Humanizing Education with Dramatic Inquiry: In Dialogue with Dorothy Heathcote's Transformative Pedagogy

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Book Review Details

Brian Edmiston and Iona Towler-Evans

New York and London: Routledge (2022) 264pp.

ISBN: 978-1-032-21663-8

Book Review Authors

Stig A. Eriksson, Stig.Audun.Eriksson@hvl.no

Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL), Norway

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“Our societal nightmare is of an increasingly polarized, atomized, moralizing, oppressive, and thus dehumanizing world. Because we believe that every action makes a difference, then as teachers we want to make a difference in every classroom” (p.214).

This very urgent statement from the last chapter of this engaged book can stand for both its foundational commitment and its ambition. It delivers the message that education in our time needs to be holistically humanising and then it expounds ways of doing it – first and foremost based on true dialogue between learners and educators, presupposing that there is enough willing flexibility to accommodate the interests and concerns of both parties. The book offers dramatic inquiry as the dynamic and powerful medium to attain such aims.

An interesting take for this reader is the book’s focus on the importance of education for the process of growing up in a broad sense, what we in Northern Europe often refer to as Bildung. It is about education seen in connection with personal and collective development and cultural maturation - or put in another way: about the dynamics of attaining knowledge, adulthood and personal autonomy through processes of philosophy and education intertwined, aiming at transformation and change. It reminds me of long past days of drama education in my own Scandinavian context, the optimism from the 1970s and concepts like ‘dynamic pedagogy’ (Dan Lipschütz) and ‘social analytical practice’ (Bjørn Magnér). These must not be seen as dated references; I mention them to honour the intentions of the authors of the present book, because so many of the recommendable practices from the past have been completely overrun by todays’ ‘education-by-measurement’ schemes in the wake of new public management policies during the last decades.

The present book offers creative, supplementary alternatives to the still quite present transmission models of teaching found in many schools. It is written by two very experienced drama educators, Brian Edmiston (based in the USA) and Iona Towler-Evans (based in the UK). They are both influenced by and committed to the work of Dorothy Heathcote, whose spirit pervades the thinking and the practices presented through the 8 chapters of the book. But in addition, they connect their transformative humanising pedagogy with both “classical” authors, like Jerome Bruner, Lev Vygotsky and Mikhail Bakhtin and more current educationalists and philosophers, like Jacques Rancière, Sonia Nieto and Gert Biesta. I find the authors’ active use of a variety of references in connection with dramatic inquiry stimulating and interesting. I like also that each chapter has its own list of literature, which makes the references more readily accessible.

In a copious introductory theory chapter, the authors present their understanding of 'humanising pedagogy' and how it can be realised through 'dramatic inquiry' and 'dialogue' in 'story worlds'. 'Role and positioning' and Heathcote’s four types of drama are introduced: ‘Process drama’, ‘Rolling role’, ‘Mantle of the expert’ and the ‘Commission model’. “With each approach, young people and adults work as an ensemble to dramatize and inquire into the meaning of events” (p.29). The authors contend that rather than portraying them as distinct approaches, Heathcote envisaged them as “facets of a comprehensive pedagogy” (ibid.). I think that this is an understanding that deserves discussion, because in my opinion these four facets come with genre characteristics that are not necessarily always compatible. Whilst process drama is often more short-term, theme- and story based, focussed on investigating human dilemma situations, like a self-contained drama, the three latter ones are more long-term; rolling role with possibilities for teachers to work collaboratively, developing a dramatic inquiry process across different classrooms with an evolving theme orientation, whilst the mantle and the commission models have potentials to continue over weeks and months of dramatic exploring of themes and issues within particular subject areas or across the curriculum at large. The authors give illuminating examples of how they have engaged with these approaches in their own teaching contexts.

As the book develops, the latter two approaches get the strongest focus. But throughout the book, examples from several of these projects are continued as illustrations of other focus points from their pedagogy, thus weaving threads from one chapter to another. Among the focus points are ‘levels of engagement’, ‘positions and perspectives’, ‘the real and the imagined’ / ‘what is and what if’, ‘objects to represent other’ (chapter 2), and ‘framing and role distance’ (chapter 4), including a useful chart on main differences in framing between process drama, mantle and commission approaches (p.108). In fact, throughout the book the authors use charts to illuminate the various aspects of their humanising pedagogy. Chapters 6 (‘dramatic conventions’) and 7 (‘story and storying’) centre more specifically on elements in educational drama as an art form. Dramatic conventions belong to the aesthetic means of expression available for teaching through drama, and as underlined by the authors, stories and storying are foundational ways humans use to make sense of life, from the past, in the present, or through projections of future possibilities. I am not so sure, though, that the continuation of the practical examples from previous chapters function so well here. I miss a particular focus on the poetics of story and storying and in fact on the aesthetics of educational drama as an art form. Even if I appreciate the chart of how ‘playing’, ‘presenting’ and ‘responding’ work together in dramatic inquiry, characteristics of the art form could have been focussed on more firmly.

The authors draw dominantly on literature from the education world. Only to a modest degree do they relate their discussion to structures from the dramatic art world. For example, when discussing the concept of role (or enacting a role), it is referenced (both in theory and practice) more from a sociological standpoint than from a theatrical point of view, even when ‘dramatising’ is being used as a key word. I wish that the authors had made more out of what makes even classroom drama an art form and how to ensure that teachers actually understand and can use the aesthetics of classroom drama. As I see it, the question of aesthetics is too often downplayed in classroom drama literature, and to a degree in this book as well.

All in all, I can recommend the book to both the education community more generally and to the drama in education community more specifically. For the former, here is a book that is able to explain how the ideals of a dialogue-based, holistic and humanising pedagogy can be realised in practice. For the latter, here is a book that takes the theory and practice of Heathcote into contemporary classrooms in a way that inspiringly relates humanising pedagogy to drama pedagogy. Perhaps it is at times a little repetitive, for example that the terms humanising and transformative are being a bit overused. But the book is well written and is an accessible read. It complements in a positive way the field literature that aspire to show how important a dramatic art approach is for engaging young people in relevant – and challenging - learning experiences.

References

Lipschütz, Dan (1971). Dynamisk pedagogik. Synspunkter på skapande verksamhet samt samspel och samarbete i grupp, Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. (New edition 2004 by Kordaföreningen).

Lipschütz, Dan (1976). Samspel i grupp. Kordainstitutets övningar i skapande verksamhet och dynamisk pedagogik, Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand.

Magnér, Björn and Helena (1976). Medveten människa. En metod att utforsdka förhållandet mellan individ och samhälle, Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand.

Magnér, Björn (1980). Hur vet du det? Socioanalys i praktiken, Göteborg: Esselte studium. Akademiförlaget.

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