Drama in Education

7/28/2019 Drama in Education

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The Importance of drama in education

Chapter One presented an overview of an attitude that is still prevalent in many schools

in the Algarve, highlighting the need to redefine the position of the teacher in the

classroom and stressing why drama should be considered as a complementary form of

pedagogy in this redefinition.

This chapter will argue for the importance of drama throughout our lives, analysing the

reasons why it should be preserved in key stage one environment, presenting different

learning methods as meaningful to learning and understanding, comparing the nature of

drama in education in key stage one.

The meaningful themes are drawn from learning methods, arts philosophy, philosophy

and drama in education and they will seek to provide insight into what the application of

drama has to offer education in key stage one.

The role of drama as part of our process of explaining the world has to do with the need

we all have to interpret and give meaning to what we are experiencing.

The world is an unknown place and we try to make sense of it through the application of

various strategies. For example, we use imagination to relate to the world using

metaphors, categories, values and contexts.

Vygotsky (1979) showed how important the imagination is for the mental development

of the child, and how make-believe play is very important in giving meanings to things.

In fact, young children often have difficulty in separating imaginary situations from real

ones. During the process of growing up, imaginary situations take on different purposes

and become subject to different rules and greater demands.

This study focuses on the use of imagination in our process of explaining the world, as

well as the regular use of imagination through drama. Let us consider the example of

students learning three basic competences – reading, writing and arithmetic –



A child knows nothing and the process of growing up is to fill that nothing with

symbols, roles, different contexts and using language in different situations, while

experiencing a changing society.

In the context of the above argument, it is important to stress what Bruner (1991), Bond,

(1996) and Vygotsky, (1979), all say about the importance of roles, actions, stories and

contexts, in our process of growing up:

“For stories define the range of canonical characters, the settings in which they

operate, the actions that are permissible and comprehensible (…) As we enter more

actively into the life of a culture around us, as Victor Turner remarks, we come

increasingly to play parts defined by the „dramas‟ of that culture. Indeed, in time the

young entrant into the culture comes to define his own intentions and even his own

history in terms of the characteristic cultural dramas in which he plays a part …”

(Bruner, Haste, 1987, p. 91).

These concepts are used to present a picture of how human development is directly

linked to the “bricks” from which drama is built: stories, roles, contexts, sets, language

development in different situations, questions, symbolic systems, understanding the

surrounding world, and make-believe as the source of so many meanings.

According to Bruner and Haste, children were seen as isolated beings in “mapping” the

world through the major stages of development after birth with regard to cognition. This

study, however, underlines the importance of relating the cognitive and cultural aspects

that place the understanding and interpretation of the world in “… an appropriate,

shared social context …”( Bruner, Haste, 1987, p. 1).



“A number of researchers have demonstrated the importance of collaborative activity in

enhancing problem-solving ability. They have observed the role of language and

interaction in exploring possible solutions. What in fact happens in such interactions is

that the child‟s own cognitive approach to the problem is challenged, either by peers

directly or by parents or teachers „scaffolding‟ understanding through pacing problem -

solving process.”

(Bruner, Haste, 1987, p. 8).

In this study, the term “understanding” will always be connected with drama. Therefore

understanding something through the medium takes the form of an external response,

which, in turn, stems wholly from social and cultural factors. “Understanding”

something in education is normally taken to mean acquiring knowledge in relation to

situations, contexts, people and attitudes. When we understand something, we are able

to relate particular information to broader concepts. “Understanding” is, thus, always

positioned in an external world and has to do with experiments based on “self”.

“The word „understanding‟ only makes sense in public context. This becomes clear

when we ask how we know that someone has „understood x‟ because we can only

properly answer that question by observing how they act and by listening to what they

say.” (Fleming, 2001, p. 61), “It is the understanding which can not be abstracted from

the context in which it finds expression.”

(Fleming, 2001, p. 62)

Gardner (1995) maintains that any sort of rehearsal or performance can be illustrative

of whether someone has “understood” something – especially drama that can be

considered as a response to or a reflection of any issue. „„Understanding‟ something

through drama where, “… we can view education as a constant process of refining and



deepening, seeing things from new angles, making fresh connections …” (Fleming,

2001, p. 62).

The above arguments sustain the importance of the use of drama as a complementary

form of pedagogy. A complementary form of pedagogy that will complement and

enhance the learning that actually takes place in many classrooms in the Algarve.

