A voice for community during unsettling times

Here we are at the end of 2021, a year that the world hoped would bring some return to a sense of ‘normality’ and an end to the feeling of ‘stuckness’ and waiting that characterised so much of 2020 because of COVID-19. It has been a year where there were moments of optimism, but then stop-go, reverse, turn, wait and see. It is a time where we have had to remain able to sit with the unsettled, no-normal state that is the current reality.

We feel it important to bear witness to our communities and that this has not been an easy time for drama educators and educators more generally. It has been noted by some longstanding members of our community that for many it has felt like the most challenging time for drama education in living memory.

In schools, drama teachers have risen to the challenge of teaching on-line and in hybrid modes, adapting their classes to reach their students. As time went on in jurisdictions with long lockdowns, teachers had to re-negotiate changing rules/lockdowns/restrictions around COVID-19, with planned drama activities being rescheduled, sometimes several times, re-negotiated, sometimes cancelled. In some schools the loss of productions has meant drama teachers have had to continually rebuild their programs. Alongside this, pressures to return to ‘the basics’ (again), push students into studying STEM subjects, or deal with changes to assessment and tertiary ranking systems, means that teachers feel continually pressed to advocate and maintain their space.

The higher education sector was one that was hit early and continues to suffer the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Australia in 2020, government support for employers with programs such as Job Keeper did not extend to universities and so redundancies began early and continue to impact the sector this year. In many cases, universities have been keen to lose staff at senior academic levels and voluntary redundancies were offered and encouraged. Among our community, a range of academics with drama educator backgrounds have left the academy, and there is little scope for them to be replaced any time soon. For those remaining, the pressure to secure funded research and align to national research agendas (where education and the arts are invisible), makes doing drama research increasingly challenging.

And yet there is the sense that there is more need than ever for learning experiences that enable students to connect, communicate, imagine and create. There is a thirst for opportunities to explore and express our humanity, to work out how we might now ‘be’ and be ‘seen’ in the world. We have been heartened throughout the year by the activity and impact of the organisations that make up Drama Australia, the work that professional associations continue to lead, the efforts and optimism that inspires them to keep going, reaching out and providing platforms for drama educators to share, collaborate and support. Many of us have valued the passion and enthusiasm of this extended community, and taken heart from the learnings and legacy of our field.

It has given us pause for thought as we have had to consider the future for this journal, when faced with the conclusion of our contract with Taylor and Francis. We wondered if there still was a need for an Australian-based, but internationally connected academic journal for drama and education. We were however reminded of our legacy.

Drama Australia has a considerable history and from the start the publication of a journal such as NJ was always core to the aims for the organisation. Drama Australia is an organisation of organisations, and its member organisations are the state and territory organisations of: ACTDA, Drama New South Wales, Drama Queensland, Drama SA, Drama Tasmania, Drama Territory, Drama Victoria and Drama West. Founded in 1976 as NADIE – the ‘National Association for Drama In Education’, one of the three main objectives for the organisation was publications including a national journal. The other two objects were for advocacy and promotion and hosting an annual conference. The first edition of the journal, originally called the NADIE Journal, was published in that same year, 1976, so we are now a very mature 45 years old.

In the Drama Australia 40th anniversary keynote, Donelan et al., (2016) noted the important role for such a national journal. In the late 1970s, some state drama member associations were already publishing their own ‘tips for teachers’ journals to describe local events and practice, ‘but NJ was born to be a more serious and national forum’ (p. 148). The journal fulfilled an important role as a national journal before becoming a refereed academic journal in 1993, assuming a position on the world stage. Drama Australia continued to publish NJ in print and then CD form until moving to publishing with the Taylor and Francis platform in 2015 with Volume 39.

The history of the journal has not always been easy but the words of Philip Taylor in 1997 still resonate still today, with him believing that the journal was able to

… provide the Australian drama community with a voice, to present solidarity in unsettling times, to provide a forum where the community can reflect on its work and ambitions … (Taylor, 1997)

With this sixth volume published with Taylor and Francis, we conclude this phase of NJ’s history and face another transition in the world of academic publishing. In 2022, NJ will be published online as a fully Open Access publication, hence opening up access freely and globally.

In ‘NJ Drama Australia Journal 45:2ʹ, we are pleased to present a strong range of articles profiling the voices of new researchers from our Australian community but also work emerging from the international drama community. It demonstrates the range of concerns of this unsettling time, the depth and scope of practice that is ongoing, and the continued reach and ambitions for drama education in 2021.

