Exploring teacher–student interactions and moral reasoning practices in drama classrooms

Abstract

The research reported here brings together three settings of conceptual and methodological inquiry: the sociological setting of socio-economic theory; the curricular/pedagogic setting of educational drama; and the analytic setting of ethnomethodolgically informed analyses of conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis. Students from two schools, in contrasting socio-economic areas, participated in drama lessons concerned with their future. The study found that process drama allowed them to overcome the rhetoric and abstract nature of the theorising of controversial issues by allowing them to become actively involved in testing theories, developing ideas, and finding solutions to controversial problems through their work in the dramatic context. Within this paper three aspects of the study are drawn out for particular attention: the settings for such an inquiry, the varying kinds of talk found in drama lessons, and the key contrasts and similarities between the two research sites. These three aspects highlight the particular ways in which talk in drama classrooms may have powerful implications for the ways in which moral reasoning is built and shared by students.

Keywords:

• educational drama
• process drama
• socio-economic status
• conversation analysis
• membership categorisation analysis

Notes

1. For an explanation of transcription symbols see: Hutchby, I., and R. Wooffitt. 1998. Conversation analysis. Cambridge: Polity Press.