Transforming English Through Drama

Maggie Pitfield, an experienced English and Drama teacher, is currently a Research and Knowledge Exchange Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London.Jane Coles, a former Head of English and Deputy Headteacher, is also an experienced teacher educator and educational researcher, most recently at UCL’s Institute of Education.Maggie and Jane are joint recipients of the NATE Outstanding Contribution to Research award (2024).

In Transforming English Through Drama, Jane Coles and Maggie Pitfield have presented an overwhelmingly forceful argument for the enactment of the ‘drama-in-English’ pedagogy formulated in their earlier work, Drama at the Heart of English. This collection of international classroom-based case studies offers powerfully persuasive accounts of the ways in which ‘drama-in-English’ approaches can foster enjoyment and motivation, stimulate creativity and create rich and meaningful learning for students. Coles and Pitfield rightly argue that English is in need of transformation; for all those involved in the subject who share this view, [and who believe in the centrality of effective learning and teaching of English for young people’s development] Transforming English Through Drama should be essential reading.SIMON GIBBONS: Reader in English Education, King’s College London.Maggie Pitfield and Jane Coles are to be warmly congratulated on their new edited book, Transforming English Through Drama: Case Studies in Classroom Practice. This wide-ranging collection promises to be an invaluable handbook for English, Language Arts, English as Additional Language teachers and the broader drama-in-education community. Each chapter makes a strong case for embedding drama-rich strategies and experiences in fostering deep and critical literacy learning. An experienced group of researchers and practitioners demonstrate how these inherently inquiry-based approaches motivate and engage learners, nurturing their creativity and imagination while drawing on their own identities and cultural understandings. A very welcome and very timely addition to the field.ROBYN EWING AM: Professor Emerita, Co-Director, The CREATE Centre, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney.The push to bring in the 'knowledge-rich curriculum' has swept aside much of the arts curriculum in schools and one victim of this has been drama. Maggie Pitfield and Jane Coles have done a superb job here of building on their previous work by drawing in other practitioners to the cause. Transforming English Through Drama: Case Studies in Classroom Practice is a timely and much-needed book which lays out both the 'what' and the 'why' of collaborative drama work in schools, specifically in subject English.MICHAEL ROSEN: Professor of Children’s Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London; poet and children’s author.

• List of ContributorsAcknowledgementsChapter 1. IntroductionJane Coles and Maggie PitfieldChapter 2. Adapting Texts, Adapting Practice: Applying Rehearsal Room Methodology to the Study of NovelsSusie FergusonChapter 3. Drama in English: A Decolonial StrategyKatherine BarberChapter 4. Shakespeare on Zoom!Erin WoodfordChapter 5. Writing-in-Role: The Significance of Visualising Fictional Worlds Through DramaTheo BryerChapter 6. Drama-Rich Translanguaging for Multilingual Meaning-Making Rafaela Cleeve Gerkens and Julie ChoiChapter 7. Embodied Approaches to English ‘Exam Prep’ in an Attainment-Driven Climate: ‘Coming in through the pleasurable route.’Camilla StangerChapter 8. Multilingual Digital Storytelling: Enhancing the Learning of English Through DramaVicky MacleroyChapter 9. Teaching English Under Occupation: Classroom Fictions and the World OutsideRaja’ Farah, Ghoson Orouq and Maggie HulsonIndex