--Offers a comprehensive rationale for why and how dramatic inquiry can be used by teachers of all levels to humanize classroom communities regardless of subject area. --Drawing from approaches pioneered by renowned British educator Dorothy Heathcote, the book uses Process Drama, Mantle of the Expert, and the Commission Model to offer a scholarly yet practical analysis drawn from classroom teaching in US and UK classrooms. --Offers an inclusive perspective for dramatic inquiry, accounting for students of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities, and demonstrates how dramatic inquiry contributes to antiracist and decolonizing pedagogy.

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2014! How can teachers transform classroom teaching and learning by making pedagogy more socially and culturally responsive, more relevant to students' lives, and more collaborative? How can they engage disaffected students in learning and at the same time promote deep understanding though high-quality teaching that goes beyond test preparation? This text for prospective and practicing teachers introduces engaging, innovative pedagogy for putting active and dramatic approaches to learning and teaching into action. Written in an accessible, conversational, and refreshingly honest style by a teacher and professor with over 30 years' experience, it features real examples of preschool, elementary, middle, and high school teachers working in actual classrooms in diverse settings. Their tales explore not only how, but also why, they have changed the way they teach. Photographs and stories of their classroom practice, along with summarizing charts of principles and strategies, both illuminate the critical, cross-curricular, and inquiry-based conceptual framework Edmiston develops and provide rich examples and straightforward guidelines that can support readers as they experiment with using active and dramatic approaches to dialogue, inquiry, building community, planning for exploration, and authentic assessment in their own classrooms.

Through compelling examples, Brian Edmiston presents the case for why and how adults should play with young children to create with them a 'workshop for life'. In a chapter on 'mythic play' Edmiston confronts adult discomfort over children's play with pretend weapons, as he encourages adults both to support children's desires to experience in imagination the limits of life and death, and to travel with children on their transformational journeys into unknown territory. This book provides researchers and students with a sound theoretical framework for re-conceptualising significant aspects of pretend play in early childhood. Its many practical illustrations make this a compelling and provocative read for any student taking courses in Early Childhood Studies.

--Offers a comprehensive rationale for why and how dramatic inquiry can be used by teachers of all levels to humanize classroom communities regardless of subject area. --Drawing from approaches pioneered by renowned British educator Dorothy Heathcote, the book uses Process Drama, Mantle of the Expert, and the Commission Model to offer a scholarly yet practical analysis drawn from classroom teaching in US and UK classrooms. --Offers an inclusive perspective for dramatic inquiry, accounting for students of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities, and demonstrates how dramatic inquiry contributes to antiracist and decolonizing pedagogy.

Through compelling examples, Brian Edmiston presents the case for why and how adults should play with young children to create with them a 'workshop for life'.

In a chapter on 'mythic play' Edmiston confronts adult discomfort over children's play with pretend weapons, as he encourages adults both to support children's desires to experience in imagination the limits of life and death, and to travel with children on their transformational journeys into unknown territory.

This book provides researchers and students with a sound theoretical framework for re-conceptualising significant aspects of pretend play in early childhood. Its many practical illustrations make this a compelling and provocative read for any student taking courses in Early Childhood Studies.

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2014! How can teachers transform classroom teaching and learning by making pedagogy more socially and culturally responsive, more relevant to students' lives, and more collaborative? How can they engage disaffected students in learning and at the same time promote deep understanding though high-quality teaching that goes beyond test preparation? This text for prospective and practicing teachers introduces engaging, innovative pedagogy for putting active and dramatic approaches to learning and teaching into action. Written in an accessible, conversational, and refreshingly honest style by a teacher and professor with over 30 years' experience, it features real examples of preschool, elementary, middle, and high school teachers working in actual classrooms in diverse settings. Their tales explore not only how, but also why, they have changed the way they teach. Photographs and stories of their classroom practice, along with summarizing charts of principles and strategies, both illuminate the critical, cross-curricular, and inquiry-based conceptual framework Edmiston develops and provide rich examples and straightforward guidelines that can support readers as they experiment with using active and dramatic approaches to dialogue, inquiry, building community, planning for exploration, and authentic assessment in their own classrooms.