Oldal 242 [242]
MY LESSONS IN RELATION TO OTHER ÁPPROACHES
The issues considered in this section are part of an ongoing debate about
the living through approach, which covers many different methodologies and
forms of drama in education. My research has made useful contributions
to this debate by offering a new mode of connection between LID and
theatre, creating new responses to some old guestions and opening some new
possibilities for further investigation. I will continue by placing the drama
approach developed in my research in the wider context of contemporary
drama education.
My LESSONS IN RELATION TO OTHER APPROACHES
There are many valuable practices of drama education around the world, used
in different contexts with a variety of aims. As mapping diverse approaches
was not the aim of my research, I will only examine the similarities and
differences of the practice developed through this research to two very
differing, but widely used reinterpretations of the living through approach.
Bolton describes Heathcote’s Mantle of the Expert (MoE) as a
reinterpretation of her own earlier living through approach work, known
as Man in a Mess.”” Heathcote herself defines MoE as “an approach to
the whole curriculum””®? where learning science, maths, language, etc. can be
incorporated into and motivated by the fictional context. Maria Gee explains
MoE: “Heathcote’s model offers an imagined context (the Enterprise) within
which the learning happens. Within that fictional context, the students work
on a multitude of tasks connected with the Enterprise they are running. They
will be responsible to the (fictional) client, who has approached them with
a problem which they are required to deal with”.’°*
The framing of participants as experts offers the framework for incorporating
a variety of elements of the curriculum in dealing with the problem placed
by the client. Approaching the problem professionally, as an expert, moves
the focus to exploring knowledge related to the problem to create solutions
for it; rather than experiencing situations which change people and offer
possibilities to re-evaluate stance, as with Man in a Mess. The questioning of
values was a central aim in my work, but Davis sees the “lack of questioning
the values in the social context as the inherent weakness in the MOE
method”.”° While MoE can incorporate various forms of theatre as well,
like Chamber Theatre,” the expert frame creates a distancing effect that is
7 Bolton: Acting in Classroom Drama.
Heathcote-Bolton: Drama for Learning, 16.
Gee: The contribution of drama, 20.
Davis: Imagining the Real, 58.
Bolton: Acting in Classroom Drama, 242.
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