ILSA in Arts Education: The Effect of Drama on Competences

Abstract

This chapter discusses the role of aesthetic education with a focus on educational drama and theatre. It investigates the lack of international large-scale assessment (ILSA) studies in the field of aesthetic education and exemplifies how to measure competence development in one of the aesthetic subjects: drama, based on the international mixed method large-scale assessment study DICE (Drama Improves Lisbon Key Competences in Education). The aim is to gain new understanding of the role of aesthetics in schooling, relating traditional philosophical arts theory from Aristotle and Dewey to relevant contemporary conceptualizations, such as twenty-first century skills (OECD), Lisbon Key Competences (EU), and Education for Sustainable Development (UNESCO). The discussion considers three main questions: Why does only a few international large-scale quantitative assessments of drama education exist? Why are researchers and practitioners in drama education skeptical about quantitative measurements? Can we design large-scale assessment studies in drama education?

Appendix

In the DICE project, particularly two genres of applied drama/theatre constitute important references for the research: process drama and theatre-in-education (TIE). The following descriptions of these two dramatic art genres may clarify their function in educational contexts:

Process drama is a genre of educational drama which focuses on collaborative investigation and problem-solving in an imaginary world. Process dramas use ‘pre-texts’ (photographs, newspaper articles, music, artefacts, etc.) to frame the investigation and raise questions for the students. Process dramas are improvised, not script-based, built up from a series of episodes or scenic units, usually in a non-linear and discontinuous fashion. The entire group of participants are engaged in the same enterprise, and the teacher may function within the drama as playwright and participant (e.g. teacher-in-role). A primary purpose of process drama is that the participants discover, explore, and articulate a theme, narrative or situation together as percipients, /…/, or put differently: as audience to their own acts. In process drama there is an intention to learn and understand, rather than to perform and entertain. (Cooper & DICE Consortium, 2010, p. 203)

Theatre in education (TIE) is a theatre genre and dramatic outreach activity for schools or nurseries/ kindergartens – tailored to specific age or target groups – by professional actors. (Or occasionally highly qualified drama/theatre teachers or university-trained drama/theatre students.) Its primary aim is to use theatre and drama to create a wide range of learning opportunities across the whole curriculum. Most TIE programmes comprise performance and participatory/interactive elements. Actor-teachers (so called because they use the skills of the actor while thinking as a teacher at one and the same time) engage the pupils directly in parts of the play, or tasks and activities extending from it. Often the TIE programme involves preparation work and follow-up (usually drama) activities developed as a part of the whole experience. (Cooper & DICE Consortium, 2010, p. 205)

They both operate visibly at the crossroads of art and education, and can be regarded as contemporary best practice examples of drama/theatre as aesthetic subject areas in schools.

Three examples of drama structures showing how the art form can actualize, perspectivize, contextualize, and lead to discussion. The first two are process drama, and the third is TIE:

• 1. In an approach to “Snow White” (primary school), the teacher combines narrative with interactive play sequences. Partly narrator and partly player, the teacher enrolls the class as people with special tasks or as advisors. The castle is created collectively as a big drawing on the blackboard, so that the pupils get a common sense of place and time. Then they are invited to become workers in the castle. “What kind of work do you know that is needed there? What is your speciality? How can you demonstrate your particular skill?” The teacher in role as the king (or the queen) comes to inspect his / her workers. After another sequence of narration, the teacher in role as the hunter, invites his work friends to a secret meeting: “The queen has asked me to kill Snow White this very evening. What shall I do?” After this sequence, a class discussion follows – about responsibility, moral dilemma, obedience, consequence, and empathy. The story may well continue with a shift of perspective: The teacher in role as the queen visits the apothecary (the whole class collectively): “I need to buy some poison. What do you have in stock?” The teacher follows the train of the fairy tale when improvising with the apothecaries, but challenges them in role to make considerations and decisions. In doing so, the teacher balances cunning with smooth talk – depending on what resistance she gets from the apothecaries. A final class discussion follows after having finished the tale. (Heggstad, 2012, pp. 94–95).

• 2. With a newspaper article about the peace activist Rachel Corrie as pretext, teacher connects Rachel’s destiny with that of the Greek heroine Antigone, by involving the class (secondary school) to explore situations from the lives of these two young women: From teacher narration, the class create still images of life situations (e.g., respective family pictures), the pupils act short scenes from Rachel’s e-mails and Sophocles’ play, they contrast extracts from Rachel’s e-mail monologues with Antigone’s script monologues – experiencing their dilemmas across time and space, and they witness ritual: The class in a half circle on the floor. Teacher lays out a silk cloth and puts on it two glass beakers with sand. Pours out a small heap of sand on the cloth and narrates: “Rachel Corrie, 23 years old from the state of Washington, was killed while she was trying to prevent Israeli army bulldozers from destroying a Palestinian home. … (etc.).” Pours out another small heap of sand on the cloth and narrates: “About 2500 years earlier, Antigone – daughter of Oedipus and his mother Jocasta, became a victim of a battle between private conscience and public authority… (etc.).” The drama invites shifts of perspective, like the convention ‘the chair’: Volunteer participants in turn represent Rachel on the chair. The class ask Rachel questions after death, for example “would you do it again?”; or ‘hot-seat’: The class interrogate the driver of the bulldozer (volunteer participant) or other witnesses: bystander, soldier, politician, journalist, boyfriend, mother, father, grandma. The session ends with a class discussion of issues raised and explored in the drama. (Eriksson, 2007, pp. 134–146).

• 3. “The pupils (primary school) are watching a refugee girl, Amani, and a boy, George, interact in a disused railway station. Amani and George are played by two actors in role. The interaction is fraught with tension. Amani is frightened, George is aggressive – he is frightened too. They cannot speak to each other. One of the pupils, a girl aged seven, a girl who is often quiet, distant even, taps one of the adults working in the programme on the shoulder. “I know what the problem is”, she says. The adult gets the attention of the actor facilitating the programme, indicating that the child is prepared to share her understanding with the rest of her peers. “His story is her story” she observes with quiet confidence, “and her story is his story, but they don’t realise it.” The significance was apparent to everyone in the room, it was held in a portentous silence. The task for everyone involved now was to deepen this understanding and share it with George and Amani. This was the stuff of real drama” (from Cooper and DICE Consortium, 2010, p. 17).