Policy Paper - Drama Improves Lisbon Key Competences in Education

With the help of educational theatre and drama work, socially-disadvantaged children
can experience aspects of belonging to a constructive group. This membership of the
group enables the participants to think about taking responsibility for themselves and
each other, and thereby to develop their own self-reliance and independence. The main
emphasis is on forming a community where creativity and belonging to the group are
equally important.
In the Norwegian experts’ view, educational theatre and drama is focused on progress
in the individual’s social and moral abilities. It develops physical and mental abilities
and communication skills. Pupils can learn about their own opinions and about the
views of others. They have the chance to experience various types of interpersonal
communication. They learn how to cooperate, how to work on a collective project. The
main asset is the individual’s own experience.
• dialogues - as the simplest way of being in a role, taking a perspective which
engages all the students, develops imagination, critical thinking and empathy;
• interviews - conversations with specific characters in the form of fictional media
coverage, press conferences or opinion polls;
• letters - as narratives from a perspective (on behalf) of a character and as a reaction
to a specific event or a dramatic situation;
• improvisations - enactions of possible solutions to spontaneously discussed openended
problems which are formulated in such a way as to stimulate curiosity or
suspense;
• ‘sculptures’ - a frozen form of self-, pair- or team-created expression of emotional
state or attitude, and as a reaction to a specific event or situation. The ‘sculptures’
can be made through shaping by touch, demonstration (mirroring) or giving verbal
instructions.
R e s u l t s
Content of educational theatre and drama work
According to the drama descriptions there are two most common content types of
educational theatre and drama work. The first type includes projects that use an imagined
frame-story within which participating children can compose and contrive to communicate
their own thoughts and feelings by finding ways of describing and depicting them. For
example, in one project the participants are being framed as people of a fictional country,
who have decided to flee their country. They are taken on a journey with one of the actor
teachers as the leader of the flight. These kinds of sessions usually have a theme either
suggested by the group or prepared by the teacher(s). The themes come from everyday
life or literature.
The second type consists of those projects that are directly linked to school subjects,
based on curricular requirements, or to particular problems or issues. For example a
Serbian drama-teacher described how their drama workshops are related to the regular
curriculum for mother tongue and literature in the first grade of high-school. (“Structural
analysis of traditional poem by Banovic Strahinja. Research tasks for analysing the
Banovic Strahinja character - meaning and function of the character, demonstrating
artistic manners in the process of creating the character, culture of expression: How
I envision Banovic Strahinja, and how literature critics envision him, introducing the
techniques of scientific research and the usage of so-called primary and secondary
resources to students.”)
Methods used in educational theatre and drama work
Most of the drama descriptions list the same methods used during educational theatre
and drama sessions. Among many methods cited, the most frequently-appearing ones
are the following:
A Polish example of a drama workshop illustrates the use of a wide range of pedagogicalmethodological
tools. A typical session starts with warm up exercises and concentration
games; they involve simple movement patterns (stretching, mirroring, pantomime
or dance), breathing, humming or singing, speed or reaction games, brainstorming,
improvising with props, emotions or simple situations. Students work individually, then in
pairs, or in small or large groups. The reflection part of the workshop has the form of a
structured discussion or uses symbolic techniques of drama like a tunnel of thoughts, role
on the wall, freeze-frame with bubbles.
There are only a few drama descriptions reporting on the usage of more traditional forms
of teaching and learning. For example a Slovenian one: “We start with reading exercises
around a table. The actors here participate in reader's school and the dramaturgical
analysis of the play. When they are confident in pronunciation and word emphasis, and
are clear with the melody of the sentences, we move on to the stage itself. At this point
the notion of teamwork is important because it’s needed to manage the actions and
movement of the production.”
Evaluation of children
There are only three comments on evaluation of
children’s performance in the drama descriptions.
The Palestinian practice of evaluation shows that
individual investment by the children is stimulated
and praised. In the daily evaluations, the teacher
collects feedback from the children to check the
ownership process and stimulate their individual
investment. Teachers offer more comments on
the style and sometimes the scenes are worked
on and presented again for further feedback.
R e s u l t s
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