Drama as leisure and learning

Drama as leisure and learning
The new Danish curriculum for kindergartens describes an overall learning approach based on play as well as six curriculum themes that the pedagogical staff must include in their pedagogical practice. This paper describes a co-creative actionresearch project that is part of the nationwide project LegeKunst and explores how the curriculum's learning goals and pedagogical intentions can be fulfilled through a dramapedagogical praxis. As a basic ambition, both artists, educators and researchers in this project wanted to develop a pedagogical practice that, like play, was experienced as meaningful, joyful, magical and fun in itself. The dramaproject took its starting point in experiencing a professional theater performance at the local theater. This theater experience was then used as an impulse for a creative dramaprocess involving both children and adults facilitated by a dramapedagouge. The process stretched over six weeks culminating in a process where children moved into the settings of the local theater to perform their own play for their parents.
In this paper, I - based on participatory observations as well as qualitative interviews- analyze and discuss, the built-in well-being, learning and development potentials in the dramapedagogical practice. Methodologically, the research project is based on a juxtaposition of pragmatic research method and appreciative inquiry. As these methods are understood as both normative, interactive and participatory the significance of these methodological approaches for the project's practice, the developed potentials and the result are described and discussed. The theoretical framework for the analyzes is sociocultural play theory by Vygotsky, Broström and others. Classical drama theory by Gavin Bolton, Lindquist, Sæbø and others, and theories of aesthetics and learning by Sørensen and Austring & Sørensen.