Abstract
English Literature courses are elective and considered minor courses in the departments of Applied English in institutes of technology in Taiwan. Teachers of English Literature courses face challenges in engaging students in their classes. This action research inquiry describes a research journey of how a teacher of Literature comes across educational drama and how educational drama pedagogy could be used to help engage students in Literature classes, based on a case study in an institute of technology in Taiwan. Although many scholars of literary studies have discussed Literature teaching, their approaches tend to be focused more on discussions (led by the teachers) on topics related to a text, or written assignments as discussion starters (Langer 1992:43). The approach of using educational drama to facilitate students in Literature classes has not been widely researched. This paper presents findings of this action research inquiry and considers how strategies and conventions of process drama (such as "teacher-in-role" and "mantle of the expert") have been employed to empower students in conducting interpretations of the texts they read, deepen their literary understanding, and assist them in taking responsibilities for their studies in the literature classes. This study was entirely qualitative, contextualized naturalistic in nature and aligned closely with the fundamental principles of action research: "identifying a problematic issue, imagining a possible solution, trying it out, evaluating it (did it work?), and changing practice in the light of the evaluation." (McNiff 2002:6). By employing this research method to guide this project, I hope to enhance the practice as a teacher through the reflective cycles.
Author Information
Che-Chien Weng, WuFeng University of Technology, Taiwan
John O'Toole, The University of Melbourne, Australia
Christine Sinclair, The University of Melbourne, Australia
Paper Information
Conference: ACE2013
Stream: Education
This paper is part of the ACE2013 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Weng C., O'Toole J., & Sinclair C. (2014) Invigorating Literature Teaching in Taiwan through Drama ISSN: 2186-5892 – The Asian Conference on Education 2013 – Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/2186-5892.20130490
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/2186-5892.20130490
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