How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama
DINI FATIHATI
171230087
TBI 6C
1. How to Begin with Teacher in Role
Why use teacher in role?
The most important resource you have as a teacher when using drama is yourself.
Learning demands intervention from the teacher to structure, direct and influence the learning of the pupils. One of the best ways to do that in drama work is to be inside the drama. Therefore, at the centre of the dramas that we include in this book, is the key teaching technique that is used, namely teacher in role (TiR). This chapter will set out approaches to TiR and give examples of how it works.
Many teachers see TiR as a difficult activity, particularly with older children in the primary school. However, it is our experience that when a teacher takes a role he or she becomes ‘interesting’ to the children, so that there are less control problems because they become engaged. Many times we have watched trainee teachers with a class of children struggling to get attention when giving instructions in traditional teacher mode. Yet, as soon as they move into role, they obtain that attention more effectively.
Teacher as storyteller
The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognise. Good teachers slip easily into it and use it frequently. In its most observable guise it occurs when teaching the whole class and engaging them with a piece of fiction. The pupil’s role will be dominated by listening and this will be interlaced with questioning, responding and interpreting the meaning and sense of the fiction. The teacher’s role will be to communicate the text in a lively and interesting manner, holding their attention and engaging their imagination. In making judgements about the quality of this method of teaching, the critical questions will be around whether the content of the story interests
the class and holds their attention, whether the delivery of the teacher, i.e. voice, intonation and interpretive skills, are good and, where relevant, whether accompanying illustrations have impact and resonance. For many pupils the times spent listening to their teacher as storyteller will remain as significant moments in their education. The connection between the teacher as storyteller and the teacher using drama, lies in the fact that they both use the generation of imagined realities in order to teach.
Preparation for the role
In preparing to be this kind of storyteller the teacher must have made particular decisions about this child.
Begin by asking the class out of role what they want to ask the child and the order of those questions. This not only provides the teacher with some security in knowing what is going to be asked, at least initially, but also allows some minutes to refine the planning, so that the teacher can be specific in answering their questions. The questions will, to a certain extent, be predictable because they are largely generated by the circumstances of the drama so far and the role the class has taken, which will be that of anxious parents.
Before the drama session, decide what attitude you are going to take when questioned by the class. You are going to be telling them a story but it will be as if they had just met you and it will not be the voice of the narrator re-telling someone else’s story but in the present tense as if it is happening now. There is no book symbolising the re-telling of someone else’s words. This is your story re-told in a specific place (coming down the mountain path) at a specific time (within minutes of a significant event) and from the child’s point of view, not a dispassionate onlooker or observer of events.
Of course, all these things are possible from the text of a book; however, the pupils will be defining what is important, which are the most important questions to be asked and how to handle the mood of the storyteller, whose views on the events may be very different from those of the audience whom haddresses. Be clear about his attitude towards being left behind, what has happened and how he feels about it. Then run the hot-seating.
The requirements of working in role
The teacher, working in this way, is an important stimulus for the learning. It is not necessary to use role throughout the piece of work. It can be used judiciously to focus work at strategic points or to challenge particular aspects of the children’s perceptions whilst other techniques and conventions are used to support the work and develop it.
In order to make the TiR most effective, we need to look at educational drama from the point of view of the ‘audience’, an audience who in this instance are participants at the same time. This will help us shape up the TiR elements particularly according to how the audience is seeing things. Here are two responses to considering the ‘audience’ position.
The teacher-taught relationship
So what are the possibilities in terms of power and choosing a role? There are
five basic types of role and mostly can be illustrated from the ‘The Dream’ drama.
The authority role
This is a role like the Duke in the ‘The Dream’ drama, who is presented with Egeus’s problem and has to rule on it. This figure is usually in charge of an organisation and has the class in a role subordinate to him/her. The role is fair, applies rules and governs properly, but often does not
know the full facts and issues and needs the class to investigate and enlighten him/her. It is very close to being teacher and can be reassuring for a class, but also has the negativity of not changing the teacher–taught relationship enough to allow more ownership for the class.
The opposer role
This is a role that is often in authority but dangerous to and/or creating a problem for another role and, by extension, the class. Egeus is an opposer role who is against Hermia and therefore in opposition to the class role, as they take her side against his dictatorial treatment of her. This is a stimulating position for many pupils as the opposition of parents is something they have all experienced. The opposer role has to be used carefully because the response to it can be difficult to handle if it becomes too strong. We have to know what response to expect and be able to channel it productively.
The intermediate role
This is often a messenger or go-between, as the servant role used in the ‘The Dream’ drama. This role is then caught between opposing sides and can appeal to the empathy in the class to help them out of the predicament. In the ‘The Dream’ it might be a servant to Egeus who is sympathetic to Hermia but does not know what best to do as she cannot just tell her employer what she thinks he should do. So she seeks the help of the class to solve her dilemma.
The needing help role
This is a role like Hermia, who is in need of help to fight the injustice of her father’s decision. This role, like the servant described above, is the best way to get empathy from a class and most raises the status of the class, putting them in a position of responsibility and thus generating
interest and learning possibility because the teacher is the one who does not know what to do for once.
The ordinary person
This role is in the same position as the role given to the class. We do not have this sort of role in our ‘The Dream’ drama but the Steward in the ‘Macbeth’ drama is like this. He faces the same problem and danger as the other servants represented by the class. Even though he is in
charge of them, he needs them to sort it out for him and make decisions. Therefore this is a lower status role, the teacher being ‘the one who does not know’, a very powerful position of ignorance that teachers cannot ordinarily occupy. It is powerful because it shifts responsibility more to the pupil roles.
2. How to Begin Planning Drama
In this chapter we are going to describe and analyse the main components of planning in drama. On this journey we will visit a number of key planning decisions and approaches. These are:
●How to begin a plan
●The frame of a drama – first example ‘The Governor’s Child’
●The frame of a drama – second example ‘The Wild Thing’
●How did this drama evolve?
●The ingredients of planning
●Learning objectives
●Strong material
●Roles for the pupils
●Tension points – risks – theatre moments
●Building context and belief-building
●Challenges and decision-making
But before we begin this journey a word of warning to those who are new to this way of working: ‘If I was making this journey, I wouldn’t start from here!’ Planning brand new dramas is complex and, while we hope to unravel some of the complexity in this chapter, the best starting point is using tried and tested dramas first. That is why we have included 14 dramas in this book. When you feel comfortable with the approach, the planning becomes more accessible.
The frame of a drama
We are using the idea of a frame as a way of seeing key decisions in planning. It is originally defined by Erving Goffman (Goffman, 1975) as the way a situation develops, or in our case is constructed, to give particular viewpoints and ways of understanding the meaning of that situation. Goffman uses ‘frame’ to refer, essentially, to the viewpoint individuals will have about their circumstances and which helps them to make sense of an event or situation and to assess its likely impact upon themselves as individuals. Translated into terms of process drama as a genre of theatre, we could say that Goffman’s frame constitutes a means of laying in the dramatic tension by situating the participants in relation to the unfolding action. (Bowell and Heap, 2001, p. 59) The frame is a dynamic, interrelated and complex weaving of all the other ingredients. It has pre-text, which is derived from the stimulus material (see Figure 2.1). In planning a drama we have to write the main frame, the scenario, in a way that indicates the relationship of the component parts and how the interactions provide tension and potential.
Finally – the key decisions
With all plans you need to ensure that a tension moment comes early to spur
the interest of the group and that a TiR features early to model the commit-
ment and seriousness of the drama.
Summary of points to consider
●How to begin a plan – facing the problems of starting from scratch
●The frame – the way the elements link together to provide viewpoint for the class
●The elements of planning including: learning objectives, a stimulus to learning, roles for the teacher and for the children, how to create tension points, building context and belief in the drama, the decision making for the class, the choice of strategies and techniques
●Planning with someone else
●Road testing the first version
3. How to Generate Quality Speaking and Listening
Authentic dialogue – teacher and pupil talk with adifference
In one run of the drama pupils used their role to point out the error of Max’s ways, asserting, You are only 7 and must listen more to your mother, at the same time making clear that they saw their role as adults and the teacher’s role as only a little boy. This gives pupils confidence in speaking and they see that their contributions matter a great deal. In this way we structure into a drama the very possibility of pupils’ talk mattering. The drama itself provides a form which ensures that the pupils are part of a context with roles that always have direction, often a problem to solve, a person to help, and with strategies and structure that ensure a framework for the language. As the drama develops the pupils develop as a community on the basis of the shared experience. That in itself provides a cumulative language world which is very rich and where the pupils, if the drama engages properly, care in a way that promotes collective, reciprocal and supportive talk. We would maintain that drama is more effective in developing pupils’ ways of thinking, ways of understanding, than ordinary classroom discussion because the language of drama, as the language of all artistic creation, is a heightened version of the language of everyday talk. Its usefulness to speaking and listening, and thus language development, is that we create together a shared experience which frames the language and makes us, the pupils and the teacher, communicate more effectively than mere discussion ever can.
This is particularly true for older primary pupils, ages 7–11, who can bring more separate experiences than younger pupils and are often starting their discussion with greater gaps between them, preventing their chances of shared understandings. Very often in discussion pupils are not really listening to each other because they are more concerned about what they want to say than what they can learn from other pupils. All of the pupils still bring ideas and opinions from their separate experiences, but they are all remade by the creation of a new context. Drama produces greater motivation for the pupils, motivation because of their interest in the problem-solving of the drama.
At the time that this chapter was being written the sort of excitement and interest that drama generates could be seen in a group of training teachers preparing roles for drama. Drama gives the pupils plenty of opportunities to think through speaking and listening. Mistakes can be made and looked at because any particular stage of the drama can be reworked to make it work better for us. In fact the making of mistakes is seen as part of the learning, a major part of helping to negotiate the meaning and to create the drama itself.
What does dialogic teaching demand of the teacher?
One of the key changes that drama brings is a different position for the teacher. If the teacher is the young boy, Daedalus, who has taken his father’s secret project design, without his permission, and the pupils are the family servants, then they have important decisions to make about what they do with this knowledge. They are framed within the drama context to oppose or sort out this behaviour, all the more motivated by the fact it is their teacher behaving in this way through the use of role. So the teacher is able to talk and interact with the pupils in many ways and with many purposes. All of this ensures that the pupils are thinking about what they are part of, looking at actions and consequences and considering options, looking at what to do and why. This reflective mode is special to drama.
How to Generate Quality Speaking and Listening
It would be odd to stop a discussion and say, Let’s look at ourselves and what we said, how we were standing, what it meant. In drama we do that routinely and the learning from the elements of the drama becomes even more potent.
