The Diversity of Drama Practice
The National Curriculum
Drama has the potential to make a significant contribution to the core aims of the new primary curriculum, helping learners become successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens (Rose, 2009). In this context, drama is placed within the English, communication and languages area of learning, and is noted as contributing specifically to speaking and listening.
It can however also make a rich contribution to children's writing offering audience and purpose and extending their ideational fluency (see Cremin et al, 2006; Crumpler and Schneider, 2002). Additionally, drama, a highly motivating tool for learning, supports children's engagement in texts and fosters their understanding and comprehension.
Drama is recognised within the
Primary Literacy Framework which implicitly acknowledges that, like the other art forms, drama involves the processes of making, performing and appraising. The strand on drama highlights the use of dramatic techniques, in particular the value of working in role in order to explore ideas and texts, also noting that in drama children can create, share and evaluate their own and others' ideas and develop their understanding of issues and subjects through drama.
The learning objectives for drama in each year group in the Framework can be found at:
http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/strands/34758/34265/110201.
It may be useful to print these out and consider with student teachers whether there is a bias in the objectives towards 'performance'? What does this imply?
It might also be worth discussing whether in the context of improvisational classroom drama the term 'sharing' is more appropriate? In such improvisational contexts a greater degree of informality often exists such that children 'share' their freeze frames or small group improvisations, offering these as forms of meaning making in the unfolding exploration, not as mini-performances.
