Drama Pedagogies, Multiliteracies and Embodied Learning: Urban Teachers and Linguistically Diverse Students Make Meaning

Drawing on theoretical work in literacy education, drama education and second language education, and taking account of poststructuralist, postcolonial, third world feminist, critical pedagogy, and intersectionality frameworks, this dissertation presents findings from an ethnography that critically examined the experiences of English language learners (ELLs) in three different drama classrooms, in three different high school contexts. More specifically, this multi-site study investigated two aspects of multiliteracies pedagogy: i) situated practice and ‘identity texts’ (Cummins et al., 2005; Cummins, 2006a) and ii) multimodality and embodied learning by overlaying, juxtaposing, or contrasting multiple voices (Britzman, 2000; Gallagher 2008; Lather 2000) of drama teachers and their students to provide a rich picture of the experiences of ELLs in drama classrooms. The diverse drama pedagogies observed in the three different drama contexts offer possibilities for a kind of cultural production proceeding from language learning through embodied meaning-making and self-expression. The situated practice of drama pedagogies provided a third space (Bhabha, 1990) for the examination of students’ own hybrid identities as well as the in-role examination of the identities of others, while moving between the fictional and the real in the drama work. The exploration of meaning-making and self-expression processes through drama, with attention to several aspects of embodied learning—from concrete, physical and kinesthetic aspects, to complex relational ones—was found to be strategic and valuable for the language and literacy learning of the English language learners. The findings from this study highlight the role of embodied forms of communication, expression and meaning-making in drama pedagogy. This embodied pedagogy is a multimodal form of self-expression since it integrates the visual, audio, sensory, tactile, spatial, performative, and aesthetic, through physical movement, gesture, facial expression, attention to pronunciation, intonation, stress, projection of voice, attention to spatial navigation, proximity between speakers in space, the use of images and written texts, the use of other props (costumes, artefacts), music and dance. The dialogic, collective, imaginative, in-between space of drama allows students to access knowledge and enrich their language and literacy education through connections to the real and the fictional, to self/others, to past and present experiences, and to dreams about imagined selves and imagined communities (Kanno & Norton, 2003).

Keywords: Drama
Second Language Education
Literacy Education
English as a Second Language
English as an additional language
Identity texts
English Language Learners
Ethnographic Research
Multi-sited Ethnography
Applied Theatre
Applied Drama
ESL
ELL
Pedagogy
Multimodality
Multiliteracies
Embodied Learning
Reading
Writing
Listening
Speaking
Linguistic Diversity
Situated Practice
Critical Framing
Third-world feminism
poststructuralism
postcolonialism
critical pedagogy
Urban Education
High School Students
Linguistic and Cultural Diversity
Advisor: Gallagher, Kathleen