Ethics, Identity, and the Dramatherapy-informed Classroom

"'Drama classrooms can offer students critical opportunities to re-think and re-enact themselves as social beings and citizens. Dramatherapy, integrated into mainstream classes, offers long-term exploration of values and identities rather than short-term cultivation of marketable skills. Jeanne Roberts helps us think our way out of the overly-managed classroom and into a space of potential transformation. This splendid adventure in creative, student-centered, drama-based classroom education will appeal to teachers at all levels of education who long for more active and enjoyable ways to engage students and open up their worlds.' Dr Kathy E. Ferguson teaches Political Science and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. 'This is a book for all those educators, policy makers, and students of education who are interested in educating for children’s self-actualisation and critical agency. It powerfully highlights the role of dramatherapeutically informed drama for promoting the embodied, psychosocial, and relational identity work which is fundamental to enabling children in this. Rooted in Roberts’ empirical research and over thirty years’ practice experience, the book offers searing critique of neoliberalised narrowing of learning, and evidences new possibilities enacted in current dramatherapeutically informed classrooms. The book makes a passionate, rigorously articulated case for the importance of relationality and embodiment in learning and the development of a dramatherapeutic sensibility in drama teaching practice.' Dr Shona Hunter, Leeds Beckett University, Author of ""Power, Politics and the Emotions"". 'Drama classrooms can offer students critical opportunities to re-think and re-enact themselves as social beings and citizens. Dramatherapy, integrated into mainstream classes, offers long-term exploration of values and identities rather than short-term cultivation of marketable skills. Jeanne Roberts helps us think our way out of the overly-managed classroom and into a space of potential transformation. This splendid adventure in creative, student-centered, drama-based classroom education will appeal to teachers at all levels of education who long for more active and enjoyable ways to engage students and open up their worlds.' Dr Kathy E. Ferguson teaches Political Science and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. 'This is a book for all those educators, policy makers, and students of education who are interested in educating for children’s self-actualisation and critical agency. It powerfully highlights the role of dramatherapeutically informed drama for promoting the embodied, psychosocial, and relational identity work which is fundamental to enabling children in this. Rooted in Roberts’ empirical research and over thirty years’ practice experience, the book offers searing critique of neoliberalised narrowing of learning, and evidences new possibilities enacted in current dramatherapeutically informed classrooms. The book makes a passionate, rigorously articulated case for the importance of relationality and embodiment in learning and the development of a dramatherapeutic sensibility in drama teaching practice.' Dr Shona Hunter, Leeds Beckett University, Author of ""Power, Politics and the Emotions""."