“To declare oneself against the institution of the three Rs in the schools is like being

against motherhood or the flag. Beyond question, students ought to be literate and

ought to reveal in their literacy (…) “What is missing are not the decoding skills, but

two other facets: the capacity to read for understanding and the desire to read at all …

it is not the mechanics of writing nor the algorithms for subtraction that are absent, but

rather the knowledge about when to invoke these skills and the inclination to do so

productively in one‟s own daily life”

(Gardner, 1995, p. 186/187)

This underlines that understanding is a basic skill that needs to be maintained and

developed in cultivating the additional skills we acquire as we grow, the ones we need

in our striving to cope with the world around us. It also underlines that we only

understand something, if we desire to know and give meaning to knowledge.

According to Bond (1996) and to Freire‟s pedagogy, (1993) there cannot be knowledge

or understanding, if people are dependent on ideology and do not take a critical position

towards authority. This is not to say that rebellion or inappropriate behaviour is

permissible, rather that children cannot be educated as passive citizens. Again,

imagination will be in the centre of the desire to know and understand knowledge.

In Chapter One, drama has traditionally been viewed in schools as something useless

and trivial, something very dangerous for ideology – in exactly the same way as



imagination. During many years, in Portugal, imagination and drama were seen as

something subversive, something that was hidden by those who never let their

imagination die, like artists, writers, singers. Nevertheless, the majority of the people

were passive, leading a routine life and wishing to live as quietly as possible.

“Many adults have ceased to wonder because they feel there is no time for wondering

… Many adults have never had the experience of engaging in wondering and reflecting

that somehow made a difference in their lives. The result is that such adults, having

ceased to question and to reach for the meanings of their experience, eventually become

examples of passive acceptance that children take to be models for their own conduct.”

(Lipman, Sharp, Oscanyan, 1980, p. 31).

According to Edward Bond, who indeed defends the imagination versus alienation, this

kind of adult behaviour is the reflection of a non-regular use of imagination that allows

us to continuously ask questions preserving the child inside us. Given the fact that

many generations in Portugal, failed to regularly use the imagination, in schools and

failed to use drama, we ended up with stagnation in respect to the usage of drama,

within other areas of the curriculum. Bruner (1996) provides us with an illustration in

the context of one model of pedagogy, long used in Portuguese classrooms, a model

that, “(…) presumes that the learner‟s mind is a „tabula rasa‟, a blank slate … More

important is this view‟s assumption that the child‟s mind is passive, a receptacle

waiting to be filled. Active interpretation or construal does not enter the picture.”

(Bruner, 1996, p. 56)



This argument then extends into the realm of how school teachers, and how humans

learn about the world. Education should not be about predetermined structures centred

on the teacher as a single point of reference:

“(…) knowledge is not an abstract, isolated subject-based discipline, but is based in

human action, interaction, commitment and responsibility”

(Bolton, 1998, p. 177)

In addition, it is important to note that on the basis of predetermined structures centred

on the teacher as a single point of reference, it is likely that children will find it difficult

to adapt to a classroom environment that clash with “the luggage” they bring with them,

from the first years of their lives.

“What will happen in school cannot be predicted exactly in any given case. Recent

insights into the process however, reveal how difficult it is for most children to master

the agenda of school, particularly to the extent that its mode of operation clashes with,

or is irrelevant to, biases and constraints that have emerged during the first half decade

of life.”

(Gardner, 1995, p, 104)

This seems to prompt many questions: why does the curriculum of Key Stage One so

often separate children from their reality, from the world where they also learn? Why is

it that academic goals that give priority to acquiring limited skills and preparing

children to overcome different levels are regarded as indicators of excellence?



“The language of school is remote from daily experience, favouring abstract terms and

concepts and entailing formulaic exchanges between teacher and student. Meanings are

often defined in technical ways and there is considerable metalanguage – talk about

talk.”

(Gardner, 1995, p.134).

Since 1990, Dorothy Heathcote has underlined that the mode of teaching practice was

failing, and yet we still find this preoccupations in education methods. Many educators

in the Faculty of Education in Faro use Freire‟s pedagogy to underline the importance

of a different stance of the teacher in the classroom. The elementary school teacher, key

stage one, should adopt a critical position, a position centred on transformation –

transformation through more dialogue about complex issues, issues explored in a more

collective way, a way that challenges responsibility and reflection about learning and

understanding.

Therefore, in the classroom, teachers should use a complementary form of pedagogy,

which has to do with:

“(…) lived experiences, meaningful and useful (...) An open system will allow the

students and their teacher in conversation and dialogue to create more complex orders

and structures of subject matter and ideas than is possible in the closed curriculum

structures of today.”

(Fleming, 2001, p. 28)

The principal contention of this study is that the creative mind of children is always

looking for the unexpected and new, and these two aspects receive nourishment in “the

present moment”, that drama creates. Drama is about something happening now.



