Tomasidou, Nandia (2013) Exploring the relationship between drama and the well-being of Primary school children in Cyprus : an ethnographic case study. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates the potential of the arts, and drama in particular, to contribute
to the personal, social and emotional well-being of primary school children. It is
based on a six-month fieldwork in two educational institutions in Cyprus; a Primary
School and a Youth Theatre. I conducted a series of drama workshops with 46
children aged 6-13, in order to examine whether and how their engagement with
drama led to benefits associated with the following aspects of their well-being:
Happiness and pleasure; sociability, social skills and skills of working with others;
self-esteem, self-confidence and sense of achievement; beauty; and children’s voice.
I have decided to focus on these, among many others, because when recent official
reports in the UK and Cyprus suggested that the well-being of children is under
threat, they translated the phenomenon into terms that fall into these categories.
Additionally, while looking at the data generated during my fieldwork, I realised that
they pointed strongly to these directions.
The recent interest with well-being has led governments in the UK and Cyprus to
invest in the designing and implementing of special educational programmes that
aim to help children develop their social, emotional and behavioural skills. These
programmes are Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) in the UK, and
Social and Emotional Education (SEE) in Cyprus. Yet a number of critical reports
have pointed out that the very programmes designed to address the well-being of
children, are actually posing the risk of undermining it. These criticisms focus on
their ‘target-driven’, ‘management-by-objectives’ approach, that has been evaluated
as having had little substantial impact on student welfare. In my thesis, I will argue for an alternative understanding of children’s well-being;
one that can be achieved in a more natural, organic way, through their participation
in drama and the arts, and through their taking pleasure in aesthetic experiences. I
will mount my argument using practical evidence from my research, which made use
of the methodologies of ethnography, case study and reflective practice, and which
implemented the methods of participant observation, semi-structured interviews and
questionnaires, practitioner’s journal, and drama conventions as research tools.
However, it is important to note that the approach of addressing well-being through
drama and the arts is not without its problematic aspects. It invites a different set of
challenges and implications to those of SEAL and SEE, some of which conflict with
general pedagogical approaches. For example, my findings suggest that youngsters
flourish on a personal, social and emotional level when they are allowed to engage
with horror fiction and boisterous play. These are areas that teachers and parents
might understandably perceive as crossing the boundaries of what is permissible and
what is not within a classroom context. Whereas I am not denying that these
approaches involve certain risks, in my thesis I propose a classroom pedagogy that
can help deal with these challenges.
As it will become evident throughout my thesis, issues relating to the correlation of
drama to the personal, social and emotional growth of children are not technically
straightforward. It is a multi-layered and more complex relationship than what the
immediate responses to it might be. What I hope to have achieved is to have
unpicked some of the complex issues and limitations arising from this relationship,
and to have offered certain pedagogical suggestions that can make flourishing
through participation in drama and the arts possible for students.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB1501 Primary Education
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	School children -- Cyprus, Drama in education -- Cyprus, Well-being, Education -- Research -- Case studies, School children -- Health and hygiene -- Cyprus, Affective education -- Cyprus, Educational psychology
Official Date:	September 2013
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Institute of Education
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Winston, Joe, 1953-
Extent:	419 leaves : illustrations.
Language:	eng

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