Educational drama is well established with children of statutory school age, but it remains under-represented in early years settings - and in the education literature. The Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage makes reference to imaginative play and role play, but not 'drama' as such. Yet it is possible to 'do drama' with children whose make-believe is only just emerging - and they can derive enormous benefits from it.
Drama, whether a soap opera or Shakespeare play, focuses on human experience, especially when characters face a problem, and through that dilemma aims to broaden our knowledge and understanding of ourselves and others. The same is true of drama in education, even in the nursery: 'By encouraging creativity and imagination we are promoting children's ability to explore and comprehend their world and increasing their opportunities to make new connections and reach new understandings... Through their imagination children can move from the present into the past and the future, to what might be and beyond.' (Duffy, 1998, p8).
In drama, children are motivated by a situation that is fun and intriguing all at once. Its appeal is that it hinges on the natural way they learn and make sense of the world - play, in other words. 'Play' is both the process and the product of drama, and from the child's perspective, they are one and the same thing.
The power of drama as a learning medium is that the children are actively engaged in the experience but with the awareness that it is pretence. This enables them to explore situations in safety, even to make mistakes, knowing that it is not 'for real', even though their actual responses and feelings may be.
DRAMA v ROLE PLAY
But what exactly is educational drama in an early years context?There is often confusion among practitioners over what distinguishes it from role play and imaginative play. Educational drama is an extension of children's spontaneous pretend play, but the difference between it and role play is that in drama the practitioner looks to confront the children's make-believe, to slow things down and so extend their thinking.
It is in such moments, where children's existing frame of reference is thrown temporarily, that new learning can take place, and it is the role of the practitioner to deliberately set up such opportunities. For example, in a drama where the bus has a puncture, instead of cruising with a quick-fix solution, the practitioner-in-role could interject, 'Not me! I'm not changing that wheel in my nice driver's uniform... What shall we do?' The adult then empowers the children by encouraging their ideas and helping them to draw on their experience, resourcefulness and initiative to solve the problem. In the bus drama, the children's suggestions might include all donning overalls to change the tyre, phoning the AA, or something viable that the adult had not anticipated, such as asking Bob the Builder! Whatever, the adult would lead the children towards working at a satisfactory resolution.
Drama in the early years always works best when the practitioner enters the make-believe in this way. By taking an active role, the adult can provide another perspective, probe the children's ideas and help develop their social understanding about why people think and behave as they do.
Covertly, the practitioner can carefully give structure to the experience, to provide boundaries within which the children can make creative decisions and which help construct the make-believe and resolve the emerging dilemma. In this way, pretend play becomes a means to an end, not just an end in itself.
Planning drama does not contradict the essential creative nature of the experience - rather, it is a matter of ensuring a worthwhile learning experience, and the issue is more the extent to which it is pre-planned and/or negotiated 'on the hoof' (to be discussed later).
Challenges need to be within the children's capabilities and require them to recognise and empathise with basic emotional states (feeling worried, sad, frightened, cross, happy). The children may draw on their knowledge and practical skills across the curriculum, for example, dialling a telephone correctly and conducting an appropriate conversation with Bob (supporting adult in role). Some children may be able to use powers of persuasion - perhaps Bob is busy and reluctant to come straightaway.
At first, any 'challenges' may need to be clear-cut choices ('Will we have milk or orange drink?'), developing ultimately into more abstract ideas ('How can we get our ball back?'). Some decisions may seem to be quite small, but they do matter. Children will sense that they matter, and will care more about something they perceive as 'theirs'.
Drama-in-education also thrives best as a larger group experience, as it is concerned with developing children's understanding of universal themes affecting us all - for example, taking responsibility, behaving appropriately in a certain situation, or helping someone in need.
BENEFITS
The value of drama, therefore, is different from children re-enacting short sequences from real life as they would in the role-play area or from free-flow imaginative play (although both may provide a starting point for drama). The potential of drama is more than simply acting out a story, whether or not presented to an audience.
Drama in the early years can help precipitate, support and extend many of the benefits that stem from pretend play. This is because drama:
* develops children's ability to acknowledge and understand the perspectives of others.
* provides opportunities to explore and take carefully constructed risks, all within the safe, make-believe context, and so prepares children to embrace the unexpected in these fast-moving times.
* prompts creative, flexible thinking, and helps children apply this relevantly and purposefully to resolve a dilemma.
* puts children in touch with their emotional responses to situations and helps them come to terms with their feelings about tensions and themes.
* helps make children more aware of the impact of their feelings, actions and behaviour on others, which in turn helps raise self-esteem as they discover their powers to influence others.
* involves children in co-operating and negotiating (a solution to a dilemma) and so develops their social skills.
* provides a range of meaningful contexts for the expression and communication of ideas, thoughts and feelings.
* helps children understand how sequences of events are connected.
* enables children to reflect on the implications of the experience, with the adult helping them to make connections to the real world.
For children, educational drama can be a meaningful experience that enables them to integrate knowledge, skills and understanding. For the practitioner, drama can be a multi-layered opportunity to promote learning in several areas simultaneously. While drama is driven by objectives for children's personal, social and emotional development, all other areas of learning within the early years curriculum be accommodated (especially creative development).
The drama can be carefully pitched to target individual learning needs. For example, a particular child could be required to remember to say 'please' and 'thank you' to obtain an item from an adult-in-role.
Drama can provide a meaningful opportunity both to introduce and to practise or consolidate learning. For example, the children could help Snow White (adult-in-role) lay the table for the dwarves (with the correct number of place settings, of course!). It can also involve the children in co-operating with one another towards a shared purpose.
Teaching drama has been likened to creating Frankenstein's monster (Taylor, 1986): it actively engages children in constructing something that then seems to acquire a power of its own, and that in turn shapes and influences them.
References
Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage, DfEE (2000), Sudbury: QCA Supporting Creativity and Imagination in the Early Years, Duffy, B. (1998), Buckingham: Open University Press 'Frankenstein's Monster', Taylor, J, London Drama magazine, 7 (3), Autumn 1986, 17-19
Further reading
Supporting Drama and Imaginative Play in the Early Years by Lesley Hardy and Lucy Toon (Open University Press, 14.99) Supporting Creativity and Imagination in the Early Years by Bernadette Duffy (Open University Press, 13.99) The Excellence of Play edited by Janet Moyles (Open University Press, 14.99) Drama for All by Melanie Peter (David Fulton Publishers, 12) Making Drama Special by Melanie Peter (David Fulton Publishers, 15) Developing Play and Drama in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders by Dave Sherratt and Melanie Peter (David Fulton Publishers, published April 2002)
Beginning Drama 4-11 by Joe Winston and Miles Tandy (David Fulton Publishers, 15)
