Drama In Education

Many children do not reach the full potentials of their lives; their God-giving gifts, talents and creative abilities are left undiscovered. This is most often true among children living in orphanages and other institutionalized homes. Factors such as lack of financial resources, quality parental control, favourable environment for talents discovery and stigmatization are often cited as major hindrances. Talents, gifts and special abilities in children should be nurtured, shaped and encouraged to promote full utilization for the benefit of the child. Drama in Education, an area under the arts has been recognised as a significant model of learning by children. It provides children with an opportunity to work together cooperatively on a common

RELATED LITERATURE

DRAMA IN EDUCATION/CREATIVE DRAMATICS

Kim (2011) recommended that schools and other places of learning for children should encourage creative thinking and expression. Opportunities should be available for children to be active and have critical discussions instead of the normal drill exercises and standardized testing. Children become less creative and narrow in thinking. By this it becomes difficult to unearth their creative abilities either by the children themselves or their teachers or instructors.

Drama in Education is regarded as the “play way” to education (Ustundag, 1997). This means it is a methodology through which a child learns through playing games. It is a means of making drama the centre of classroom experience for children.

Drama in education taps into the talent abilities of the child to create ideas that will help improve upon what they do (Bolton, 1998). As children participate fully, lasting impressions are created in their minds which can speed up their creative thinking. Drama in Education focuses on experimental attitude, in which mistakes, failures, weaknesses, strengths and exercises that in normal sense may not work are all viewed as useful learning tools for the child. One process under the Drama in Education as a methodology for educating the child is Creative Dramatics, ‘a democratic process for children education and self consciousness’(Baldwin and Fleming, 2003,

Drama created through the creative dramatic process therefore is mostly improvisation with spontaneous dialogue and acting. The fundamental ideal is that, the story and everything concerning the drama is created by the children and played by them as well. This democratic participation of children in creating their own stories as well as acting them out presents the opportunity of identifying each child’s area of special abilities and in some cases talent discovery. In a creative learning environment of drama children are provided with rich experiences and their active role in learning is emphasized. This make the learning process more interactive and in the end making the learning itself a social activity(Toivanen, Halkilahti,