Process Drama Research Articles

Bears Don't Need Phonics: an examination of the role of drama in laying the foundations for critical thinking in the reading process

ABSTRACT This article is based on a 6‐week intervention drama programme in selected inner‐city schools, as part of an in‐service project. The teaching involved working with selected classes for 2‐3 half‐day sessions. The aim was to raise the awareness of drama as a medium for the teaching of reading. The classes were in the lower primary track with children ranging from 4 to 8 years old. The data are based on observations made during the drama sessions by the researchers and the class teachers who were in observer and participant‐observer roles. This article is driven by the hypothesis that process drama contributes to the development of critical literacy skills. The researchers offer two ‘thick descriptions’ of literacy events, involving children with English as an emerging additional language, to illustrate that process drama may contribute to our understanding of developing critical literacy through a pedagogic approach which validates extensive drama intervention in the reading process. The evidence is opportunistic and grounded in the researchers’ short‐term intervention as active participants in the drama programme. The researchers make the claim that these literacy events are not unique, and that they set the need for a longitudinal study of drama and the reading process in the early years of education. The researchers aimed to address the question ‘Does process drama contribute to the development of critical literacy?‘

Theatre As Education: A Distinctively Canadian Approach To Secondary School Drama

In recent decades, drama has earned an increasingly secure place in Canadian secondary school curricula. The teaching of high school drama has been influenced by a number of national and international trends, including two British variations of process drama. Focusing on the process of developing original drama through improvisation rather than on the production of scripted plays, this method is used to promote personal development and to explore issues associated with other subject areas besides drama. Critics of process drama have objected to a perceived lack of theatre knowledge and skills in this approach. Canadian teachers, however, have found an effective means of bridging the process-product divide in a multi-level programme that begins with process drama and leads to a study of interpretative theatre production. Particularly useful is the collective creation of dramatic anthologies. This strategy parallels a collective trend in Canadian theatre history while, at the same time, drawing on the inherent educational power of theatre.

‘This Time I'll be the Golden Bird’: a call for more child‐structured dramatic play

Although child‐structured dramatic play is widely recognised as being important for the younger child, few opportunities are provided for the middle to upper primary school child to enjoy the benefits of this form of drama. Child‐structured play spaces are generally only found within pre‐primary and infants classrooms, and yet this form of dramatic experience enables the child to generate meanings which are far more individual than those emerging from more structured dramatic experiences such as process drama. The collective nature of process drama limits the individual's opportunity to be playful in their use of form and content. Playfulness is restricted by the structures imposed by the cooperative nature of the medium. However, these very structures and the collective nature of process drama are a key part of its strength and value to the learner. As well, the involvement of the teacher is of key importance in elevating the artistry of the work. How, then, can the gap between child‐structured dramatic play and process drama be bridged, in order to gain the most from each? This article outlines a number of options which provide opportunities for children to work in both structured and unstructured contexts, with small group play being used before, during and alongside ongoing process drama units.

Drama in Rehearsal: Arthur W. Pinero's Trelawny of the 'Wells'

Arthur W. Pinero’s Trelawny of the 'Wells' (1898) concludes with the rehearsal of a drama in the making — an image of drama in process that now seems more characteristically modern than Victorian. Yet drama in the making, in a different but related sense, has also been regarded as characteristically Victorian. Late nineteenth century British drama is often described as "drama in transition," although the connection has not often been made between drama in the process of transition and particular dramas in the process of unfolding. Yet this, I would suggest, is the source of strength of Pinero's best work, of which Trelawny of the 'Wells' is an illuminating instance.