Playful Learning Research Articles

Introducing “ Undha Usuk” Javanese Language Through Children Drama Performance in Festival Kampoeng Pejoeang at Trate, Ngadiluwih

Undha usuk in the Javanese language increasingly forgotten by the children in the Trate village, Ngadiluwih sub-district. The progress of the times, as well as the rise of technology, makes children seems forgotten in their own regional language politeness. Innovative and educational activities are needed to overcome this. One of them is by staging child drama. Staging children's drama is an activity that integrates various language skills such as reading, listening, and speaking. The staging of children drama in Trate village, Ngadiluwih sub-district can be held in Kampoeng Pejoeang festival to celebrate independence day. The purpose of this article is to describe the technique of child drama performances in the festival Kampoeng Pejoeang as a strategy to introduce undha usuk in the Javanese language to children at Trate village, Ngadiluwih sub-district. The data obtained comes from observations and interviews. Drama learning theory, as well as language skills, especially undha ushuk Javanese language, are combined in this article so that this strategy can be adapted elsewhere.

PROSES KREATIF BERTEATER PADA MAHASISWA DAN NILAI KARAKTER YANG TERBANGUN DI DALAMNYA

Creative Process of Berteater on Student and Value of Character built in it (Descriptive-Analytical Study of Creative Process of Berteater on Student of Semester VI at Department of Education of Indonesia University of Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa and Its Application in Drama Learning Model in High School). In facing the development of science knowledge and technology with all its positive and negative implications, we need strong fences and strongholds to keep ahlak, character, and personality based on virtue values. Based on the description, an alternative method is needed to organize and develop character education for to respond to the changing times. On the basis of this description, this research tries to offer an alternative method for character planting, especially for the younger generation who will become the heir to continue the nation's sustainability. The method offered, namely the character value recording through the process berteater. This result is based on the assumption that the creative process of the theater will make human beings aware of the process of creation. The result of this research is a new finding about the description of the creative process done by the students of semester VI of the Department of Indonesian Education, University of Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa to provide an alternative method in the cultivation of value- the value of characters through the learning of drama in High School through the creative process berteater.

Drama and arts-based professional learning: exploring face-to-face, online and transmedia models

Australian and international research has identified that many generalist teachers have limited confidence and experience in teaching the Arts in the early years of schooling and education. There is also a significant gap in the provision of quality professional learning programs for teachers. Research has identified that appropriate training and professional learning programs need to provide teachers with practical experiences, informed by sound pedagogical theory and some form of ongoing support and potential for collaboration and shared learning. This article reports on the development of a professional learning programme which sought to support arts-focussed professional development of early years teachers. The project, known as The Open Storybox, lead to the development of a model which could be called a ‘transmedia’ learning model, as it utilises different media, and flows of content across digital platforms and technologies as well as the embodied and material.

“When you’ve been doing it as long as I have ...” Repositioning children through role-based strategies in classroom research

In this presentation, Viv talks about a drama-based data generation strategy that was developed during a two-year research project: Connecting curriculum, connecting learning (Fraser, Aitken, Price, & 2012). The strategy, ‘researcher-in-role’, involved a researcher stepping into role alongside children as they were learning in drama, to conduct learning conversations and generate data. The strategy was used in five classrooms. On three occasions, researchers tried the researcher-in-role strategy simultaneously alongside a more traditional researcher, working out of role. This allowed Viv to compare the quality of children’s talk to the researcher-in-role with that of the researcher out of role. She found that where researcher-in-role was used, children seemed more inclined to share provisional knowledge, express the processes of their learning and grapple with incomplete understandings. After sharing these findings, Viv goes on to theorize them through the lens of Positioning Theory (Harre and Lagenhove 2009. The presentation concludes by advocating for the researcher-in-role strategy as a useful tool in drama education and other research contexts. Please note, this powerpoint presentation has been further developed into a peer reviewed journal article published in RIDE (Aitken, 2014 in press).

A Study of the Effectiveness of Socio-Drama Learning Package in Promoting Environmental Knowledge and Behaviour of Secondary Schools Students in Osun State, Nigeria

