Drama, inklusion og udvikling af legekompetence i børnehaven: Projektrapport

Drama inclusion and development of play-competences in Kindergarten
This report takes it’s starting point in an understanding of make-believe play, drama and other aesthetic activities as an indispensable and integral part of socialization, an understanding which is based on socio-cultural theory and modern aesthetic theory describing make-believe play and other aesthetic activities as equal recognition ways, where one’s own work with the aesthetic idiom allows the participant not only to develop aesthetic and linguistic skills but further more to acquire a special kind of knowledge. According to this thinking aesthetic activity explores a special learning mode, in which the child actively in dialectical interaction with society's aesthetic form offers transforms it’s inner perceptions and experiences in to symbolic form. This transforming process enables the child to reflect and communicate feelings, experiences and impressions, and develop understanding of itself, the other and the world it is a part of. However, recent Scandinavian research suggests that in there in kindergartens often are groups of children, who are not a part of the children's own play groups. These children are at risk of not only missing the learning potential of these aesthetic activities but even more to stand outside the children’s cultural community, and they are in danger of getting an experience of being marginalized. This report presents the results of a pragmatic action research project, in which we have been exploring the effects of process drama in two Danish kindergartens. The focus is firstly on whether it is possible for the children to develop social skills and play- competences within the process of drama, secondly on whether gaining this competences can support the inclusion of children who have a marginalized position in the playgroups.