Multiliteracies and Teacher Change: Understanding the Challenges of Implementing Dramatic Approaches to Reading Complex Texts

• In Event: Literacies, Learning, and Drama: Engaging Multiliterate Knowledge Through Action Within Possible Worlds

Abstract

This presentation reports on two-years of research with elementary – secondary teachers in two U.S. urban school districts, who implemented an innovative drama pedagogy designed to promote reading and interpretation of complex texts. Scholar-practitioners have been developing pedagogical uses of classroom drama over half a century (Heathcote,1984; Heathcote & Bolton, 1995; O’Neill, 1995; Gallagher, 2001; Neelands, 2010). When based on a shared, authored text, drama is an inherently multimodal and multiliteracies approach to language and literacy learning (New London Group, 1996; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000). Drama’s use in literacy education continues to be explored in classrooms around the world (Booth, 1994; Winston, 2000; Schneider, Crumpler, Rogers, 2006; Prendiville & Toye, 2007; Beach et al, 2010), though no study has been able to incorporate the views and practices of multiple teachers engaged in a similar drama pedagogy.
Thirty-two teachers in this study were taught to use drama and complex texts, during two intensive weeks of immersive experiential learning, and then through multiple follow-up workshops and in-classroom co-teaching during the 2009-2011. Drama approaches required teachers (and in turn, their students) to engage in physical movement, use of drama conventions (e.g., stop action, tableau) playful dramatization of complex language and stories, and collaborative inquiry. Given teachers’ extensive engagement with new pedagogies, my research question focused on what changes teachers struggled with as they implemented innovative multimodal practices in their literacy teaching. Across the two-year, collaborative action research (Gordon, 2008), data were collected through teacher surveys, classroom observations (video and audio recorded), teacher and researcher reflective interviews, and still images. Teachers also wrote reports of their learning three times across the study.
Data were analyzed through Kalantzis & Cope’s (2008) theoretical framework, which argues for a transformative approach to language and literacy teaching and learning that promotes shifts in adults’ and students’ identities. In their model, adults become change agents focused on designing, creating, and assessing collaborative critical learning situations. Literacy learning is social and distributed among collaborating, inquiring students and adults, who engage in the following four interrelated processes: They experience both the known and the new; conceptualize not only by naming, but also by using cultural frameworks to theorize about the world; and analyze life experiences, while contributing creative applications of knowledge in authentic or life-like situations.
Following a reflexive process of discussion and document review with teachers, along with references to the aims of multiliteracy teaching and learning developed by Kalantzis & Cope (2008), nine categories of change in teaching and learning emerged. As they learned to create new multiliteracy-rich classrooms, teachers: 1) adapted the physical space; 2) built an ensemble community; 3) changed views of themselves as a teacher; 4) selected text extracts; 5) created embodied images with students; 6) moved among real and imagined spaces; 7) shared power with students; 8) taught through inquiry; and 9) promoted dialogue among conflicting perspectives. Teachers engaged in 20-40 weeks of drama, and all reported that the experiential, conceptual, analytic, and creative dimensions of student/teacher learning exceeded their expectations.

Author

• Brian W. Edmiston, The Ohio State University - Columbus