The study developed an interactive socio- drama learning package for the teaching of Environmental Education concepts. It also examined the level of students’ knowledge of and attitude to environmental education and determined the influence of the interactive socio- drama learning package in enhancing student’s knowledge about the dangers of environmental hazards and pollution. These were with the view to ensuring sustainable and healthy environment. The study employed pre test, post test control group design. The population for the study consisted Junior Secondary School students in Atakumosa-West Local Government Area of Osun State. Two hundred JSS III students were randomly selected from four schools from this Local Government. These students were also randomly assigned to two groups i.e. the experimental and control groups. The students in the experimental group were exposed to the interactive drama learning package while the students in control group were taught Environmental Education concepts using the conventional method. Three instruments were used for data collection were (i) Survey questionnaire on students’ prior knowledge of environmental education and environmental hazards (ii) Questionnaire on the effect of the interactive drama learning package on learning environmental education concepts ) (iii) Environmental Hazards Achievement Test. Data collected was analyzed using mean, standard deviation and t-test. The results showed that the interactive drama learning package was effective in the teaching of environmental education and useful in broadening students’ knowledge about environmental pollution. The results also showed that the Interactive Socio- Drama Learning Package enhanced the academic performance of the students and changed their attitude positively. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p1325

Ethnographic performance: a change agent for drama teaching and learning

This article considers the ways in which an ethnographic performance can be an effective means of data generation, analysis and presentation for a researcher working in collaboration with drama teachers and students in an educational setting. The creation of the ethnodramatic play was part of a three-year Ph.D. educational ethnography conducted by the researcher in the Drama department of an inner-city co-educational government school in Melbourne, Australia. The researcher mapped the development of the play including how the drama teachers and their students collaborated on its development by providing feedback as it was being written and performed. The topic of the play was boys' participation in drama in a co-educational learning environment, how they ‘performed’ gender in the classes and how this affected, and was affected by, the drama teachers, the female students and other males in the class. The article examines how the development of the ethnodramatic play was a transformative experience for the school community. The ethnodramatic process affected a change for the better in the work habits of the teachers and how some of their students viewed their participation in the drama classes.

To Play or Not to Play: Diverse Motives for Latino and Euro‐American Parent–Child Play in a Children's Museum

A popular social discourse in the United States is that play is important for children's learning and that parental involvement maximizes play's learning potential. Past research has concluded that parents who hold this view of play are more likely to play with their children than those who do not. This study investigated the prevalence of this view among Euro‐American and immigrant Latino parents of young children in order to illuminate the extent to which it uniquely and uniformly motivates parent–child play. Parents' models of play were assessed through interviews and naturalistic observations in a children's museum. Analysis revealed ethnic group differences in parent–child play that corresponded with parental beliefs about play. Within‐group analysis, however, revealed diversity in the ways that these play behaviours and beliefs came together to comprise parents' models of play. Discussion focuses on the social nature of play, the dynamic nature of culture, and the issue of individual subject validity. Implications for the interpretation of parent–child play in early childhood settings are considered. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Drama and the representation of affect – structures of feeling and signs of learning

The way in which school students represent affective aspects of human relationships in drama and what this reveals about learning in drama is the focus of this paper. Such an enquiry traverses the borders between affect, intellect and physicality. Affect and its representation in drama have been themes in the history of drama and theatre and is a current concern in the field of applied theatre and drama. Writers on drama in schools have hitherto been mostly concerned with affect in terms of feelings experienced and emotions represented by students participating in drama. There has, however, been little theorisation of what students' representation of affective human relations might reveal about the complexity of learning processes involved. Cultural theories of representation and learning are related to an example, drawn from field notes, of school student drama in which students present a stylised representation of a relationship. Because affect is intimately connected with both the bodilyness and modes of representation in drama, multimodal social semiotic analysis will be used as one component of a framework to draw attention to the body as a principal material and tool for making meaning in drama. Theoretically, explanations of learning will be taken from the work of Vygotsky, who maintained a lifelong interest in both drama and learning and the relationship between the two. Concepts taken from the cultural theories of Raymond Williams are also referred to – specifically to the ways in which cultural activity and artefacts represent ‘structures of feeling’.

Drama and learning science: an empty space?

Constructivist teaching methods such as using drama have been promoted as productive ways of learning, especially in science. Specifically, role plays, using given roles or simulated and improvised enactments, are claimed to improve learning of concepts, understanding the nature of science and appreciation of science's relationship with society (Ødegaard 2001, Unpublished Dr. scient., Dissertation, University of Oslo). So far, theorisation of drama in learning, at least in science, has been lacking and no attempt has been made to integrate drama theory in science education with that of theatre. This article draws on Peter Brook's notion of the theatre as the ‘empty space’ (Brook 1968, The empty space, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books) to provide a new theoretical model acting as a lens through which drama activities used to teach science can be better understood and researched. An example of a physical role play is used to ground the theory. The paper concludes by suggesting areas for further research.