How is listening of high quality taught through drama?
Drama is the creation of meanings in action and pupils have to struggle all the time to make sense of what is going on around them so that they can engage with it. In drama we can get new levels of listening because of the pupils’ interest in the problem-solving of the drama itself. Pupils feel valued in drama and consequently have more confidence in what they want to say and show more respect to what other contributors to the drama say. In order for drama to work the teacher has to listen very closely as well, to see where the pupils are, to pick up what the pupils are offering and use it within the drama.
Transcript from a session on Daedalus and Icarus
This comes from the third hour-long session of this drama with a class of mixed 8- and 9-year-olds.
I’ll have to have words with the servants if it’s got in the dustbin. ’ Icarus might go and he might pick them up and say, ‘I have found them’ and say they were in the dustbin.
Pupils
Liam, why don’t you swap with Mary.
Conclusions
Lucy, one of the brightest members of the class, who saw the implications of lying from the beginning, very shrewdly sees how the teacher is making the pupils face the consequences of Icarus’s taking of the folder. We have the subtle language of Sally’s lie as Icarus to ‘her father’, with its clear brief denials accompanied by non-verbal commitment to the role. Then come the frank and bold statements of Lucy deciding to be honest and owning up to not only having taken the folder, but having shared it with her friends, the servants, servants of the King, Daedalus’s jailor and enemy. Their feeling of involvement shows clearly by the way they shriek when Daedalus talks of having to speak to the servants about either the throwing away of the folder, or in version 2, their knowledge of the plan.
4. How to Use Drama for Inclusion and Citizenship
This chapter is concerned with the relationship between inclusion and drama as a pedagogical approach. We look at how drama, through its idiosyncratic approach, facilitates inclusion. We then make the link to the Citizenship curriculum and how drama’s approach to inclusion is an intrinsic part of this area. Drama’s inclusion is embedded, first, in its dialogical approach to teaching and learning.
These are
So inclusion will always be found in drama’s approach to learning and it may also be part of its subject content. Let us begin with defining what we mean by inclusion. In the United Kingdom the Office for Standards in Education Educational inclusion has a broad scope. It is essentially about equal opportunities for all pupils, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, background and attainment, including special needs or disability. The inclusive school will have, within its policies and curriculum, strategies to ‘address racism and promote racial harmony where all pupils know they are valued and important to the school’ . Inclusion pays particular attention to the provisions for different groups of pupils. Any children who are at risk of disaffection and exclusion. We would argue that drama has, by its nature, a distinctive role and it is this role we wish to explore further.
What can drama offer in terms of inclusion?
● Drama offers ‘new opportunities to pupils who may have experienced previous difficulties’ .
● Drama takes account of pupils’ varied life experiences and needs by using fictional contexts and roles which enable pupils to explore the underlying issues safely.
● For some pupils drama may offer experiences that are different to those they experience in the real world, for example taking the role of the outsider or the role of the one in charge.
The concept of drama and keeping pupils safe
There is a perception of drama dealing with issues in a safe way because it uses fictional contexts. It is almost as if by shifting to the fictional, a safe emotional distance is automatically created. It would be simplistic to believe that just because we work within fictional contexts, using fictional roles and events, that the experience for pupils is therefore immediately safe from the negative and destructive emotions of real life experiences. In teaching, whether working inside or outside fiction, we need to be constantly aware of the need to treat pupils in ways that demonstrate respect for persons and awareness of their particular social and emotional circumstances in that learning situation.
On one level, the teacher must make the content interesting and appropriate for the pupils, that is, it should be related to their needs and structured in such a way as to grab and hold their attention. The risk of criticism and humiliation by pupils has to be removed or at least made clear as an unacceptable way to behave. This can be done by the teacher modelling how to behave when they make a mistake. Teachers need to demonstrate how to deal with mistakes made by pupils and by protecting and defending them if they are subjected to negative response by classmates. The risk of making mistakes does not automatically vanish because we are using role-play. The principle of protecting pupils from humiliation and embarrassment remains inside and outside the fictional world of drama, in fact, it underpins good teaching and helps raise the social health of the class by modelling positive ways of treating each other.
Gavin Bolton makes an important distinction when writing about pupils and emotion in drama
I cannot stress enough how important it is for teachers to realise that because drama is such a powerful tool for helping people change, as teachers we need to be very sensitive to the emotional demands we make on our students. The notion of ‘protection’ is not necessarily concerned with protecting participants from emotion, for unless there is some kind of emotional engagement nothing can be learned, but rather to protect them into emotion. This does not mean we do not take risks or put pupils in situations that feel risky but these risks are perceived rather than actual.
He suggests three ways to deal with a topic indirectly
1. Enter the topic at an oblique angle to the main issue.
2. Put the pupils in a role that only obliquely connects them with the topic.
The drama teacher plans dramas with these devices in order to shift and adjust the emotional proximity of the class in relation to the social event they are examining. You go into role as the workhouse boss and aggressively tell them to stand when you enter the room. One of the class has a rolled up cardigan to represent her baby and takes the role of Martha. This living-through style of confrontational drama with its raw emotion can be received with derision and light-heartedness by pupils.
Later in the drama one child is asked to stand upon a chair with the label
They are totally inappropriate as ways of structuring a drama lesson. We have no right to subject pupils to this kind of treatment because it is under the cloak of drama and fiction. Our first concern is to take the class to looking at the disturbing reality of the nineteenth-century workhouse and to do that we must find a role for the pupils which gives them power. As the drama progresses and trust in the teacher and the medium is built then the pupils can move closer to the role of the inmates. The stopping and starting of the drama helps defuse the raw emotion and allows pupils to reflect, negotiate and manipulate the fiction to clarify their own understanding. That does not mean we cannot move closer to these issues as the drama develops, but it does mean we need to find a way into the drama that will not generate counter-productive learning, behaviour that will seek to undermine or destroy the drama.
Let us draw an analogy with the social ritual of the funeral services in
Usually the closer to the coffin or front of the service you sit, the closer your relationship to the deceased, with family and close friends in the pews at the front, more distant friends and relations further away. How to Use Drama for Inclusion and Citizenship 55 emotionally charged topic or one where the cultural taboos of our society are to be examined, we need to take the class there very carefully. We need to build their trust in the fictional world we create through the roles we put them in and the strategies we use. It is this that makes it safe for the participants, for as long as we, as teacher and manager of the fictional world, intervene and reflect upon it, we can facilitate learning and protect the vulnerable.
The dramas we include in this book cover some challenging ideas. The gradual making of meaning out of this moment unites the class and fully allows for a variety of levels and activity in response so that it is truly inclusive. When doing this drama in school we were not surprised when a child with autism asked Christopher’s Mum whether she thought he might be autistic?.
With the protection of the class role – people who can help worried parents
– he was able to distance himself from the drama being about him, using the given role of someone who can help parents of pupils with autism.
Another example of a powerful and demanding moment occurs in the
‘Macbeth’ drama when the servants are meeting to discuss what to do. Unexpectedly, TiR as Macbeth shouts for them to report to him. This is a shock and can cause anxiety to the members of the class in role as servants. ● The servants know they have knowledge about him at this point which gives them power, unlike the powerless inmates of the Workhouse. In both of these cases the class are protected by the fiction and if necessary the teacher can go OoR to negotiate what to do, so that the class is never in any danger from the moment of anxiety.
Having a voice in society
If we return to the central idea in drama of creating an ‘as if’ world we see that it is a world that is, at least in part, created by the participants through their ideas. As we have seen in the planning section, good planning creates gaps and spaces for pupils to input their ideas. If we plan for pupils’ ideas to be part of the drama lesson and we are creating a safe environment for this to happen, we are in effect giving them a voice to express their understandings and perspective on the world in which they live. Figure 4.1 describes the pupils who have the confidence to express an opinion in the drama lesson.
There will be a relative congruence or not in the relationship between these components. Whether what I think is close to what I say, whether what I say bears any relationship to what I do will shift in relation to the social circumstances of the moment. One can imagine that more secure pupils whose self-worth is high will present a more congruent view of these three factors. If the concept of ‘giving pupils a voice’ means enabling pupils to express their feelings, their ideas and their suggestions for action, then drama holds the possibility of being a truly inclusive experience. It can do this by shifting pupils into a fictional world where they are no longer speaking as themselves but through the fictional context the teacher has structured for them and the class. The safe distance enables them to say and do the things they may not say or do in the real world. The dialectic that exists between the real world and the drama fictitious.
The real world outside the drama
They can of course be involved in the school itself and learn about responsibility by taking part in school activities and institutions like the school council. To a limited extent they can have experience in the community as part of their school experience. They can make trips out or relevant visitors can be brought in to make pupils aware of the important structures and ideas that community involves. Indeed, if children get very committed to a real-world project there is a dilemma for the school.
Drama’s relationship to citizenship works on two levels, as a methodology that demonstrates aspects of citizenship in action and when the content is specifically focused upon issues of citizenship. When we consider that drama can link citizenship with personal and social education, and spiritual, moral, social and cultural education, then we can begin to understand the importance of drama as a teaching method.
So any whole class drama carried out in the methodology represented in this book is strong on the model of democracy, corporate learning, responsibility and tolerance.
A drama for teaching about citizenship
If we want the pupils to experience a particular political idea or social situation, the fictional world of drama can provide that situation efficiently and with an immediacy that reality cannot provide. Whilst the fiction also protects the pupils into learning at the same time and allows all avenues to be explored without the real consequences that we indicated above. As one example let us consider the use of ‘The Governor’s Child’ drama as a vehicle for uniting these areas. The drama builds the pupils’ roles as citizens of a mountain village and places them in the situation where the community is under threat.
As citizens the pupils have to take on the responsibility of hiding the woman and baby, thus endangering themselves. The drama opens up the issues of justice and revenge as sought by a revolutionary soldier, the idea of what you undertake when you give someone hospitality and ultimately the question of the worth of the single life against the community. We can see from a summary of the drama that a number of citizenship issues are immediately contextualised and presented to the children. Drama ensures that they have to explore them and get involved in them, to challenge and seek solutions in a number of ways.
Here is a list of the issues and ideas that were identified as present in this drama by a group of teacher trainees when they examined it
Giving the children something they can relate to. They have their say – they have ownership of the key decisions in the drama. We can see that the ideas listed cover important aspects of the Citizenship curriculum. In addition, the content of a specific drama can be planned to highlight key Citizenship areas. If we examine the thinking behind the planning of the stages of ‘The Governor’s Child’, we can see how by the nature of the tasks, techniques and content, it promotes elements of the Citizenship curriculum. We have given examples from ‘The Governor’s Child’ so that you can see how abstracts like fairness, democracy, identity, community, belonging, responsibility, can be made concrete through the process of drama. The process makes them more of a community that can work together to the benefit of each individual’s understanding.
