Student engagement in process drama in primary classrooms

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms University of British Columbia EDUC 451 Vandy Advani

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms

Abstract This paper explores the factors that foster student engagement in oral storytelling and process drama activities. Storytelling is an oral retelling of a narrative. Process drama is the dramatic exploration of an idea or an event drawn from a story. Research suggests many academic benefits of using process drama in classrooms. But, more needs to be said about how engagement takes shape in a drama classroom. This inquiry paper attempts to understand the complexity of aesthetic engagement in process drama.

Keywords: engagement, process drama, storytelling, aesthetic engagement, performative inquiry

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms

PART I – INTRODUCTION We are going on a bear hunt We’re going to catch a Big One What a beautiful day We’re not scared today Oh Oh….

A river A deep, cold river We can’t go over it, We can’t go under it Oh no! We have to go through it….

Bear hunting is fun. Especially if you have to cross a deep cold river, a dark green forest, a swirling whirling snowstorm to reach a dark gloomy cave. I have gone bear hunting many a times with eager little children. They wet their little feet in cold water, stumble over barks in a deep forest and shiver in the snowstorm. When we reach the cave, they wait with anticipation. I see the bear. They also see the bear. I run. They run. We run back through the swirling, whirling snowstorm, the deep dark forest and the freezing cold river. Back to our home relieved to have been saved from the bear. We return to the safety of our world which happens to be the dream room of our library. As often as I enjoyed role playing this wonderful picture book chant, written by Michael Rosen (1989), and relish the engagement of most who would accompany me, there were always a few who chose to stay behind. They would either watch us with disbelief or accompany us with apprehension, refusing to feel the cold water from the river, the chilliness of the snowstorm or even the sharpness of the barks in the forest. Sometimes, 3

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms

their generous pretense, if they allowed, would turn to disappointment. “There is no bear, Vandy!” a five year old boy once declared to me. The glare and mistrust in his eyes pricked the very core of my belief. It made me wonder what keeps some students grounded in reality while others take flight with their imagination. Why do some students remain standing with their arms crossed over, while others spread out their wings and take off? Is there a magical pixie dust that I could sprinkle before I invite them to the wonderland of drama? As a future teacher who intends to use drama as a tool to teach, I am in search of that magical pixie dust – a secret ingredient that can whisper a convincing invitation to every child in my classroom; an invitation to join me and imagine together. This inner quest leads me to wonder about student engagement in process drama especially in primary grade classrooms. As an educator, whose pedagogical beliefs are pinned on the power of play and drama, I would like to investigate the factors that foster student engagement in process drama.

Guiding questions Dr. Seuss urged readers to “think of the places you’ll go,” but a drama advocate like me would say, “think of the places you will know.” But this paper is not about what I “believe” in.

Belief as per Southerland as quoted by Smith and Siegel is “emotionally laden, subjectivelyderived, based on significant teaching episodes.” (2004, p. 558) This inquiry paper is an opportunity for me to test my belief through the lens of knowledge which as per Southerland is “non-emotional, empirically-derived, based on outside research and personal data.”(Smith, 2004, p. 558) My inquiry may not adhere to all three conditions stated by Southerland, in particular the one that says based outside of “personal data.” Quite the contrary, this inquiry is guided by my internal compass that points to experiences I’ve had before and links them to

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms existing research on drama and education. That being said, in order to move into an “inquiry” mode, I temporarily place my belief in a test tube for further justification. By doing so, I begin to see and examine my own convictions critically. The process of inquiry has taken me outside the box of my personal “beliefs” and has urged me to test the validity of my convictions from multiple perspectives. A teaching career awaits me and I am bubbling to put my pedagogy into practice. But before I do so, I need to know if my teaching style will suit my students. I started with the question, “Can drama engage most, if not all my students?” “Are children open to imaginative thinking that is required in drama?” Furthermore, if the answer to these questions is in affirmative, can drama be integrated with other subjects? As I reflected on why students responded differently during drama, moments of engaged as well as disengaged faces flashed by my mind; these faces were of the young audience who visited the public library branch where I served as a library technician. Whether I did a read aloud or performed a full on act inviting actors from the audience during story time, there were always a few among my audience, who remained pinned to their seat mats refusing to participate in the act. It is the disengagement of those few which leads me to wonder if drama can engage all kinds of learners. I wonder what comes between children and their urge to participate in a drama act. Is it their lack of comprehension of the story or is it a lack of play or imagination on their part? Do they not pretend play at home with their toys? Are they too young to imagine? Or is it their personality that holds them back? Does enacting or pretending make them anxious? Are they body shy? Do some cultures deem drama acts inappropriate? Is their refusal to participate due to a bad mood that must have originated from a bad breakfast, lack of sleep, unstable life style, family problems and the list can be endless. The domain of possibilities continues to expand as I begin to wonder the reasons of disengagement in a drama class. As the possibilities expand, the reasons for disengagement go far and beyond a facilitator’s control and this paper’s intent.

