Performing Identities through Drama and Teatro Practices in Multilingual Classrooms

Abstract

This article provides evidence from our work as teachers, drama facilitators and researchers that drama potentially affords a generative nexus between the students’ own identities and more expansive understandings school-based literacy practices. We examined data from two separate fifth grade classroom studies on drama and literacy to show how drama may in fact open critical spaces within which students negotiate diverse perspectives and collaboratively generate knowledge. These perspectives and knowledge can then be put in the service of their own educational and social empowerment.