Although laboratory activities are widely acknowledged as being fundamental to the teaching of science, many secondary science school teachers have limited knowledge of how to design and run effective teaching laboratories. Utilising a situated cognition theoretical framework, we discuss our collaborative efforts to develop a laboratory based…

Interpretation and construction of graphs are central to the study of physics and to performance in physics. In this paper, I explore the interpretation and construction processes called upon in questions with a graphical component, in Western Australian Physics Tertiary Entrance Examinations. In addition, I list errors made by students as…

We report on an investigation of students' ideas about gravity after a semester of instruction in physics at university. There are two aspects to the study which was concerned with students' answers to a carefully designed qualitative examination question on gravity. The first aspect is a classification of the answers and a comparative study of…

There is considerable evidence that use of anthropomorphism and animism in science teaching is a common practice in all grades of education. However, not much is known about teachers' own views on the real reasons why they have been using animistic and anthropomorphic formulations or on the issue of whether animism and anthropomorphism should or…

The results of a large scale (N=1001) cross-sectional (Years 6, 8 and 10) study of students' ideas about the composition of unpolluted air, the nature of air pollution, the biological consequences of air pollution, and about acid rain and the Greenhouse Effect are reported. A range of persistent alternative conceptions were identified, in some…

Performance theorist Herbert Blau's "The Audience" (Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins Press, 1990) is an important yet neglected theoretical text on theatre audience. Deconstructive, dense and allusive in nature, Blau's text creates a real challenge for his reader. This paper presents a study of "The Audience" employing what I am calling…

The term 'community arts theatre' is used here to describe theatre created and performed by groups of adults in Telford, Shropshire, a new town in the West Midlands of England. The author, who was the co-founder and a theatre worker at Telford Community Arts (TCA), argues that their work is best understood as grassroots artistic reflections of and…

This paper seeks out the gaps between localised accounts of drama's efficacy in terms of producing transformations in students' behaviours and sense of identities and the theoretical accounts of such transformations offered in the textual discourses of the field of Drama in Education. Drawing on a range of post-colonial and emancipatory discourses…

This article describes the main findings of a study of youth theatre commissioned by the National Association of Youth Theatres (NAYT), funded by Arts Council England (ACE) and carried out by the Centre for Applied Theatre Research (CATR). The study explored the impact of taking part in youth theatre on young people's personal and social…

This article describes a case study of a new venture by the children's theatre company Oily Cart to develop a participatory theatre piece for carers and their under-two-year-olds, entitled Clouds. Given what little is known about how to design and conduct arts events with this age phase, a case study offered the opportunity to identify features…

Russian theatre for young audiences has had a long tradition of professional, state subsidised theatre, with a strong educational function specifically for young people. The primary task of the "tiuz" ("teatriunogo zritelia," theatre of the young spectator) was to contribute to the ideological and aesthetic education for future Soviet citizens. To…

Most Forum Theatre practice encourages as many 'spect-actors' as possible to intervene directly on stage as part of the investigation of an oppressive social situation. Such practice is in line with Boal's advice (in "Games for actors and non-actors") that 'the keener the desire to take action, the more the spect-actors hurry on to the stage'.…

The author presents an instrumental case study from an ethnographic research that examined how George, a student in one diverse fifth grade classroom, participated in a series of drama engagements to respond and construct meaning from the picture book "Friends from the other side/Amigos del otro lado" by G. Anzaldua (Children's Books Press,…

This paper will make a critical comparison between the stages of the Hero's Journey as presented by Christopher Vogler and the taxonomy of personal engagement as articulated by Educational Drama theorists. Both Vogler's journey and the taxonomy describe how a person travels from one world into another and back again, combining the two results in a…

This article reports on research which examined the impact of The National Theatre's Transformation drama project on young pupils' reading, mathematics, attitude, self-concept and creative writing in primary schools. Two of the schools taking part in Transformation were matched to two Control schools in the first two years of the project.…