Using Literature and Drama to Understand Social Justice
Source: Teacher Development, Volume 14, Issue 1, (2010), pages 123-135.
The authors’ work at a large urban community’s metropolitan university in the mid‐Atlantic region of the United States is designed to help pre‐service teachers understand the concepts of diversity, equity, democracy, and power relationships at a deeper level.
The authors encourage beginning educators to rethink their interpretation of words and images used to construct their thinking about these issues.
This essay investigates a series of workshops that combined children’s literature and drama to help pre‐service teachers understand the parts they play in inequality, oppression, and racism and to recognize their role in larger societal constructs.
The authors suggest that reinforcing children’s literature with Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed techniques helps transform pedagogy in ways that empower both students and teachers.