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms In this paper, I propose to uncover the horizon of aesthetic engagement. What happens to a child, who chooses to move with the flow of drama temporarily suspending her or his state of ‘reality’ to swiftly slip into an imaginative mode? I am interested in exploring the transition point that moves one from reality to imagination. I started by exploring the abundant literature on drama and education and found numerous strategies to engage students but very little has been written to explain why some children remain disengaged during interactive drama or storytelling activity. Not having found direct research on the cognitive interpretations of a disengaged mind, I realized that there was more for me to know about “engagement”. Before even I ask “Why are some children disengaged in a class,” I must find out, “what is it that engages a child’s mind?” I begin this inquiry by exploring engagement theory. What keeps students engaged not just in a drama class but in school and learning? Following which, I will elaborate on what we know about engagement theory in relation to process drama. Finally, I propose to distill my understanding of the above two questions to answer the question I started with - what happens to a child who chooses to move with the flow of drama, temporarily suspending her or his state of ‘reality’ to slip into an imaginative mode. In other words, what is it that aesthetically engages a child’s mind allowing her or him to participate in process drama. This paper is a conceptual exploration of the nature of engagement in drama. It is based on the writings of prominent authors in the field of drama and education. I will also draw upon my own experience as a performer for young children.

Definitions This paper explores the potential of storytelling and process drama to engage a student audience. But what exactly do I mean by oral storytelling and process drama? Storytelling includes the retelling of familiar stories as well as the development of new stories (Barrs, Barton & Booth, 2012, p. 154). Oral storytelling is often done without the use of visuals such as picture books, felt board, puppets etc. When you mix storytelling with drama, you get “storydrama”, a 6

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms term coined by David Booth. Students in story drama are engaged in the dramatic exploration of an idea or an event drawn from a story. Storydrama, as per Taylor (2000), involves a more improvisatory exploration of significant themes, issues or relationships that are suggested through and by the story (p. 46). In David Booth’s words, In story drama, there is the story we begin with – our shared story; the story of the drama – our created story; and the stories triggered by the drama from student’s life experiences – our own life stories. As teachers, we work with students through drama, based on and integrating pieces of the stories we have met and the stories we have lived. As a community, we build slowly putting each piece of our work together until we have our story told and shown “in action.”

Story drama is a process whereby those involved create a new story that all of us own.” (2005, p. 13) Another term that is synonymous with story drama is process drama, which I use interchangeably in this paper. A research methodology that emerges from story drama is performative inquiry. Author George Belliveau explains, “Performative inquiry is an umbrella term that speaks to the learning and research possible through a variety of drama strategies such as role drama, forum, theatre, or play building.” (Fels & Belliveau, 2008, p. 12)

My biases and positionality Before I dive into making sense of the role of drama in student engagement, I must understand my own biases. Parker Palmer’s words, “We teach who we are,” to which I cannot less agree, urge me to recognize the assumptions I have come to live with (1997, p. 14).

Listening to stories has been a way of learning for me. Stories have been a source of entertainment and education. I have spent hours listening to stories, visualizing images in my head. For this reason, narratives tend to be a focal point of my lessons. Author Kieran Egar 7

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms (2001) echoes my thoughts on the joys of pure listening by saying that we typically experience greater joy from “generating our own images from text or listening to an oral story than from seeing images presented to us on film or television.” (p. 9) But, what if a student is not used to just listening to stories? Picture books, animated videos and graphic novels are staple sources of a child’s literary entertainment today, all of which are rife with visual representations of a story line. Not just the content, but the format in which literature is presented has shifted from text heavy to icon heavy medium. The medium of literacy today has expanded from print to a plethora of visually appealing digital formats such as ipads, ereaders, iphones, ipods, audio books and the good old television. I feel as I write, there are many other formats being conceived in the digital market around the globe. The book “Goodnight ipad”, a parody on the age old classic children’s literature by Margaret Wise Brown “Goodnight room,’ captures the shift that has taken place in the world of entertainment in the past few decades. The old lady in the story has to snatch the digital devices from the little bunnies so they could go to sleep.

Unlike the old bunny that drifted off to sleep saying goodnight to everything around him in the room, these digital bunnies have trouble saying good bye to their toys. This culture that is being brought up in the lap of digital animated videos force me to wonder if oral storytelling will make any sense to a child of this day and age. Secondly, process drama and interactive storytelling demand participation from the audience which often involves chanting, tapping, singing or even dancing. My family and the sub-culture I come from, believed in active participation and I was encouraged to take part in both on and off-stage activities. But, what if a culture deems such upstage participation as disgraceful? As per a BBC investigation in one London primary school “20 pupils were removed from rehearsals for a Christmas musical and one five-year-old girl [remained] permanently withdrawn from mainstream music classes.” (Clark, 2010) A similar example comes from my direct experience in planning Ramadan program at the public library where I served as a library technician. To plan out the event, I worked with a number of community volunteers who were Muslims and were more culturally aware than I was about 8

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms Islam. I was advised not to include any chanting or dancing in my storytelling or book reading when I read the story of Ramadan. Such stark differences in cultural assumptions make me wonder if family values tie a child down and hold her or him from participating in classroom activities that use dance, drama or music as a teaching tool. As a teacher, before even I presume that a child is not participating in a drama act because she or he is disengaged, I must remember to take off the glasses of my cultural assumptions and see the child and identify where she or he is coming from.

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms

PART II – LITERATURE REVIEW Why Drama?

Stories are narratives woven with emotions. According to Egar, (2001) stories have a “beginning that sets up a conflict or expectation, a middle that complicates it, and an end that resolves it.” (p. 10) A common theme in stories, which are often liked by children and adults, is that they have a “simple binary conflict based on security/fear, courage/cowardice, good/evil, and so on.” (Egar, 2001, p. 11) Children, like adults, are not only adept at understanding stories and identifying abstract themes, but often find the process engaging and entertaining. As educators, if we can bring in the culture of oral storytelling in our classrooms and turn concrete objectives of the curriculum into complex emotional stories, we can develop their listening and speaking skills in a way that engages them.

If listening to oral stories and aural comprehension is a personal affair, then drama is the social aspect of the same process. Drama, especially process drama, is a collaborative process of meaning making. According to Wendy Mages (2007), “when a child's classmates enact a story [that] the child has dictated, [it] creates a culture in which the peer-group supports and encourages the child's participation.” (p. 4) Making use of drama activity to deliver lessons not only helps build a safe and inclusive community of learners through collaborative meaning making, but it also brings in multi-modality to address the various styles of learners. The word “inclusive” is significant in many ways. Even if there are a handful of actors or storytellers in a drama act, the process is inclusive because the audience contributes by listening and imagining

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms the created set. Authors Fleming and Baldwin (2003) analyze drama and its applicability to Gardner Howard’s eight multiple intelligences. They state: “Drama appeals to a wide range of learners as it invites them to access, understand, develop and communicate their learning creatively, in and across the whole curriculum, verbally, visually and kinesthetically using and developing a wider range of intelligences than many other subjects.” (p. 14) Furthermore, drama effectively transports the mind into an imaginative mode, which is an essential element for a writer. Much has been written about the effective use of drama to support the writing process of a child. Caldwell (1990, 1993) found that drama was a more effective precursor to writing than traditional planning and discussion.” (Cremin et al, 2006, p274) McNaughton’s research, as quoted by Cremin et al., (2006), suggests that “primary-aged learners who engage in drama prior to writing write more effectively and at greater length, using a richer vocabulary that contain more emotive and expressive insights.” (p. 274) Much has been written about useful applications of drama in education. Those interested must consult works of authors such as Dorothy Heathcote, David Booth, Julia Saxton, John O Toole, Pamela Bowell, Brian S. Heap and George Belliveau who, through their research in drama and education, set a strong case of using drama in classrooms.

For all that drama has to offer young imaginative learners it is granted the sidelined status of being a sub section of arts in BC’s curriculum package in elementary grades. The curriculum documents direct teachers to divide their time spent on arts into music, dance, drama and visual arts. (Ministry of Education Curriculum, 2010) Bowell and Heap (2001) make an interesting point about the history of drama’s status in curriculum worldwide: “…there have been times when it has been valued but there have also been times when it has been out of favor, the victim of a ‘back to basics’ approach to education.” (p. 1) Resistance on part of policy makers and practicing teachers is often seen when it comes to using drama in classrooms. Like Eisner, 11

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms an advocate of art, I often feel that I am standing on a deserted drama island “waiting for a row boat filled with cognitive psychologists searching for the shore,” who can establish the correlation between drama and cognitive achievement. (p 14) Although research has established the correlation between drama and learning, drama is not frequently put into practice in elementary classrooms. In John Toole’s book Drama and Curriculum (2009), Julia Saxton puts her angst in the forewords about the sidelined status of drama in our curriculum: “We, who have been knocking for what seems to be a very long time, know well that when evaluation and measurement criteria are demanded as evidence of drama’s efficacy, an examiner stands as gatekeeper……(vi) What are the hurdles between theory and practice of drama? As a student teacher, the mandatory courses crafted by teacher education faculty, do not provide sufficient training in using drama in classrooms. Drama is mentioned in language arts courses, but practical approaches are left to be explored, on their own, by those interested. Lack of training can be one reason for its infrequent usage by practicing teachers. Another reason, as points out Belliveau (2008), is that many teachers perceive drama as a “time consuming activity” that cannot be completely justified to “parents who expect [the teacher] to be teaching math with a textbook.” (p. 53) But even if one is convinced to use drama as a teaching tool, is engagement guaranteed? What factors as an educator must I be aware of to maximize student engagement in drama. Eisner (1991) describes the act of teaching more prolifically than any other author. He states, “teaching is an artistic activity….it provides a deep sense of aesthetic experience to both perceiver and actor when it is well done …teaching is a constructive activity whose efforts result in forms that can provide what the fine arts intended to provide – a heightened consciousness and aesthetic experience.” (p. 17) The act of teaching, in some ways, is a dual performance between a student and teacher. An effective teacher knows ways to tether the student’s 12

