Drama education in the lives of girls : imagining possibilities / Kathleen Gallagher ; with a foreword by Madeleine Grumet.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gallagher, Kathleen, 1965-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Drama--Study and teaching (Secondary).

Drama.

Teenage girls--Education.

Teenage girls.

Physical Description:

xiv, 155 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, [2000]

Summary:

In this book, Kathleen Gallagher presents a case study that illustrates how drama provides a fertile ground for the intellectual and emotional development of girls. By examining the power and possibility of drama in schools to animate the processes of learning, Gallagher's research offers pedagogical alternatives in what she sees as an increasingly mechanistic and disempowering period in education. This work is a unique contribution to the fields of equity studies and the arts in education, as it provides a new lens through which to examine gender, diversity, and schooling.

Combining research and classroom practice in a Catholic girls' school over an eighteen-month period, the author shows how through drama girls can explore their particular sexual, cultural, ethnic, and class-based identities in relation to the broader world around them, as they draw on their own lives and experiences in order to create their fictional worlds. She demonstrates how the collective action of drama in the classroom can support girls in becoming the authors of their own experiences. This compelling book reveals the liberating possibilities of drama education for adolescent girls, a vastly diverse and complex group.

Contents:

1. Drama and Girls 13

Reflection and Ethnography in Classrooms 13

Girls' Voices: The Conversations 18

Inviting the Aesthetic into Classrooms 21

Expanding the Question of Equity 28

Girls and Institutions: The Myth of Co-Education 30

Single-Sex Education: Beginning from 'Ourselves' 32

Our Setting 38

2. Creators of Worlds 43

Living through Stories 43

Drama and Expressive Learning 45

Dramatic Structures I 47

Drama and Intelligence 51

Spontaneous Role-Playing and Cognition 52

Change as a Significant Indicator of Cognitive Development 58

Drama and Moral Development 59

Drama as Collective Process 68

Drama as Personal Development 76

3. Research in the Classroom 85

Personal Narrative and Self-Construction 85

The 'Insider' Outside Eyes: Videographer Voices 97

Becoming a Teacher-Researcher 103

Assumptions and Paradigms: Three Propositions to Consider 105

The Importance of Evaluating the Arts in Schools 108

4. Teacher Roles and the Curriculum 113

The Drama Practitioner: Imagining Possibilities 113

Bringing the World In 115

The Action of Curriculum: When Objectives Meet Practice 119

The Problem of Goal-Setting in the Arts 121

The Projects of Drama are the Projects of Life 126.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0802047637 :

OCLC:

44545810