ABSTRACT
The origins of this paper are twofold: firstly, a long time interest in the role of the Creative Arts in schools, especially Drama, which I first encountered during my P.G.C.E. year in the mid 1960s in the English department of the London University Institute of Education. ( 1 ) Secondly, I am a strong advocate of Educational Ethnography ( 2 ) and its development into what is now a highly productive and vibrant, classroom-based research tradition. The data on Ms Floral, an exponent of pupil-centred Creative Drama, was gathered during fieldwork I undertook in the Lower School of Victoria Road, a large 11-18 Comprehensive in Seatown, South Wales, on initial encounters between teachers and their new cohort of entrants. I concentrated on one form (1Y) and followed members as they moved from lesson to lesson, tape recording, interviewing and observing. Although my fieldwork stretched over a year, most of the data was gathered during an intensive eight week period at the start of the autumn term. I was particularly interested in how teachers presented themselves, their subjects, and their ground rules and how, in turn, pupils responded to this ‘grooving-in’ (Smith and Geoffrey, 1968). I set out to identify the strategies used by both parties during this crucial period of socialization, rule-inculcation and procedure establishment. By strategies I mean routinized adaptations to circumstances, the nature of which dictate that there is often little time for deliberation before a move has to be made or a decision taken. Ms Floral was one of fourteen teachers I worked with closely and whose lessons I observed (see Beynon, 1985).