The first article features innovative and important work with ‘It’s got to be a journey’: Learning to teach First Nations content and concepts in the drama classroom. In this collaborative auto-ethnodrama, Victorian drama educators Andrew Byrne, Danielle Hradsky, Danielle, Rachel Forgasz, Jane Carter, Kristy Griffin and Lauren Miosku document and analyse their experiences of coming to teach First Nations content and concepts, shaping their journeys into a research informed ethnodrama. As many educators across the education spectrum seek to know more about how to best approach teaching in this area with respect and integrity, the insights offered by this work provide useful advice and reflections. Their conclusions are that teaching First Nations content and concepts is about far more than compliance with curriculum imperatives, but it has to be about the process educators themselves undertake. It has to be a journey.

Work which has promoted using drama for teaching English and literacy has been fundamental to the work of drama educators from the very start of NADIE/Drama Australia. Therefore, it is fitting to be able to include in this issue two articles that present contemporary practice and research that provides further evidence to justify the value of drama-based pedagogy approaches. In ‘Dramatic shifts in student learning: a case study analysis of student learning through the ‘School Drama program’’, our current Drama Australia President, John Nicholas Saunders, shares just one case study from the research conducted for his PhD. John worked with Sydney Theatre Company and the University of Sydney leading the School Drama project for seven years and has shared many snapshots of his research and practice across this time. He was also the recipient of the Drama Australia Christine Sinclair Research Award 2020 for his PhD thesis. So we are very pleased to be able to publish this article, which focuses on the impact on student learning in one Sydney primary school, in this case investigating impact related to the focus area of inferential comprehension.

The following article further expands upon the evidence base for ‘School Drama’ and drama-rich pedagogy with the work of Olivia McAtamney’s ‘School Drama: Using drama for oracy in an EAL/D classroom’. Her focus was on oracy skills for students learning English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D) and again using a case study approach. Her work with an Intermediate Intensive English class at a western Sydney secondary school met with challenges but still achieved improvements for students in their oracy skills. Other developments were also evident in vocabulary, imagination, creativity and confidence.

Revisiting influential work of the past to interrogate its ongoing relevance and impact has been the focus of work of international researchers Adam Cziboly, Mette Bøe Lyngstad ánd Sisi Zheng. They focus on the work of Johnothan Neelands and Tony Goode’s Structuring Drama Work in their article ‘Influence of the “conventions approach” on higher education in drama’. Drawing in particular on the contexts of Norway, Hungary and China, they investigated the international influence of the ‘conventions approach’ to drama learning, by surveying teaching in higher education. Their findings reveal that conventions approaches are widely spread internationally, and a common element to be found in higher education in drama.

Another international study concludes our scholarly articles for this volume. Ayomi Irugalbandara has conducted research in Sri Lanka to investigate ‘The potential of Zoom technology for enhancing creativity in the drama classroom through peer-assisted learning and group collaboration’. Like many education systems across the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic ‘forced’ a transition for the Faculty of Education in her university to adopt a hybrid mode of teaching and learning. For her research, she analysed an alternative strategy developed for a course element for a drama Teaching Practice. Through a process of using zoom for peer-assisted learning, final year Teaching Practice students were engaged in a new way of teaching collaboratively with this process evaluated. The findings are of interest to many educators who continue to explore the possibilities of teaching drama in digital spaces, in Sri Lanka and well beyond.

We are pleased to also include reviews on two books that explore the application of drama pedagogy to two discipline areas – those of English and Science. Joanne O’Mara reviews Stand Up for Literature by John O’Toole and Julie Dunn, a book focussed on Secondary English teaching and the use of literature. Amanda Peters has reviewed Science and Drama: Contemporary and Creative Approaches to Teaching and Learning, a new book edited by Peta J White, Jo Raphael and Kitty van Cuylenburg. The book features a range of chapters by both Drama and Science educators/researchers and includes a foreword by John O’Toole.

It has indeed been a watershed era for drama, education and the world. We are having to sit with uncertainty and fluidity, use imagination to sustain us during stagnation, embrace opportunity when it appears (no matter how fleeting), and find ways to exist, shapeshift, transform and continue. The work of this issue, and the end of our time with Taylor and Francis marks a particular time in the life of our drama education community. Once again, we have met with huge challenges but through the support and contributions of our community, we have found the courage to continue, reinvent and renew. We thank Taylor and Francis for their support in publishing our journal for the past six years and look forward to working with Drama Australia’s new Director of Publications, Adjunct Professor Julie Dunn in the transition to our new Open Access platform. We hope that the work published in this issue provides sustenance, food for thought and inspiration. We look forward to continuing to provide a voice for our community, and helping realise such through a new vision of this journal in 2022.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.