| Statement of problem. Literacy involves creation and communication of thought, and creative drama can be beneficial to teachers who wish to use constructivist approaches, but there are few studies which document how teachers might use creative drama in literacy classrooms. Seven teachers with limited drama experience were given an open-ended script in order to investigate how they used it as an instructional scaffold, how it affected their concepts of literacy, and to identify what literacy processes were used as teachers and students created a play.;Methodology. This qualitative study involving seven teachers of the gifted was conducted using participant observation techniques. During their use of scaffolded plays in a Roman banquet project, data collection included interviews, direct observations, audiotaping, videotaping, and artifact collection.;Results. As teachers and students developed a drama from an open-ended script, participant teachers reported this instructional strategy encouraged originality, elaboration, fluency, and flexibility of their student's ideas. However, creativity could be suppressed if prior knowledge was used as the ending point rather a starting point for addressing a problem, and gatekeeping rather than scaffolding occurred. Teachers' stances broadened from literacy being a decoding skill to an awareness of prediction, reflection, imagination, voice, and empathy. Participants reported empathy encouraged communication at greater, elaborative depths, as students worked collaboratively to convey meaning. Even in noisy or cramped space, imagination provided focus for attention. Voice inflection identified an individual's level of understanding. Prediction and reflection worked at the problem solving level, exploring different solutions to dilemmas. The sociocognitive interactive model present in creative drama allowed participants to become active creators rather than passive recipients of literacy.;Conclusions. Teachers inexperienced with creative drama found the flexibility within the scaffold play allowed them to use it as a constructivist literacy strategy. Participants reported the scaffold plays encouraged them act as facilitators and collaborators of knowledge rather than sole authorities. Through dramatic processes creative approaches to meaning making occurred as participants began to explore, through play, expanded literacy concepts. |
