Drama
‘Talking about emotion is no substitute for feeling it’
(Dorothy Heathcote in Johnson and O’Neill, 1991:101)
Course Content
The importance of active learning; social interaction; the development of higher-order thinking skills; and integration, in its broadest sense, are identified in most forward thinking systems of education. Drama in Education has much to offer in this regard being an active, social subject which can provide opportunities for critical challenge which in turn stimulate the employment of higher-order thinking skills. Drama approaches can be used to integrate areas of curricula thus contextualizing learning and aiding children to make sense of their world. Another important aspect of drama often overlooked, is its unique ability to create fictional contexts wherein empathy can be developed. Professor Simon Baron-Cohen (2003:2) defines the process of empathizing as ‘the drive to identify another person’s emotions and respond to them with an appropriate emotion’. Drama offers us the opportunity to ‘meet’ characters from a variety of social and cultural backgrounds. Participants, be they third level students or children in primary schools, can identify the emotions of a character and experiment with responses to those emotions within the safe parameters of the fictional world. The drama course in Coláiste Mhuire, Marino invites participants to explore drama at a personal level; to experiment practically with drama conventions; to examine the current Drama Curriculum (1999); to plan for classroom drama and to keep abreast with theory and current research in the field.
Teaching and Learning Methods
Practical workshops, online tasks, dialogue and group presentations
Outcomes
This course will enable participants to
• Engage with drama on a personal level
• Develop an understanding of the origins of Drama Education and its place in teaching and learning.
• Become familiar with the structure of The Drama Curriculum.
• Explore both the theory underpinning Drama education and current research in the area.
• Practically explore the elements of drama and how they can be developed.
• Plan for the implementation of drama in a variety of settings including special educational settings and scoileanna lán-ghaelacha.
• Create meaningful contexts for the integration of learning through incorporating educational drama approaches.
Staff Profiles/Contact
Lecturer: Annie Murphy
Phone: 353 1 853 5105
email: annie.murphy@mie.ie