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms attention, when needed. This is especially true for drama classes where the lesson hangs on the linchpin of the student’s attention which originates from their engagement. Learning happens, if and only if, the student is engaged. But disengagement, which can take place in seconds, can make a lesson fall apart. I want to explore the pivotal moments of students engagement in a drama act. What factors foster student engagement and create a zone for learning. It is through this inquiry, I wish to understand those crucial moments of engagement in process drama to inform my practice of drama in primary classrooms. If a teacher is aware of the factors that enhance engagement in drama, then that knowledge can inspire active use of drama in classrooms. I begin by looking at students’ engagement in school and learning, and further dwell into inquiring about student engagement in process drama.

Student Engagement in Learning This section discusses the elements of student engagement and how it can be described in a classroom set up. We all know what student engagement looks like. I know students are engaged in listening to an oral story being told when their eyes are locked with mine. They smile when I describe a happy scene, stiffen when tension arises and heave a sigh of relief when the conflict is resolved. I know then, that they have travelled with me and were ‘in the moment’ of the story. An interesting study conducted by Drama for Schools , an arts integrations professional development program, that trains teachers to use drama-based instruction techniques, found that not only did student engagement in learning increased over time but a positive shift was seen in the way teachers articulated their student’s involvement in the learning process (Cawthon, Dawson and Shasta, 2011). Prior to the program, typical indicators of students’ engagement provided by teachers included, “paying attention”, good “listening”, and completion of homework. Their responses shifted through the program and teachers became more articulate in framing the success in student engagement. One teacher’s response said,

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms “They volunteered, complimented other student comments, got out of their seats to participate, gave ideas, collaborated with other students.” (Cawthon, Dawson & Ihorn, 2011, p. 14) These observations align with authors such as Shernoff, Csikszentmihalyi, Scheider, & Shernoff who have tried to identify aspects of student engagement as “high involvement in classrooms, which includes concentrated attention, interest, and enjoyment as opposed to apathy and a lack of interest in instruction.” (Parsons & Taylor, 2011, p. 20) But how do we define student engagement? Consensus over factors and outcomes of student engagement exists in the literature, but there still seems to be confusion over its measurement. “That student engagement is integral to student achievement is not argued in the literature, but how we measure and define student engagement remains contentious.” (Parsons, 2011, p. 17) The authors further note: Fredericks, Blumenfeld and Paris (2004) classify 44 engagement studies behavioural, emotional and cognitive categories. Behavioural engagement is student participation in academic, social, and extracurricular activities. Emotional engagement is considered to exist when students have positive attitudes and reactions towards school, teachers, learning, and peers. Cognitive engagement is thought to be present when students make personal investment into learning in focused, strategic, and self regulating way (p. 58).” (Parsons, 2011, p.18) Other authors have also tried to define student engagement and categorize it slightly differently.

Anderson, Christenson, Sinclair, and Lehr divide engagement into four types: behavioral, academic, cognitive, and psychological. (Parsons, p. 18) Authors Dunleavy and Milton, in their book “What did you do in schools today? Exploring the concept of Student Engagement and its implications for Teaching and Learning in Canada” (2009), add yet another category of measurement of student engagement – academic cognitive, which refers to time-on-task, homework completion, response to challenges in learning, effort directed towards learning, 14

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms cognition and strategic learning. (Parsons, p. 19) All the above discussed aspects make student engagement multidimensional and hence the difficulty in quantifying it.

Student Engagement in Learning Due to Drama Authors Fredericks, Blumenfeld, and Paris suggest that, “research has not capitalized on the potential of engagement as a multidimensional construct that involves behavior, emotion, and cognition.” (2013, p. 21) Kathleen Gallagher, a professor and Canada Research Chair in Theatre, Youth, and Research in Urban Schools at the University of Toronto, tried to do just that.

