Drama 7-11

Developing Primary Teaching Skills

Neil Kitson, Ian Spiby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134767441
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book is a practical guide to teaching drama and provides a clear and coherent framework together with a theoretical underpinning which will allow teachers to create their own drama lessons from an informed standpoint and maximize the learning potential. The authors propose a curriculum for drama which combines the diverse references in the various documents of the National Curriculum whilst at the same time identifying the unique qualities specific to the subject which can form a coherent framework for teachers to adopt. Central to the book are a range of techniques, examples and activities which will provide a firm foundation for the teaching of drama, give confidence to those who have little or no experience and allow development for others who may have already acquired some.

Unit 1 Drama-in-education

In the Introduction we commented on how drama is often seen as a fringe subject in schools. Very often it shares this perception with the other arts: dance and music as well as the whole range of activities that come under the umbrella of fine art. Of course, with art and music which are named specifically in the National Curriculum, such marginalization has receded somewhat. But what makes drama different from its fellow artistic subjects is that there is considerable confusion about what it actually is. This has even extended into bitterly contested debates among drama theorists and true to the tradition of what everyone expects from ‘dramatic’ people, there have been accusations of defamation of character and threats of court action! Unlike in the cases of art and music though, the National Curriculum has not helped the matter, for where drama is mentioned, many practitioners find themselves at odds with the way it is described and the assumptions made about it. This, despite the fact that in Activity 0.1 in the Introduction, it is likely that you found the Bullying drama to have covered many of the aspects mentioned in the Speaking and Listening Programme. Little wonder then that newcomers, confronted by a bewildering array of types of drama and competing methodologies, are tempted to throw up their hands in despair and turn to another subject to teach.

In this Unit we are going to pick our way through this minefield so that by the end we will have an understanding of what drama in schools is about, why we should teach it and what we are aiming for when we do teach it. It's probably the most difficult Unit in the book but we think it is important because it will give a sound basis on which you can create your own drama lessons rather than simply rely on those that have been created and written up in books. To help us through the Unit, and so that you don't develop theory-indigestion, we shall be referring back from time to time to the Bullying lessons. First of all, however, try the following:

ACTIVITY 1.1

The nature of school drama

Brainstorm all the images which come to mind when the phrase ‘school drama’ is mentioned. If you are in a group, share the images and make a list of all the different activities that come under this heading.

You can now turn to the end of the Unit to see a detailed list of those we've thought of, although it is very likely that you have thought of activities not included there. In any case your list will probably be quite long and comprise a surprisingly wide variety of activities and pursuits, some of which appear at first sight to bear only a remote relationship to one another. Contrast the picture of small children playing in a pretend corner (called in pre-politically correct times a Wendy House) with older children engaged in a Board Room simulation; ‘music and movement’ with a school play; personal development games and exercises with drama club improvisations; a nativity play with a problem-solving role play; choral speaking with a puppet play.

ACTIVITY 1.2

Drama experience (Part A)

Think about your own personal experiences of drama, both when you were at school, at college or university and during your teacher-training. Try to pinpoint the moments that were i) most enjoyable, ii) most meaningful and iii) most uncomfortable. Once again, if you are part of a group, share these experiences and see if you can isolate some common threads in the three types of experiences.

The uncomfortable experiences are probably the most vivid. A colleague of ours recalls at her teacher-training establishment being asked in a drama class to pick up an imaginary baby bird with a broken wing and hold it gently in her skirt. Then, with her fellow students, she had to go outside, acutely aware of the smirks of passers-by to place the bird carefully on the grass. One of the present writers as a student, attended a drama session conducted by Peter Slade (see p. 101) in which the whole group was made to run around the hall with arms held out pretending to be aeroplanes. Both of these activities seem to us to reveal fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of drama and we will be returning to them later. But they do go a little way towards an understanding of why teachers of drama have traditionally been seen as colourful, eccentric characters who ask their pupils to do outrageous, embarrassing things.

The enjoyable experiences on the other hand are likely to be concerned with the putting on of a play: the sense of camaraderie, of a special occasion, the excitement of appearing before an audience – that feeling of being involved in a special time somehow outside the boundaries of ordinary everyday life. While a great deal of learning takes place during this time, meaningful or learning experiences most often recalled are to do with drama sessions not directly connected with performance. They can be part of the rehearsal process or a drama lesson and are most frequently associated with an emotional experience. Something that happens within the drama touches us personally and even while the subject might be upsetting (the loss of a loved one for example), strangely it is at the same time enjoyable. Before going any further, it might be worthwhile considering the three types of experiences in connection with the Bullying dramas.

ACTIVITY 1.3

Drama experience (Part B)

What were the moments during the drama(s) that you think the children found

• most uncomfortable;
• most enjoyable;
• most meaningful.

How far do you think that a), b) and c) mix? Can you, for example, point to moments when all three experiences were occurring simultaneously?

What was the nature of the discomfort, the enjoyment or the meaningfulness? How does this compare with what you remember of your own experiences?

