Humanizing Education with Dramatic Inquiry

Book excerpt: Humanizing Education with Dramatic Inquiry provides a comprehensive rationale for why and how dramatic inquiry can be used by any teacher to humanize classroom communities and the subject areas being explored with students. Written by teacher educators Brian Edmiston and Iona Towler-Evans, the book re-evaluates the radical humanizing dramatic enquiry pedagogy of British educator Dorothy Heathcote, as developed by the authors in their own teaching using her three approaches: Process Drama, Mantle of the Expert, and the Commission Model. Through scholarly yet practical analysis of extended examples drawn from their own classroom teaching, the volume demonstrates how teachers can collaborate with students of all ages, dispositions, presumed abilities, and cultural backgrounds to transform classroom life into a richly humanizing, curious, inquiring, imaginative community. This book will appeal to educators and teacher educators not only those open to using drama pedagogies in classrooms and in therapy but also to those engaged in applied theatre. Additionally, it will interest those in literacy and education in general who are committed to inclusive, critical, antiracist, anti-oppressive, and artistic practices.