What do they think? Children's perceptions of learning drama in an Arts rich Australian primary school

This paper discusses aspects of a focused case study that was undertaken to discover what the children in one school knew and understood about drama learning, and about the value and purpose of learning in this way. With the belief that, for conversations about education to remain relevant they must be opened up to include the perspectives of children, this study privileged children's voices above all others, placing the research focus on the critical connections between students and their teachers, as they participate together in the learning process. The children's perceptions about a wide range of drama learning experiences, both inside and outside the classroom over a number of years were collected during a series of focus group interviews, with younger children being encouraged to draw as they chatted, an approach aimed at further enriching the data.

Sustainability in Drama

Cultural sustainability is a very important concept. Drama can be considered in the area of cultural sustainability as well. Throughout the history of Turkish education, learning drama gained importance both in educational sciences as a teaching method and in arts education. The years of 1980s-1990s-2000s-2010s can be accepted as appropriate years to analyze the sustainability of drama. The purposes of this study are to obtain opinions of experts coming from different decades; to conduct interviews; to investigate how the transitions occurred among those decades and the reasons of this sustainability. In this qualitative research, data will be collected through semi-structured interviews and document analysis techniques. Participants will be chosen from four different decades.

Learning through fictional business: expertise for real life?

PurposeThe aim of this study is to investigate whether educational drama can be used as a tool to facilitate expert knowledge development and to help students prepare themselves for working life.Design/methodology/approachThe target group consisted of 41 students of Forest Sciences who had participated in a course of professional ethics taught through educational drama. Qualitative research data were collected from learning journals and quantitative data from questionnaires.FindingsThe results indicate that educational drama has a potential to foster expert knowledge development, because it can bring a sense of real life to classrooms and thus give experiences that resemble working‐life experiences. The course that was taught through educational drama gave students a sense of putting theory into practice and of solving working‐life problems. The students also felt that this course had made them more prepared for unforeseen situations in working life. Further, teaching professional ethics through educational drama may be a worthwhile tool to help students encounter the working‐life challenges of ethics and sustainability in particular.Research limitations/implicationsFurther studies are needed to determine the quality of the students’ professional learning in educational drama and the long‐term impacts of teaching through drama.Practical implicationsThe findings have practical implications for higher education related to the enhancement of expert knowledge development and preparing students for working life.Originality/valueThis paper introduces educational drama as an encouraging tool in higher education to simulate real‐life situations in the classrooms, and thus providing students with opportunities to practise for working life and grow as experts.

“Listening to the Affective Life of Injustice”: Drama Pedagogy, Race, Identity, and Learning

This article draws from three different ethnographic research projects situated in Canadian urban and suburban drama classrooms in which the student population is highly diverse linguistically, culturally, racially, and ethnically. In each of these classes, as students engage in discussion in and out of role, some of the unsettling events of their lives concerned with the “affective politics” of race come to light. We critique notions of consensus and demonstrate, through our examples, the central importance of the drama classroom space as one that ignites discussion and engages divergent opinions and feelings. To analyze these events, we draw upon Frantz Fanon and Sara Ahmed who acknowledge how different bodies experience the power relations associated with emotion differently.

Developing Intrapersonal Intelligence Through Technique "Make-Believe Play" In Order To Make Characterized Early Age Children

This study aimstodevelopintrapersonalintelligencein realizingthecharacterized earlychildhood, throughthe technique of Make-believeplay inlearning, meanwhile, the focusofthe problem ishow to optimize the intra personal intelligence in learning by using thesetechniques. This study is aClass Action Research (Classroom ActionResearch), followedby smallexperiments toseethe effectiveness ofactions taken. Subjectswere 24 children aged5-6 years old in group B, in thekindergartenAl-Muhajirin BengkuluCity. Selectedactivitiesin developingthe character is the technique of make-believe play in theclassroom. The research data obtained were processed using a percentage. The analysisshowed tha the application of make-believe play inlearning, it can develop intra personalintelligence in an effort to make characterized early childhood.

Difficulties Students Face in Understanding Drama in English Literature at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG)

The present paper explores the problems of English Language and Literature junior and senior majors, who are enrolled in a drama course at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG). The course emphasizes the significance of drama. Morgan (1987: 7) defines drama as an “art of communication,” which is essential in teaching literature. A survey was administered and the questionnaire consisted of of open and closed questions to have both quantitative and qualitative information of what each participant attributes to each facet of the study. The participants of the study consisted of 133 randomly selected students, which is 39% of the population of the current study. The population included both male and female students of “English Literature in the 20th Century” in the second semester (2006–2007). The data were analyzed using Pearson correlation, T-test independent sample, Spearman correlation, means and percentages, as well as Alpha Cronbach and Split-half. Findings showed that a majority of the students agreed that “reading drama is more common than watching it.” Students face this major difficulty in learning drama. Over 70% of the students agreed that “students feel frustrated with the length of a play,” “Extensive use of symbolism, similes, metaphor,” and “writing style” were serious problems. Further research is strongly recommended to be conducted particularly in IUG, to fill in the gap among issues students face such as cultural, communicative, and linguistic facets in learning drama. The removal of these obstacles can benefit different aspects of learning and teaching drama and literature. These implications can be multi-dimensional in terms of linguistic, cultural, and communicative aims.

