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The present dissertation explores student actors’ and their teachers’ coordination of text understanding in a theatre production – a two-semester process from page to stage in an upper secondary school in Sweden. With an interest in the collaborative work achieved in and through theatre education the research is realized against a background of the role of arts education and reading of literary texts in the neoliberal educational landscape that favors measurable effects of individual achievements. The overarching aim is to explore how text understanding evolves collaboratively as the participants transform drama text into stage text. This aim is pursued by investigating moment-to-moment contingency of unfolding social interaction in theatre activities grounded in a particular drama text. Analytically, such a focus is pursued by employing sociocultural and dialogical approaches to meaning making, creativity and learning. Data has been generated from ethnographic observation and video- and audio recordings of the participants’ staging of Molière’s The Affected Ladies, including the process from the first reading to the last performance. The unit of analysis applied to the data is tool-mediated activities, encompassing the participants, their interactions and the tools used. Three studies are reported through two articles and a licentiate thesis. The studies complement each other as the analytical work moved from ethnographic orientation into finer-grained scrutiny of talk- and action-in-interaction. The research design allows investigation of the micro-genesis of specific text understanding in relation to the overall transformation of a literary text into stage text, in which complexity of text understanding in artistic practice can be demonstrated. The results illustrate the situated, interactional ways in which the participants progressed from a position as newcomers to the drama text into a position of mastering the stage text. The findings show that anchoring text understanding in experiences in the material world developed the student’s perspectives on the text and expanded their action possibilities. They also show that students’ informal and playful role-playing provided the spaces necessary for appropriation of cultural and social interactional means that the students later re-used in rehearsal of scripted dialogue and in the stage text. One of the productive features was the dynamic, laminated interaction, including hybrid role-taking, in which substantial student agency surfaced. Such interaction supported collaborative realizations of meaning potentials in the situated habituation of characters’ manners. Stretched-out over the production period, the micro transitions of text understanding formed salient examples of emergent learning across formal and informal situations. There seems to be good arguments for doing more things with literary texts than ‘just’ reading them, in order to explore their inherent dynamics as layers of cultural meaning. To reduce learning arrangements to what seems efficient to reach measurable goals for the individual appears ill-judged considering the educational potentials of collaborative, creative, explorative and transgressive forms of learning illustrated in the present research.

A growing field of research shows that arts in schools have positive impacts on students, teachers, the whole school environment, and even extend to families and the community. The National Endowment for the Arts has also documented that childhood arts education is a leading contributor to a young person’s propensity for future attendance and participation in the arts. Yet, trend data shows that arts education is declining in public schools. Both school systems and arts organizations have a vested interest in young people receiving a well-rounded education which includes the arts. Both face challenges and possess unique strengths in facing the challenges. This paper explores the potential benefits of combining those strengths and questions how to do so in a deeper, more long-lasting way than existing partnerships. One alternative is considered: a partnership of a theatre for young audiences company embedded within a school system would produce a hybrid teacher-artist model, improving arts education while building current and future audiences for theatre. There are many ways to deliver arts education in public schools, and many ways to do so in partnership with arts organizations. This paper does not examine feasibility, but demonstrates that arts education would be improved through an embedded partnership by delivering theatre education with quality, equity and longevity. It also demonstrates a critical need for more attention, exploration and testing of how schools and arts organizations can create deeply collaborative partnerships, to permanently embed theatre, or any of the arts, in schools.

A theatre arts education is very important for our youth. However, within the last decade there has been a decrease in funding to support arts education from kindergarten through high school. This decrease negatively impacts the entire education system and subsequently it also has the potential to impact our society. A successful theatre arts education program teaches creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, discipline, and a strong work ethic. It is the binding agent that brings all the elements of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics together. What happens when these programs are no longer funded and disappear? What can today’s theatre artists and educators do to support a continuation of arts education while in the midst of budget cuts in our schools? This thesis, The Impact of Declining Arts Education Funding, will investigate these questions and will look into the cause of these budget cuts in order to find different solutions to combat this growing problem which will support a more productive society.

