Theatre programs in community colleges: A policy for equity

ABSTRACT

This piece presents a theoretical exploration of the potential for the creation of policy that would inform the inclusion of arts and particularly theater courses in all community colleges. In April 2017, Fong et al. released a comprehensive meta-analysis that explored the relationship between psychosocial factors of self-perception and motivation within 58 studies on student persistence and 186 studies on student achievement in U.S. community colleges. In the field of drama in and as education multiple studies have articulated a strong connection between positive self-perception, motivation, and involvement within drama-based experiences. My reflection emerges from four years service as the chair of the Arts and Humanities, and the sole theater professor at a leading campus within the largest community college in a Midwestern state. I share the ways in which the arts program, and particularly the theater program, were situated within the college's traditional vocational curriculum and theorize the ways in which a policy that secures the presence of the arts, drama, and theater in particular, within all community college curriculums may support positive self-perception and motivation and affect persistence and completion rates, particularly within terms of underrepresented and nontraditional communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Community college
• community colleges
• equity
• research
• theater education

Note

Notes

1. The Arts Education Partnership was established in 1995 and is supported by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with the Education Commission of the States (http://www.artsedsearch.org/about/about-artsearch)