HAL Id: hal-00529575
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00529575
Submitted on 26 Oct 2010
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- entific research documents, whether they are pub- lished or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers.
L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.
Kirk Robert Dorion
To cite this version:
Kirk Robert Dorion. Science through drama: a multiple case exploration of the characteristics of drama activities used in secondary Science lessons. International Journal of Science Education, Taylor
& Francis (Routledge), 2009, 31 (16), pp.2247-2270. �10.1080/09500690802712699�. �hal-00529575�
For Peer Review Only
Science through drama: a multiple case exploration of the characteristics of drama activities used in secondary
Science lessons
Journal: International Journal of Science Education Manuscript ID: TSED-2008-0119.R1
Manuscript Type: Research Paper
Keywords: learning activities, model-based learning, science education, secondary school, visualization
Keywords (user): drama, role play, physical simulation
For Peer Review Only
Science through drama
A multiple case exploration of the characteristics of drama activities used in secondary Science lessons
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
For Peer Review Only
A context for drama in Science
Cross curricular drama was first cited as a teaching strategy for English students in 1528, according to Richard Courtney (1974: 14). For the next three hundred years, the topics of Religion, Classics, and Elocution were taught through role play in some schools and monasteries in both England and France (pp.14-20). In the modern age, Henry Caldwell Cook’s influential book, The Play Way (1917) has been credited with stimulating Drama in Education in the UK (Hornbrook 1998). Caldwell Cook was followed by a series of charismatic practitioner-academics, including Dorothy Heathcote, who developed improvisational role-plays in which students were guided by their teacher in-role (Bolton 1985). Such work inspired interest in cross curricular drama across the Humanities, primarily in English, History and Languages, from the 1960s onward.
In the 1980’s, inspired by successes within the Humanities, some educators and researchers in the UK began to explore the use of drama in Science (Dorion 2007). The Association for Science Education began to publish guidance and lesson plans such as the Limestone Inquiry -- an extended community debate about the development of a new limestone quarry (SATIS no. 602). At this time too, a seminal study by Robert Metcalfe focussed on the teaching of particle theory through drama, by having students
‘act’ as atoms within different states of matter (Metcalfe, Abbot, Bray, Exley, and Wisnia 1984).
Drama in Science has since grown in scope and breadth. According to Marianne Odegaard’s literature review in 2003, interest has extended internationally, in particular to Norway, North America, and Australia (2003). It has ranged across topics
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
For Peer Review Only
including historical role plays (Solomon 1990), forensic investigations of fictional crimes (Heathcote 1991), the physical modelling of electric circuits (Tvieta 1996) and kidney function (Johnson 1999). The range of drama forms, however, has been relatively consistent: Odegaard observes that the activities tended to be improvisational role plays, rather than scripted performances (2003).
Claims for drama as science pedagogy
It has been claimed that drama, or drama-type activities such as role plays, can support learning of cognitive, affective and technical objectives, especially higher order
thinking skills relating to analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Ellington et al. 1981;
Wagner 1998; Harvard-Project-Zero 2001). Some experimental studies have suggested that drama can enable meaningful learning (Metcalfe et al. 1984; Tvieta 1993; Tvieta 1997). A central characteristic of these activities is that they are seen to promote opportunities for ‘interactive dialogue’ (Wilson and Spink 2005), dialogic teaching (Edmiston and Wilhelm 1998) and student-centred discourse (Somers 1994).
Furthermore, the literature consistently highlights findings of high motivation among students, imbued in part by their perceptions of empowerment and ownership during these events (Odegaard 2003).
However, although a pattern of features for learning has emerged, researchers engaged in meta analyses argue that some claims are difficult to substantiate due to ideographic methodologies and incomplete descriptions of the activities (Conard 1998; Harvard- Project-Zero 2001). The confusion over the evidence echoes a similar confusion of definitions across the research disciplines which inform this topic. These include Drama in Education (DIE), Science Education, Games and Simulations, Psychology
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
For Peer Review Only
and Theatre. Each has its own terms of reference and internal disputes regarding the definition of drama (Dorion 2007). For example, authors within Games and Simulations research have argued that although they use similar activities to DIE practitioners, they study role play, not drama (O'Toole 1992). This appears to be an argument over the question of whether pretend play entails the creation of character or the structuring of behaviour according to a set of rules (Jones 1995). One author reflects that this is a case of splitting hairs, and offers a resolution in asserting that an activity is drama or role play depending on the intentions of the instructor (ibid). DIE researchers working within praxial drama have argued that cross curricular drama must attend to the human condition (Somers 1994; Bowell and Heap 2001), as opposed to theatrical forms which explore the representation of non-human concepts through symbolic role play. Science Education researchers have been most consistent in describing their role play strategies as ‘drama’ (Metcalfe et al. 1984; Tvieta 1993;
Tvieta 1996; Tvieta 1997; Aubusson and Fogwill 2006).
