CHAPTER THREE DEVELOPING A METHOD TO EXPLORE THE BATTLES, BARRICADES AND BELIEFS OF DRAMA EDUCATION JANE ISOBEL LUTON In this chapter Jane Luton shares some of the highlights from her search to examine the tensions in drama education praxis. Jane reveals how her quest contains serendipitous moments; when theory or practice light up the darkened stage. Discovering arts-based research and performative inquiry she places her participants centre stage to enable them to perform their stories. Researchers will gain an insight into the development of a method specifically designed to enable the skills of the elite respondents to be applied. A few performative moments will also be shared. An Introduction to drama education Becoming a practitioner I became a drama teacher in 1989 entering the profession, like many, “sharing a desire to teach, a love of theatre and a passion to work in drama in education” (Schonmann and Kemp 2010, 327). My twenty years in drama teaching has been interesting, and has brought me pleasure and joy. However, it has also been physically and emotionally draining for a number of reasons. Drama is often regarded as a “Cinderella subject” (O’Connor 2011) and, like Cinderella, it is often the poor relation when it comes to resources and perceived value. Detractors believe it is “not theatrical enough to be real theatre, too playful to be real learning and too ephemeral to be of real value” (O’Connor 2009, 21). This requires drama teachers to constantly advocate for the importance and value of their subject and pedagogy. Recent studies have acknowledged that many drama teachers suffer from a “loss of ideals and the hyper-judgement of the self” (Gallagher, Freeman, and Wessells 2010, 8), which has been termed “melancholia” (Gallagher 2012). As drama teachers often struggle Emerging Critical Scholarship in Education : Navigating the Doctoral Journey, edited by Jean Rath, and Carol Mutch, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/auckland/detail.action?docID=1683195. Created from auckland on 2023-10-15 22:25:56. Copyright © 2014. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. All rights reserved.