This article examines drama in relation to girls' education, and considers some of the ways in which drama might be applied in schools to challenge limiting hegemonic narratives about gender and support the emerging understandings and performances of femininities of adolescent girls. It reports on case study research conducted with a Year 9 Drama…

In 2005-2009, the author researched the theatre-making practices of young people in selected black townships near Cape Town, South Africa. Township theatre groups comprised secondary school learners and out-of-school youth who join together to learn about and make theatre, perform and watch each other. These theatre practitioners do not describe…

This ethnography, completed by the classroom teacher in a publicly funded secondary school in Mississauga, Canada, explores issues of conflict and sabotage that affected a devising project with suburban young people. The processes of devising generated ethnographic data that included a play script and videotaped rehearsals and performances. As…

In 1975 a new definition of disability, challenging the conventional medical model, was proposed by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) and the Disability Alliance. Subsequently extended to cover all impairments, this definition considers disability to be the "disadvantage or restriction caused by a contemporary social…

In this article the author draws on classroom video recordings and student commentary to explore ways in which the kinaesthetic elements of a process drama provided the context and the space for beginner additional language learners to engage with intercultural language learning. In the light of student comments in interviews and questionnaires,…

For more than 30 years drama has been promoted as a valuable teaching tool for language learning. Recent research results have reinforced this position. However, these and other earlier studies reveal that the overall success of the work is dependent, at least in part, upon the artistry of the teacher and the quality of the pretext materials used…

Ensemble-building is a practice within drama education that is understood to be a powerful metaphor for democratic living. However, this ongoing work in classrooms also demands that teachers understand and enact a broad, interrelated range of knowledge, skills, and values that support participants' encounters with conflict and representations of…

The article explores the limitations of applied drama interventions promising integration and inclusion against the material realities of urban disenfranchisement and misrecognition. Through reflection on a participatory theatre project facilitated with young women in an urban secondary school in London, social and moral agendas emerge which…

How do you stage the world? This article reviews how a series of performance installations by the theatre company Stan's Cafe have approached global space. It examines the way "Plague Nation" and "Of All the People in All the World" tackle national and global scale through the representation of populations. Drawing on a discussion of…

This paper, delivered at the International Drama in Education Research Institute (IDIERI) conference in Sydney in July 2009, explores the outcomes of a project designed to apply the applied theatre techniques developed for the Acting Against Bullying programme to the specific problem of covert or hidden bullying by adolescent girls. Conducted in a…

Traditionally drama in schools has been seen either as a learning medium with a wide range of curricular uses or as a subject in its own right. This paper argues that the importance of drama in schools is in the processes of social and artistic engagement and experiencing of drama rather than in its outcomes. The paper contrasts the pro-social…

This paper reports on a one-year project in a Singapore "neighbourhood" school where the researcher was invited to assist the teachers of two secondary English classes to incorporate drama strategies to enliven their pedagogy. Few teachers involved had any prior experience of drama in schools and none had studied drama during pre-service teacher…

This article presents a case study of Australian secondary school students as co-creators of a dramatic pre-text, using online and mobile media to develop an improvisation-based drama that introduces a textual study. Integrating recognised dramatic conventions within a digital environment provides the tension, and drives the educational…

In this pilot project, drama was used to situate genetic testing in a social and cultural context--that of the family. The drama was used to stimulate discussion about social issues relating to genetic testing, such as who has the right to know the results of the test and whether participants would want to know their "genetic future". A 10-minute,…

This paper reports on research undertaken into what secondary school drama teachers think they need to possess in terms of subject knowledge in order to operate effectively as drama specialists. "Subject knowledge" is regarded as being multi-faceted, and the paper considers how drama teachers prioritise its different aspects. A discussion of what…