Collected Writings on Education and Drama

Front Cover
Northwestern University Press, 1991 - Drama - 218 pages
What does it mean to be "an excellent teacher?" To Dorothy Heathcote, one of this century's most respected educational innovators, it means seeing one's pupils as they really are, shunning labels and stereotypes. It means taking risks: putting aside one's comfortable, doctrinaire role and participating fully in the learning process. Above all, it means pushing oneself and one's students to the outer limits of capability--often, with miraculous results.

In this lively collection of essays and talks from 1967-80, Heathcote shares the findings of her groundbreaking work in the application of theater techniques and play to classroom teaching. She provides a time-tested philosophy on the value of dramatic activity in breaking down barriers and overcoming inertia. Her insistence that teachers must step down from their pedestals and immerse themselves in the possibility of the moment makes for magical and challenging reading.
 

Contents

Foreword Gavin Bolton
8
Introduction
16
Training teachers to use drama as education
26
Introduction
42
Roletaking
49
Subject or system?
61
Drama as challenge
80
Drama and learning
90
Introduction
112
Material for significance
126
Drama as context for talking and writing
138
Drama and the mentally handicapped
148
Considerations when working with mentally handicapped
154
The authentic teacher and the future
170
Dorothy Heathcotes notes
202
Films
211

From the particular to the universal
103

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About the author (1991)

DOROTHY HEATHCOTE was born in Yorkshire, England in 1926. She trained in theater with Esme Church and Rudolph Laban at the Bradford Civic Playhouse School, and was Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England.

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