And later describe these learning outcomes for 7- and 8-year-olds
They will continue to build on their capacity for empathy and on their awareness and management of feelings, particularly fearfulness in relation to meeting new challenges . Drama makes one of its greatest contributions in modelling and generating this sort of learning. For drama to operate most effectively we need to understand what is happening and how we most effectively create the conditions for empathy to thrive. A phrase commonly linked with empathy is ‘standing in someone else’s shoes’, the idea of, at least for a short time, seeing the world from someone else’s perspective, as if you were standing in their shoes. The inference is that in some way we can see the world through someone else’s eyes, we can think and feel as they would and in some way put ourselves in their position. However, even the most superficial engagement with this idea uncovers deep-seated problems with it in practice. Let us take for example a drama/history lesson where we wish to get the pupils to empathise with the plight of London’s street children of the 1870s. The Nike-shod twenty-first-century pupil is as far removed from the barefooted ‘street urchin’ in dress as in life experience.
We want them to look at, engage with and reflect upon the lives of children of that time. Victorian life for poor children and understand it in relation to their own. To do this we make a shift into a fictional world, where time and place can be reallocated and we can behave ‘as if’ it were happening now, where it is possible to dialogue with fictional ideas of people who no longer exist and where we have an understanding of the empathetic process that engages emotionally without the cruel consequences of the real Victorian world for children. Empathy, like drama, is framed in the particular and so we need to move from broad-brush emotions to their demonstrable particularity. Drama works by focusing upon the particular and moving from the particular to the general. To understand drama’s relationship with empathy we need to deconstruct the process of empathetic behaviour and see how this is replicated in drama.
A working definition of empathy
We need a definition that not only belongs to the real world but can be replicated inside the drama lesson. Pupils will then be able to empathise without having to bear witness to or have the actual life experiences of those to whom they are directing their empathy.
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, the director of the Autism Research Centre at
Cambridge, suggests that ‘empathizing is the drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts, and to respond to them with an appropriate emotion’.
The components of empathy
The idea of a ‘cognitive’ stage and an ‘affective’ stage in the empathetic process is taken from the writings of Alan Leslie in his work at London University, as summarised by Simon Baron-Cohen .
Component One – the cognitive component
Piaget called this aspect of empathy «responding non-egocentrically» as it entails the «setting aside of your own current perspective» and «attributing a mental state to the other person . » .
Component Two – the affective component
‘The second element to empathy is the affective component. There is here a desire to do something, to take action, and therefore empathy is not just about recognising the emotional state of someone but also doing something about it.
An example of structuring drama for empathetic response
Let us use these ideas to analyse how empathy might be generated using as an example ‘The Workhouse’ drama. In the next part of the drama the pupils are told that a new inmate is expected and that they are to witness her induction to the workhouse. First, they look at the Workhouse Master as he watches the girl walking towards the gates.
This strategy of conscience alley will enable the class to sympathise with
Martha’s circumstances. The first stage of structuring for empathising is the cognitive stage.
The cognitive stage
3 Martha’s purpose – to enter the workhouse and save the baby. Martha’s approach to the doors of the workhouse, in other words, the pre-text. Workhouse Master – cruel, untrustworthy, manipulative – and finally the low status role of Martha, vulnerable and limited in the choices she can make on her own. The context If we then put these roles in the context of a workhouse – dangerous, forbidding and the last resort of the poor – while at the same time requiring the class to make judgements and a report about the workhouse, we are giving them power to take action.
Events leading up to her approaching the workhouse The pre-text to
When the class meet roles with cruel and negative attitudes, i. The second stage of structuring for empathising is the affective stage.
The affective stage
The roles First the pupils’ role as commissioners is high status, fair-minded, responsible, not easily fooled and trying to make the world a better place. Events leading up to their debrief of the Workhouse Master The pupils share the experience of witnessing the induction of a new inmate. While the class’s attitude to Martha represents the cognitive state, the second stage of the empathetic process is the affective state. Martha.
Of course, this situation is manipulated by the teacher structuring the roles and events in a particular way – the initial meeting with those who run the workhouse, listening to their attitudes and witnessing their deceitful behaviour. How to Generate Empathy in a Drama 67 take place. Of course the nature of the response may vary from mere sympathy with Martha’s predicament to a more dynamic response to help the person by initiating action to help. What distinguishes empathy as a response is its appropriateness to the person’s circumstances.
Those pupils who find it difficult to empathise will have the opportunity to see the skills modelled and the positive consequences played out.
5. Can we plan for generating empathy?
We can generate empathy through structuring roles and creating a drama frame where it is likely to happen.
The role of the pupils
While placing the pupils in a positive, problem-solving and high status role gives them the power to make judgements about people’s circumstances from a positive point of view, it is also possible to generate empathy for the dispossessed. Later in the workhouse drama the pupils shift their role to inmates, demonstrating life in the workhouse through tableaux based upon the workhouse rules.
The role of the teacher
The role of the pupils needs in the first place to be a community one so that they see the situation from one point of view and are not divided in their attitude. Just as the role of the pupils gives them a perspective from which they can empathise, the role you plan for the teacher is also part of structuring for an empathetic response. The Workhouse Master generates an empathetic response towards Martha from the pupils by his lack of humanity. The modelling by the teacher of roles who are unable to empathise enables the pupils to witness their shortcomings and therefore have a sense of how disabled they are without these skills.
We are not historians, and in writing this chapter we shared our approach to using drama to teach history with Professor Hilary Cooper at St Martins
In using the arts pupils are creating their own interpretation or account, based upon sources. We have a responsibility to the historian to make clear the dangers and risks in a dramatic approach. As was discussed in Chapter 5, the phrase ‘to stand in someone else’s shoes’ is one often used to describe the concept of empathising and it is never more liberally tossed about than in the History and Drama curriculum. To expect a child to ‘step into the shoes’ of a 10-year-old evacuee or a servant in the household of a wealthy family in the nineteenth century, is ignoring the impossibility of this shift for pupils with twenty-first-century minds.
Dressing up to go back in time
One popular method of ‘empathising’ in the teaching of history takes the form of dressing up in costumes from the past. Alternatively, schools will suspend the usual timetable and devote lessons and other activities to a particular period in time. Teachers may even be locked into roles from the past , thinking, misguidedly in our view, this will generate ‘empathy’ in the pupils with people from history. While dressing up in costumes is a very popular history/drama experience, we must be guarded about what we think children may learn by the experience.
In drama we are particularly interested in the last element. It is here that drama synthesises story and past events. As a teacher planning a history-related drama this does not mean abandoning facts and reasons. If we are asking pupils to take on roles of people from the past we need to frame this task in such a way as to respect the need for authenticity and to give them roles that will enable them to look at the past in a way that respects the work of the historian.
Of course, the research is not just a task for the teacher but one that can be shared with the pupils in lessons introducing the topic and before the drama work takes place. The drama then has an assessment function, as knowledge gained in the research activities will be exposed during the drama.
Balancing the tensions – stories and history
Much of drama in education operates from creating fictions and telling stories. Of course this is not necessarily in conflict with history as we can approach individuals’ viewpoints in history as their stories of the past. We need to be clear about our learning objectives, about what we are trying to teach. We are going to use a drama about Victorian street children to illustrate how drama and history can be structured to work in harmony. In using drama we are using a dense form of teaching, because the currency of drama is language, listening and speaking, and we have a cross-curricular approach that will touch upon learning objectives from several areas of the curriculum. Let’s begin with the English and the History National Curriculum learning objectives.
In this way drama confronts pupils with the ideas, beliefs and values of people from the past. The juxtaposition of values and beliefs from the past with pupils’ own values and gives them the opportunity to ‘use techniques of dialogic talk to explore ideas, topics or issues’ through the prism of history and the safety of fictional contexts. The ‘Victorian Street Children’ drama illustrates how the tensions between history and drama can be managed. 72 How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama history can work together it must be remembered that the drama lesson should not be seen in isolation from history lessons that precede or follow it.
It is part of a series of lessons and issues raised in the drama can be dealt with in other more appropriate teaching and learning settings. The starting point for this drama is a photograph . Alan Lambert in their book Drama Structures , although we have used it to develop a different drama. The photograph immediately nails the first important rule of drama and history, the importance and value of historical authenticity.
Photographs and artefacts are a key approach because they can grab the attention of the pupils. They can also generate a context, a time and a place, roles and even a possible dilemma, all ingredients of drama. We need to take the class to the drama. The initial viewpoint is that of the outsider, the historian.
The subject matter is delicate, the plight of the poor, and more poignantly, poor children. We are making a conscious decision to move into the fiction of the drama using the authenticity of a primary source, a photograph. We are taking the pupils to the harsh reality of the past by distancing them through the collective role of historians. We manage this through their role, as historians, we give them high status, the Mantle of Expert.
In this way we generate and manage the commitment of the class by ‘beguiling them’ into a fictional world of the poor at this time in history. We can examine how the past is represented and this begins the process of enquiry into the past that is central to the function of the historian. We need to go to other sources in our teacher research, and a chapter by Blake Morrison in Too True provides us with another source to validate our understanding. This in turn juxtaposes pupils’ own attitudes with those adopted by the roles. In confronting the attitudes of the roles, for example, the acceptability of the physical chastisement of children, pupils are looking at issues of continuity and change. Analysing the photographic process in the 1870s compared to digital photography today would be an example of pupils dealing with similarity and difference. Continuity and change, similarity and difference are key concepts in the teaching of history and through drama these are made concrete experiences. The drama begins as a history lesson, with the idea of taking on roles in the lesson introduced from the beginning.
What skills do they need?
The discussion of the role of the historian is a preparation for this. We need to frame the class’s thinking in such a way that they are constrained to think like a historian. This approach replicates Facts – Hypothesis – Research. The ‘think we know’ section opens up the possibilities for the class, for example, an observation such as the boys are poor will present a possibility based on the evidence of their dress and demeanour. This may generate further research and it may not be resolved. However, it may also draw the pupils’ attention to the fact that girls did live on the streets and were taken into Barnardo’s homes.
This in turn raises the opportunities for further research outside the drama lesson.
● There are five boys and one man in the photograph.
● The name of the man in the photograph is Edward Fitzgerald.
● Edward Fitzgerald is holding a lamp. Having collated some evidence, hypotheses and research questions we can use drama as a means to test out some of their observations.
