Keeping the flame alive: legacies of Heathcote’s practice across the tasman

ABSTRACT

In this article, two mid-career drama education researchers use duoethnography to reflect on Professor Dorothy Heathcote’s legacy in Australia and New Zealand. Drawing on personal artefacts and a shared metaphor, we create narratives that consider Heathcote’s influence on our particular contexts and practice, particularly our work with Mantle of the Expert and Rolling Role. We describe the balancing act of honouring the work and ensuring it continues to be responsive in educational and cultural contexts very different to Heathcote’s own. We also consider the tensions of engaging in and representing the Heathcote tradition without having been directly taught by her. Framed as a personal exchange between two individuals, we suggest that this conversation is one that needs to occur as next generation practitioners and researchers in Drama education work together and repurpose her legacies of theory and practice to move the field into the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Dorothy Heathcote
• process drama
• mantle of the expert
• rolling role
• drama education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christine Hatton

Christine Hatton is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. She teaches in the field of drama and creative arts education and is a passionate advocate for drama learning and curriculum, and she has a keen interest in teacher artistry and development. Her research has explored playbuilding pedagogies, applied drama, ethnodrama, as well as learning in and through drama (particularly processes utilising digital technologies.  Recent publications and research projects have focussed on contemporary theatre for young audiences, the applications of Heathcote’s rolling role system of transdisciplinary teaching and the impacts of artists in schools. With Peter Duffy and Richard Sallis she has co-edited and co-authored the recent publication Drama Research Methods: Provocations of Practice (Brill Publishers, 2018).

Viv Aitken

Dr Viv Aitken is a Research Associate with the Faculty of Education at Waikato University in New Zealand, where she was senior lecturer in drama education for 14 years. She also spent two years as Associate Professor in Education at the Eastern Institute of Technology in Hawkes Bay. In her current role as a Ministry-accredited consultant, Viv supports teachers and school leaders across New Zealand to implement arts rich programmes including using drama as a cross-curricula pedagogy. She also continues to teach, supervise, mentor, write, perform and research in a wide range of drama, theatre and applied theatre projects. Viv's research to date has explored power and positioning in theatre and classroom drama including in inclusive settings. Her current focus is on developing and theorising Mantle of the Expert within the New Zealand context.