Abstract:
Quality teacher education is a crucial component of authentic, effective classroom practice that is continuously intensely and publicly scrutinised within the Australian context. In the current educational climate, there are a number of contested and complex issues that require interrogation and further research. This includes the creation of hierarchies that marginalise subjects such as the Arts and the increasing need to consider multilingual and cultural perspectives.Quality teacher education requires us to empower students to be active, creative and reflexive learners. The presenters argue that it is imperative that those who teach into Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses enable their students to participate in critical conversations and dialogical spaces where they can learn to plan for diverse contexts and communities of learners and improve and transform education. They have found through their research and community of practice that Drama Education can be effective in providing such spaces for critical conversations, active meaning-making and reflective dialogue.This paper makes use of teacher experiences and data from an ongoing research project (2017 to 2021) to identify and discuss Drama Education techniques and strategies that are effective in fostering critical conversations with students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The research has taken place across four different geographical locations, two in Australia (the University of Melbourne and University of Newcastle) and two in South Africa .University of the Witwatersrand Drama for Life and Sibikwa Community Arts Project). Reimagining education research is viewed from the perspective of identified challenges and successes for Drama Education strategies during COVID and the presentation format which is in the form of a piece of Performed Research (ethnodrama).