Subverting perceptions of academic and professional learning with drama

ABSTRACT

What is the impact on student learning when Education is taught through the Arts in a diploma level bridging course? This paper describes and analyses the experiences of 350 students when the expectation of a first-semester, first-year unit in an Education course is to devise and perform an ethnodrama – a drama based on the lives of the students themselves. The students, many of whom have had negative experiences of education, are challenged to think of learning as physical as well as intellectual and emotional. Influenced by Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and August Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, the authors encouraged risk-taking and playfulness in class in order to develop students’ understandings of personal agency, capacity, and responsibility. Participation in the Drama, although very challenging for many students, resulted in increased confidence as learners and as individuals, increased collaborative skills, empathy, respect for others, and a sense of empowerment.

KEYWORDS:

• Drama pedagogy
• disruption
• identity
• risk

Ethical statement

This work has ethics approval from Victoria University, Melbourne, number 0000024773. Students’ names have been changed; dates accompanying student names indicate the year of the student’s study. Participating students signed consent forms.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary-Rose McLaren

Mary-Rose McLaren Is an Associate Professor of Education at Victoria University where she draws on her Drama experience to invigorate teaching with Diploma of Education Studies and Early Childhood students.

Scott Welsh

Scott Welsh Is a Doctor of Philosophy (Education), actor and playwright who utilises an understanding of the arts as social criticism in his current role as a teacher and researcher at Victoria University.

Shiona Long

Shiona Long Is a former secondary music teacher and current Course Chair of the Diploma of Education Studies at Victoria University who readily embraces the transformational power of arts education.