- Title
- Masks and education: a study in the teaching of drama and theatre studies in the Australian secondary curriculum
- Creator
- Roy, David
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- In education, masks have been applied using the theories of a multitude of practitioners such as Meyerhold, Brecht, Grotowski, Lecoq and Brook. In drama classes throughout the Western world, masks are regularly engaged within a variety of contexts. However, there is negligible information available as to how masks are actually used in the classroom, and to what degree they are effective in different teaching and learning contexts. The original empirical part of this research is based upon teacher questionnaire responses from secondary teachers in the Australian states of Victoria (VIC), New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland (QLD). The research also observed and interviewed students in six drama classes, five of which were engaging with masks, to understand how masks could potentially have further impact and to understand more about the students’ engagement with and understanding of their learning. The findings suggest that mask usage is similar across classes and that students have high engagement, with increased self-awareness of roles and of their own sense of personal identity through the use of masks. In addition, there were significant indications that the usage of masks in the classroom offered opportunities for genuine inclusion of students with specific learning difficulties (including autism and dyspraxia), more so than the normal inclusive Drama class. Students with autism and dyspraxia have recognised neurological conditions that often manifest physically. The mask, through its very usage, forces the wearer, and the observer, to consider consciously their physicality in a more methodical way.
- Subject
- masks; drama; education; teachers; teaching; anthropology; psychology; disability
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1403582
- Identifier
- uon:35190
- Rights
- Copyright 2019 David Roy
- Language
- eng
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 14 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 217 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |