Policy Paper - Drama Improves Lisbon Key Competences in Education

R e s u l t s
out that even without the evidence provided by longitudinal
research, these are the two competencies that drama
teachers would expect their work to support.
Learning to Learn was perhaps the most
difficult competence to quantify. There was
little explicit mention of this attribute in
the documents. One can assume that as
students gain, process and assimilate new
skills in drama they are effectively managing
their own learning. They are likely to work
with perseverance and concentration, often
displaying these qualities where they have been
previously absent. Learning from others and sharing
what they have learnt can also be expected.
Where civic competence can be inferred from the documents, it tends to be in the work of
the various Theatre in Education teams. The aims and approaches of these companies
often include a focus on problems affecting the community. Participants are likely to be
involved in critical and creative reflections on such issues as tolerance, diversity and
democracy, and decision-making is encouraged.
Another competence which was problematic to quantify was the degree to which the
work in drama promoted a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship. It is true that the
work encourages participants to turn ideas into action, and to plan their work in order to
achieve a desired outcome in performance, for example, and a few of the documents
mention this explicitly. Where students are involved in interactions with parents and the
public they display initiative. Some of the skills and attitudes expected in this competence
– motivation, leadership, planning, organising, communicating, evaluating – are certainly
promoted though engaging in drama and theatre activities.
It is clear from the documents that the skills and attitudes relating to cultural awareness
and expression are strongly promoted. Again, this is to be expected since drama is itself
a cultural medium. Many of the documents emphasise creativity and self-expression as
explicit aims, and performances, for parents and the community, as well as involvement
in local, national and international festivals, are obviously a valued aspect of the work.
responsibility in the participants. The aim of creating an artistic work did not always
feature as the most important objective.
It it is very heartening to find that teachers and facilitators throughout Europe and beyond
are using drama and theatre approaches to animate their classrooms, to promote
creativity and imagination, to encourage personal and social transformations and to give
their students a sense of power, responsibility and ownership within the work.
B.11. Relationships between the different
components of the quantitative research, and an
example: what makes an educational theatre and
drama programme better?
This chapter tries to explain what makes the DICE research design special and why we
say that all the results above are less than 1% of all the results of the research.
Until this point we have been discussing the different parts of the research separately.
Now imagine that all of the quantitative tools discussed above are interlinked and their
relationships can be examined, so that you can look at the relationships between any
parts of:
• the students’ self assessment questionnaires,
• the teachers’ questionnaires,
• the drama descriptions,
• the observations,
• and the external assessments.
So two examples: it is possible to examine whether those programmes that have been
assessed highly (external assessment) and are small group work dominant (observation)
have a greater impact on students’ communication skills (students’ questionnaires),
or not. Or, we can see whether or not those students who have not participated in
any drama activity before (students’ questionnaire) are assessed more highly by their
teachers (teachers’ questionnaire) after they have participated in a series of youth theatre
workshops (drama description).
R e s u l t s
On the whole it is gratifying to find that so many different European cultures find Drama
and Theatre in Education approaches sufficiently worthwhile to include in already
crowded curricula. Most drama teachers working in schools indicate that creativity,
personal growth and social competence are their most important aims, while facilitators
working in Theatre in Education work towards developing a sense of collaboration and
In addition, the same analyses can be run on any subset of the entire sample, e.g. only
Polish students, or only girls, or only those going to a special school, or only 14-year-old
students, or even only those 14-year-old Polish girls who go to a special school!
Given that there are 1,080 variables measured per student, all of them interlinked, and
given that the sample is uniquely large and rich, there are almost endless possibilities
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