‘It lifts up your imagination’: Drama-rich pedagogy, literature and literacy : The School Drama programme

An extensive and highly significant body of research spanning more than three decades demonstrates unequivocally that empathy and compassion and other personal dispositions and capabilities are nurtured alongside literacy through the artistic processes and experiences inherent in drama-rich pedagogies and quality literature. Yet often this research is ignored. The practice of, evolution of and research about the School Drama programme, an ongoing teacher professional learning programme developed in Australia by Sydney Theatre Company and the University of Sydney, provides a rich exemplar of why drama-rich processes and quality literary texts enable children and young people to become deeply literate. This chapter explores how the provision of opportunities, time and strategies to activate learners’ imaginations, embody their feelings and enact new experiences encourages primary students to work together to delve deeply beyond the surface and taken-for-grantedness of a text to learn about themselves and others in the context of the complexities of today’s world. We argue that drama has the potential to encourage children to develop the confidence to ask ‘what if’ and that drama-rich pedagogies can and should be used to interrogate quality literary texts; enable multiple ways of knowing, doing, being and becoming; and explore alternative possibilities and realities in a world sorely in need of new understandings.