Mrs Blue Gum, Some Puppets and a Remnant Forest: Towards Sustainability Education through Drama Pedagogy

Abstract

AbstractThis paper focuses on a case study of the collaborative development of an environmental education unit involving the use of puppetry and drama. The collaboration was between an experienced classroom teacher beginning to use drama, and a drama/environmental educator and researcher. The critical lens for the analysis was sustainability education, including how this aligns with some recent theory on multiplist and evaluativist meaning-making. It is argued that these modes of meaning-making are necessary pedagogical goals of an eco-connected pedagogy. This case study showed that collaborative planning, implementation and reflection of drama pedagogy was not only a catalyst for more complex and deeper levels of meaning-making for the classroom teacher, but also prompted discussion about other important issues such as the quality of student engagement, classroom power dynamics and authentic assessment. In addition the teacher observed a range of outcomes achieved by her students that align with sustainability education as they became immersed in a dramatic world. In particular she observed that the students, through role-playing and writing about points of view not necessarily their own, developed deeper understandings demonstrating multiplist and evaluativist meaning creation.