Drama and Creative Learning Processes for Teaching Quality & Democracy, Engaged Learning and improved Learning Outcomes, 2011

Drama in reading and writing education - a pilot

The pre- project will end up with an application to PRAKUT for the November deadline. The primary goal for the main project is to create new understanding on how teachers can use creative process drama strategies to improve students' engaged reading and writing, develop their reading, writing and grammar skills and competences, improve their engagement in democratic verbal activities and as a possible consequence of this strengthen teaching quality and democracy and improve students' total learning outco me. The main project also includes developing new knowledge on needed teacher knowledge and competences for teaching through democratic, creative and aesthetic drama process genres to promote engaged learning. The pre-project and the main project imply collaboration between researchers at University of Stavanger. In addition researchers from at least two University Colleges in Norway and international researchers from New Zealand, Iceland and England (already decided) and eventually Hungary, Poland or Check R. The theoretical approach will be based on pragmatic & democratic aesthetic, constructivistic and socio-cultural learning approaches to learning and theory on engaged reading and writing. In total the main project will includes methods based on classroom and field research, comparative studies, experimental designs and a broad methodological approach. A very important goal for the pre-project, besides the elaboration of the content and methodology, will be to create a learning community between the national and international researchers to be able to expand the knowledge base for quality in education. Another important goal for the pre-project will be to establish a home page for the project (including results from KUPP and PRAKSISFOU for the project I was the leader for) to be able to communicate interesting findings, results and teaching resources from the very beginning of the project.