Drama Education in the Lives of Girls : Imagining Possibilities

In this book, Kathleen Gallagher presents a multi-case study of adolescent girls who are learning through drama about their particular sexual, cultural, ethnic, and class-based identities in relation to the broader world around them. By examining the power and possibility of drama in schools to animate the processes of learning, Gallagher's research offers hope for meaningful reflection on pedagogy in what she sees as an increasingly mechanistic and disempowering period in education. This work is a unique contribution to the fields of equity studies and the arts in education, as it provides a new lens through which to examine gender, diversity, and schooling. Experiencing the drama curriculum as a process and method, the students learn by taking on different roles. This re-positioning of the learner generates new and rich experiences in the dialectic of life and art and the discourse of the "world as a stage" metaphor. Combining research and classroom practice in a public Catholic girls' school over an eighteen-month period, the author illustrates how drama provides a fertile ground for the intellectual and emotional development of girls, as they draw on their own lives and experiences in order to create their fictional worlds. She demonstrates how the collective action of drama in the classroom can support girls in becoming the authors of their own experiences. This compelling book reveals the liberatory possibilities of drama education for the vastly diverse and complex group, adolescent girls. The doctoral research on which Drama Education in the Lives of Girls was based received the American Alliance of Theatre and Education's most distinguished scholarly research award for 1999. In this book, Kathleen Gallagher presents a multi-case study of adolescent girls who are learning through drama about their particular sexual, cultural, ethnic, and class-based identities in relation to the broader world around them. By examining the power and possibility of drama in schools to animate the processes of learning, Gallagher's research offers hope for meaningful reflection on pedagogy in what she sees as an increasingly mechanistic and disempowering period in education. This work is a unique contribution to the fields of equity studies and the arts in education, as it provides a new lens through which to examine gender, diversity, and schooling. Experiencing the drama curriculum as a process and method, the students learn by taking on different roles. This re-positioning of the learner generates new and rich experiences in the dialectic of life and art and the discourse of the "world as a stage" metaphor. Combining research and classroom practice in a public Catholic girls' school over an eighteen-month period, the author illustrates how drama provides a fertile ground for the intellectual and emotional development of girls, as they draw on their own lives and experiences in order to create their fictional worlds. She demonstrates how the collective action of drama in the classroom can support girls in becoming the authors of their own experiences. This compelling book reveals the liberatory possibilities of drama education for the vastly diverse and complex group, adolescent girls. The doctoral research on which __Drama Education in the Lives of Girls__ was based received the American Alliance of Theatre and Education's most distinguished scholarly research award for 1999. Contents 8 Foreword 10 Acknowledgments 14 Prologue 18 1. Drama and Girls 28 Reflection and Ethnography in Classrooms 28 Girls' Voices: The Conversations 33 Inviting the Aesthetic into Classrooms 36 Expanding the Question of Equity 43 Girls and Institutions: The Myth of Co-Education 45 Single-Sex Education: Beginning from 'Ourselves' 47 Our Setting 53 2. Creators of Worlds 58 Living through Stories 58 Drama and Expressive Learning 60 Dramatic Structures I 62 Drama and Intelligence 66 Spontaneous Role-Playing and Cognition 67 Change as a Significant Indicator of Cognitive Development 73 Drama and Moral Development 74 Dramatic Structures II 77 Drama as Collective Process 83 Drama as Personal Development 91 3. Research in the Classroom 100 Personal Narrative and Self-Construction 100 The 'Insider' Outside Eyes: Videographer Voices 112 Becoming a Teacher-Researcher 118 Assumptions and Paradigms: Three Propositions to Consider 120 The Importance of Evaluating the Arts in Schools 123 4. Teacher Roles and the Curriculum 128 The Drama Practitioner: Imagining Possibilities 128 Bringing the World In 130 The Action of Curriculum: When Objectives Meet Practice 134 The Problem of Goal-Setting in the Arts 136 The Projects of Drama are the Projects of Life 141 Epilogue 146 References 152 Index 166 "In this book, Kathleen Gallagher presents a case study that illustrates how drama provides a fertile ground for the intellectual and emotional development of girls. By examining the power and possibility of drama in schools to animate the processes of learning, Gallagher's research offers pedagogical alternatives in what she sees as an increasingly mechanistic and disempowering period in education. This work is a contribution to the fields of equity studies and the arts in education, as it provides a new lens through which to examine gender, diversity, and schooling."--Jacket Through drama girls can explore their particular sexual, cultural, ethnic, and class-based identities. Gallagher's research offers pedagogical alternatives in an increasingly mechanistic and disempowering period in education.