Dramatic Inquiry and Anti-Oppressive Teaching

Abstract

Teachers have long used dramatic pedagogy to make oppression visible and to explore with young people how they might challenge it. By analyzing the pedagogy of one high school teacher in a high-poverty, inner-city freshman English high school classroom, I illustrate some of the complexities of how dramatic inquiry (dramatic pedagogy used as part of inquiry-based learning) may be used to effectively disrupt oppressive practices experienced by students. Kumashiro (2004) argues that anti-oppressive teaching must create, for teachers and students alike, both experiences of, and ways to work through, crises. I illustrate how dramatic inquiry is an effective pedagogy for mediating students' encounters with imagined crises that resonate with their real lives. I apply Bakhtin's conceptualizations of dialogue and events to understand why a teacher's use of dramatic inquiry may disrupt experiences of oppression as well as how an oppressive status quo may unintentionally be reified. Additionally, I show how working as an ensemble in dramatic inquiry may create the space in which a self-excluding student may reposition himself in relation to the classroom community. Finally, I consider some of the challenges for teachers in learning to use dramatic pedagogy that may challenge an oppressive status quo in their own teaching.