| How do teachers prepare for and plan their various language arts lessons so that they are teaching through drama? How do students respond in speaking, listening, reading, writing, viewing and representing to language learning experiences arising from drama? These are two key questions that frame this inquiry into drama's role in language arts programs. Using the methodological frame of social constructivism, this study presents interpretations which emerged from observation, interviews, reflection journals, photographs, conversations, and a collection of speaking and writing from students in four teachers' language arts environments. Data are presented as individual case studies which comprise a multiple case study.;Using Bakhtin's notion of architectonics, the metaphor of collage is offered to indicate how the independent pieces of data relate to each other and how the parts are shaped into wholes. The four teachers in the study are conceptualized figure studies that are portrayed as the major idea in the collage. Finally, threads are pulled from these teachers' individual case studies and considered in relationship to a social constructivist perspective, the emerging notions of multiliteracies and multimodal forms of representation, and the language arts educator and drama.;The intent of the study is to show how teachers who understand drama, first as an art and then as a teaching methodology, use a variety of drama strategies that can affect growth in students' language arts development and literacy. Further, this study promotes dialogue about the potential of drama to provide alternative forms of creating and expressing meaning in order to enhance the six language arts for elementary school students. The study also provides valuable information about theories supporting a constructivist view of learning as well as the transactional theory of reading. Close analysis of the teachers' planning and student responses contribute to the connection between dram in education and literature based language arts programs. |