Children have the chance to be in a laboratory, to experience real situations, “… without

the burden of future repercussions”. (Johnson, O‟Neill, 1984, p. 104)

The present moment is the best way to deal with many different moments of all kinds,

the present moment being part of an adventure that can lead to any place, any time, any

language, any context and any role. Moreover, adventures are, by definition, always

new and uncertain.

“… we are not born with an awareness of the future: such awareness is what adults

construct out of past experiences and verifications. Children have little future to count

on; they only know that the present makes sense or does not make sense, on its own

terms (…) adventure, never free of risk and delightful uncertainty, is what the child‟s

reveries suggest life ought to be.”

(Lipman, Sharp, Oscanyan, 1980, p,9 - 10)

The present moment that children create in their story of the world can be explored as

well through drama and become the same laboratory of questions, doubts, hypotheses,

answers and experiments. According to Freire‟s pedagogy, (1993) we should all look

for meaning in our knowledge. Meaning comes from problem posing, and education

must offer more knowledge through experience than through discourse alone.

“The great strength of drama as a learning medium is that it allows students to learn in

the way that is most natural to them – in the context of situations and stories and

happenings that they recognize as lifelike”.

(Ball, Airs, 1995, p. 55/56)



From the beginning, we are all dealing with stories, roles, different contents and sets.

From the above arguments, it could be emphasised that the use of drama as a

complementary form of pedagogy must require a new stance from the teacher.

“ They may need to alter their teaching style gradually, so that pupils can adapt to new

approaches, and they will no longer be able to adopt the familiar teacher stance of

being the “one” who knows. They must be prepared to build on the knowledge and

experience which pupils bring with them to the work, and they must value their pupils‟

contributions to the lessons more than their own”

(O‟Neill, Lambert, 1982,p21)

A redefinition in education is also supported by those who criticised fragmented

knowledge, which is not the case in drama as a complementary form of pedagogy. The

interaction between contents (interaction between different areas of the curriculum),

extended beyond a single lesson, even though the duration of the work naturally does

not imply a precise outcome or a specific presentation, the constant questioning, the

problem – poser and problem-solver, and respect for group work, shows that children are

motivated to acquire knowledge from such activity. As demonstrated in Chapter One,

through the analysis of the questionnaires, the actual teaching practice, showed

inconsistency, and a low level of knowledge regarding a different concept of

methodology in education, which was working other areas of the curriculum through

drama.

In our first “play”, we bring together all areas of knowledge. The story has a place or

several places; it contains things of different shapes and sizes. It contains a text, lines,



people or animals in those places. It contains movement, gestures, and expressions.

Above all, “play” is dependent on a context in which anything can happen. Children are

responsible for their answers; they are responsible for their questions, their doubts and

their understanding. All these aspects are naturally subject to a limited basis, but it is

this very basis that will help children to acquire more knowledge.

In the words of Edgar Morin, we should always maintain that the learner must be

responsible for his knowledge.

“Learning about learning, which includes integrating the learner into his knowledge,

should be recognized by educators as a basic principle and permanent necessity.”

(Morin, 2001, p. 27).

Learning the contents of the other areas through drama as a complementary form of

pedagogy is shown by the response that children might have in the various tasks: for

example, children framed as people in the Middle Ages, to explore the living conditions

of that time. Through the present moment that drama offers along with the lived

experience, children can be able to explore feelings, attitudes, constraints, rules,

relations, thoughts and other behaviours of a distant age, comparing the evolution and

changes of today. The learner enters into his knowledge, for it will no longer be

exclusively learnt from a book or from the reception of the information through the

teacher.

“The emphasis will be on discovery rather than on mere implementation of f actual

knowledge.”

( O‟Neill Lambert, 1982.p17)

Emphasising the need for a redefinition in education in key stage one, from the

perspective of the importance of drama as a complementary form of pedagogy, this



study would like to introduce an example of Freire‟s theory about literacy, as a principle

for hope. In the words of Peter Roberts (1998), from the University of Auckland:

“(…) Freire‟s theoretical and practical work in the area of literacy can be understood

as one dimension of a broader narrative of hope.”

(Roberts, 1998, Vol. 50, p. 108)

In this article, Peter Roberts looks at the importance of pedagogy of transformation in

Freire‟s theory, with regard to the importance of dialogue for those who want to be

socially critical human beings. He maintains that the most important concept that must

be applied in elementary school key stage one is that teaching any subject has to be

based on the experiences of the participants.