Using digital communications across sites, her cross border theatre project team aimed to examine “student engagement, pedagogical practices, and success at school from a localglobal perspective.” (Gallagher, 2013, p. 13). Although, the focus of study was to measure student engagement in schools by introducing drama in the curriculum, it shed considerable light on their engagement in drama. What makes this study even more interesting is that their learning was observed in the process of constructing drama. The building of positive relationship, the creation of an imaginative playground and their regular attendance were clearly noticeable in the process. At each site young students, 17 to 18 years old, were asked to come up with “a collective performance based on the idea of “door” as a metaphor in their lives – doors that open, or close, or act as important thresholds.” (Gallagher, 2013, p. 21) The study found that some people find drama engaging because of “the nature of the collaborative pedagogy one typically observes in drama classrooms.” (Gallagher, p. 21) The pursuit of common goal makes the process interactive begging for negotiations within a group. An example to illustrate “collaborative pedagogy” comes from my recent experience of facilitating an impromptu drama act with a class of grade one and two students. Since the students had been learning about community workers, we assigned a secret role to each group of five students. They were given ten minutes to come up with an act to demonstrate the role of the community worker they were assigned. The challenge for the other groups, who acted as an 15

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms audience, was to infer the community person the group was pretending to be. It was interesting to see the voices in the planning process. The negotiations between students were note worthy and some of the otherwise quieter students, were found exchanging ideas and enacting their collectively agreed upon thoughts. Process drama, as Booth notes, creates a variety of opportunities for students to use language in purposeful and meaningful ways and to practice both oral and written language skills. (Bainbridge and Heyden, W15) Each group’s performance was coherent and the process of bringing the act together exemplified the concept of “shared consciousness” to me. The activity was student-centered and student driven and instances of student disengagement were negligible. The self organization of the groups made me realize the intelligence of collective minds as Korten puts it: The universe is a self organizing system engaged in the discovery of its possibilities through a continuing process of transcendence towards ever higher levels of order and self definition. (Fried, 2012, p. 18) Bellaviau (2008) confirms the complexity of interactions that occur in the midst of process drama. He notes: “Performative inquiry engages students in complex relationships and responsibilities as well as uncovers their perceptions, ambitions, and biases.

Learning through performative inquiry brings students to an awareness of how they, as individuals and in groups, influence the world they inhabit: this is the embodied learning from and awareness of interaction that complexity theory and enactivism invite. Like life, learning happens in an endless dance of coemergence that breathes hope and possibility into the classroom.” (p. 28)

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms Does it mean that engagement happens when learning is student-driven and the process is collaborative? If the answer to the above question is yes, then process drama provides a creative and educational collaboration between learning and student engagement.

Student Engagement in Process Drama “Process Drama is a term which has gained greater currency over recent years and is used to describe the genre in which performance to an external audience is absent but presentation to the internal audience is essential.” (Bowell & Heap, 2001, p. 7) Story or process drama puts the very audience in action. In fact, there is no audience in process drama. Of course, the process may be initiated with a read aloud or act out of a small piece to set a frame and give the story a context, following which the audience is invited to become a character in the story and their thoughts are woven on the impending situation. The process allows students to construct their own script and gear the drama in a self desired direction. George Belliveau, in praise of process drama calls it a vehicle for learning through performative inquiry. He notes, “performative inquiry uses the arts - drama, theatre, music, visual arts, dance and multimediafor inquiry. Performative inquiry invites participants to ask questions, to work collaboratively, to solve problems and to make decisions to respond critically and creatively to situations and issues, to reflect on their learning and choices of action. They become inquirers and learners.

And it’s a great ways to keep students actively engaged in the curriculum.” (Fels and Belliveau, 2008, p. 10) The beauty of the process also lies in the gradual release of responsibility – from a listening audience one is gently nudged into a particular character’s role. If the student is engaged, she or he does not only embodies the physical character of the role assigned but they also dip into the mind of the character to feel, experience and hence comprehend the situation better than any other teaching or discussion method can allow. Process drama certainly meets 17

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms the emotional and cognitive aspects of student engagement as outlined by Blumenfeld, Frederick and Paris. Patrice Baldwin and Kate Fleming echo similar thoughts in their book Teaching Literacy through Drama: Creative Approaches – High quality drama shares many characteristics with the criteria of high quality thinking…In drama, we are inviting children to bring their memories and previous learning and real-life experiences to an active, creative fictitious experience with fellow participants, to think in and out of role and thus to engage and empathize with a range of issues and situations from different perspectives. (2003, p. 31) Some characteristics of ‘high quality thinking’ as mentioned in the above quote include –are original or not routine, tend to be complex, the path is not visible from a single viewpoint, yield many solutions, involve imposing meaning and finding structure in apparent disorder. (Baldwin, p. 32) To sum up, behavior, emotion and cognition set the parameters for defining student engagement. It is also evident that drama captures these essential elements of engaging minds.

But what factors fosters engagement in drama? What causes disengagement? How can a teacher bring in aesthetic engagement during the process? These are some questions the answers to provide encouragement to teachers who wish to pursue performative inquiry in their classrooms.

