Jan – Jul 2025
A qualitative study of how drama helps activate learning in the classroom.
Thesis →
Supervised by
Prof. Gemma Blackshaw
MRes,
Royal College of Art
Process
3-step process of first thinking through design to narrow my research interest, then performing secondary research to identify a gap in the existing research and finally designing and conducting an experiment with 70 participants to address this gap. The project ultimately became a technical exercise in qualitative observation and research through design.
Narrowing focus
How does drama create value outside the theater?
Design Exploration
Idea for an interactive 1-person confession booth
Expanded to a 2-person yoga activity to facilitate a more mindful connection
Script →
Texts on applied theatre towards mindfulness led me to texts on applied theatre towards therapy, which in turn led me to texts on applied theatre towards education.
Finding a gap
How might drama be used in education?
Problems in existing classroom format
The 'banking' concept of education views children as passive receptacles to be 'filled up' with deposits of knowledge.
Defines reflection and action as the two dimensions of the Word that must work together to create transformative dialogue. The banking approach educates through the use of reflection without action (verbalism) or action without reflection (activism).
The curriculum's world is an abstract one stretching infinitely back in time and indefinitely outward in space – fractionalised into disciplines based on abstract principles. The child's world on the other hand is one of singular wholehearted unity, held together by practical ties of concern and affection.
How drama in the classroom solves these problems
Approaching learning objectives through games, problem-solving, role play, scene work – students are more 'activated' – experiencing discovery and application of new concepts and skills in practice – creating more enduring understandings, holistic awareness of context.
Sense-making through constant synthesis of action & reflection
Students bring existing understandings across subjects to make new connections
Integrating affective, aesthetic and academic senses
While a state of 'activation' has been evidenced as the backbone of drama-based pedagogy in the existing theory as well as research studies, the process of activation hasn't been explicitly observed or identified in much detail.
Primary research
How does drama activate learning?
Experiment design
I developed a VR experience for an exhibition to place participants within a 3D 'blackboard' where they could pinch their fingers and handwrite/draw in the air around them. It was a simple full-body experience designed to activate their spontaneous creative presence within the space.
I then observed how 70 different participants were activated differently by the experience – the different forms that 'dramatic exploration' took in each case – and tried to make sense of the overarching process or moments of 'activation' that emerged universally across all of them.
First Moment: Initial Spark
Inner movement: Poles moving closer together as the affect of the initial jolt of excitement steadily reduces
Second Moment: Deepening states of engagement
Inner movement: Expanded orbit of awareness as they encounter surprise or inspiration and adopt a more 'productive' creative action
Third Moment: Arrival of flow state
Inner movement: State of continuous, flowing affect; orbit falls into steady spherical movement
Fourth Moment: Release
Inner movement: at this point the energy produced by the multiplicity of senses they just experienced is either exhausted, synthesised into a singular memory or released in the form of a question or statement.
Process of Activation
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