresponding aesthetics. From the perspective of the ag...

This paper illustrates research on the effects of ‘process drama’ to enhance intercultural awareness for learners of Italian as an Additional Language. To validate the potential synergy between ‘process drama’ and intercultural language learning, I created six ‘process dramas’ to explore some contemporary Italian socio-cultural issues, as part of a third-year course of Italian at an intermediate/advanced level of proficiency. I experimented with manipulation of aesthetic distance to allow participants to de-centre and empathise with the characters and situations, to trigger an intercultural awareness process based on experience, reflection, analysis and action. The findings confirm that strategies of manipulation of distance crafted within a ‘process drama’ approach can be successful in enhancing intercultural awareness in an Additional Language learning context.

The research reported here brings together three settings of conceptual and methodological inquiry: the sociological setting of socio-economic theory; the curricular/pedagogic setting of educational drama; and the analytic setting of ethnomethodolgically informed analyses of conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis. Students from two schools, in contrasting socio-economic areas, participated in drama lessons concerned with their future. The study found that process drama allowed them to overcome the rhetoric and abstract nature of the theorising of controversial issues by allowing them to become actively involved in testing theories, developing ideas, and finding solutions to controversial problems through their work in the dramatic context. Within this paper three aspects of the study are drawn out for particular attention: the settings for such an inquiry, the varying kinds of talk found in drama lessons, and the key contrasts and similarities between the two research sites. These th...

We live in a world of normalised violence. New Zealand has high statistics of child abuse and child deaths and in 2003 had one of the highest child-death rates in the OECD. To take serious note of these statistics is to recognise that children in many New Zealand classrooms are likely to have experienced violence directly, or to have witnessed it, or to know that one of their friends or family members has experienced violence at home, school or work. Process drama theorists have stressed the importance of placing empathic imagination and creativity at the centre of learning if we are to build a ‘pro-human society’. Some drama theorists assert that ‘a sense of social justice and equity’ should take empathy beyond catharsis – it should inspire people into action. In process drama, a careful and subtle sequencing of conventions enables participants to move between spectator and actor, and towards transformative social action. This article traces how carefully sequenced conventions in the Everyday Theatre dra...

The centre of this article is a critical description of the development and production of Everyday Theatre's performed pretext, called replay@timeout, including a detailed account of the devising process and the programme's content. The programme is located within the history and traditions both of theatre in education (TIE) and process drama, as well as contemporary practice in applied theatre. The author demonstrates that the principles and practice underlying all the decisions, aesthetic, pedagogical and logistic, consciously sprang from, and occasionally differed from, these interwoven and complementary traditions, in a complex blend. The opportunities given to the team, and some of the strengths of the programme, are identified, along with some of its constraints, weaknesses and casualties. Together with the company's director, the author identified the programme's essential aesthetic and pedagogical principles, and these then had to be realised through negotiation with the company since the programm...

The rationale for this study is that students’ views on their own learning play an integral part in their educational journeys. Students’ voice has been gaining recognition as a vehicle for cultivating ownership of learning, restoring classroom dialogue, and developing strategies for school improvement. These benefits echo the pedagogical purposes of drama education. This study examines how a group of primary students in Hong Kong relate drama pedagogy to their learning in two curriculum subjects – Chinese Language and General Studies. Working with a group of primary students introduced to drama as a medium of learning for the first time, the researcher seeks to find out what aspects of the drama programme is seen by the students as pertinent to their learning in these subjects. The students generally found the Process Drama units more closely related to the learning in General Studies than Chinese Language. Factors influencing their views include the learning focus of the Process Drama work, students’ be...

The purpose of this study was to describe a group of fifth grade students as they engaged in process drama during their social studies class. The author found that students who engaged in process drama learned to combine texts to understand and create new texts. As they became engaged in the material, students collaborated with each other and became leaders in class while honoring the cultures they studied in their social studies textbooks.

Dramaturgy is an expression of how a drama or performance is composed, staged, and how it might involve the audience, or the class, as participators. The idea behind coupling dramaturgy and epistemology is that dramaturgy also expresses a view of knowledge, and that different dramaturgies therefore can be tied to different views of knowledge and learning processes. My main focus in this analysis is to reveal possible divergences in their praxis as a function of the relationship between dramaturgy and epistemology.

The National Project to Counter Stigma and Discrimination was established by the New Zealand government in1997. The Project recognised that people with a diagnosis of mental illness are marginalized and excluded from full participation in society. The Mental Health Foundation was contracted to provide workshops for mental health service providers to shift workplace attitudes and behaviours that were discriminatory or stigmatising. This thesis used a case study approach to capture and evaluate the significance and nature of the transitory form of process drama in three workshops I facilitated in largely Maori communities in the far north of the North Island. The principles of reflective practitioner research informed the use of research tools, data collection and analysis. This research focused particularly on reflective strategies that occurred inside process drama work and the way in which meaning was constructed in that context. The central research question asked: 'In what ways does process drama work to assist people to reflect on their attitudes and behaviours associated with mental illness?' This raised a secondary question: 'What potential is there for a model to counter stigma and discrimination that uses process drama as a central strategy?' This thesis posits a new model for understanding the nature of reflection in process drama. The mimetic notions of the fictional and the real as discrete and defined entities should instead be seen as permeable frames of existence that on occasions collide and collapse into each other. The double paradox of process drama is that, having created an empathetic relationship with the roles taken, we purposefully structure distance so we can then deliberately collapse the distance to create deep moments of reflection. I suggest a more accurate term to describe reflection in process drama is refraction. Refraction acknowledges that, rather than clarity, process drama seeks ambiguity: instead of resolving issues it seeks to further problematise and complexify. The tension of working with a democratic and open-ended art form towards a pre-ordained end as part of the project is closely examined. The impact of performative rituals and proto drama processes as part of the context of working in Maori settings is also explored. A three step model for countering stigma and discrimination is formulated and workshopped. The content of the model is based on an analysis of research undertaken within an anti-racist context, and models that have informed similar mental health campaigns. The form of the model is process drama. An analysis of the workshops demonstrated that the first model developed was limited in its effectiveness. Instead, participants should engage in repeating cycles of generating and investigating images. This leads to the development of what I have termed the Spiral Three Step Model. Although the effectiveness of the Spiral model is not tested in this research, it became apparent that the workshops based on this structure provided opportunities for participants to consider and reflect/refract deeply on their workplace's attitudes and behaviours.