Gaps, silences and comfort zones: dominant paradigms in educational drama and applied theatre discourse

The Performative Arts and Pedagogy Project – Towards the Development of an International Glossary

“…The systematic review also reveals that authors publish their work across a diversity of journals, which attests to the interdisciplinarity of the field. However, with 48% (n=182) of the articles published in four journals, this interdisciplinarity is largely located in Western, Anglophone contexts, which aligns with Omasta and Snyder-Young's (2014) findings. Finally, the analysis of terms as a result of this type of systematic review approach provided a list of terms for one of the interview questions.…”

“…The systematic review did not yield a high number of primary studies in the field and the dominance of secondary sources within the search results attests to the dearth of studies reporting on the impact of research using quantitative evidence. This aligns with Omasta and Snyder-Young's (2014) finding that qualitative and conceptual or theoretical publications informed by critical theory, action research and performance-based lenses are dominant in the field. Due to the nature of knowledge created in the field, a dominance of research within the interpretative paradigm is expected.…”

“…Influenced by both traditions, research in drama and theatre education tends to prioritise qualitative and theoretical approaches such as the case study, narrative inquiry and performance ethnography (Ackroyd, 2006), as well as a range of other critical theoretical approaches, such as semiotic and feminist approaches (Grady, 1996), in an effort to focus attention on the necessity of change. One such example of empirical data in research pertaining to drama and theatre education relates to the use of meta-analysis as a quantitative research method (Gjaerum, 2013;Omasta and Snyder-Young, 2014;O'Toole, 2010). Meta-analysis constitutes the analysis of primary studies by the researcher in which they numerically assess the results (Creswell, 2008).…”

“…In 2011, a systematic review of the literature was undertaken in order to explore the question: What is applied theatre? There are comparable approaches at work in this study and in Omasta and Snyder-Young's (2014) research, which also utilises a meta-analysis approach. Using databases to collect a data set of articles, and keywords to search these articles, they applied a content analysis to categorise each article in relation to the research methods, modes of analysis used, the type of results reported, and to examine the geographic location of the authors.…”

“…The systematic review undertaken draws on a large, multi-disciplinary set of databases and presents the results using both qualitative and quantitative data. As discussed above, the approach uses a set of recommended steps (EPPI centre, 2010;Omasta and Snyder-Young, 2014;Ryan, 2010) and is transparent in its description of the process as a result.…”