Defining drama in science
In an effort to draw from research and theory across disciplines, this study aimed for synthesis, and developed a definition which retained a ‘wider lens’ (Stebbins 2001) for exploring drama in the secondary Science classroom. Here, drama could be seen to be the combination of three features: role play within an imagined situation, and enacted within the human dimension. A brief discussion of these features will help to situate the assumptions of the study: The first of these features, role play, has been broken down by McSharry and Jones into role, which is to ‘behave in accordance with a specified function’ (2000: 73), and play, which is a ‘positive emotional relationship with the learning environment’ (p. 74). While roles and play can occur in non-dramatic
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
For Peer Review Only
activities such as science investigations, they become drama when the students’
specified function is to behave as if their world is different to reality (Anderson 2004).
This pretend world may differ in temporal, geographic, social, corporeal, or dimensional features. Whatever its form, it is superimposed onto the physical limitations of the real world (O'Toole 1992) so that in practice the participant moves through an imagined environment while simultaneously negotiating other students, the chairs and tables etc. A student’s mental navigation of these real and imaginary worlds is little understood, but perceived to engender ‘metaxis’, or a state of ‘double consciousness’ (Wilhelm and Edmiston 1998: 135) which holds two forms in mind at the same time (Somers 1994). During the process of this internal dialectic, there is also an external, social dialectic, as these activities are primarily collaborative and improvisational. The result is perceived to be a highly dialogic learning environment, which Vygotskian and Bakhtinian researchers suggest helps to develop knowledge development through complex negotiations of meaning (Edmiston and Wilhelm 1998;
Lytle 2003 ).
Two strategies for drama in Science
Two strategies for teaching Science through drama in the classroom have emerged within the literature. The first strategy aims to simulate social events, usually of the adult world, which students have not yet experienced. Often employed in the form of extended role plays, these convey topics which relate to affective contexts of social, cultural and intellectual discourse which occur in Science contexts (Odegaard 2003). A second strategy employs mime and role play to convey abstract physical phenomena, which would be otherwise unobservable in the classroom (Odegaard 2003; Aubusson and Fogwill 2006; Dorion 2007).
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
For Peer Review Only
The first strategy of ‘social simulations’ has been found to be useful in conveying to students the impact of science and technology on society, with activities that include debates, consensus conferences, and historical role plays (Duveen and Solomon 1994). The structure of these activities is exemplified by Odegaard’s description of two historical role plays, in which students are asked to adopt the different points of view associated with a science issue:
The trial of Galileo and a supposed trial for blasphemy of Charles Darwin are examples of episodes of science which have been developed as roleplays constructed for the science classroom (Duveen
& Solomon, 1994; Solomon, 1990). The students play roles of historical characters, which show the range of ideas that were current at the time. They are introduced to the characters by a role-card description, but in the role-play they improvise, and the fictitious context allows the role-play to have no defined ending. Thus this is a semi-structured drama activity, giving the students a story as framework that acts as a scaffold while the students explore these historical science events.
(Odegaard 2003: 86) A recurrent rationale for introducing such a drama strategy to the Science classroom is its potential for conveying affective knowledge through empathy, i.e. the ability to understand the perspectives and emotions of other people, both individual and collectively. Empathy is described as a potent vehicle for teaching about moral and ethical issues (Duveen and Solomon 1994; Brown 1995; Claxton 1997). It can also focus students on a metacognitive awareness of their own morality, in that they may find out their responses to a given context other than the present situation (Bolton 1980; Heathcote 1991).
Soon after drama began to be considered by Science researchers, Robert Metcalfe proposed a more unorthodox form of empathy: that drama might allow students to
‘empathise’ with an non human entities, such as atoms:
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
For Peer Review Only
However, Drama can be used in an additional way: it can be used to enable the learner to ‘take on the role of another’, to cast off an egocentric perspective—and the ‘other’ can equally be an animate or an inanimate object.
