Exploring "Grown-Up-Ness in the World" Through Dramatic Art and Literature

• In Event: Art, Artists, and Pedagogy: Philosophy and the Arts in Education

Abstract

It is a rare moment indeed when a young person can not only explore and express their own reality but also act upon it to make an intervention into the world around them.(Prentki, 2014, p.5)

Many western education systems are currently in crisis given their increasingly reductive and technical approach to learning. At the same time international research increasingly demonstrates the important role that arts rich pedagogies should play in and across the school curriculum. This paper uses a contemporary Australian project School Drama to focus particularly on how embedding educational or process drama strategies in the study of literary texts can enable teachers, children and young people to explore ‘grown-up ness’ in the world. Through suspending their disbelief they can work through real problems, dilemmas and issues about their relationships with others and the environment. The dramatic artform enables the educational ‘moment’ to appear inside the resulting artistic ‘work.’Educators and children’s understandings of others and the world around them can be extended and deeper learning about ‘grown-up ness’ can result.

Author

• Robyn Ann Ewing, The University of Sydney