George Belliveau, Carmen Medina, Gus Weltsek (University of British Columbia): Reflective practices in drama teacher preparation

New perspectives in teacher education calls for ways to decenter our practices and reflect on the ideological discourses that frame approaches to teacher preparation.  As a group of newly hired professors asking how best to prepare drama teachers, we realize that our life journeys as artists and educators situate our teaching in particular ways.  In this performance/presentation we share the results of a collaborative process of self reflection. The performative approach allows the intersections, contradictions and competing ideologies to become productive sites from where to begin devising and mapping effective teacher preparation in drama.  The themes we share in this presentation include the debates between drama as subject and/or as approach to learning; drama as process and/or as product; and drama in light of new literacy studies, particularly how drama as a socially situated practice is always embedded in particular social discourses.