Drama Boreale - Åbo Akademi

Creating these kind of situations, that appeal to the pupils’ own experiences and
thoughts, have been substantial for the pupils increased interest for Dass’ life, times and
poetry, in spite of the lack of knowledge and commitment when the project started.
Many of the pupils have mentioned this. And the change of attitude was shown in many
of their plays, and in some of the pictures the pupils made. This part of Dass’ biography,
his loss of father and being deserted by mother, made Dass of interest as a human being,
and motivated pupils to examine this theme, to get more knowledge about his biography,
and a more independent relation to his poetry.
Figure 5. ’Mother leaving young Petter Dass’. (Drawing by pupil in the 8. form).
Many of the children said in interviews after the project, that dramatizing and role plays
were especially motivating forms of working. They argued that these forms are more
instructive than traditional teaching and its priority of textbooks. The working methods
in the project are not very much used in Norwegian school; neither in the three schools
in Helgeland that took part in our project, nor in classes that experience some variation
in working methods. The existential dimension created greater engagement for the
majority of pupils, both in the role plays and in their writings (logs and other texts).
Using dramaturgy to change learning processes
In the third phase drama and teacher-in-role was used as main methods. This phase also
used physics experiments (like Galilei did with pendulum and his discovery that motion
time of falling objects of the same mass and descent was independent of their mass), and
some traditional working methods (group work, textbook, compendium). In the end the
pupils gave a presentation and summing up of the subject through a power point
presentation by each of the groups.
At an early stage of this phase the teacher commented that even if the pupils seemed to
have a great time, and enjoyed the lessons, the project did not seem to be rewarding for
some of the high achieving pupils, which was one central aim for the use of dramaturgy
in this phase. By that time I had presented Galilei, his times, some parts of his biography
and central scientific findings through the pupils interview of Galilei (’Meeting a Role’),
and the pupils had done two physics experiments and begun their group work. I therefore
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