This question is there to gauge the pupils’ knowledge at this early stage of the lesson.
Already there are hints at the evangelical nature of Barnardo’s exploits and these can be further examined out of role. ‘after’ photograph to show the immediate and dramatic change Barnardo’s home had made to them. He will open up the issues related to the technology of the photography, how the children would have to stay still for up to half a minute.
Having drawn the class into the photograph through their interviews with
Not all pupils will feel comfortable in taking on the role of the children in the photograph at this point, so a process of selection and contracting the demands inherent in adopting these roles is critical to the success of the next part of the drama.
Modelling the roles
Part of the process of setting this up is the modelling of roles by the teacher before asking pupils to take on this responsibility. We’re going to move the drama on now and meet the boys in the photograph we have been looking at. You must be good at keeping a serious look on your face because, as you can see, the boys in the photograph are going through unhappy times. Finally, I will be with you as Edward Fitzgerald and so you won’t feel left on your own to do this.
The rest of the class will be wealthy ladies and gentlemen who are keen to support
Their task is to decide upon the questions they wish to put to Fitzgerald and the boys. The role of the majority of the class has two facets. The role will put them in a powerful position in relation to Edward Fitzgerald. While the boys may be in fear of the beadle the questioners will not, as their class and superior education puts them in a position of power. Should they wish to talk to the boys on their own, without the inhibiting presence of Fitzgerald, they may request to do so and this will be acceded to, albeit reluctantly by TiR as Fitzgerald. Away from the rest of the class , those who have decided to be the boys meet with you.
Setting up the boys
Avoid any names of pupils in the class. In the photo some of the boys do look like brothers, others do not. In Saõ Paulo gangs of street children go round together and refer to each other as ‘uncle’, hinting at a family-like grouping.
Having answered these questions and built up a history, there are four
Without the agreement of the group on these the next part of the drama will not work. 1 We must agree that you are afraid of Fitzgerald. If the drama is to work you must agree that you are afraid of him.
2 They must agree that they want to go into the home. This very carefully engineered setting up of the boys is essential for the success of the task. Whatever happens as teacher you will be moving in and out of role, managing the teaching and learning process, checking understanding, negotiating the next question, the next move and using the as-if-it-is-happening-now to engage the pupils attention. They are the scriptwriters, but they are constrained by the ‘givens’, the non-negotiables of frame through which they are exploring how they make sense of this part of history. In a session with some students, those taking the role of the interested wealthy benefactors asked Fitzgerald to leave, which he did, warning the boys to be best behaved as he left. This was a marvellous opportunity to discuss the implications of his request. Should they give money and food now?.
What are the implications of this?
From that moment we can incorporate it into the drama. We can tell the pupils in their planning of the boys that if Fitzgerald leaves they can ask for food and money.
Whole class participation – a sculpture of children living on the streets
In this drama each frame takes the class closer to the children who are the subject of our historical investigations. The next task is to engage the whole class as a sculpture of the children living on the streets. Welcome to our new exhibit on the theme of children in the nineteenth century. In the next room we have an interactive exhibit, a sculpture of children who were known as street children. What is exciting about this exhibit is that not only can you view it, but you can, through the wonders of modern technology, hear what the children represented in the piece are thinking. They are programmed to say what they are thinking at this moment in history. As half the class watch, the teacher touches each of the pupils on the shoulder and they voice their thoughts. Of course, not all pupils will speak and some will repeat what others say, but this is not a problem because the overall effect is to create a sound collage of their thoughts in this situation while at the same time not putting unnecessary pressure on those who cannot think of anything to say and would prefer to listen. This slowing down of the drama and looking in detail at a particular moment is important and a feature of how drama in education works. Unlike performance and product-orientated drama, the purpose here is to negotiate meanings and consider implications of particular issues. The pupils have been moved frame by frame to make sense of the world of the street children by a gradual edging towards their perspective.
Whole class improvisation
We can use the sculpture and thought-tracking work as a starting point for a whole class improvisation or ‘living through’ part of the drama. I am going to take the role of a wealthy gentleman who comes across these street children on a bitterly cold night.
The teacher begins to narrate
Dozens of children huddled together desperately trying to keep warm in front of the dying embers of a fire. He immediately organised his servants to bring soup, bowls and bread to the children and as they greedily ate bread and soup he sat with them.
Teacher as narrator
The next section is a transcript of some 10- and 11-year-olds at this point in the drama The teacher realises the class is too far away and that only the children close to him are responding verbally to him, although they are all engaged with what is going on. The class have taken a position that exposes the ignorance and patronising attitude of the wealthy gentleman. The lesson has been structured to ensure their inclusion and their responses are spontaneous and offered genuinely from the viewpoint of the roles they are representing. They connect with the plight of the street children by recognising the lack of understanding of their position embodied in the teacher roles.
Hence the misdirection of much well-meant effort into charity of the
The drama approach must be seen as a particular pedagogical approach to the subject. Drama needs to be recognised for what it does best, which is to negotiate meanings through engagement with imagined realities.
6. How to Link History and Drama
I think I will study well and then help children like myself. We can see from this that the ‘Street Children’ drama acts as a metaphor for now and enables us to open up issues that may be hindered by prejudice in a way that uses history as a prism through which to view global issues.
Speaking and Listening through Drama
The two of us were initially unclear as to what exactly a chapter on drama and assessment would contain. We have in our work used many approaches and many ideas for the philosophy and practice of assessment. The result of the hour-long discussion, much of it focused through looking at drama work with pupils on video, was that we had the powerful sort of dialogue, exchange of ideas, challenge of assumptions, that we are putting forward in this book.
What is assessment?
Drama is not just about speaking and listening, but the creation of a fiction, where the art form of drama is essential and the success of that enterprise depends on valuable interaction between all participants. However, we must stress we are primarily looking at assessing speaking and listening, the focus of this book, and we are not providing in this chapter a framework for the assessment of theatre skills, the art form of drama, for personal and social development, nor other learning areas that drama can address. The currency of drama is speaking and listening and in its nature it is swift, fleeting and ephemeral.
Listening attainment levels of the English National Curriculum in any significant
How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama way. It is easier to assess, of course, because it is an isolated target, one person delivering a set structure in front of the teacher and class, a performance.
Since the inception of the National Curriculum, assessment of Speaking and
Our approach is not to produce league tables, but to give a snapshot of pupils’ communication skills in order to recognise achievement and to chart possible development. The prime requirement on teachers when doing assessments is to listen to the pupils and to look carefully at the activity. In the formative role of assessment we need to be feeding back to the pupils during and after the drama.
How do we collect data more formally?
Assessment in this context is the detailed study of episodes of speaking and listening. We need to describe what we see and teachers need to operate as researchers of the dialogue in their classrooms. To set this up properly, the senior management team need to become involved in planning a whole school strategy for the assessment and development of speaking and listening. One teacher can be freed to observe a partner.
With A as a critical friend, a lesson or lessons can be carried out by B and the events are logged by the observer A, as well as noted afterwards by B. Then they reverse roles for the other class. From the evidence, judgements need to be made of the speaking and listening and pupil profiles built up based on the thinking and the empathy demonstrated during a drama. Further evidence is collected by the class teacher from other contexts to check out whether what has been observed in the drama is unique to that context or a general tendency and ability.
Other issues to consider
We must learn to read body language, including facial expressions during the drama. If a pupil only speaks once we must look at that single contribution and at other evidence drawn or written after the event to see what they know from the drama. We have to manage the exchanges in a drama so that the naturally dominant voices in the classroom learn to listen and we allow others space to talk. Such pupils may distil ideas in a way that frequent contributors fail to do because they do not listen as well. Other class members are naturally quiet and we will not change people’s personalities so we should not expect them to be as vociferous.
Capturing the samples of speaking and listening
There is readily available technology that can record work and allow us to consider it at greater length after the event, particularly video recording. Again, if teachers are paired to do the assessment, one can handle the camera while the other teaches. Some teachers object to the use of video recording on the grounds that it distorts the drama process.
We will now look at a transcript from a video recording of a drama lesson at a key moment and consider the way it can be assessed. At this point teacher OoR is standing up talking to the class.
Charlie: They’re here because they’re trying to get the
Highwayman. The Highwayman stole some gold for the landlord’s daughter to get the keys.
7. How to Begin Using Assessment through Drama
There are a number of critical moments to assess here. Because you, as historians, can find a lot about the legend. Tim and then with his dilemma about whether to tell on the Highwayman to the soldiers, which is the central focus of the drama at this point. Alan’s contribution is worth assessing for its value.
In answering him in role I can expand on why Tim is wishing himself away, something terrible’s happened, hinting at but not telling what is happening. Other members of the group are then able to interpret what this means and are keen to introduce the Highwayman themselves. Neil introduces the subject and at once the tension of the situation can be raised. Charlie is creative in developing ideas of what he thinks the soldiers and Highwayman are doing, They’re here because they’re trying to get the Highwayman.
The level of engagement in the drama for him is very high. He is introducing storyline ideas that are original to him and can be used by me in developing the drama later if the class agree to take on the ideas. The nature of the situation changes as these historians from the twenty-first century are drawn into the mesh of Tim’s difficult situation.
Alan’s contribution can be seen to have opened this up and he can be rewarded for empathising with Tim from the previous exchange.
Teachers should talk to children after drama sessions in order to elicit their understanding. Children need to reflect separately and together on the process.
Talk for writing – the wholeness of communication
We can get clear evidence for assessment of the effectiveness of speaking and listening, particularly the latter, from other forms of communication like writing or art work.
Key findings
The project cited here was set up to do concentrated Literacy work involving more visual stimuli and drama.
Here are some outcomes observed by the teachers
One teacher observed, ‘the children have become more involved in the texts that we read’ ... ‘it was clear that those who use drama as part of their integrated planning were beginning to choose specific drama conventions suited to the overall learning intention.
And the project report summarises
The expectation of many was that drama would become a regular – at least weekly – feature of Literacy and that in particular more work needed to be planned to prompt adults to model drama in order to support the children.
She is not a member of this family so how can we trust her?
If Maria doesn’t give the baby to his mother she will feel guilty by ruining an innocent baby’s life. We can see from this work that the two 10-year-old children are very focused by the arguments that were rehearsed orally within the drama as the villagers discussed the decision as to what to do with Maria. The writing has become a way of formalising the argument.
How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama
In addition, they have been motivated to write by the drama and produced creditable pieces. In conclusion, we know that assessing and recording speaking and listening is a demanding task, but we would contend that is no more demanding than other assessment if it is approached in the right way.
