Drama Education in the Lives of Girls : Imagining Possibilities

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.

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 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."--Résumé de l'éditeur "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 Contents 7 Foreword 9 Acknowledgments 13 Prologue Drama: A Picture of Our Knowing 15 Chapter One. Drama and Girls 27 Chapter Two. Creators of Worlds 57 Chapter Three. Research in the Classroom 99 Chapter Four. Teacher Roles and the Curriculum 127 Epilogue 145 References 151 Index 165