Factors that shape Engagement in Drama As a children’s library technician serving a small community in Richmond, I presented story time to preschool and elementary grade children. They came to the library to engage in literature. I engaged them in children’s literature through dance, drama and music. We read, sang, danced and stomped our feet as we learned about stories, plots, predictions, characters,

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms and language. As mentioned earlier, I did meet disengaged audience who refused to participate fully in the experience. On reflecting the many possible reasons of disengagement, I found language was a huge barrier between some of them and me. According the Census 2006, East Cambie is among the fifth most preferred neighborhood for new immigrants. I found that some children, who came from families that spoke a language other than English at home, hesitated in participating in group drama acts. From my limited experience, I can see language as an important factor of engagement. Kathleen Gallager’s (2013) research team who studied engagement in and due to drama, at four international sites, found four main reasons of disengagement namely, “financial, social, political and ecological.” (p. 23) In Toronto, the team of researchers worked in a large technical school in downtown Toronto and a special program in a downtown school for at-risk students. The schools were multicultural and a “primarily socioeconomically disadvantaged students.” (Gallagher, 2013, p. 24) Researchers found that for those who were not as engaged as the others, substance addiction played a significant role. In Taiwan, the team worked with a technical school, where most of the students were becoming educated in trades.

“In India, domestic work for young women and fear of women’s emancipation had the most negative impact on young women’s ability to engage in school. In Taiwan,

social

stigma

and

educational

quality

for

socio-economically

disadvantaged students became a significant barrier to school engagement” (p.

20) The findings of Gallagher’s research revealed a number of factors students disengage from school and learning. But the beauty of her research, as she reports, is that out of the reasons of disengagement arose some opportunities that engage the young minds in North America and Asia. Through drama, the students created a caring community where joys and sorrows could be shared. Drama allowed them to experience a better 19

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms and more comfortable world, which they yearned in their real lives. Gallagher mentions one such comment by a participant name Peanut from Toronto who described in vivid details the many different challenges in her life: “The aesthetic space of the drama was paramount in her re-imagining of who she was and what she was capable of. She describes the classroom as the place that allowed her to return to her “younger, more innocent self that loved to dance” before being weighed down by a relenting addiction.” (p. 23) The power of suspending one’s belief is a price Peanut paid to experience the temporary elation. It is the suspension of belief that kept her engaged in the process. In order to understand engagement in drama, I have to acknowledge and appreciate the complexity that comes with every participant. Their financial, social, emotional and physical states of mind are just some layers to be considered, before one begins to analyze their engagement in a drama class. But, doing so will only expand the scope of this inquiry.

For the sake of understanding engagement, I wish to reduce the frame and focus on engagement due to suspension of belief. In John O’Toole words, “The first thing necessary for any drama is to suspend disbelief. As the audience of a play, film or TV drama we temporarily suspend our knowledge that we are sitting in a theatre or living room watching actors, and believe in fictional situation – the dramatic context. It is the same when actually taking part in a drama: all the participants need to suspend their disbelief, simultaneously, behavior, though they are suspended-just as they are in the cinema.” (2009, p. 4) What goes on in the mind of those who cannot imagine the spoken scene? What role does imagination play in suspending disbelief? What keeps some grounded to reality? Is it their strong sense of awareness or my weak deliverance that holds them back from 20

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms imagining a different reality? Did the boy who did not find the bear in the drama act not differentiate between real and imaginary? To understand engagement, I now turn my attention to the qualities of aesthetic engagement and the role of imagination in drama.

Aesthetic Engagement in process drama Boyd White, an art educator, brings out the definition of the word “aesthetic” by contrasting the meaning of it to its antonym. In the context of modern surgical practice, “anesthetic is used to induce the deprivation of senses, and cognition during surgery. Aesthetic experience, then, is just the opposite, that is, an emphasis on perception.” (2011, p. 22) I believe that drama has the ability to aesthetically engage its audience as well as its actors. Citing Singer and Singer, Wendy Mages, notes about make-believe in drama: “children engaged in drama are often asked to imagine sights, sounds, smells, textures, and tastes. Thus children participating in drama may be practicing and sharpening their capacity for imagery.” (2006, p. 360) Penny Bundy (2003), quotes Jackson’s claim in her paper who echoes a similar thought, “the arts offer alternative ways of seeing and understanding the world around us.” (p.172) This engagement is, however, not just a temporary sensory experience; rather, it is a powerful messenger that can shift one’s perception. Florence Samson (2005) quotes poet Rilke’s thought on art: “they [audience] are enabled to pay heed when a work of art tells them, ‘You must change your life’” (p. 70). Samson further delves into philosopher Green’s interpretation of Rilke’s words, which fleshes out the importance of aesthetic engagement: Greene interprets Rilke’s words to mean that “a work [of art] when fully perceived and carefully attended to, makes a demand upon beholders – a demand that they change, look with new eyes, hear with new ears, become something they have not been before.” (2005, p.70) 21

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms Process drama heightens perception and enhances cognitive and emotional awareness. As Bowell (2005) notes, “it is a potent means by which perception and expression may be heightened.” (p. 60) It is this moment of heightened awareness that learning takes place.