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1. How to Begin with Teacher in Role
Why use teacher in role?
The most important resource you have as a teacher when using drama is yourself.
Learning demands intervention from the teacher to structure, direct and influence the learning of the pupils. One of the best ways to do that in drama work is to be inside the drama. Therefore, at the centre of the dramas that we include in this book, is the key teaching technique that is used, namely teacher in role (TiR). This chapter will set out approaches to TiR and give examples of how it works.
Many teachers see TiR as a difficult activity, particularly with older children in the primary school. However, it is our experience that when a teacher takes a role he or she becomes ‘interesting’ to the children, so that there are less control problems because they become engaged. Many times we have watched trainee teachers with a class of children struggling to get attention when giving instructions in traditional teacher mode. Yet, as soon as they move into role, they obtain that attention more effectively.
Teacher as storyteller
The teacher as a storyteller is something all primary school teachers will recognise. Good teachers slip easily into it and use it frequently. In its most observable guise it occurs when teaching the whole class and engaging them with a piece of fiction. The pupil’s role will be dominated by listening and this will be interlaced with questioning, responding and interpreting the meaning and sense of the fiction. The teacher’s role will be to communicate the text in a lively and interesting manner, holding their attention and engaging their imagination. In making judgements about the quality of this method of teaching, the critical questions will be around whether the content of the story interests
the class and holds their attention, whether the delivery of the teacher, i.e. voice, intonation and interpretive skills, are good and, where relevant, whether accompanying illustrations have impact and resonance. For many pupils the times spent listening to their teacher as storyteller will remain as significant moments in their education. The connection between the teacher as storyteller and the teacher using drama, lies in the fact that they both use the generation of imagined realities in order to teach.
Preparation for the role
In preparing to be this kind of storyteller the teacher must have made particular decisions about this child.
Begin by asking the class out of role what they want to ask the child and the order of those questions. This not only provides the teacher with some security in knowing what is going to be asked, at least initially, but also allows some minutes to refine the planning, so that the teacher can be specific in answering their questions. The questions will, to a certain extent, be predictable because they are largely generated by the circumstances of the drama so far and the role the class has taken, which will be that of anxious parents.
Before the drama session, decide what attitude you are going to take when questioned by the class. You are going to be telling them a story but it will be as if they had just met you and it will not be the voice of the narrator re-telling someone else’s story but in the present tense as if it is happening now. There is no book symbolising the re-telling of someone else’s words. This is your story re-told in a specific place (coming down the mountain path) at a specific time (within minutes of a significant event) and from the child’s point of view, not a dispassionate onlooker or observer of events.
Of course, all these things are possible from the text of a book; however, the pupils will be defining what is important, which are the most important questions to be asked and how to handle the mood of the storyteller, whose views on the events may be very different from those of the audience whom haddresses. Be clear about his attitude towards being left behind, what has happened and how he feels about it. Then run the hot-seating.
The requirements of working in role
The teacher, working in this way, is an important stimulus for the learning. It is not necessary to use role throughout the piece of work. It can be used judiciously to focus work at strategic points or to challenge particular aspects of the children’s perceptions whilst other techniques and conventions are used to support the work and develop it.
In order to make the TiR most effective, we need to look at educational drama from the point of view of the ‘audience’, an audience who in this instance are participants at the same time. This will help us shape up the TiR elements particularly according to how the audience is seeing things. Here are two responses to considering the ‘audience’ position.
The teacher-taught relationship
So what are the possibilities in terms of power and choosing a role? There are
five basic types of role and mostly can be illustrated from the ‘The Dream’ drama.
The authority role
This is a role like the Duke in the ‘The Dream’ drama, who is presented with Egeus’s problem and has to rule on it. This figure is usually in charge of an organisation and has the class in a role subordinate to him/her. The role is fair, applies rules and governs properly, but often does not
know the full facts and issues and needs the class to investigate and enlighten him/her. It is very close to being teacher and can be reassuring for a class, but also has the negativity of not changing the teacher–taught relationship enough to allow more ownership for the class.
The opposer role
This is a role that is often in authority but dangerous to and/or creating a problem for another role and, by extension, the class. Egeus is an opposer role who is against Hermia and therefore in opposition to the class role, as they take her side against his dictatorial treatment of her. This is a stimulating position for many pupils as the opposition of parents is something they have all experienced. The opposer role has to be used carefully because the response to it can be difficult to handle if it becomes too strong. We have to know what response to expect and be able to channel it productively.
The intermediate role
This is often a messenger or go-between, as the servant role used in the ‘The Dream’ drama. This role is then caught between opposing sides and can appeal to the empathy in the class to help them out of the predicament. In the ‘The Dream’ it might be a servant to Egeus who is sympathetic to Hermia but does not know what best to do as she cannot just tell her employer what she thinks he should do. So she seeks the help of the class to solve her dilemma.
The needing help role
This is a role like Hermia, who is in need of help to fight the injustice of her father’s decision. This role, like the servant described above, is the best way to get empathy from a class and most raises the status of the class, putting them in a position of responsibility and thus generating
interest and learning possibility because the teacher is the one who does not know what to do for once.
The ordinary person
This role is in the same position as the role given to the class. We do not have this sort of role in our ‘The Dream’ drama but the Steward in the ‘Macbeth’ drama is like this. He faces the same problem and danger as the other servants represented by the class. Even though he is in
charge of them, he needs them to sort it out for him and make decisions. Therefore this is a lower status role, the teacher being ‘the one who does not know’, a very powerful position of ignorance that teachers cannot ordinarily occupy. It is powerful because it shifts responsibility more to the pupil roles.
2. How to Begin Planning Drama
In this chapter we are going to describe and analyse the main components of planning in drama. On this journey we will visit a number of key planning decisions and approaches. These are:
●How to begin a plan
●The frame of a drama – first example ‘The Governor’s Child’
●The frame of a drama – second example ‘The Wild Thing’
●How did this drama evolve?
●The ingredients of planning
●Learning objectives
●Strong material
●Roles for the pupils
●Tension points – risks – theatre moments
●Building context and belief-building
●Challenges and decision-making
But before we begin this journey a word of warning to those who are new to this way of working: ‘If I was making this journey, I wouldn’t start from here!’ Planning brand new dramas is complex and, while we hope to unravel some of the complexity in this chapter, the best starting point is using tried and tested dramas first. That is why we have included 14 dramas in this book. When you feel comfortable with the approach, the planning becomes more accessible.
The frame of a drama
We are using the idea of a frame as a way of seeing key decisions in planning. It is originally defined by Erving Goffman (Goffman, 1975) as the way a situation develops, or in our case is constructed, to give particular viewpoints and ways of understanding the meaning of that situation. Goffman uses ‘frame’ to refer, essentially, to the viewpoint individuals will have about their circumstances and which helps them to make sense of an event or situation and to assess its likely impact upon themselves as individuals. Translated into terms of process drama as a genre of theatre, we could say that Goffman’s frame constitutes a means of laying in the dramatic tension by situating the participants in relation to the unfolding action. (Bowell and Heap, 2001, p. 59) The frame is a dynamic, interrelated and complex weaving of all the other ingredients. It has pre-text, which is derived from the stimulus material (see Figure 2.1). In planning a drama we have to write the main frame, the scenario, in a way that indicates the relationship of the component parts and how the interactions provide tension and potential.
Finally – the key decisions
With all plans you need to ensure that a tension moment comes early to spur
the interest of the group and that a TiR features early to model the commit-
ment and seriousness of the drama.
Summary of points to consider
●How to begin a plan – facing the problems of starting from scratch
●The frame – the way the elements link together to provide viewpoint for the class
●The elements of planning including: learning objectives, a stimulus to learning, roles for the teacher and for the children, how to create tension points, building context and belief in the drama, the decision making for the class, the choice of strategies and techniques
●Planning with someone else
●Road testing the first version
3. How to Generate Quality Speaking and Listening
Authentic dialogue – teacher and pupil talk with adifference
In one run of the drama pupils used their role to point out the error of Max’s ways, asserting, You are only 7 and must listen more to your mother, at the same time making clear that they saw their role as adults and the teacher’s role as only a little boy. This gives pupils confidence in speaking and they see that their contributions matter a great deal. In this way we structure into a drama the very possibility of pupils’ talk mattering. The drama itself provides a form which ensures that the pupils are part of a context with roles that always have direction, often a problem to solve, a person to help, and with strategies and structure that ensure a framework for the language. As the drama develops the pupils develop as a community on the basis of the shared experience. That in itself provides a cumulative language world which is very rich and where the pupils, if the drama engages properly, care in a way that promotes collective, reciprocal and supportive talk. We would maintain that drama is more effective in developing pupils’ ways of thinking, ways of understanding, than ordinary classroom discussion because the language of drama, as the language of all artistic creation, is a heightened version of the language of everyday talk. Its usefulness to speaking and listening, and thus language development, is that we create together a shared experience which frames the language and makes us, the pupils and the teacher, communicate more effectively than mere discussion ever can.
This is particularly true for older primary pupils, ages 7–11, who can bring more separate experiences than younger pupils and are often starting their discussion with greater gaps between them, preventing their chances of shared understandings. Very often in discussion pupils are not really listening to each other because they are more concerned about what they want to say than what they can learn from other pupils. All of the pupils still bring ideas and opinions from their separate experiences, but they are all remade by the creation of a new context. Drama produces greater motivation for the pupils, motivation because of their interest in the problem-solving of the drama.
At the time that this chapter was being written the sort of excitement and interest that drama generates could be seen in a group of training teachers preparing roles for drama. Drama gives the pupils plenty of opportunities to think through speaking and listening. Mistakes can be made and looked at because any particular stage of the drama can be reworked to make it work better for us. In fact the making of mistakes is seen as part of the learning, a major part of helping to negotiate the meaning and to create the drama itself.
What does dialogic teaching demand of the teacher?
One of the key changes that drama brings is a different position for the teacher. If the teacher is the young boy, Daedalus, who has taken his father’s secret project design, without his permission, and the pupils are the family servants, then they have important decisions to make about what they do with this knowledge. They are framed within the drama context to oppose or sort out this behaviour, all the more motivated by the fact it is their teacher behaving in this way through the use of role. So the teacher is able to talk and interact with the pupils in many ways and with many purposes. All of this ensures that the pupils are thinking about what they are part of, looking at actions and consequences and considering options, looking at what to do and why. This reflective mode is special to drama.
How to Generate Quality Speaking and Listening
It would be odd to stop a discussion and say, Let’s look at ourselves and what we said, how we were standing, what it meant. In drama we do that routinely and the learning from the elements of the drama becomes even more potent.
