Resilience or resistance? The value of subject knowledge for drama teachers

Abstract

This paper reports on research undertaken into what secondary school drama teachers think they need to possess in terms of subject knowledge in order to operate effectively as drama specialists. ‘Subject knowledge’ is regarded as being multi-faceted, and the paper considers how drama teachers prioritise its different aspects. A discussion of what ‘subject knowledge’ may be seen to encompass reveals interesting tensions between aspects of professional knowledge that are prescribed by government policy and local context, and those that are valued by individual teachers and are manifest in their construction of a professional identity. The paper proposes that making judgements that associate propositional and substantive knowledge with traditionally held academic values as ‘bad’ or ‘irrelevant’ to drama education, and what Foucault has termed ‘subjugated knowledge’ (i.e. local, vernacular, enactive knowledge that eludes inscription) as ‘good’ and more apposite to the work of all those involved in drama education, fails to reflect the complex matrices of values that specialists appear to hold. While the reported research focused on secondary school drama teachers in England, Bourdieu's conception of field and habitus is invoked to suggest a model which recognises how drama educators more generally may construct a professional identity that necessarily balances personal interests and beliefs with externally imposed demands.

Keywords:

• subject knowledge
• professional identity
• field
• habitus