Heikkenen, Hannu (2002)
(Diss) Jyväskylä. University of Jyväskylä.
The aim of the study was to explore and analyse Drama Education as a university subject, as a scientific discipline and as a school subject. As a university subject and a discipline Drama Education occupies a place “in between” Art and Education as a cultural-aesthetic dramatic discipline. As an umbrella term it covers all other sectors of drama activity that occur in educational settings i.e. including theatre, but theatre made in or for educational settings, and not therefore including professional theatre, for example. In education, the subject in Finland is usually placed at the margins, or given an instrumental function.
This study was a Philosophical one. As a research method Systematic, Conceptual Analysis was used. In addition, so called Participatory Philosophy played a role in deepening the theoretical analysis from the point of experience and reflection on action. In this study British Drama Education theories were studied through the concepts of Serious Playfulness and Aesthetic Doubling (Methexis). Both are analysed in order to arrive at a formulation of a theory of learning potential and poetics of Drama Education.
Based on Huizinga’s theory, playfulness can be seen as serious mode of human behaviour. Serious Playfulness is about creating a culture. Aesthetic Doubling refers to all elements of drama/theatre, that is, in the player’s presentation of himself to others in time, in space and in the imagined acts and in the relationship between reality and fiction: transforming the actual space into a fictive space and the real time into fictive time.
Drama Education is about exploring and about experiencing other ways of being. On a small scale it engages young people in collective, collaborative authorship of dramatic properties. On a large scale Drama as education is learning how to understand the rules of Dramatised Society. The study will demonstrate the relevance of Drama Education as a part of Arts Education in Finland at school today and in future. Drama Worlds can be seen as a “potential spaces” – a space for growth and critical reflection within participatory and socio-cultural learning.