These three types of experiences which in some ways are at odds with one another but in others (we hope you have discovered) seem to be intertwined, go some way towards accounting for the confusion over the precise nature of the subject.

A further confusion is highlighted by the number of activities listed under the name of ‘drama’ in Activity 1.1 at the beginning of the Unit and one of the reasons for this is because the philosophy of drama-in-education has developed and changed in the years since 1945. In fact there was no coherent written philosophy at all until just over fifteen years ago. Drama is often regarded as a somewhat new subject on the school curriculum despite the fact that its use in education goes back at least as far as the sixteenth century. However, until after the Second World War, with a few exceptions, it was firmly linked to both elocution and the performance of written texts – especially Shakespeare; hence the term ‘Speech and Drama’, still seen, amazingly, as a heading in the appointments columns of the Times Educational Supplement.

KEY POINTS

Drama is in a confused state.

It means different things to different people.

Their experiences of drama are variously uncomfortable, enjoyable or meaningful – or a combination of all three!

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMA THINKING

In the 1950s and early 1960s the ideas of the drama adviser Peter Slade became fashionable, spread by the publication in 1954 of his book Child Drama. He argued strongly that child drama was an art form in its own right and quite different from theatre and performance. The teacher's job was to encourage or allow to happen what is essentially a natural process. It is unfortunate that much of the book is written in a rather fey, poetic style which has obscured for later readers much of what he has to say that makes a lot of sense. Be that as it may, Slade must bear some responsibility for a phrase which has been used ever since as yet another stick to beat drama teachers – ‘free expression’.

Slade's ideas were superseded by those of Brian Way who as a drama practitioner felt that the fundamental purpose of the subject was the personal development of the participants. Literally dozens of books were spawned as a result which gave hundreds of ideas for exercises and (later on) games to be played in the name of drama. One of these books A 100+ Ideas for Drama is still in print and can be found on many a staffroom bookshelf. Non-interference by the teacher, however, still continued to hold sway and gave rise to the notorious ‘bum on the radiator’ style of teaching whereby the teacher would divide the class into groups, give them a subject to make up a play about (for example a plane crash), sit at the side (perhaps doing a little marking the while) as they prepared it, then watch while one by one the groups presented their finished product. End of lesson.

KEY POINTS

The plot so far:

You let the kids do their own thing – express themselves freely. On the other hand you give them exercises or play games so they can develop personally. It's nothing to do with performing but when they've made up plays in groups without teacher interference, expressing themselves freely, they perform them to one another.

THE NEW THEORETICIANS

In 1970, the BBC broadcast a highly influential film in their Omnibus series entitled Three Looms Waiting about Dorothy Heathcote, a lecturer in drama at Newcastle University, and indeed, if what she says in the film were to be studied carefully by every present-day, quarrelling theorist, the basis for such quarrels would largely disappear. We will be returning to these ideas later but what was taken from the film at the time was the fact that Mrs Heathcote would apparently go into a class, ask the children what they wanted ‘to do a play about’ and from their suggestions create a spell-binding drama with them – just like that! Even more alarmingly, she actually joined in the drama and took part herself. The result was that many drama teachers, including one of the present writers, simply gave up in despair. Drama was difficult enough when it was thoroughly planned without the strain of spinning marvellous things out of thin air. The common reaction to her work was, ‘Yes, what she does is wonderful but I could never work like that’, thus reinforcing the idea that drama teaching was only for a special kind of charismatic person and not for ordinary folk like you and me.

In 1979, another university lecturer, Gavin Bolton, this time at Durham, published a seminal book, Towards a Theory of Drama in Education and his ideas together with Heathcote's held sway for the next ten years. Basically Bolton's work was taken to advocate drama as a medium for learning. With the aid of the teacher adopting a role in the drama, children would be presented with situations in which it was necessary to solve problems (‘How do we persuade the Squire to let us build a railway through his land?’ for example). As such it was seen to be a very powerful and effective method for teaching other subjects, particularly those that concerned social moral or historical issues. Despite the fact that if we look carefully at Bolton's writings we find a somewhat different story, such drama came to be seen as separate from theatre and in certain quarters ‘performance’ became a dirty word. In some schools and colleges, so extreme was the view that drama was a method rather than a subject, that its eradication from the timetable was advocated by the very people who were in favour of it. It was to be an all-purpo...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• CURRICULUM IN PRIMARY PRACTICE SERIES
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• UNIT 1: DRAMA-IN-EDUCATION
• UNIT 2: LEARNINQ THROUQH DRAMA
• UNIT 3: TEACHER STRATEGIES
• UNIT 4: WAYS OF WORKING: ROLES AND CONVENTIONS
• UNIT 5: ASPECTS OF THEATRE IN DRAMA TEACHING
• UNIT 6: PLANNING AND STRUCTURING
• APPENDIX I: KEY STAGE 2 PROGRAMME OF STUDY
• APPENDIX II: EXTRACTS FROM KEY WRITERS ON DRAMA IN EDUCATION
• APPENDIX III: ANNOTATED EXTRACT FROM RICHARD III, ACT V, SCENE III, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
• BIBLIOGRAPHY