How is listening of high quality taught through drama?
Drama is the creation of meanings in action and pupils have to struggle all the time to make sense of what is going on around them so that they can engage with it. In drama we can get new levels of listening because of the pupils’ interest in the problem-solving of the drama itself. Pupils feel valued in drama and consequently have more confidence in what they want to say and show more respect to what other contributors to the drama say. In order for drama to work the teacher has to listen very closely as well, to see where the pupils are, to pick up what the pupils are offering and use it within the drama.
Transcript from a session on Daedalus and Icarus
This comes from the third hour-long session of this drama with a class of mixed 8- and 9-year-olds.
I’ll have to have words with the servants if it’s got in the dustbin. ’ Icarus might go and he might pick them up and say, ‘I have found them’ and say they were in the dustbin.
Pupils
Liam, why don’t you swap with Mary.
Conclusions
Lucy, one of the brightest members of the class, who saw the implications of lying from the beginning, very shrewdly sees how the teacher is making the pupils face the consequences of Icarus’s taking of the folder. We have the subtle language of Sally’s lie as Icarus to ‘her father’, with its clear brief denials accompanied by non-verbal commitment to the role. Then come the frank and bold statements of Lucy deciding to be honest and owning up to not only having taken the folder, but having shared it with her friends, the servants, servants of the King, Daedalus’s jailor and enemy. Their feeling of involvement shows clearly by the way they shriek when Daedalus talks of having to speak to the servants about either the throwing away of the folder, or in version 2, their knowledge of the plan.
4. How to Use Drama for Inclusion and Citizenship
This chapter is concerned with the relationship between inclusion and drama as a pedagogical approach. We look at how drama, through its idiosyncratic approach, facilitates inclusion. We then make the link to the Citizenship curriculum and how drama’s approach to inclusion is an intrinsic part of this area. Drama’s inclusion is embedded, first, in its dialogical approach to teaching and learning.
These are
So inclusion will always be found in drama’s approach to learning and it may also be part of its subject content. Let us begin with defining what we mean by inclusion. In the United Kingdom the Office for Standards in Education Educational inclusion has a broad scope. It is essentially about equal opportunities for all pupils, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, background and attainment, including special needs or disability. The inclusive school will have, within its policies and curriculum, strategies to ‘address racism and promote racial harmony where all pupils know they are valued and important to the school’ . Inclusion pays particular attention to the provisions for different groups of pupils. Any children who are at risk of disaffection and exclusion. We would argue that drama has, by its nature, a distinctive role and it is this role we wish to explore further.
What can drama offer in terms of inclusion?
● Drama offers ‘new opportunities to pupils who may have experienced previous difficulties’ .
● Drama takes account of pupils’ varied life experiences and needs by using fictional contexts and roles which enable pupils to explore the underlying issues safely.
● For some pupils drama may offer experiences that are different to those they experience in the real world, for example taking the role of the outsider or the role of the one in charge.
The concept of drama and keeping pupils safe
There is a perception of drama dealing with issues in a safe way because it uses fictional contexts. It is almost as if by shifting to the fictional, a safe emotional distance is automatically created. It would be simplistic to believe that just because we work within fictional contexts, using fictional roles and events, that the experience for pupils is therefore immediately safe from the negative and destructive emotions of real life experiences. In teaching, whether working inside or outside fiction, we need to be constantly aware of the need to treat pupils in ways that demonstrate respect for persons and awareness of their particular social and emotional circumstances in that learning situation.
On one level, the teacher must make the content interesting and appropriate for the pupils, that is, it should be related to their needs and structured in such a way as to grab and hold their attention. The risk of criticism and humiliation by pupils has to be removed or at least made clear as an unacceptable way to behave. This can be done by the teacher modelling how to behave when they make a mistake. Teachers need to demonstrate how to deal with mistakes made by pupils and by protecting and defending them if they are subjected to negative response by classmates. The risk of making mistakes does not automatically vanish because we are using role-play. The principle of protecting pupils from humiliation and embarrassment remains inside and outside the fictional world of drama, in fact, it underpins good teaching and helps raise the social health of the class by modelling positive ways of treating each other.
Gavin Bolton makes an important distinction when writing about pupils and emotion in drama
I cannot stress enough how important it is for teachers to realise that because drama is such a powerful tool for helping people change, as teachers we need to be very sensitive to the emotional demands we make on our students. The notion of ‘protection’ is not necessarily concerned with protecting participants from emotion, for unless there is some kind of emotional engagement nothing can be learned, but rather to protect them into emotion. This does not mean we do not take risks or put pupils in situations that feel risky but these risks are perceived rather than actual.
He suggests three ways to deal with a topic indirectly
1. Enter the topic at an oblique angle to the main issue.
2. Put the pupils in a role that only obliquely connects them with the topic.
The drama teacher plans dramas with these devices in order to shift and adjust the emotional proximity of the class in relation to the social event they are examining. You go into role as the workhouse boss and aggressively tell them to stand when you enter the room. One of the class has a rolled up cardigan to represent her baby and takes the role of Martha. This living-through style of confrontational drama with its raw emotion can be received with derision and light-heartedness by pupils.
Later in the drama one child is asked to stand upon a chair with the label
They are totally inappropriate as ways of structuring a drama lesson. We have no right to subject pupils to this kind of treatment because it is under the cloak of drama and fiction. Our first concern is to take the class to looking at the disturbing reality of the nineteenth-century workhouse and to do that we must find a role for the pupils which gives them power. As the drama progresses and trust in the teacher and the medium is built then the pupils can move closer to the role of the inmates. The stopping and starting of the drama helps defuse the raw emotion and allows pupils to reflect, negotiate and manipulate the fiction to clarify their own understanding. That does not mean we cannot move closer to these issues as the drama develops, but it does mean we need to find a way into the drama that will not generate counter-productive learning, behaviour that will seek to undermine or destroy the drama.
Let us draw an analogy with the social ritual of the funeral services in
Usually the closer to the coffin or front of the service you sit, the closer your relationship to the deceased, with family and close friends in the pews at the front, more distant friends and relations further away. How to Use Drama for Inclusion and Citizenship 55 emotionally charged topic or one where the cultural taboos of our society are to be examined, we need to take the class there very carefully. We need to build their trust in the fictional world we create through the roles we put them in and the strategies we use. It is this that makes it safe for the participants, for as long as we, as teacher and manager of the fictional world, intervene and reflect upon it, we can facilitate learning and protect the vulnerable.
The dramas we include in this book cover some challenging ideas. The gradual making of meaning out of this moment unites the class and fully allows for a variety of levels and activity in response so that it is truly inclusive. When doing this drama in school we were not surprised when a child with autism asked Christopher’s Mum whether she thought he might be autistic?.
With the protection of the class role – people who can help worried parents
– he was able to distance himself from the drama being about him, using the given role of someone who can help parents of pupils with autism.
Another example of a powerful and demanding moment occurs in the
‘Macbeth’ drama when the servants are meeting to discuss what to do. Unexpectedly, TiR as Macbeth shouts for them to report to him. This is a shock and can cause anxiety to the members of the class in role as servants. ● The servants know they have knowledge about him at this point which gives them power, unlike the powerless inmates of the Workhouse. In both of these cases the class are protected by the fiction and if necessary the teacher can go OoR to negotiate what to do, so that the class is never in any danger from the moment of anxiety.
Having a voice in society
If we return to the central idea in drama of creating an ‘as if’ world we see that it is a world that is, at least in part, created by the participants through their ideas. As we have seen in the planning section, good planning creates gaps and spaces for pupils to input their ideas. If we plan for pupils’ ideas to be part of the drama lesson and we are creating a safe environment for this to happen, we are in effect giving them a voice to express their understandings and perspective on the world in which they live. Figure 4.1 describes the pupils who have the confidence to express an opinion in the drama lesson.
There will be a relative congruence or not in the relationship between these components. Whether what I think is close to what I say, whether what I say bears any relationship to what I do will shift in relation to the social circumstances of the moment. One can imagine that more secure pupils whose self-worth is high will present a more congruent view of these three factors. If the concept of ‘giving pupils a voice’ means enabling pupils to express their feelings, their ideas and their suggestions for action, then drama holds the possibility of being a truly inclusive experience. It can do this by shifting pupils into a fictional world where they are no longer speaking as themselves but through the fictional context the teacher has structured for them and the class. The safe distance enables them to say and do the things they may not say or do in the real world. The dialectic that exists between the real world and the drama fictitious.
The real world outside the drama
They can of course be involved in the school itself and learn about responsibility by taking part in school activities and institutions like the school council. To a limited extent they can have experience in the community as part of their school experience. They can make trips out or relevant visitors can be brought in to make pupils aware of the important structures and ideas that community involves. Indeed, if children get very committed to a real-world project there is a dilemma for the school.
Drama’s relationship to citizenship works on two levels, as a methodology that demonstrates aspects of citizenship in action and when the content is specifically focused upon issues of citizenship. When we consider that drama can link citizenship with personal and social education, and spiritual, moral, social and cultural education, then we can begin to understand the importance of drama as a teaching method.
So any whole class drama carried out in the methodology represented in this book is strong on the model of democracy, corporate learning, responsibility and tolerance.
A drama for teaching about citizenship
If we want the pupils to experience a particular political idea or social situation, the fictional world of drama can provide that situation efficiently and with an immediacy that reality cannot provide. Whilst the fiction also protects the pupils into learning at the same time and allows all avenues to be explored without the real consequences that we indicated above. As one example let us consider the use of ‘The Governor’s Child’ drama as a vehicle for uniting these areas. The drama builds the pupils’ roles as citizens of a mountain village and places them in the situation where the community is under threat.
As citizens the pupils have to take on the responsibility of hiding the woman and baby, thus endangering themselves. The drama opens up the issues of justice and revenge as sought by a revolutionary soldier, the idea of what you undertake when you give someone hospitality and ultimately the question of the worth of the single life against the community. We can see from a summary of the drama that a number of citizenship issues are immediately contextualised and presented to the children. Drama ensures that they have to explore them and get involved in them, to challenge and seek solutions in a number of ways.
Here is a list of the issues and ideas that were identified as present in this drama by a group of teacher trainees when they examined it
Giving the children something they can relate to. They have their say – they have ownership of the key decisions in the drama. We can see that the ideas listed cover important aspects of the Citizenship curriculum. In addition, the content of a specific drama can be planned to highlight key Citizenship areas. If we examine the thinking behind the planning of the stages of ‘The Governor’s Child’, we can see how by the nature of the tasks, techniques and content, it promotes elements of the Citizenship curriculum. We have given examples from ‘The Governor’s Child’ so that you can see how abstracts like fairness, democracy, identity, community, belonging, responsibility, can be made concrete through the process of drama. The process makes them more of a community that can work together to the benefit of each individual’s understanding.