Dissertação de Mestrado em Arte e Educação apresentada à Universidade Aberta O objeto de estudo desta pesquisa centra-se no Teatro como Disciplina de Educação Artística: um projeto na Escola Básica e Secundária da Ponta do Sol, que durante dez anos letivos esteve em funcionamento no 3.º ciclo do ensino básico. A questão principal da pesquisa foi formulada da seguinte forma: – Qual é o significado atribuído pelos alunos da Escola Básica e Secundária da Ponta do Sol à sua experiência na disciplina de Teatro, entre 2003 e 2012? Esta pesquisa incide portanto num contexto educativo formal, descrevendo os aspetos de fundamentação, conceção, implementação, retroação e avaliação deste projeto com grupos de alunos que frequentaram a disciplina de Teatro, no período de 2003 até 2012. O trabalho empírico assenta numa metodologia qualitativa de ação-investigação, pós -facto, tendo como estrutura orientadora o modelo de Relação Pedagógica de Renald Legendre (1993, 2005). Esta metodologia permitiu-nos apreender e reconstituir as narrativas vivenciais das viagens artísticas e teatrais realizadas em contexto de sala de aula e extra sala de aula, com alunos/sujeitos de 7.º, 8.º e 9.ºanos de escolaridade. Esta narrativa foi construída, analisada e interpretada a partir de documentos, jornal de bordo, registos fotográficos, registos videográficos e entrevistas semiestruturadas, que permitiram a resposta à questão principal da pesquisa. Os principais resultados obtidos com a pesquisa destacam o contributo do Teatro para o desenvolvimento pessoal, artístico e cultural dos jovens, realçando também o sentido da relevância e participação desta disciplina nas práticas escolares. The object of study in this research is focused in Theatre as an Arts Education subject: a project in Ponta do Sol Elementary and Secondary School, which for ten school years has been running in the 3rd cycle of basic education. The main question of this research was formulated as follows: - What is the meaning given by students from Elementary and Secondary School of Ponta do Sol to their experience in the subject of Theatre, between 2003 and 2012? This research therefore focuses on a formal educational context, describing aspects of reasoning, design, implementation, feedback and evaluation of this project with groups of students who attended the subject of Theater, from 2003 until 2012. The empirical work is based on a qualitative methodology of action-research, post facto, having as guiding structure the model of Pedagogical Relationship of Renald Legendre (1993, 2005). This methodology allowed us to seize and rebuild the experiential narratives of the theatrical and artistic journeys executed inside and outside the classroom, with students / subjects from the 7th, 8th and 9th grades. This narrative was built, analysed and interpreted, based on documents, logbooks, photographic records, video records and semi-structured interviews that allowed an answer to the main question. The main results obtained from the research highlight the contribution of Theatre for personal, artistic and cultural development of young people, enhancing the sense of relevance and interest of this subject in school practices.

Arts education is a controversial topic in the realm of education reform: the need for it, the value of it, the teaching of it, which students receive it and at what point in their education are all areas of interest about arts education. New theoretical concepts about cognition and learning have spurred new research into creativity/divergent thinking/imagination which in turn has led to attempts to reform arts education. Ongoing research indicates that arts education may be far more important than previously considered. In order to promote changes in the perception of the value of authentic arts education in current educational practice, evidence that students who participate in authentic arts education can do as well or better on accountability measures of the core curriculum for reading, writing, mathematics and elementary science is needed. This evidence can also point out one effective method of developing creativity: arts education. If, as has been proposed, the survival of the human species has always depended on creative innovations and solutions to physical and social complexities, then encouraging the development and training of creativity through the process of education is perhaps the most important goal of the process. This study was conducted in a private school. The academic achievement of thirty-four participants in a theatre arts program were compared with thirty-three students who did not participate in the theatre program. The statistical analysis of the study consisted of two parts, the descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The study provided at least partial support for the enhancing effect of theatre education on student academic performance. Students who participated in the program had better academic performance in mathematics and general academic performance defined as the Total Grade Equivalent Score and the Total Normal Curve Equivalent scores produced by the Terra Nova standardized test than those who do not participate in the theatre education program.