Reframing Readers Theatre for teaching EFL: infusing values for peace and conflict prevention for teacher professional development in Indonesian Islamic schools’ settings

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a project investigating the impact of a new framework for Readers Theatre on teachers’ professional skills. Twenty-one Islamic secondary English school teachers engaged in collaborative professional development training to experience and give feedback on the framework. The article describes the participants’ affective and critical responses and perspectives as well as opportunities and challenges related to the new framework in infusing peace values into EFL (English as a Foreign Language) materials. This study provides fresh insight into the potential of Readers Theatre for teaching peace and conflict prevention in the Indonesian Islamic EFL secondary school context.

KEYWORDS:

• Readers theatre
• drama education
• EFL (English as a foreign language)
• teacher professional development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP), Ministry of Finance, and the Directorate General of Higher Education (DIKTI), Ministry of Education, Culture and Technology, The Republic of Indonesia.

Notes on contributors

Dana Kristiawan

Dana Kristiawan is an English lecturer at Universitas 17 Agustus 1945 Banyuwangi, Indonesia. His research interests are teacher professional development, multimodality-based material development and peace education in English as a foreign language context.

Carol Carter

Carol Carter is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Curtin University, Perth, Australia. She has taught at a number of universities in South Africa and Australia, including the University of Newcastle and the University of Melbourne. Her research areas relate to cultural and linguistic diversity, drama education, early childhood education, initial teacher education and Arts-Based Research (ABR).

Michelle Picard

Michelle Picard is Professor who currently works as Pro Vice Chancellor Learning and Teaching Innovation at Flinders University and was formerly Dean Learning and Teaching and Acting at Murdoch University in Australia and Deputy Director of the English Language and Foundation Studies Centre at Newcastle University. Michelle has worked in higher education for the past 20 years researching TESOL, academic literacies and online/blended learning.