Drama and Learning

Abstract

In an era of concern about the alienation of young people from learning and from community, the education and health sectors are turning towards the arts as a means of enhancing ethical understandings and engagement in learning. In Australia and internationally the performing arts are increasingly being recognised for their capacity to build social and cultural capital through collaborative and purposeful endeavour. This special edition of Melbourne Studies in Education showcases current thinking about drama as an educational and artistic medium within contemporary school and community contexts. Historically, drama was positioned as an optional extra — a luxury item in the smorgasbord of education. However, over the past twenty years drama has become an established part of the education of young people in Australian secondary schools and is widely used as a teaching and learning strategy within education and training. In the past decade Australia has gained international recognition for providing drama with an integral place within its national arts curriculum framework. Drama is becoming a mandatory area of the primary school curriculum in a number of States. Yet, in spite of these developments and an established body of research about students' learning in drama, its potential is often under-valued or ignored by educators outside the arts. Recently however, with the renewed focus on pedagogy, the highly interactive, flexible and creative methods used by drama educators have come into focus as key strategies for teachers. In this issue Australian writers from the field of drama highlight the powerful pedagogies employed in a range of educational and community contexts. They draw on recent research embedded in practice to illuminate the ways in which meaning in drama is shaped within dynamic learning encounters. Through their contextualised accounts the writers reflect on the challenges for educators working as co-creators with diverse participants, calling creative thinking and critical reflection into play. These articles collectively reflect a deep conviction about the moral purpose of education to nurture, challenge and develop the human being and the community. The writers describe and analyse drama practice in which social and emotional goals are interwoven with intellectual and aesthetic challenges. Drama is seen as a powerful and empowering pedagogy and as a participatory, enquiry-based learning medium. Contributors highlight drama's role in developing cultural understandings and critical literacy skills, and in fostering resilience and a sense of connectedness. Imagination, empathy, play and creativity are foregrounded as central qualities of a contemporary drama curriculum. As guest editors we hope that this journal will generate important questions and provoke productive dialogue about the potential of drama and its pedagogical practices within educational environments. We have grouped the articles according to the central themes emerging from the diverse perspectives of the writers. We find many of