Cacophony and Fugue: pre‐service narratives create conversation about drama education

Abstract

Teacher preparation seeks to develop reflective practitioners who examine and re‐examine teaching and learning, knowledge, beliefs and values. Articulation of teacher voice‐‐use of language to explain, describe, question, explore or challenge‐‐is vital. Teacher voice implies that a teacher can speak her or his own truth and be heard. Inherent barriers in teacher education, especially in drama education, impede reflection and teacher voice. These include: (a) isolation‐‐particularly problematic in drama education‐‐students feel marginalised in both theatre and education departments; and (b) student culture favouring practice over theory, a perception created when education departments ignore arts students and drama methods texts ignore education theory. Three drama educators, two Canadian and one American, use drama student teacher written cases to develop reflection and community in pre‐service secondary drama teachers. The cases are introduced during the methods class. While each case can be explored on many levels, the collection is organised to fit methods class topics, e.g. Planning and Presenting Lessons. These cases are a very powerful teaching tool because they are stories of real experiences, perceived as authentic. When methods students discuss the issues in the cases, they must be careful to respect the author's voice and to avoid making decisions based on a surface reading of the case rather than on close reading and reflection. Methods students also tell stories from their own experiences either as a student themselves or in field placement situations to help them relate issues in the cases to their own future practice. By confronting their own ideas about teaching drama, not only are they discovering what they do and do not know, but they are also finding their own voice. Each student teacher then writes a case about a challenge, concern, or issue occurring during the practicum. Students have to be taught to write as ‘ethnographers’ of their own practice. They keep a journal recording events that might become part of the case and reflecting on daily teaching practices. The case is written in two stages: first, the students try to depict the story accurately; and second, the students try to ‘step back’ from the events in the case and analyse and reflect on the experiences integrating theory as they do. Well‐written cases can empower future teachers because they have learned from their experiences and they have had the opportunity to look forward to what they might do differently ‘next time’. By understanding their own story, these pre‐service teachers move forward on the continuum of articulating their own teacher voice. The cycle, and thus, the conversation, is completed when new cases are used in subsequent methods classes. The methods professors who use these cases have found that their understanding of drama education and teacher preparation has been strengthened from the cases and from their own conversations with each other. The result is an emerging conversation about drama education.