This article is an exploration of oral history practice within the context of a performing arts archive. It addresses the deceptively simple question of what oral historians should actually ask their respondents and, ultimately, how much do we, as researchers, really want to know. The use of oral history material is discussed from a historical…

State and national accountability initiatives are forcing educational administrators to seek curricular interventions that will yield the greatest improvement in students' academic performance in the least amount of time. Though volumes of documentation regarding the value of the arts in education line the shelves of professional libraries and…

In past years, teachers without professional training in the arts have often been able to avail themselves of summer institutes that introduced them to specific works of art and followed up with artists in the classroom, performance, or trips to an art museum. But what happens when such support is no longer available and teachers have to function…

This article discusses two activities--Readers Theatre and Rhythm Walks--that encourage students to "get moving" with fluency instruction. Movement can be a motivating factor for struggling students, as well as a kinesthetic tool for conceptualizing the rhythm and flow of fluent reading while triggering brain function for optimal learning. Also…

Narrative construction is an approach to social research in which data are configured into any of a variety of diachronic, or storied, formats. Having recently gained popularity, this approach is now in danger of marginalization (along with other qualitative and quantitative forms of social research) as a result of politically charged attempts to…

As teacher-facilitators, Joseph M. Shosh and Jennifer A. Wescoe emphasize the educational value of theater. To promote student leadership of a production, students audition for roles on and off stage and contribute to the technical aspects of the production through "crew days," from which they build community and develop a sense of respect for the…

The use of drama with the children in your classroom can catch the attention of even the most reluctant of students and bring literature to life in a way that other methods cannot. Furthermore, "playing" with plays can teach more than language arts; depending on the texts chosen, drama can teach children such important life lessons as tolerance…

Teachers can help minority children close the academic achievement gap in intermediate and middle school by combining literacy instruction and content-area material. This connection improves reading achievement and increases curriculum knowledge, even if students have previously experienced difficulty with primary school reading. Fortunately,…

Designed to demonstrate a variety of ways in which listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities can be built around the study of the drama in the classroom, this collection of materials, lessons, and activities deals with one of the plays most frequently taught in New York City ninth-grade classrooms. The document begins with a general…

The articles collected in this journal are devoted to the topic of teaching speech and theater in community colleges and junior colleges. "Here's Looking at Us," a report of the Association for Communication Administrators' (ACA) 1975 Denver conference on speech communication at the community college and junior college levels, details suggestions…

Established in 1880, the University Musical Society (U.M.S.) in Ann Arbor, Michigan is one of the most innovative venues for music and the performing arts in the United States. Each season, it offers performances by renowned American and international artists. Through the society's youth education program, performers entertain and educate…

For over ten years, London's National Theatre, under the banner of "Connections", has been commissioning ten professional playwrights per year, each to write a play for young people. The plays are workshopped and performed by secondary schools, colleges and youth theatres across the United Kingdom and Ireland, and are presented in a…

Objective: Headspace Theater has been developed to allow small group learning of psychiatric conditions by creating role-play situations in which participants are placed in a scenario that simulates the experience of the condition. Method: The authors conducted a literature review of role-playing techniques, interactive teaching, and experiential…

This chapter describes the methodology of the Theater of the Oppressed as developed by Augusto Boal along with examples of its application.

This chapter looks at the power of theater and literature programs to affect correctional facilities; it delves into how such programs can deepen connections to oneself, to others, to community, and to the larger world.