Drama integration across subjects, grades, and learners: insights from new teachers as inquiring reflective practitioners

Abstract

Promoting equitable access to the arts may depend on structures that support teachers in integrating arts into core curricula. We describe an arts-integration design that spotlights attention within and beyond one teacher credential program to one arts field–drama–engaging 24 new non-arts teachers across grades and subjects who participated in a drama academy. Our project shines the light on contributions of early-career teachers to generating conceptions derived from immersion in drama and inquiry into classroom practice. We focus on teachers’ developing repertoires of drama-based pedagogy (DBP) practices for use among wwdiverse learners, and on engagements in ongoing inquiry and reflective cycles. Drawing upon teachers’ reflections and classroom inquiry projects from a multiyear experience, we mapped teachers’ drama conceptions and practices in three interactive tiers: foundational, core, and critical literacies. We illustrate themes with teachers’ reflections and reports of practice, including a vignette of a Mexican-American/Chicana teacher with children ages 9–10, a number of them native-Spanish speaking emergent bilinguals. The study informs teacher efforts in diverse classrooms to integrate and sustain classroom drama. Drawing upon insights and themes from results, we offer policy implications and recommendations for others wishing to design for and learn from innovative drama integration efforts.