Belliveau (2008) calls them “pregnant moments of learning within a curricular context. This learning invites new questions, new perspectives, and new understandings.” (Fels and Belliveau, p. 12) Process drama allows that to happen because in process drama “the external audience of the theatre is replaced by an internal audience, so that the participants are both the theatrical ensemble that creates the “play” and the audience that receives it.” (Bowell, 2005, p.

60) In process drama students have to develop imagery for the situation being narrated to extend the act. Is that an acquired art or is it something we are born with? Michael Pollya’s example, as cited by author Kieran Egar, illustrates our cognitive capacity to imagine. She invites the reader to a completely dark cave – “In the cave you are having to move forward, and are feeling your way with the stick. You poke the ground and feel that there is something soft over there, perhaps moss, or perhaps it is more crumbly, so more likely mushrooms, and over here you feel hard, uneven flinty rock, and so on.” (2001, p. 5) The above example pushes the domain of aesthetic experience beyond the senses. Process drama, then is more than just an experience of senses. In fact, what is imagined is through our mind and not our senses. In other words, it is the ‘idea’ that brings to life the imagination which sets the stage for drama. Penny Bundy’s research on aesthetic engagement in the drama process brings out three basic qualities of aesthetic experience: connection, animation and heightened awareness (p. 176). Animation refers to the context of drama wherein the character depicts her or his role through body movement. Bundy suggests that animation is one of the products of engagement, and not a cause of engagement. It is “connection” that must take place between the actor and the ‘idea’ of the act, which will bring in the animation, engagement and 22

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms lead the actor to a “heightened awareness”. In Bundy’s words, “When we experience a sense of invigoration (animation) as we connect to an idea at a metaphoric level (connection) we are encouraged to be more alert to new ideas and thoughts (heightened awareness)” (p. 180). Idea, according to Bundy, “is not contained in the drama but in the response of percipients as or after they experience it.” (p. 177) Just as in reading, readers connect to a book when they relate the events in a story to the events, feelings or emotions of their lives; similarly in drama, actors must make a connection to the emotion presented in the story drama for engagement to take place.

The connection does not necessarily have to be from one’s direct life experience; nor does it have to be a related to content or form such as “fat girl”, “lonely man”. One needs to connect to the “idea” metaphorically. Bundy quotes Collinson who explains this through the example of her experience of Picasso’s painting Woman weeping. Her response “is not simply to the individual elements of form and content, but that in being combined in the manner they are, they evoke in her a sense of grief and thus an idea of grief.” (p. 177) More specifically, in process drama there exists a point when audience is transitioned from spectator to an enactor of the situation. It is at this point, the teacher-in-role passes the bait to its audience inviting them to take up a role and move the story further. If the audience has not been able to make a connection between their prior understanding and present make-believe situation, the drama in the story will collapse. It would be interesting to investigate the factors that assist in successfully delivering the core theme of a story to the student audience.

The third factor that could askew the translation of idea is its deliverance. In process drama the teacher works in role within the drama with the learners. Bowell and Heap point out that the “successful teacher-artist in process drama actually needs to function as playwright, director, and actor, as well as teacher.” (p. 60) Furthermore, they narrow down “three distinct but utterly interrelated sets of increment and layering taking place as teacher and learners become ever more sophisticated in their engagement with process drama.”

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms The first lies within the learning of the pupils, in terms of the content of the drama but also in terms of their understanding and confidence in aesthetic engagement with the art form. The second lies within the unfolding structure of the process drama, and the third within the continuing development of the teacher’s ability to create a process drama.

The authors believe that successful process drama involves careful planning of “theme, context, role, frame, sign and strategies.” The distillation of a teacher’s planning in these areas result in the creation of a river flowing through the dramatic experience where the narrative will unfold and where the desired learning objective may be reached – a process that can be described as “the hourglass dilemma.” (p. 64) Drama continues to engage the actors if the idea is sustained as a group. “As the river flows, it is the teacher’s continuing thinking, in symbiosis with that of the pupils that shapes the exploration of the landscape that is not being created.”

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms

PART III CONCLUSION Implications The implications between connection of idea and engagement imply the importance of warm up activities that teachers can choose to scaffold process drama. Bundy suggests activities that build trust and integrity will help foster connections between drama and its actors.

Some examples of warm up activities include workshop leader, physical, emotional, and intellectual responses to other participants, the disclosure of the private self in public sphere (p.

179). Bundy goes on to admit that these activities focus on knowing the actors as individuals rather as a group. Similar observations were made in Gallagher’s research wherein the researchers noted that for drama to be engaging one has to create a safe environment for participants to grow, share, learn and exchange ideas and emotions. With drama emerges a caring community, but for drama to occur, one needs to set the stage for a safe community of learners. Preparing the stage refers to preparing the space, training the minds of actors to imagine and setting the pace of activities. Just as some teachers spend the first few months of the school year laying the behavioral expectations among students, so does one have to do in a drama class. A reasonable amount of time needs to be given to students for them to become comfortable pursuing imagination and expressing it through thought and movement. Process drama activity is peppered by a number of prompts. While some students operate better at an impulsive state, others stall in their thinking process. Teachers-in-role must take that into consideration and move the drama on without demanding a response from those who get stalled.

