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RESEARCH IN DRAMA EDUCATION
understand that we participate in the construction of our own narrative(s),
this research methodology can affect how we view education, our conception
of the role of the teacher, and how we create drama and theatre within and
beyond our classroom walls”.°° This approach to research can be effective in
investigating questions relating to identity and its different representations
in drama. Kathleen Gallagher explains that critical ethnographic inquiry of
drama “observes the phenomena that allow people to function in a particular
drama education classroom culture while taking account of the researcher’s
impact on the context under study”.°* Jane Bacon developed the methodology
of performance ethnography, which “aims to value the experience of both
researcher and researched within a creative environment such as the applied
arts”. Her approach relies highly on “embodied understanding, or
the feeling of the experience”*” that provides the ground for ethnographic
data collection.
Taylor argues that the writings of pioneers of drama education like Caldwell
Cook can be considered reflective practice as they record and analyse their
own work.’® Jonothan Neelands attempts to redefine reflective practice.
He says that the reflective practitioner position describes a “particular
self-orientation towards understanding and improving one’s own practice
rather than towards the research of practice by external researchers”.°**
This approach connects well with my direction of research. It also links well
with the pedagogical paradigm I want to base my practice on. Neelands
explains why a reflective practice approach connects with the basic critical
and democratic attitude of drama education. He states that
reflexive teaching, based on reflective practice, is designed to disrupt the natural
authority of the teacher and the versions of reality contained in the curriculum
plan, so that both teachers and learners are made aware of knowledge as an
interactive process which is selective, produced and constructed between teachers
and learners rather than as mechanical transference of naturalised and un¬
contestable facts and figures.5*
53
©
Belarie Zatzman: Narrative Inquiry: Postcards from Northhampton, in Judith Ackroyd (ed.):
Research Methodologies for Drama Education, Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books, 111.
Kathleen Gallagher: (Post)Critical Ethnography in Drama Research, in Judith Ackroyd (ed.):
Research Methodologies for Drama Education, Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books, 2006, 63.
Jane Bacon: The Feeling of the Experience: a methodology for performance ethnology,
in Judith Ackroyd (ed.): Research Methodologies for Drama Education, Stoke on Trent,
Trentham Books, 2006, 135.
5 Ibid.
543 Taylor: Power and Privilege, 6.
Jonothan Neelands: Re-imaging the Reflective Practitioner: towards a philosophy of critical
praxis, in Judith Ackroyd (ed.): Research Methodologies for Drama Education, Stoke on
Trent, Trentham Books, 2006, 16.
5% Ibid., 21.
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