Climate literacy and collaborative on-line landscapes: Engaging the climate conversation through drama facilitation in distance and e-learning environments

Abstract

The dramatist and the scientist have similar goals as they both attempt to ‘create unique, engaging and insightful texts about the human condition’ (Saldina in Youth Theatre J 14:60–71, 1999, p. 60). As the risks of devastating climate change becomes more and more apparent there is a growing understanding of the role the creative arts can play in making sense of the ecological challenges we encounter. Drama processes and performance can widely engage with sustainability issues across a number of Year levels and it’s behavioural activism appeals to its audiences to think for themselves and ‘act’. Dramatic form is premised on critical and creative thinking. As an art form it is only a complete learning activity when it engages the learner to experience the drama and ‘do’ or ‘act’. This chapter discusses the potential to introduce climate literacies into on-line learning platforms through drama curriculum processes and practices. While utilising drama in on-line learning landscapes is still largely a theoretical proposition, this chapter suggests that the dramatic form could provide a unique means of fostering climate literacies with distance learners. A focus on environmental and ecological issues in the curriculum through drama collaborative processes and practices can potentially increase the possibilities for global climate change education and promote the importance of sustainability for future generations. This chapter therefore proposes that dramatic investigations of scientific discourse may provide unique ways of developing climate literacy through alternative understandings, through adopting scientists’ amassed knowledge and transforming it into something that can be experienced and explored kinaesthetically in the representational worlds of the drama.