Subverting perceptions of academic and professional learning with drama

Abstract

What is the impact on student learning when Education is taught through the Arts in a diploma level bridging course? This paper describes and analyses the experiences of 350 students when the expectation of a first-semester, first-year unit in an Education course is to devise and perform an ethnodrama – a drama based on the lives of the students themselves. The students, many of whom have had negative experiences of education, are challenged to think of learning as physical as well as intellectual and emotional. Influenced by Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and August Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, the authors encouraged risk-taking and playfulness in class in order to develop students’ understandings of personal agency, capacity, and responsibility. Participation in the Drama, although very challenging for many students, resulted in increased confidence as learners and as individuals, increased collaborative skills, empathy, respect for others, and a sense of empowerment.