“As Long as It’s Not Shakespeare”: In-School Playwriting Instruction for the Urban Language Arts Classroom

• In Event: Roundtable Session 81
  In Roundtable Session: Multimodal Narratives in Arts Education Research: Digital Stories, Playwriting, and Soundscapes

Abstract

The study explores the question of the extent to which an in-school playwriting program transforms the writing skills and interest in writing for 24 students involved in an in-school playwriting course. The study takes place in a 4th grade urban, mid-Atlantic classroom, in a district that is nationally recognized as troubled. The use of arts integration strategies is somewhat controversial given the district-wide reliance on standardized test scores as the dominant measure of student achievement. Through classroom observations, interviews with the teacher and teaching artist, focus group interviews with the participating students, and content analysis of student writing over Spring 2010, we found that student centered instruction in playwriting enabled intrinsic motivation and agency through imaginative work and self-expression

Authors

• Mary Stone Hanley, 304 Aspen St NW #10

• Jenice Leilani View, George Mason University