tema: drama i grunnskolen - Landslaget drama i skolen

Drama i[ grunnskolen ]Drama i[ grunnskolen ]Annie Ó BreacháinDrama lecturer at the teacher educationcollege, ‘Marino Institute of Education’in Dublin, Ireland.[ ]One hopes that the vision which affordeddrama its status as a subject in primaryschools in Ireland will be seen againSoaring andSwoopingtekst: Annie Ó BreacháinDrama on The Primary School Curriculum in IrelandIn 1999, for the first time, drama was includedas a compulsory subject on the PrimarySchool Curriculum in Ireland. This articleattempts to expose the reasons for this; toexamine the design and content of the curriculumstatement and to look at the currentstatus of drama.It is impossible, of course, to trace the precisefactors which influenced that decision andone is mindful of Sugrue (2004) who notesthe inherently political nature of educationalreform and the sometimes invisible powerrelations which are at play in such processes.Educational Drama in the Broad HistoricalContext. The rich dramatic heritage ofIreland is widely recognised and its theatretradition includes an extensive list of internationallyrenowned playwrights. There wasa strong performance tradition across schoolsin Ireland historically with virtually everyschool producing plays to coincide with religiousfeasts at a time when schools were denominationaland managed by the church.In the 1960s, significant changes were takingplace in the field of educational drama in theUnited Kingdom and the pioneering work ofDorothy Heathcote and Cecily O’Neill whichplaced greater emphasis on ‘living through’drama was gaining momentum ( O’Neill, 1999).The National Curriculum for PrimarySchools published in 1971 (Govt. of Ireland,1971a) was characterised by its ‘commitmentto experiential and environment-basedlearning, to the holistic development of thechild and to the idea of the child as activelearner’ (Waldron, 2004: 211). It recogniseddrama as a methodology but also crediteddramatic activity as being beneficial for entertainmentpurposes; for allowing childrento express their inner feelings and thoughtsoutwardly and for developing intellect andpersonality (Govt. of Ireland, 1971a).This recognition of the importance of dramawas also evidenced in the practice of teacherswith one third of teachers surveyed in 1986reporting that they used drama on a weeklybasis and 44% had brought their classes to atheatre or had invited theatre-in-educationcompanies into the school.The Move towards the Inclusion of Dramaas a Subject. Finneran (2008: 185) providesa chronology of events which he believescontributed to the achievement of subjectstatus for drama beginning with a report onthe arts in education published by the ArtsCouncil (Benson, 1979) which stated thatdrama both as a methodology and as an activityin its own right warranted more attention.Three national conferences on dramain education were organised between 1987and 1989 which brought prominent internationaldrama practitioners to Ireland andin the 1990s, a series of conferences organisedby the National Association for YouthDrama (NAYD), continued to build on thisadvocacy for drama (Finneran, 2008).The 1990s saw considerable activity in educationalpolicy and curriculum reform culminatingin the publication of the WhitePaper entitled ‘Charting our EducationalFuture (Govt. of Ireland, 1995:22) in whichthe importance of the arts in education featuredstrongly. In 1998, The Education Actwas signed into law and the following year a‘revised’ primary curriculum (Govt. of Ireland,1999a) was published which sought tomaintain the philosophical underpinningsof its predecessor (Govt. of Ireland, 1971a)but was also influenced by constructivisttheory and by the work of Bruner (1960) andVygotsky (1975) in particular. The introductorydocument to the Primary School Curriculum(Govt. of Ireland, 1999a) states thatit is characterised by its ‘breadth and balance’and by its commitment to the ‘developmentof the full potential of every child’. At atime when spirits were high with a boomingeconomy and when the dominant discoursewas of holistic development; conditions wereripe for the inclusion of drama as a subject.John Mc Ardle, the drama consultant to theNational Council for Curriculum and Assessment(NCCA), the body charged withdevising the revised curriculum, wrote apamphlet as part of a series produced by theNational Theatre Outreach Programme entitled‘Flying on Both Wings’ (Mc Ardle, 1998)in the year prior to the publication of that curriculumwherein he put forward a theory ofdrama and theatre in