“This does not mean that personal experience should represent the end -point of a

literacy programme (…) Freire‟s point is that each person has unique access to at least

one domain of knowledge – the reality of their lived experience (…) A literacy

programme (indeed any educational programme) cannot succeed if learners are unable

to relate in some way to what educators or coordinators are saying. The stronger the

connection with existing knowledge and experience, the better…”

(Roberts, 1998, Vol. 50, p. 108)

The importance of dialogue as a means to encourage the learner to establish a critical

comprehension of the world – through discussion and using the words of the learners –

is one of the cornerstones needed for education to take place in the sense of learning and

understanding.



“The crucial bridge between existing and new forms of knowledge and experience in

any educational endeavour (a literacy programme being one example) is dialogue.”

(Roberts,1998, Vol. 50, p. 108)

From the above examples, this study underlines once more the new stance of teachers in

the classroom, as promoters of one important aspect in using drama to work within

other areas. Dialogue is used in drama with a specific context, where children have a

place to discuss their ideas. This dialogue allows teacher and students to enter into a

world where they have to find the right language for the situation and where they have

to understand multiple voices in a given situation. It is a dialogue that contributes

towards the understanding of all participants, in relation to the issue to be explored

through drama, where meaning has to function for the group as a whole. Dialogue is the

means to enter into the world of both teacher and student. Dialogue is a way to create

focus in any situation; dialogue with the purpose of establishing a critical stance

towards that situation; dialogue with the purpose of allowing people to use their own

words; dialogue loaded with questions that allow children to provide answers on the

basis of what they know – and help them to see beyond what they know; true dialogue

to understand the meaning of that particular situation.

This all has to do with communication.

“With regard to education and, more specifically, pedagogy, Freire talks of dialogue as

a process of communication between thinking subjects seeking to know, mediated by the

object of the study, within a given social context.”

(Roberts,1998, Vol. 50, 1998, p. 109)



Communication is about promoting the habit of asking questions; it is about decision-

making as part of humans growing up in society; it is about letting children tackle

situations in different ways, supported by discussion; it is about showing them the

uncertainty of learning and helping them to understand different situations.

“Drama is essentially social and involves contact, communication and the negotiation

of meaning.

(O‟ Neill, Lambert1982, p13)

Drama gives meaning to any situation explored – in the same way as we “play” –

through symbols and through answering questions in order to express our understanding

of a particular situation.

All the analysed theories from education and drama concur to emphasise that drama, in

general, belongs to our process of growing up, exists in our lives in many forms and,

can serve to preserve the child inside us, because it nourishes imagination. It is

important to stress that, in this chapter, the selected reading and referencing aims to

juxtapose and highlight similar elements from the theories, so as to point towards the

necessity of a redefinition of the teaching practice in the Algarve, especially as regards

the development of autonomous human beings, in the context of their capacity to learn

and understand. From this perspective, the activities currently taking place in key stage

one classrooms need to include the unique qualities drama activities bring to learning.

Dr ama as complementary form of pedagogy is about nurturing “experiences lived” in

the classroom. It is about respecting the world of symbolisation created and retained by

all children in their “growing up” process, a world that accommodates differences

among children in the classroom and opens up the opportunity to integrate any subject



from the curriculum. It is about challenging children‟s imagination in the context of any

subject. It is about developing children‟s capacity to interface with what they see, hear,

read, taste, touch, smell, like or hate. It is about working with active students looking

for meaning in their learning. It is about motivation through dialogism. It is about

developing a critical consciousness about any matter, a consciousness fed by the process

of questioning – which is inseparable from drama.

Furthermore, drama as a complementary form of pedagogy can provide motivation

“A more convincing explanation of drama‟s motivational force is that it harness the

inclination to play which while at its strongest in early childhood persists into

adolescence and arguably into the whole of adult life”

(Fleming1994, p 37)

Drama as a complementary form of pedagogy can also provide:

– Continuous use of imagination in different problem-posing scenarios, in all

sorts of contexts through many different roles.

– “ It is imagination that allows both teacher and students to devise alternative

modes of action, alternative projects and solutions (…)”

( Heathcote, Bolton,1995, p,7-8)

– Active participation rather than passive learning with the chance to be part of an

active group with equal rights where all points of view are given credit.



– Time to negotiate and explore alternative solutions to situations, therefore

giving children the opportunity to understand different contents of areas of the

curriculum, from various perspectives.

– Time to use the make-believe world and for children to be whoever they want to

be and even “live an adventure”, to help them to learn in an environment they

are familiar with.

– ““ In a play a child deals with things having meaning”” ( Bolton, 1998,p176)

Finally, learning through drama in the classroom gives children the opportunity to

relate real-life experiences to all educational areas of the curriculum.

“ It has become clear that interest, motivation and learning all result when drama is

employed for educational ends”

(Morgan, Saxton, 1987,p4)

Drama in Education

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