Learning L2 Vocabulary with American TV Drama From the Learner’s Perspective

Following the trend of computer assisted language learning (CALL), in Taiwan, most language classes now have equivalent media support for language teachers and learners. Implementing videos into classroom activities is one of the choices. The current study explores the process of implementing American TV drama in L2 vocabulary learning from learners’ perspectives. Twenty-eight Taiwanese EFL adult learners participate in the study. Authentic video clips from three different American dramas- “How I met your mother”, “The King of Queens”, and “Reba” are adopted. After three sessions of class activities including clip watching, class discussion, word listing, etc., students complete a 4-likert scale questionnaire and are individually interviewed by the researcher to give their opinions. The results reveal positive comments on the facilitative role of TV drama in learning new vocabulary as previous studies suggested, but learners’ comments point out some crucial factors while learning L2 vocabulary with TV drama. First of all, the interest level and the familiarity of the content is an important factor. In addition, the images, subtitles and repetition help participants to “remember” the target words. Other factors such as the authenticity of the language, the contextual meaning of the words, and the dramatic performances all contribute to the learning of the L2 vocabulary. In the end of the study, working memory system, the context, acquisition-learning hypothesis (Krashen, 1981), and noticing hypothesis (Schmidt, 1990) are further discussed.

Integrating on-line technology into teaching activities to enhance student and teacher learning in a New Zealand primary school

Continuing emphasis given to computer technology resourcing in schools presents potential for web-based initiatives which focus on quality arts teaching and learning, as ways to improve arts outcomes for all students. An arts e-learning collaborative research project between specialist on-line teacher/researchers and generalist primary teachers was designed to investigate student learning, quality teaching, and implementation factors. Constructionist-based teaching activities using on-line technology were designed to engage students in a learner-centred e-learning environment where students and teachers collaborated to produce a media and learning artefact. A case study highlights the outcomes for four students who transferred learnt drama skills to other classroom contexts. This model has potential to provide drama learning for students and professional development for primary generalist teachers, contingent on the availability of rigorously planned and well-resourced programmes.

Towards professional growth: essays on learning and teaching forest economics and marketing through drama, role-play and reflective journals

The requirements of the current working life are setting new challenges for higher education. It is widely accepted that besides mastering academic knowledge and skills, university graduates should also be provided with diverse generic skills before they begin their careers. However, there seems to be a gap between higher education and the needs of professional life. The findings of this research are designed to help tackle some of those challenges. The objective of this dissertation was to advance theories of learning in drama and roleplay, and to develop teaching methods that further expert knowledge development in higher education, especially in the field of forest economics and marketing. This study also explored learning journals as a tool for reflection and assessment. This multidisciplinary dissertation uses the mixed methods research approach and consists of a summary and three published (or accepted to be published) essays and one submitted manuscript. The qualitative research data were collected from students’ learning journals and a focus group interview, and quantitative data were gathered from two survey questionnaires. Qualitative thematic analysis and qualitative content analysis were applied to the qualitative data. The main quantitative analysis methods included t-tests and ANOVA. This dissertation introduces educational drama and role-play as viable learning and teaching methods in higher education. According to the findings, both methods seem to be able to involve several learning outcomes that are needed in the development of professional expertise. Furthermore, while real workplace placements cannot always be arranged for students, role-play can act as a supplementary learning method alongside work-based learning. It is also concluded that role-play is likely to suit better for enhancing learning that concentrate on a specific topic or a skill, whereas the strength of drama lies in critically evaluating underlying premises and personal stances students have towards a particular topic of learning. The findings of this dissertation also highlight the notion that reflective skills do not develop by themselves, but they should actively be fostered in higher education. Along with forest sciences education, other disciplines can also apply the findings in both higher education and vocational upper-secondary education. In addition, the gained information about promoting expert knowledge and skills through drama and role-play can also be transferred to new contexts, such as working-life personnel training and human resources development.

Bodies and language: process drama and intercultural language learning in a beginner language classroom

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 positive response to the kinaesthetic elements of the work, she suggests that, despite the challenge of balancing drama and language imperatives, encouraging language teachers to venture into imaginative worlds and include a kinaesthetic dimension to their communicative practice could improve engagement and outcomes for beginner learners.

Process drama and intercultural language learning: an experience of contemporary Italy

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.