ABSTRACT

The past century witnessed a long and established tradition of presenting schoolchildren with opportunities to engage in dramatic playing activities. These activities, which have operated under a variety of different titles including improvisation, enactment, drama, theatre sports, youth theatre, role-playing, storydrama and process drama, to name a few, achieved a birthing of popularity during the so-called child-progressive era of the late 1960s and 1970s. During this period, movements like those launched in Dartmouth (Dixon, 1967), and the research of Vygotsky (1978), Moffett (1968), Britton (1971) and Bruner (1979), supported the interest in child play and its place in children’s learning. In recent times, the investigative work of Wagner (1998) in drama and language development, of Manley and O’Neill (1995) in drama and multicultural education, and of Winston (1998) and Wagner (1999a) in drama and moral education, has helped us understand the far-ranging potential of drama praxis as a programmed curriculum offering.