Abstract
Teachers need pedagogies to make classrooms a safe place for students to engage in authentic embodied learning about the planet, its people, and the problems within it so they can make sense of their place in the world. In this hybrid thesis, I critically examine the affordances of process drama as an arts-based pedagogy to foster authentic embodied learning experiences in primary school settings and on a university campus in Aotearoa New Zealand. The investigation considers the potential of process drama as an embodied pedagogy to expand local and global competencies by examining real-world issues in the safety of the classroom setting.
The arts learning area has been seriously neglected in primary classrooms for decades in this country. Unsurprisingly, there is a lack of empirical evidence regarding the value or type of authentic learning and understanding that can emerge through embodied arts-based pedagogies, such as process drama in a New Zealand context. This thesis addresses the paucity of research in this area. I privilege the voices of primary school generalist teachers, primary school students, initial teacher education students and a specialist drama teacher as they engaged in learning through process drama pedagogy in classrooms and on a university campus, over three research projects. To investigate the overarching research question: What are the affordances of learning through process drama pedagogy? I examined three sub-questions: How does process drama pedagogy facilitate cognitive and/or affective aspects of empathy? In what ways might you capture metaxis moments, and what were the precursors that initiated them? What can ITE students’ experiences of process drama as an embodied pedagogy on campus and in schools teach us about the theory-practice divide?
Findings drew on thematic analysis of transcripts from initial and exit interviews with teachers, focus group interviews with primary school students, filmed lessons, and group meetings with teachers. A selection of student writing was also part of the data set. Additional data comprised lesson plans, and reflective interviews with a drama specialist and a classroom teacher post-observation of the specialist teaching her class. In the final project, I collected qualitative heavy, mixed methods data from two participant groups, comprising survey data from initial teacher education students and focus group interviews with a separate group of ITE students. A combination of relational and sociocultural theoretical lenses was used to support the thematic data analysis.
I identified three key insights. Process drama as a pedagogy nurtured the stimulation of both cognitive (mind) and (affective) learning processes to enhance the exploration of diverse perspectives and the development of holistic empathy. A further finding confirmed that authentic questions can play a compelling role as precursors to initiating metaxis moments in process drama contexts. Finally, this research evidenced that embodied learning through process drama can be one means of bridging the persistent theory-practice divide between schools and ITE providers. Process drama is a powerful pedagogy that provides an innovative safe platform from which students can be scaffolded to experience profound, authentic embodied learning, whilst exploring complex real-world issues that matter.