Book Review

Drama and Curriculum: A Giant at the DoorJohn, O’Toole, Madonna, Stinson and Tiina, MooreSpringer (2009)ISBN 978-1-4020-9369-2£76.50 (hardback), £76.50 (paperback)

This is a book written by three highly respected Australian authors and dramaeducation practitioners. The lead author is John O’Toole, whose impressivecontribution to drama education spans five decades, and his publications inthe field are testament to serious commitment to theorising the teaching ofdrama in schools. It is a thought-provoking book, often highly controversialand robustly polemical, and all the more enjoyable for that.

The book takes as a recurring theme the image of the giant Proteus, whostands as a metaphor for the potential of drama in schools. It is a metaphorthat allows the authors to further a very lively and specific perspective ofdrama education and, although many chapters are co-authored, it is O’Toole’svoice that seems to guide the reader forward through the debates and battlesthat illuminated and beset drama education through the mid and late 20thcentury. The eclectic history O’Toole charts is personal, elliptical anddeliciously partisan. He starts with the Greeks – perhaps a legacy of hiseducation at Cambridge University in the 1960s – and moves forward throughtime and space to the present day. O’Toole’s illustrious career has earned himthe privilege of hindsight, and although I might quibble with some of the moredated readings of theatre history (where was the work of Oliver Taplin, DavidWiles or Edith Hall, for instance, in his invocation of Greek theatre?) andoccasional inaccuracies of the more recent past (he got himself in a pickle overthe subject of a themed issue of Research in Drama Education, for example,guest edited by his Australian colleagues Kate Donelan and Michael Anderson)this book is a tour de force infused by the commitment and passion of aneminent scholar. It is O’Toole, not Proteus, who is the giant of this book – notas an Old Man of the Sea, but as proteus mirabilis.

O’Toole is served well by his co-authors, whose chapters offer soundinsights and generous practical advice. The book is organised in threesections. The first addresses Background and Context, with the secondchapter co-authored by Madonna Stinson. Part 11 debates theories andpractices associated with drama education, and moves through chapters on

DOI: 10.1111/j.1754-8845.2012.01126.x English in Education Vol.46 No.2 2012

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Drama and Language, Drama for Development and Expression (whichincludes discussions about play and psychodrama) and Drama as Pedagogy.The final two chapters in this section rehearse debates about differentparadigms, with O’Toole advocating ‘process drama’, and debating DavidHornbrook’s conception of drama as Making, Performing and Responding(or Appreciating) in the final chapter. This section offers a broad sweep ofa history in which O’Toole was an active participant and significantcontributor. The sense of personal involvement and commitment gives thewriting a glorious vitality, the chapter ‘Civil Wars’ that documents paradigmshifts in the 1980s has the authenticity of presence, and the narrative is, attimes, almost mischievously engaging.

The third and final section is, in my view, the most useful part of the bookfor teachers working today. There is clear advice on how to design a dramacurriculum with Queensland offered as a case study. In the UK we have muchto learn from Australian drama educators, particularly in the deft ways inwhich they have balanced policy and pedagogical practice. John O’Toole andMadonna Stinson chart a careful path through the politics of assessment indrama education, and how government policy impacted on pedagogy. Thoseof us who remember ‘mode 3’ examinations in the 1980s, in which studentscould undertake 100% coursework instead of standardised tests 16+, will beinterested in how parents, teachers and students worked together to definethe drama curriculum in Australian schools. It was not only a period in whichschool-based assessment liberated the drama curriculum, it also marked asignificant moment in the intellectual debates that defined a radical pedagogy.There was a clear analysis of the role of National and State Associations inshaping the curriculum and sharing good practice, and discussion of theimpact of the university sector on schools. If the idealistic days of teacherautonomy and local consultation seem remote from contemporary educationalbiopolitics, Chapter 9 offers a sound account of the development of the ArtsCurriculum in Queensland, described by Madonna Stinson. This chapter is notonly an intelligent analysis of the implications of curriculum design, it is also apractical guide. Stinson recounts periods of consultation and trialling thenewly designed curriculum in schools, and gives a clear analysis of how thislearning impacted on practice. There is also an illuminating section on theconstraints faced by those involved in this process, and how teachers ofdrama faced hostility from those in government who were developing a moreconservative education policy. The debate about the issues facing specialistand non-specialist drama teachers is positioned within this political context,where Stinson points out the hierarchy between teachers of different artsdisciplines. Music teachers were traditionally trained specialists, whereasdrama and dance teachers can be generalists. Chapter 10, written by TiinaMoore, provides careful and insightful advice and thoughtful discussions ofher own practice. This section of the book is instructive, and offers a timelyreminder of the immense contribution drama can make to an inter-disciplinarity curriculum.

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The final chapter, authored by O’Toole and Stinson, considers the future.There is a lively debate about the ways in which applied theatre has come toembrace aspects of dramatic practice that are not orientated around the schoolcurriculum. Their argument, that applied theatre is becoming more pervasivein some quarters than drama education, is controversial and sometimeswickedly polemic. Nevertheless, there is a sense throughout this book thatdrama in schools has become increasingly professionalised, and that a clearand serious rationale for learning drama in schools has been developed. It islikely that readers will find much to discuss after reading this book, and that iswelcome, because it is through provocation and debate that we prompted toquestion our own pedagogical principles and practices.

Helen NicholsonRoyal Holloway, University of London

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