Although drama is part of the National Curriculum for English at all Key Stages, little guidance currently exists on how teachers can effectively integrate this into the curriculum. Often drama is used only for Personal and Social Education - to explore issues such as bullying or for the "end of term production". Although these activities are valuable in their own right, children also need to be encouraged to be play writers and play watchers if they are to discover and appreciate drama in all its forms throughout the world. In this collection of essays, David Hornbrook and a team of contributors focus on practical strategies for developing the drama curriculum in primary and secondary schools. Although the book focuses on the content of the curriculum, the theoretical foundations underpinning these strategies are also clearly explained. The book is divided into three sections: teaching and learning - the contributors consider the role of drama as a world phenomenon and the skills and knowledge needed to develop a coherent, multicultural drama curriculum; creating and performing drama in school - how can teachers effectively involve young people with the three constituent elements

'...an important book that deserves the attention not only of drama teachers but anyone concerned with designing the school curriculum...The case is impressively made, and overwhelming.' - Times Educational Supplement

'It is good to read a book that views watching and understanding a play as a two way means of communication.' - Education Review

'A thoughtful and passionate book that fuels the fires of the longstanding process/product debate close to the heart of all drama/theatre practitioners and scholars.' - Canadian Journal of Education

To this day, Education and Dramatic Art remains the only fully worked critique of drama education in schools. Provocative and iconoclastic, this new edition brings the argument up-to-date and locates the author's proposals for a curriculum based on the making, performing and appraisal of dramas securely in the evolving culture of schools.
The first section of the book traces the origins and fortunes of drama in schools in the context of changing political times and argues that by neglecting the customs and practices of the theatre, drama-in-education has often kept from the students it professes to empower, the very knowledge and understanding necessary for them to take command of their subject.
Part two examines the developmental and pedagogic claims of drama-in-education. Theories of knowledge and meaning and assumptions about schools drama's power to establish a moral and social agenda, are all called to account.
Finally, Education and Dramatic Art proposes a multiculturally-based, theoretical structure for the teaching of drama which pulls the theatre and the classroom together and offers teachers the foundation for a broad and balanced drama curriculum with its own distinctive body of knowledge and skills.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203134354

To this day, Education and Dramatic Art remains the only fully worked critique of drama education in schools. Provocative and iconoclastic, this new edition brings the argument up-to-date and locates the author's proposals for a curriculum based on the making, performing and appraisal of dramas securely in the evolving culture of schools. The first section of the book traces the origins and fortunes of drama in schools in the context of changing political times and argues that by neglecting the customs and practices of the theatre, drama-in-education has often kept from the students it professes to empower, the very knowledge and understanding necessary for them to take command of their subject. Part two examines the developmental and pedagogic claims of drama-in-education. Theories of knowledge and meaning and assumptions about schools drama's power to establish a moral and social agenda, are all called to account. Finally, Education and Dramatic Art proposes a multiculturally-based, theoretical structure for the teaching of drama which pulls the theatre and the classroom together and offers teachers the foundation for a broad and balanced drama curriculum with its own distinctive body of knowledge and skills.

Hornbrook, referring to current legislation, argues the case for an organized curricular framework for drama in the 1990s which develops in children the activities of designing, directing, acting, writing and evaluating - all within the range of the historic context of dramatic work. He asserts that recent drama teaching in Britain has been child-centred and psychological, and viewed as a learning medium rather than as an aesthetic study in itself. This, he believes, has had the effect of cutting children off from the variegated world of the theatre and, in the broader sense, from any collective aesthetic or historical dimension. This book is intended mainly for the use of primary and secondary school teachers.