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms Bundy’s research also emphasizes the importance of communicating the ‘idea’.

Teachers who wish to scaffold the transference of idea may consider reading stories and analyzing the emotions woven in the story in whole class discussions. Using Bloom’s taxonomy of higher order thinking, one can frame thought provoking questions that will help students build emotional connections between the text and themselves. When framing questions, think if what Little Prince from Asteroid 325 said in his journeys to Earth: “Grown-ups love figures... When you tell them you've made a new friend they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? "Instead they demand "How old is he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make? "Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.” (Saint-Exupéry, 1943) Let’s remember to ask questions like children and not as grown-ups. Once the students are comfortable storytellers, enacting the ideas can follow next in form of story drama.

Another way of building interconnections between stories and self is to practice oral narration of everyday events in groups. The “talking circle” arrangement can be borrowed from Indigenous culture where the storyteller tells a tale without being interrupted. This would not only help build a caring community, but also allow students to practice their speaking, listening and dramatizing skills. Storytellers will, in the process, come to appreciate the structure and flow of a good narrative. Listeners, with their mindful attention, acknowledge the contribution of listening ears.

Last but not the least, as educators one must not make the folly of underestimating the cognitive ability of children to imagine. I wish to borrow author Kieran Egar’s (2001) written sketch about “the principles of children’s learning”. They are as follows – a.

Children are abstract as well as concrete thinkers;

b.

Children’s thinking is powerfully affective; 26

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms c.

Children readily understand content organized into story forms;

d.

Children are readily engaged by forming images form words;

e.

Children are prodigal producers and consumers of metaphors’

f.

Children’s learning is stimulated by rhyme and rhythm;

g.

Children’s learning can proceed by forming binary oppositions and mediating them. ()

Stories are language children understand the best. As educators, we have the freedom in our curriculum and capacity in our education, to turn “industry influenced objective -contentmethods-evaluation scheme” scripted in the curriculum documents into stories that can be told, discussed and improvised through drama. Engagement rests on many factors, one of them, happens to be in a tale that needs to be savored or as Egar suggests “teaching as a story telling.” (p. 19) As a future educator, I hope to remind myself the creative thoughts embedded in a child’s mind.

Further Questions and Research Directions My inquiry started with the quest to uncover the constellation of reasons that contribute to a child’s reluctance to fully participate in a drama class. I wanted to discover the significant factors that lead to engagement in process drama in primary classrooms. In a way, I was in search of magical pixie dust that would magically transport the imaginary setting and thought to the minds of young actors. I was hoping to find a handful of reasons that allow engagement. But what I uncovered was a whole school of reasons that foster student engagement in drama in particular, and learning, in general. Knowing the complexity laden in identifying singular threads that make up part of complex interactions such as in process drama, makes me admire the research that has already been established in the field. The journey brought me close enough to realize the transference of ‘idea’ as an initiator of belief in dramatic context. But, several questions emerge from my newly found understanding. It would be interesting and worthwhile to 27

Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms investigate the following thoughts - If ‘imagination’ feeds idea, what feeds ‘imagination’? Are children who are grounded in reality, who fail to see the dramatic context, less imaginative?

Does socio-culture play a role is defining the imagination quotient of a child? If children do not spend the first few years of their life in a play-based environment, have compromised imagination? These and more are wonderings that I carry with myself as I begin my journey as a teacher. Not every question has an answer but I look forward to my journey in search of the answers. Like the shepherd in The Alchemist who is guided by his dreams, I hope to navigate my discoveries through the questions that have emerged from this inquiry. After all, quoting Paul Coelho (1993), “Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.”

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Student Engagement In Process Drama In Primary Classrooms

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Bainbridge, Joyce, Heydon, Rachel. ().Constructing Meaning: Teaching the Language Arts K-8 (text): Drama in the Elementary Classroom (Web Chapter W-15). Retrieved from www.constructingmeaning5e.nelson.com Bundy, Penny (2003). Aesthetic Engagement in the Drama Process. Research in Drama Education, Vol. 8, No. 2.

Cawthon, Stephanie W, Dawson, Katie, Shasta, Ihorn (2011). Activating student engagement through drama-based instruction. Journal for Learning Through The Arts, 7(1). Available from <http://www.library.ubc.ca/> Clark, Laura (2010). Muslim Pupils Taken Out Of Music Lessons ‘Because Islam Forbids Playing An Instrument’. Mail Online. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1291218/Muslimpupils-taken-music-lessons-Islam-forbids-playing-instrument.html Coelho, Paulo. (1993). The Alchemist. San Francisco: Harper.

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