Activating (oracy) embodied-dialogic and cultural literacies through drama worldbuilding pedagogy across the primary curriculum

Abstract

Across Europe, the need for teaching practices that foster collaborative pedagogy involving creativity, active student engagement and culturally responsive learning is seen as critical. Effective social-emotional communication and language skills enhance positive life outcomes and educational attainment.  However, language ideologies in English education policy often advocate deficit thinking in monolingual and monocultural classrooms.  This case study shares the practice and research findings of a two-year 'Story Exchange ‘project by employing co-participatory research with teachers, artists, and young people. Seven primary schools worked with five artist-educators in the North of England to bring the Humanities curriculum to life through an oral storytelling and inquiry approach called Drama Worldbuilding. Dismantling deficit models of oracy, the project aimed to promote imaginative, culturally relevant learning by building on the linguistic strengths of all children, especially Black and Global Majority children—seeing these assets as rich affordances of learning.  Teachers were paired with one of five artist-educators and given time and space to co-plan, co-deliver, and co-reflect on curriculum learning, engaging them in systematic action research. Employing a translanguaging approach, the research evidences the impacts of the pedagogical approach on children's social-emotional literacy, presenting a new co-designed Framework of Dispositional Learning through Embodied-Dialogic Oracy.