(Metcalfe et al. 1984: 78) Metcalfe’s choice of term seems to describe a visceral form of spatial awareness that is now presented as embodied knowledge, consisting of ‘force sensations’ (Bresler 2004), and other internalised, non propositional features that are claimed to occur in relation to experts’ visualisations of abstract concepts in science (Reiner and Gilbert 2000). Metacalfe’s ‘empathy’ is the focus of the second strategy, in which ‘physical simulations’ are devised with an aim to provide a way for students to experience non- human processes. One example comes from Aubusson et al. in relation to the
movement of electrons within a circuit,
The room was quickly rearranged, students became electrons. These electron- students walked around as if in a circuit. Chairs (resistors) were then added into the circuit and students had to slow down to climb over them. Therefore, they quickly obtained the image of electric current as moving electrons and resistors as things which slow down the flow of electrons. They then proceeded to act out what happens when the dial on the transformer was turned up. The function of the ammeter was then introduced by having one student take on the role of an ammeter and count the number of electrons (students) that passed a point in a set time.
(1997: 570) Known variously as drama models (Metcalfe et al. 1984; Aubusson and Fogwill 2006), role play simulations (Aubusson, Fogwill, Barr, and Perkovic 1997), drama machines (Somers 1994), analogy drama (Wilhelm and Edmiston 1998), and metaphorical role play (McSharry and Jones 2000), these employ mime and role play to create three- dimensional models of chemical, physical, or biological processes (Wilhelm and Edmiston 1998). Physical simulations emphasise the use of familiar social metaphors and immediate experience to allow children to explore ‘physical systems where the
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
For Peer Review Only
real things are too expensive, complex, dangerous, fast or slow for teaching purposes’
(Jaques 2000). They provide a controllable, virtual reality (ibid) through which the participants manipulate the representation of scale, time, and space, and communicate science analogies via different senses (Metcalfe et al. 1984; Kress et al. 2001).
Everyday teachers and drama
To date, the majority of academic studies have tended towards a narrow focus on Arts- based drama strategies, and the promotion of affective learning through social simulations. Odegaard’s review of drama in Science revealed that the majority of research had focussed on indicating not what drama is in the Science classroom, but what it could be (2003). Within this context, a field of research which remains underrepresented is the investigation of everyday teachers in everyday contexts.
Academic literature has been slow to record the efforts of Science teachers’ use of drama. As a result of this, and a corresponding preference for intervention, the limitations on ecological validity are most evident in relation to the inspiration for teaching objectives, since the activities have been driven by research interests rather than emerging from the contexts of everyday Science. On some rare occasions (Wilhelm and Edmiston 1998; Aubusson and Fogwill 2006) teachers have devised their own activities, but even here the impetus for creating the activities was stimulated by the researchers, rather than coming from the learning context.
The potential for teachers in secondary Science to experience drama as a cross curricular pedagogy has increased in the last ten years (Dorion 2005). In the past, drama was considered something to be contracted out to Science Theatre groups and professionals (ibid). Now, Science teachers encounter drama through a variety of
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
For Peer Review Only
sources: multi-school Science-drama events, the Science Museum outreach programme, drama articles within Science teachers’ publications, cross-curricular workshops at Science Learning Centres, and on teacher training courses at some universities (Dorion 2007). Drama in Science has been introduced within the National Science Teacher Association (NSTA) conferences at regional and national level in the United States (Wilhelm and Edmiston 1998), and within the UK role play can now be found within the Department for Education and Schools schemes of work for ages 11- 14 (DfES 2006).
Working from the assumption that some teachers do use drama in Science, the first two piloted interviews for this study indicated a gap between academic literature and practitioner knowledge. These revealed drama activities not previously published in the literature, such as physical simulations of electromagnetic wave-forms for students aged 16-17, a long-chain molecule, and a description of zeolitic process with students aged 13 to 14. Such immediate originality, when the focus was shifted towards ‘real people in real situations’ (Cohen, L, Manion, K and Morrison, L. 2000) suggests that there are further activities, topics and objectives that have yet to be recorded in academic research. The study’s research questions reflected these themes:
What are the characteristics of the drama activities employed in some Secondary Science lessons?
• What types of drama are used?
• What objectives initiate the use of drama?
• What characteristics of these activities are perceived 1 to enable achievement of the teaching objectives?
1