And later describe these learning outcomes for 7- and 8-year-olds
They will continue to build on their capacity for empathy and on their awareness and management of feelings, particularly fearfulness in relation to meeting new challenges . Drama makes one of its greatest contributions in modelling and generating this sort of learning. For drama to operate most effectively we need to understand what is happening and how we most effectively create the conditions for empathy to thrive. A phrase commonly linked with empathy is ‘standing in someone else’s shoes’, the idea of, at least for a short time, seeing the world from someone else’s perspective, as if you were standing in their shoes. The inference is that in some way we can see the world through someone else’s eyes, we can think and feel as they would and in some way put ourselves in their position. However, even the most superficial engagement with this idea uncovers deep-seated problems with it in practice. Let us take for example a drama/history lesson where we wish to get the pupils to empathise with the plight of London’s street children of the 1870s. The Nike-shod twenty-first-century pupil is as far removed from the barefooted ‘street urchin’ in dress as in life experience.
We want them to look at, engage with and reflect upon the lives of children of that time. Victorian life for poor children and understand it in relation to their own. To do this we make a shift into a fictional world, where time and place can be reallocated and we can behave ‘as if’ it were happening now, where it is possible to dialogue with fictional ideas of people who no longer exist and where we have an understanding of the empathetic process that engages emotionally without the cruel consequences of the real Victorian world for children. Empathy, like drama, is framed in the particular and so we need to move from broad-brush emotions to their demonstrable particularity. Drama works by focusing upon the particular and moving from the particular to the general. To understand drama’s relationship with empathy we need to deconstruct the process of empathetic behaviour and see how this is replicated in drama.
A working definition of empathy
We need a definition that not only belongs to the real world but can be replicated inside the drama lesson. Pupils will then be able to empathise without having to bear witness to or have the actual life experiences of those to whom they are directing their empathy.
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, the director of the Autism Research Centre at
Cambridge, suggests that ‘empathizing is the drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts, and to respond to them with an appropriate emotion’.
The components of empathy
The idea of a ‘cognitive’ stage and an ‘affective’ stage in the empathetic process is taken from the writings of Alan Leslie in his work at London University, as summarised by Simon Baron-Cohen .
Component One – the cognitive component
Piaget called this aspect of empathy «responding non-egocentrically» as it entails the «setting aside of your own current perspective» and «attributing a mental state to the other person . » .
Component Two – the affective component
‘The second element to empathy is the affective component. There is here a desire to do something, to take action, and therefore empathy is not just about recognising the emotional state of someone but also doing something about it.
An example of structuring drama for empathetic response
Let us use these ideas to analyse how empathy might be generated using as an example ‘The Workhouse’ drama. In the next part of the drama the pupils are told that a new inmate is expected and that they are to witness her induction to the workhouse. First, they look at the Workhouse Master as he watches the girl walking towards the gates.
This strategy of conscience alley will enable the class to sympathise with
Martha’s circumstances. The first stage of structuring for empathising is the cognitive stage.
The cognitive stage
3 Martha’s purpose – to enter the workhouse and save the baby. Martha’s approach to the doors of the workhouse, in other words, the pre-text. Workhouse Master – cruel, untrustworthy, manipulative – and finally the low status role of Martha, vulnerable and limited in the choices she can make on her own. The context If we then put these roles in the context of a workhouse – dangerous, forbidding and the last resort of the poor – while at the same time requiring the class to make judgements and a report about the workhouse, we are giving them power to take action.
Events leading up to her approaching the workhouse The pre-text to
When the class meet roles with cruel and negative attitudes, i. The second stage of structuring for empathising is the affective stage.
The affective stage
The roles First the pupils’ role as commissioners is high status, fair-minded, responsible, not easily fooled and trying to make the world a better place. Events leading up to their debrief of the Workhouse Master The pupils share the experience of witnessing the induction of a new inmate. While the class’s attitude to Martha represents the cognitive state, the second stage of the empathetic process is the affective state. Martha.
Of course, this situation is manipulated by the teacher structuring the roles and events in a particular way – the initial meeting with those who run the workhouse, listening to their attitudes and witnessing their deceitful behaviour. How to Generate Empathy in a Drama 67 take place. Of course the nature of the response may vary from mere sympathy with Martha’s predicament to a more dynamic response to help the person by initiating action to help. What distinguishes empathy as a response is its appropriateness to the person’s circumstances.
Those pupils who find it difficult to empathise will have the opportunity to see the skills modelled and the positive consequences played out.
5. Can we plan for generating empathy?
We can generate empathy through structuring roles and creating a drama frame where it is likely to happen.
The role of the pupils
While placing the pupils in a positive, problem-solving and high status role gives them the power to make judgements about people’s circumstances from a positive point of view, it is also possible to generate empathy for the dispossessed. Later in the workhouse drama the pupils shift their role to inmates, demonstrating life in the workhouse through tableaux based upon the workhouse rules.
The role of the teacher
The role of the pupils needs in the first place to be a community one so that they see the situation from one point of view and are not divided in their attitude. Just as the role of the pupils gives them a perspective from which they can empathise, the role you plan for the teacher is also part of structuring for an empathetic response. The Workhouse Master generates an empathetic response towards Martha from the pupils by his lack of humanity. The modelling by the teacher of roles who are unable to empathise enables the pupils to witness their shortcomings and therefore have a sense of how disabled they are without these skills.
We are not historians, and in writing this chapter we shared our approach to using drama to teach history with Professor Hilary Cooper at St Martins
In using the arts pupils are creating their own interpretation or account, based upon sources. We have a responsibility to the historian to make clear the dangers and risks in a dramatic approach. As was discussed in Chapter 5, the phrase ‘to stand in someone else’s shoes’ is one often used to describe the concept of empathising and it is never more liberally tossed about than in the History and Drama curriculum. To expect a child to ‘step into the shoes’ of a 10-year-old evacuee or a servant in the household of a wealthy family in the nineteenth century, is ignoring the impossibility of this shift for pupils with twenty-first-century minds.
Dressing up to go back in time
One popular method of ‘empathising’ in the teaching of history takes the form of dressing up in costumes from the past. Alternatively, schools will suspend the usual timetable and devote lessons and other activities to a particular period in time. Teachers may even be locked into roles from the past , thinking, misguidedly in our view, this will generate ‘empathy’ in the pupils with people from history. While dressing up in costumes is a very popular history/drama experience, we must be guarded about what we think children may learn by the experience.
In drama we are particularly interested in the last element. It is here that drama synthesises story and past events. As a teacher planning a history-related drama this does not mean abandoning facts and reasons. If we are asking pupils to take on roles of people from the past we need to frame this task in such a way as to respect the need for authenticity and to give them roles that will enable them to look at the past in a way that respects the work of the historian.
Of course, the research is not just a task for the teacher but one that can be shared with the pupils in lessons introducing the topic and before the drama work takes place. The drama then has an assessment function, as knowledge gained in the research activities will be exposed during the drama.
Balancing the tensions – stories and history
Much of drama in education operates from creating fictions and telling stories. Of course this is not necessarily in conflict with history as we can approach individuals’ viewpoints in history as their stories of the past. We need to be clear about our learning objectives, about what we are trying to teach. We are going to use a drama about Victorian street children to illustrate how drama and history can be structured to work in harmony. In using drama we are using a dense form of teaching, because the currency of drama is language, listening and speaking, and we have a cross-curricular approach that will touch upon learning objectives from several areas of the curriculum. Let’s begin with the English and the History National Curriculum learning objectives.
In this way drama confronts pupils with the ideas, beliefs and values of people from the past. The juxtaposition of values and beliefs from the past with pupils’ own values and gives them the opportunity to ‘use techniques of dialogic talk to explore ideas, topics or issues’ through the prism of history and the safety of fictional contexts. The ‘Victorian Street Children’ drama illustrates how the tensions between history and drama can be managed. 72 How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama history can work together it must be remembered that the drama lesson should not be seen in isolation from history lessons that precede or follow it.
It is part of a series of lessons and issues raised in the drama can be dealt with in other more appropriate teaching and learning settings. The starting point for this drama is a photograph . Alan Lambert in their book Drama Structures , although we have used it to develop a different drama. The photograph immediately nails the first important rule of drama and history, the importance and value of historical authenticity.
Photographs and artefacts are a key approach because they can grab the attention of the pupils. They can also generate a context, a time and a place, roles and even a possible dilemma, all ingredients of drama. We need to take the class to the drama. The initial viewpoint is that of the outsider, the historian.
The subject matter is delicate, the plight of the poor, and more poignantly, poor children. We are making a conscious decision to move into the fiction of the drama using the authenticity of a primary source, a photograph. We are taking the pupils to the harsh reality of the past by distancing them through the collective role of historians. We manage this through their role, as historians, we give them high status, the Mantle of Expert.
In this way we generate and manage the commitment of the class by ‘beguiling them’ into a fictional world of the poor at this time in history. We can examine how the past is represented and this begins the process of enquiry into the past that is central to the function of the historian. We need to go to other sources in our teacher research, and a chapter by Blake Morrison in Too True provides us with another source to validate our understanding. This in turn juxtaposes pupils’ own attitudes with those adopted by the roles. In confronting the attitudes of the roles, for example, the acceptability of the physical chastisement of children, pupils are looking at issues of continuity and change. Analysing the photographic process in the 1870s compared to digital photography today would be an example of pupils dealing with similarity and difference. Continuity and change, similarity and difference are key concepts in the teaching of history and through drama these are made concrete experiences. The drama begins as a history lesson, with the idea of taking on roles in the lesson introduced from the beginning.
What skills do they need?
The discussion of the role of the historian is a preparation for this. We need to frame the class’s thinking in such a way that they are constrained to think like a historian. This approach replicates Facts – Hypothesis – Research. The ‘think we know’ section opens up the possibilities for the class, for example, an observation such as the boys are poor will present a possibility based on the evidence of their dress and demeanour. This may generate further research and it may not be resolved. However, it may also draw the pupils’ attention to the fact that girls did live on the streets and were taken into Barnardo’s homes.
This in turn raises the opportunities for further research outside the drama lesson.
● There are five boys and one man in the photograph.
● The name of the man in the photograph is Edward Fitzgerald.
● Edward Fitzgerald is holding a lamp. Having collated some evidence, hypotheses and research questions we can use drama as a means to test out some of their observations.
