Drama-Based Pedagogy: Tools to Create, Connect, and Conspire in the Language and Literacy Classroom

• In Event: Acting Up: Dramatic Approaches for Socially Engaged Language and Literacy Education Online and in Person

Abstract

It has been argued that bilingual or multilingual learning is key to improving global citizenship via an increase in perspective taking, career opportunities, achievement, and literacy (Tochon, 2009; Bialystock and Martin, 2004). However, the educational approach to language teaching is often lecture, text, and memorization-focused. This workshop explores drama-based pedagogy as a multimodal, multiliterate approach to language and literacy education being used globally to increase student engagement and expand pedagogic possibility.

Drama-based pedagogy (DBP) has a foundation in active and dramatic arts integration techniques which are used to engage teachers and students in cognitive, affective and aesthetic learning experiences across the curriculum (Author3 & Colleague, 2018). DBP specifically addresses factors important to second language acquisition theory as codified in the Modern Languages Association Report (2007) and ACTFL World-Readiness Standards (The National Standards Collaborative Board, 2015) as both focus on “the influence of context on communication; the socially constructed nature of both language and drama; and the importance of active participation” (Stinson & Winston, 2011, p. 479). In DBP language is embodied in multimodal activities that, as with authentic language use, can be auditory, visual, and kinesthetic.

This interactive mini-session will introduce participants to three different approaches to DBP “Image Work.” For each approach, a virtual activity will be led followed by a video excerpt of K-16 educators using the strategy in a range of language and literacy contexts. This includes:

1. Object as Image- The facilitator engages participants in a collective process of “reading” or interpreting an object to practice skills of observation and inference as a method of sense-making and interpretation. Strategy and example from a youth led English literacy research project in South Australia.
2. Bodies as Image- The facilitator invites participants to shape their body or the body of others to visually represent an idea, feeling, character, relationship, conflict, setting, or situation. Strategy and example from an inter-ethnic EFL research project in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
3. Images in Action- The facilitator uses the creation of multiple images or gestures/actions within a larger sequence or process to dialogue about the relationship between separate parts within a larger idea, concept, event or as an exploration of a character. Strategy and example from an ELL research project in South Texas.

Image work strategies in DBP invite participants to see how perception and reception is situated culturally, individually, and collectively (Edmiston, 2014; Greene, 1998; Kress, 2003). They support a participant’s ability to make meaning in multiple ways, not just with words (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996, 2001; New London Group, 1996). Students develop language and grow through dialogue with their teachers, their peers, and their environment (Vygotsky, 1978); more interactions result in more growth (Wertsch, 1985). This interactive workshop will invite participants to create, interpret, and perform meaning-making; together we will consider “that the limits of language are not the limits of cognition. We know more than we can tell” in words alone (Eisner, 2009, p. 6).

Author

• Kathryn Dawson, The University of Texas at Austin