education. In this, McArdle examined the kind of drama practiceevident in schools and argued that ‘in our educationaldrama, we have moved too far fromtheatre and that so much had been lost thatwe were effectively flying on one wing’(McArdle, 1998: 4). He further criticised the wayin which dramas which were neatly packagedand easy to control dominated classroompractice and noted a near absence of spontaneouspractice (Mc Ardle, 1998).Exploring Drama on the Revised Curriculum.The Drama Curriculum, which followedthe publication of this pamphlet, is describedas being ‘improvisational in nature’(Govt. of Ireland, 1999b: 2) As one wouldexpect, in light of Mc Ardle’s comments regardingspontaneity, there is an emphasis on‘ living through a story and making it up asthey go along’ (Govt. of Ireland, 1999b: 6).The content of The Drama Curriculum isdivided into one ‘strand’: ‘drama to explorefeelings, knowledge and ideas leading to understanding’and three strand units, or subdivisionsof this primary strand, including‘ exploring and making drama’; ‘co-operatingand communicating in making drama’and ‘reflecting on drama’ (Govt. of Ireland,1999b). Broad objectives under each of thesetitles are outlined which relate mainly to thedevelopment of each of the elements of drama:role and character; time; place; action;tension; significance and genre.It is worth examining the extent to whichthe’ two wings’ to which Mc Ardle refers,namely ‘drama’ and ‘theatre’, are representedin The Drama Curriculum (Govt. of Ireland,1999b). The following statement takenfrom the introductory piece of The DramaCurriculum seems to equate ‘educationaldrama’ and ‘process drama’ and places performanceas something outside of the educationaldomain: “educational drama is notto be confused with what may be termed‘performance drama’. This idea is repeatedthroughout the document and ‘process drama’as defined by O’Toole (1992) and O’Neill(1995) is the only form of drama advocatedin the document:This curriculum will not dwell on thedisplay element of drama but will rather,emphasise the benefits to be gained fromthe process of exploring life through thecreation of plot, theme, fiction and makebelieve.Drama used in this way is calledclassroom drama or process drama.(Govt. of Ireland, 1999b)According to Finneran (2008: 244) thesekinds of statements re-open an ‘artificialdichotomy that dominated discourse inthe field and community over the 1970’sand 1980’s that of ‘process’ versus ‘productbased’ drama.’ Furthermore, Finneran(2008: 245) wonders how the devaluing ofperformance occurred given the ‘centralityof performance to both the oral, communaland private, literary aesthetic traditions ofdrama in Ireland’.The strong opposition to performance inthe introductory sections of the curriculumstatement is contradicted in the descriptionsof drama activities intended to support theimplementation of the curriculum with twoout of four of the activities mentioning performingscenes (See Govt of Ireland, 1999c:71, 88 & 90). Many features typically associatedwith the theatre ‘wing’ are emphasisedthroughout the curriculum statementincluding the elements of drama which ‘areas relevant to process drama... as they are tothe corpus of world theatre’ (Govt. of Ireland,1999c: 46). There is also an approach toscript outlined in which performing some ofthe scenes developed is advocated (Govt. ofIreland, 1999c: 90).Support for Teachers. A national in-serviceprogramme for drama commenced in theacademic year 2006/2007 and comprisedthree days – two facilitated training days andone school-led planning day. Primary schoolteachers were seconded from their schoolsto provide this training. The in-service programmefor other curricular areas includedfurther in-school support from subjectspecificadvisors but this was not availablefor drama. The need for support was surelyrecognisable given the fact that this variety ofdrama was an entirely new area for teachers.The Current Status of Drama. There hasnot, as yet, been a review of drama in IrishPrimary Schools since it achieved subjectstatus. The dominant discourse in Ireland,however, is of curriculum overload (SeeNCCA, 2010) and the need for renewed focuson literacy and numeracy. As a result,drama, along with other subjects which givethe curriculum its characteristic breadth andbalance, have come under attack.Recognising the downward trend in primaryschool children’s achievements in literacyand numeracy coupled with the anticipationof a poor performance in the Programme for12 dr a m a n r .o3 _ 2 o11dr a m a n r .o3 _ 2 o11 13