This question is there to gauge the pupils’ knowledge at this early stage of the lesson.
Already there are hints at the evangelical nature of Barnardo’s exploits and these can be further examined out of role. ‘after’ photograph to show the immediate and dramatic change Barnardo’s home had made to them. He will open up the issues related to the technology of the photography, how the children would have to stay still for up to half a minute.
Having drawn the class into the photograph through their interviews with
Not all pupils will feel comfortable in taking on the role of the children in the photograph at this point, so a process of selection and contracting the demands inherent in adopting these roles is critical to the success of the next part of the drama.
Modelling the roles
Part of the process of setting this up is the modelling of roles by the teacher before asking pupils to take on this responsibility. We’re going to move the drama on now and meet the boys in the photograph we have been looking at. You must be good at keeping a serious look on your face because, as you can see, the boys in the photograph are going through unhappy times. Finally, I will be with you as Edward Fitzgerald and so you won’t feel left on your own to do this.
The rest of the class will be wealthy ladies and gentlemen who are keen to support
Their task is to decide upon the questions they wish to put to Fitzgerald and the boys. The role of the majority of the class has two facets. The role will put them in a powerful position in relation to Edward Fitzgerald. While the boys may be in fear of the beadle the questioners will not, as their class and superior education puts them in a position of power. Should they wish to talk to the boys on their own, without the inhibiting presence of Fitzgerald, they may request to do so and this will be acceded to, albeit reluctantly by TiR as Fitzgerald. Away from the rest of the class , those who have decided to be the boys meet with you.
Setting up the boys
Avoid any names of pupils in the class. In the photo some of the boys do look like brothers, others do not. In Saõ Paulo gangs of street children go round together and refer to each other as ‘uncle’, hinting at a family-like grouping.
Having answered these questions and built up a history, there are four
Without the agreement of the group on these the next part of the drama will not work. 1 We must agree that you are afraid of Fitzgerald. If the drama is to work you must agree that you are afraid of him.
2 They must agree that they want to go into the home. This very carefully engineered setting up of the boys is essential for the success of the task. Whatever happens as teacher you will be moving in and out of role, managing the teaching and learning process, checking understanding, negotiating the next question, the next move and using the as-if-it-is-happening-now to engage the pupils attention. They are the scriptwriters, but they are constrained by the ‘givens’, the non-negotiables of frame through which they are exploring how they make sense of this part of history. In a session with some students, those taking the role of the interested wealthy benefactors asked Fitzgerald to leave, which he did, warning the boys to be best behaved as he left. This was a marvellous opportunity to discuss the implications of his request. Should they give money and food now?.
What are the implications of this?
From that moment we can incorporate it into the drama. We can tell the pupils in their planning of the boys that if Fitzgerald leaves they can ask for food and money.
Whole class participation – a sculpture of children living on the streets
In this drama each frame takes the class closer to the children who are the subject of our historical investigations. The next task is to engage the whole class as a sculpture of the children living on the streets. Welcome to our new exhibit on the theme of children in the nineteenth century. In the next room we have an interactive exhibit, a sculpture of children who were known as street children. What is exciting about this exhibit is that not only can you view it, but you can, through the wonders of modern technology, hear what the children represented in the piece are thinking. They are programmed to say what they are thinking at this moment in history. As half the class watch, the teacher touches each of the pupils on the shoulder and they voice their thoughts. Of course, not all pupils will speak and some will repeat what others say, but this is not a problem because the overall effect is to create a sound collage of their thoughts in this situation while at the same time not putting unnecessary pressure on those who cannot think of anything to say and would prefer to listen. This slowing down of the drama and looking in detail at a particular moment is important and a feature of how drama in education works. Unlike performance and product-orientated drama, the purpose here is to negotiate meanings and consider implications of particular issues. The pupils have been moved frame by frame to make sense of the world of the street children by a gradual edging towards their perspective.
Whole class improvisation
We can use the sculpture and thought-tracking work as a starting point for a whole class improvisation or ‘living through’ part of the drama. I am going to take the role of a wealthy gentleman who comes across these street children on a bitterly cold night.
The teacher begins to narrate
Dozens of children huddled together desperately trying to keep warm in front of the dying embers of a fire. He immediately organised his servants to bring soup, bowls and bread to the children and as they greedily ate bread and soup he sat with them.
Teacher as narrator
The next section is a transcript of some 10- and 11-year-olds at this point in the drama The teacher realises the class is too far away and that only the children close to him are responding verbally to him, although they are all engaged with what is going on. The class have taken a position that exposes the ignorance and patronising attitude of the wealthy gentleman. The lesson has been structured to ensure their inclusion and their responses are spontaneous and offered genuinely from the viewpoint of the roles they are representing. They connect with the plight of the street children by recognising the lack of understanding of their position embodied in the teacher roles.
Hence the misdirection of much well-meant effort into charity of the
The drama approach must be seen as a particular pedagogical approach to the subject. Drama needs to be recognised for what it does best, which is to negotiate meanings through engagement with imagined realities.
6. How to Link History and Drama
I think I will study well and then help children like myself. We can see from this that the ‘Street Children’ drama acts as a metaphor for now and enables us to open up issues that may be hindered by prejudice in a way that uses history as a prism through which to view global issues.
Speaking and Listening through Drama
The two of us were initially unclear as to what exactly a chapter on drama and assessment would contain. We have in our work used many approaches and many ideas for the philosophy and practice of assessment. The result of the hour-long discussion, much of it focused through looking at drama work with pupils on video, was that we had the powerful sort of dialogue, exchange of ideas, challenge of assumptions, that we are putting forward in this book.
What is assessment?
Drama is not just about speaking and listening, but the creation of a fiction, where the art form of drama is essential and the success of that enterprise depends on valuable interaction between all participants. However, we must stress we are primarily looking at assessing speaking and listening, the focus of this book, and we are not providing in this chapter a framework for the assessment of theatre skills, the art form of drama, for personal and social development, nor other learning areas that drama can address. The currency of drama is speaking and listening and in its nature it is swift, fleeting and ephemeral.
Listening attainment levels of the English National Curriculum in any significant
How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama way. It is easier to assess, of course, because it is an isolated target, one person delivering a set structure in front of the teacher and class, a performance.
Since the inception of the National Curriculum, assessment of Speaking and
Our approach is not to produce league tables, but to give a snapshot of pupils’ communication skills in order to recognise achievement and to chart possible development. The prime requirement on teachers when doing assessments is to listen to the pupils and to look carefully at the activity. In the formative role of assessment we need to be feeding back to the pupils during and after the drama.
How do we collect data more formally?
Assessment in this context is the detailed study of episodes of speaking and listening. We need to describe what we see and teachers need to operate as researchers of the dialogue in their classrooms. To set this up properly, the senior management team need to become involved in planning a whole school strategy for the assessment and development of speaking and listening. One teacher can be freed to observe a partner.
With A as a critical friend, a lesson or lessons can be carried out by B and the events are logged by the observer A, as well as noted afterwards by B. Then they reverse roles for the other class. From the evidence, judgements need to be made of the speaking and listening and pupil profiles built up based on the thinking and the empathy demonstrated during a drama. Further evidence is collected by the class teacher from other contexts to check out whether what has been observed in the drama is unique to that context or a general tendency and ability.
Other issues to consider
We must learn to read body language, including facial expressions during the drama. If a pupil only speaks once we must look at that single contribution and at other evidence drawn or written after the event to see what they know from the drama. We have to manage the exchanges in a drama so that the naturally dominant voices in the classroom learn to listen and we allow others space to talk. Such pupils may distil ideas in a way that frequent contributors fail to do because they do not listen as well. Other class members are naturally quiet and we will not change people’s personalities so we should not expect them to be as vociferous.
Capturing the samples of speaking and listening
There is readily available technology that can record work and allow us to consider it at greater length after the event, particularly video recording. Again, if teachers are paired to do the assessment, one can handle the camera while the other teaches. Some teachers object to the use of video recording on the grounds that it distorts the drama process.
We will now look at a transcript from a video recording of a drama lesson at a key moment and consider the way it can be assessed. At this point teacher OoR is standing up talking to the class.
Charlie: They’re here because they’re trying to get the
Highwayman. The Highwayman stole some gold for the landlord’s daughter to get the keys.
7. How to Begin Using Assessment through Drama
There are a number of critical moments to assess here. Because you, as historians, can find a lot about the legend. Tim and then with his dilemma about whether to tell on the Highwayman to the soldiers, which is the central focus of the drama at this point. Alan’s contribution is worth assessing for its value.
In answering him in role I can expand on why Tim is wishing himself away, something terrible’s happened, hinting at but not telling what is happening. Other members of the group are then able to interpret what this means and are keen to introduce the Highwayman themselves. Neil introduces the subject and at once the tension of the situation can be raised. Charlie is creative in developing ideas of what he thinks the soldiers and Highwayman are doing, They’re here because they’re trying to get the Highwayman.
The level of engagement in the drama for him is very high. He is introducing storyline ideas that are original to him and can be used by me in developing the drama later if the class agree to take on the ideas. The nature of the situation changes as these historians from the twenty-first century are drawn into the mesh of Tim’s difficult situation.
Alan’s contribution can be seen to have opened this up and he can be rewarded for empathising with Tim from the previous exchange.
Teachers should talk to children after drama sessions in order to elicit their understanding. Children need to reflect separately and together on the process.
Talk for writing – the wholeness of communication
We can get clear evidence for assessment of the effectiveness of speaking and listening, particularly the latter, from other forms of communication like writing or art work.
Key findings
The project cited here was set up to do concentrated Literacy work involving more visual stimuli and drama.
Here are some outcomes observed by the teachers
One teacher observed, ‘the children have become more involved in the texts that we read’ ... ‘it was clear that those who use drama as part of their integrated planning were beginning to choose specific drama conventions suited to the overall learning intention.
And the project report summarises
The expectation of many was that drama would become a regular – at least weekly – feature of Literacy and that in particular more work needed to be planned to prompt adults to model drama in order to support the children.
She is not a member of this family so how can we trust her?
If Maria doesn’t give the baby to his mother she will feel guilty by ruining an innocent baby’s life. We can see from this work that the two 10-year-old children are very focused by the arguments that were rehearsed orally within the drama as the villagers discussed the decision as to what to do with Maria. The writing has become a way of formalising the argument.
How to Approach Speaking and Listening through Drama
In addition, they have been motivated to write by the drama and produced creditable pieces. In conclusion, we know that assessing and recording speaking and listening is a demanding task, but we would contend that is no more demanding than other assessment if it is approached in the right way.
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