Process Drama

Process Drama

Process drama is a pedagogical approach to teaching and learning that builds on socio-cultural theories of language development.  Typically,  in deaf education,  language acquisition is viewed as an innate process dependent on the child’s cognition. They are often judged through a deficit lens when their language fails to develop. There is increasing evidence that socio-cultural activities foster language acquisition.  Process drama uses social cultural activities to foster student engagement and learning. Participating in any number of dramatic activities fosters language development.

Process drama draws upon storytelling and play to activate the student’s imagination and creative expression. Dramatic techniques are used to explore curriculum content, texts, relationships with texts, issues connected to texts, and other aspects of literacy learning.  

Teachers step out of their traditional roles as teachers and adopt certain roles in the process of drama to explore alongside their students.  Students also take on roles to explore issues through acting, creating a tableau, writing in role, or movement.  These kinds of activities deepens students’ understanding of issue being explored.

The goal of process drama is not to produce a play but to bring together personal, cultural, musical, gestural and other meaning systems and literacies to examine relationships between the real and fictional.  Process dramas can be iterative, and often do not have a finished ending.