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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 uncontestable 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. 544 S 541 & 54. ÉS
