Drama Education in the Lives of Girls: Imagining Possibilities PDF
Preview Drama Education in the Lives of Girls: Imagining Possibilities
Drama Education in the Lives of Girls!) / Q Imagining Possibilities In this book, Kathleen Gallagher presents a case study that illus- trates 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 disempower- ing period in education. This work is a unique contribution to the fields of equity studies and the arts in education, as it pro- vides a new lens through which to examine gender, diversity, and schooling. Combining research and classroom practice in a Catholic girls' school over an eighteen-month period, the author shows how through drama girls can explore their particular sexual, cultural, ethnic, and class-based identities in relation to the broader world around them, as they draw on their own lives and experi- ences 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 liberating possibilities of drama education for adolescent girls, a vastly diverse and complex group. KATHLEEN GALLAGHER is Assistant Professor of Drama Educa- tion at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the Uni- versity of Toronto and continues to travel widely, lecturing and facilitating workshops in the areas of drama and equity in education. 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 and the Barbara Mclntyre Distinguished Research Award for 2000. This page intentionally left blank Drama Education in the Lives of Girls Imagining Possibilities Kathleen Gallagher With a Foreword by Madeleine Grumet U N I V E R S I T Y O F T O R O N T O P R E S S Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2000 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada Reprinted in paperback 2001 ISBN 0-8020-4763-7 (cloth) ISBN 0-8020-8478-8 (paper) Printed on acid-free paper Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Gallagher, Kathleen, 1965- Drama education in the lives of girls : imagining possibilities Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-4763-7 (bound) ISBN 0-8020-8478-8 (pbk.) 1. Drama - Study and teaching (Secondary). 2. Teenage girls - education. I. Title. PN1701.G34 2000 792'.071'2 COO-931198-X This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its pub- lishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). In loving memory of my parents, Jean Rogers Gallagher and Edward Gallagher This page intentionally left blank Contents Foreword by Madeleine Grumet ix Acknowledgments xiii Prologue 3 1. Drama and Girls 13 Reflection and Ethnography in Classrooms 13 Girls' Voices: The Conversations 18 Inviting the Aesthetic into Classrooms 21 Expanding the Question of Equity 28 Girls and Institutions: The Myth of Co-Education 30 Single-Sex Education: Beginning from 'Ourselves' 32 Our Setting 38 2. Creators of Worlds 43 Living through Stories 43 Drama and Expressive Learning 45 Dramatic Structures I 47 Drama and Intelligence 51 Spontaneous Role-Playing and Cognition 52 Change as a Significant Indicator of Cognitive Development 58 Drama and Moral Development 59 viii Contents Dramatic Structures II 62 Drama as Collective Process 68 Drama as Personal Development 76 3. Research in the Classroom 85 Personal Narrative and Self-Construction 85 The 'Insider' Outside Eyes: Videographer Voices 97 Becoming a Teacher-Researcher 103 Assumptions and Paradigms: Three Propositions to Consider 105 The Importance of Evaluating the Arts in Schools 108 4. Teacher Roles and the Curriculum 113 The Drama Practitioner: Imagining Possibilities 113 Bringing the World In 115 The Action of Curriculum: When Objectives Meet Practice 119 The Problem of Goal-Setting in the Arts 121 The Projects of Drama are the Projects of Life 126 Epilogue 131 References 137 Index 151 Foreword Many of us remember growing up in classrooms surrounded by scores of other people. Most were other students, maybe thirty or more, in public-school classrooms. Despite the numbers, the profusion, the jumble of kids, class proceeded as if we were all one student. That was the alchemy of the expert teacher, trans- forming a motley group of kids into a coherent unit. Desks were in rows, nailed down to the floor. Eyes front, everyone. The sixties and seventies brought in an ethic of individuation, and a belated and often reluctant recognition of diversity. In teacher-centred classrooms, teachers were now exhorted to per- ceive and acknowledge the specific learning styles, needs, and attitudes of each of the thirty students, and to individualize the curriculum created for one generic child accordingly. One teacher and thirty students, maybe an aide. Schools were built without classrooms by visionaries who imagined mobile groups of children moving from learning centre to learning centre with- out categorization by age or grade. It was a romantic idea that nobody was prepared for. The curriculum and the structures of instruction changed little. There was little material developed for this fluid curriculum, less pedagogy, and even less assess- ment. Gradually, amid the din and the distraction, bookcases appeared, and the walls grew back to establish the cubicles that would order and focus attention on - the teacher. The eighties and nineties brought a stronger learning theory to this scene, as constructivism, born of Piaget's conviction that
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