| Summary: | This thesis advances the proposition that Drama education cultivates and provides
students with opportunities to analyze, reflect upon, and reconcile daily human life
experiences; that Drama education opens up an effective and powerful medium for
young people to create a narrative and exposition, to voice their concerns; and that
Drama instruction helps students to acquire the much needed capacity to take on
different roles, to explore unknown situations, to expand their intellectual capacity
for creative and critical thought, insight, and empathy. I explore the role of the
reflective practitioner, of teacher as researcher, and Teacher Action Research
through the use of interwoven taped and transcribed personal reflections on my
own Drama praxis over the course of the 1997-1998 school year; as well as opening
up a diverse discourse in the field by questioning past and present assumptions
about the necessity of Drama's place as an integral part of the school curriculum. I
explicate the imperative for teachers to not only be sufficiently trained and well
versed in Drama methodology, but to be willing participants in the cognitive
apprenticeship of their students by being good teachers, pedagogues, mentors, and
even role models. I advance this argument by proposing that Drama curriculum is a
product of each individual teacher's abilities to credibly deliver basic elements of
their own humanity to their students, and through this unique sharing, the actual
language of Drama is formed. === Education, Faculty of === Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of === Graduate
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