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ABSTRACT
This article contemplates the way five early career drama teachers in NSW speak and write about what they consider, the special characteristics and attributions of drama to facilitate learning in order for students to make sense of a complex world. These particular teachers reflect on their passionate individual beliefs in the affordances of drama to provision students with tools to mediate a changing world and that teaching drama permits them to create the conditions for students to challenge popular or dominant notions. These drama teachers believe that good drama teaching also allows meaningful learning to occur for students from a range of abilities including, physical ability. These teachers unanimously argue that teaching drama has corroborated their ideological positions and cemented their belief that drama is a critical tool for transforming learning in ways that promotes student voice and agency.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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Notes on contributors
Alison Louise Grove O’Grady
Dr. Alison Louise Grove O’Grady is the Program Director (combined degrees) and Lecturer at the University of Sydney, Sydney School of Education and Social Work. Her research focuses on the role of empathy (Stein 1964) in creative pedagogy and its relationship to education and teacher professional learning; and the facilitation of historical knowledge using dramatic interactions to bridge different social and cultural contexts. Alison’s work explores the tensions regarding the areas of empathy, access and equity facilitated through creative practices and pedagogies. She also researches in interdisciplinary spaces particularly in ways that creative pedagogies and theatre making can support and generate transformation in schools and other contexts.