AAU28A DRAMA AS ENGAGED & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

This course will introduce key concepts and developments in the practice and pedagogy of drama as an artistic medium for engaged and collaborative learning. Through group improvisations that engage students in drama conventions and practices, students will participate in thematic and issue-based processes of storytelling, scenario-building and symbolic creativity to understand how drama operates aesthetically and pedagogically as a creative, engaged and empowering process. It will draw from the critical perspectives of drama philosophers, educators and practitioners such as John O'Toole, Augusto Boal, Helen Nicholson, Kuo Pao Kun and Kok Heng Leun, introducing frameworks and methodologies that enable student teachers to develop skills and capacities in how to apply and use drama as a medium that enhances socio-cultural and aesthetic engagement, reflexivity and agency. In varying contexts drama has been used for: artistic communication, personal development, meaning-making and empowerment. Student teachers will come to understand a range of philosophical viewpoints relating to the educative purpose and power of drama and how they are realized in practice.