Two community education projects used drama within a framework of goal setting, guidance, and network building to strengthen women's educational self-confidence. Flexible partnerships and curriculum contributed to successful learning outcomes. (Contains 11 references.) (SK)

Notes that "Julius Caesar" is required in nearly every high school curriculum, but that making the play accessible to students is not easy. Tries new teaching ideas to see whether students would more readily take to "Julius Caesar" using a more interdisciplinary approach. Describes three of these ideas that were particularly…

A schema a frame creates context and shapes interpretation. Using an "as if" framework can connect the contexts of training and job performance to improve transfer. Techniques that create "as if" situations include role playing, visualization, psychodrama, voice dialogue, improvisation, playback theatre, and six-steps reframing. (Contains 23…

Argues that the construction of a performance script permits the modification of the original text in order to render that original theatrically communicative in the present. Notes that the dominant concerns of script modification are in how to negotiate audience expectations. Describes three types of textual deviation: nonverbal alteration;…

Explores the successes and failures of the author's "Searching for Osun," a performance ethnography which charted a subjective and selective meditation on Nigeria. Explains important concepts of performance ethnography, such as: an idea of question which constitutes the context; the accountability of the ethnographer; subjectivity;…

Focuses on the practice of having students "perform scholarship" in the classroom. Offers a model for student in-class performances of scholarly texts and their responses to those texts. Proposes that a student's performance serves less as a singular response to an assignment and more as evidence of the student's active process of sense making.…

Examined Greek teachers' attitudes regarding the appointment of drama teachers in preschool and elementary school. Survey data indicated that most respondents thought drama experts were necessary in schools because their own knowledge of theater education was limited. Results suggest that Greek teachers have started recognizing the need for…

Explains that the Center for Applied Theater Research was awarded a major grant to undertake research in the effectiveness of theatre work in museums in the United Kingdom. Describes how and why one particular research project was designed as research and discusses its closeness to, but difference from, evaluation. Explains that children responded…

Describes a technique called interactive auditions. Notes that the goals of this type of auditions are: to build a working relationship between the director, stage manager, and actors; and to create a cooperative environment. Suggests that this technique gives the actor a less fearful view of the audition process. (PM)

Describes a drama-based language arts unit taught to a fifth grade class. Provides empirical evidence that drama as a strategy of instruction embedded within a writing/language arts unit helps students improve their writing. Suggests continued research and development of drama as a strategy of instruction. (PM)

Suggests the need to integrate drama into any future unified theory of the writing and reading process as symbolic action. Argues for the use of drama as an analogy for re-thinking pedagogy, because drama provides a mode of thinking that emphasizes the interplay of agent and structure. (RS)

Discusses the interaction of culture and creative drama. Examines agricultural societies under three conditions: historically, from neolithic times; contemporary American Southwest Indian and Polynesian; and modern farming subcultures of European industrial societies. Asks how far agricultural life influences creative drama in agrarian societies.…

Analyzes the role of the grandmother in the African extended family as portrayed in the work of Ghanian author and playwright, Ama Ata Aidoo. Discusses her functions as foster parent, babysitter, psychologist, teacher, and confidante. (FMW)

Explores ways in which "storying" and storytelling occur as an integral part of the collective creation of meaning in improvised classroom drama. Describes storying as a learning experience in a dramatic context that requires thinking in the narrative mode and about narrative as a means of interpreting and verbalizing experience. (MG)

Examines some considerations that Shakespeare's plays raise for students and teachers of political science. Using the plays "Richard II and III" and "Henry IV, V, and VI," Gleicher discusses the genre of the history play, describes the historical and political position from which Shakespeare wrote, and identifies themes in…