Drama in the classroom: Post-holistic considerations

Abstract

This chapter looks at the use of drama in language education, focusing on the notion of holistic learning to which proponents of drama in language education often refer when outlining the educational backdrops and goals of using drama in the foreign language classroom. The first part offers a brief account of what holistic learning entails and how it has been implemented in foreign language education. Taking the notion of the holistic seriously, it shows that many communicative language classrooms do not truly engage the “whole learner.” Integrating holistic learning into foreign language learning environments requires more explicit dramatizing of the communicative, i.e., using elements of drama. Subsequently, in light of more recent and poststructuralist views on language learning and learner identities, we have the argument that drama allows for holistic learning in foreign language education. These approaches challenge some of the basic assumptions about holistic learning and drama in foreign language education as they imply a subversion of the notion of holistic learning. Therefore, the argument reconstructed in part one of this chapter gets deconstructed in the course of part two. Section two outlines an alternative theoretical framework within which drama in language education can be viewed less as a pedagogical process that involves the “whole learner,” but that is instead based on a view of subjectivity as dynamic, inprocess, and fragmented. In conclusion, the proposed framework is discussed (a) with respect to its practical implications for language learning integration of the arts, using an example to illustrate the points discussed; and (b) in light of language teaching and TA training in university level language education.