This article was downloaded by: [University of Sydney]

On: 01 September 2014, At: 16:23

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Research in Drama Education: The

Journal of Applied Theatre and
Performance
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/crde20

Exploring teacherstudent interactions

and moral reasoning practices in drama
classrooms
Kelly Freebody

Faculty of Education and Social Work , The University of

Sydney , Sydney, Australia
Published online: 10 Jun 2010.
To cite this article: Kelly Freebody (2010) Exploring teacherstudent interactions and moral
reasoning practices in drama classrooms, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied
Theatre and Performance, 15:2, 209-225, DOI: 10.1080/13569781003700094
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569781003700094

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever
or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or
arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

Vol. 15, No. 2, May 2010, 209!225

Exploring teacher student interactions and moral reasoning

practices in drama classrooms
Kelly Freebody*

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

Faculty of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
The research reported here brings together three settings of
conceptual and methodological inquiry: the sociological setting
of socio-economic theory; the curricular/pedagogic setting of
educational drama; and the analytic setting of ethnomethodolgically informed analyses of conversation analysis and membership
categorisation analysis. Students from two schools, in contrasting
socio-economic areas, participated in drama lessons concerned
with their future. The study found that process drama allowed
them to overcome the rhetoric and abstract nature of the
theorising of controversial issues by allowing them to become
actively involved in testing theories, developing ideas, and finding
solutions to controversial problems through their work in the
dramatic context. Within this paper three aspects of the study are
drawn out for particular attention: the settings for such an inquiry,
the varying kinds of talk found in drama lessons, and the key
contrasts and similarities between the two research sites. These
three aspects highlight the particular ways in which talk in drama
classrooms may have powerful implications for the ways in which
moral reasoning is built and shared by students.

Introduction
This paper summarises aspects of a more extensive study that used the
detailed analysis of classroom interactions to explore relationships
between drama in schools and socio-economic status as both topic of
talk and resource for interpretation. Three aspects are drawn out for
particular attention in this paper: the settings for such an inquiry, the
varying kinds of talk found in drama lessons, and the key contrasts and
similarities between the research sites. These three aspects explored
together allow for an investigation into the particular ways talk is
structured in drama classrooms, and the implications of this for the
ways moral reasoning is built and shared by students.
*Email: kelly.freebody@sydney.edu.au
ISSN 1356-9783 print/ISSN 1470-112X online
# 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13569781003700094
http://www.informaworld.com

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

210

K. Freebody

This more extensive study summarised here grew out of my

teaching experiences in contrasting social and economic circumstances
and a concern for the way students in these differing circumstances
spoke differently about their future opportunities. Also relevant
was the realisation that the ways in which students spoke about
themselves as members of society was reflected in the ways in which
they viewed themselves as having or lacking agency in determining
their futures. At about the same time that I made these observations,
Ball and colleagues were researching youth pathways and transitions
after school, post-16. This research documented processes of individualisation, shifting social identities and the particular ways that young
people were affected by the intensification of individualisation. One of
the conclusions of this inquiry was that young people were seeing
crises and exclusions as personal failings rather than problems of the
system and that young people see their lives as up to them (Ball,
Maguire, and Macrae 2000, 145). As a teacher of students whom some
might consider to have been affected by the problems of the system, I
found this idea significant.
The research summarised here drew on these concerns, exploring
the ways in which students engage with issues related to socioeconomic status (SES), both explicitly and implicitly, within a process
drama. The question guiding the work was: Do students from schools
located in differing SES areas interact differently in process drama
lessons dealing with future life prospects and pathways? In order to
address this broad question, the results and discussion emerging from
this study explored the following more specific questions:
1. In their classroom interactions in drama lessons, do teachers and
students show evidence of drawing on concepts of SES as a
topic (explicit) or resource (implicit)? If so, how?
2. Do students show evidence of taking the opportunities offered
by process drama interactions to reinforce, revisit and/or revise
stereotypes about SES and future life pathways? If so, how?
3. Is there evidence that process drama pedagogy affords students
these opportunities to reinforce, revisit and/or revise stereotypes
about SES and future life pathways, and if so, what are the
structures of such opportunities?
To explore these questions a process drama that called on students
to articulate what they wanted to be in the future was conducted
on two sites. The first site, called here Higher-SES School (HSES), is
an independent Anglican school in the inner-Eastern suburbs of an

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

211

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

Australian city; the second, called Lower-SES School (LSES), is a staterun school in the outer-Southern suburbs of the same city. Data
consisted of video and audio recording of the process dramas,
student focus groups, teacher interviews and researcher field notes.
Key moments in the drama classrooms were transcribed and
analysed according to the principles of conversation analysis (CA)
and membership categorisation analysis (MCA), introduced briefly
below.
The three settings for the study
This research brings together three settings of conceptual and
methodological inquiry: the sociological setting of socio-economic
theory; the curricular/pedagogic setting of educational drama; and the
analytic setting of ethnomethodolgically informed analyses of CA and
MCA.
The sociological setting of this study can be referred generally as
socio-economic theory, particularly concerned with the ways in which
young people in differing socio-economic circumstances demonstrate
understandings of their potential life pathways (Ball, Maguire, and
Macrae 2000). Further, this study was focused on exploring the ways in
which students draw upon these understandings, both as explicit
topics and implicit resources, as they build shared moral reasoning
practices in lessons. Of immediate importance to educators, theorists,
and policy-makers is how understandings of constructions of identity
are made available to students, whether students are given opportunities to articulate and critically question these constructions in the
classroom, and in what ways drama classrooms offer particular
opportunities for students to explore these constructions in productive
ways.
In theorising this sociological setting, this research is informed by a
discussion about the changing nature of SES in the western world,
particularly the spread of individualisation as understood by Beck and
Gersheim-Beck as a:
dis-embedding without re-embedding . . . A decline of narratives of
assumed sociability . . . It is the individualization . . . of growing inequalities into separate biographies that is a collective experience . . . Social
inequality is on the rise precisely because of the spread of individualization. (2002, xxiii!xxiv)

Within this study, the ways in which SES, social disadvantage and
future pathways influence, and are influenced by, education systems

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

212

K. Freebody

and schools is central. Many researchers in the field of education and

disadvantage consider the emergence of school systems as allowing
for middle-class achievement and that, rather than being a natural
social fact, educational and social arrangements and forms of practice
are held in place by assumptions about disadvantage often influenced
by deficit models of understanding (Freebody 2007, 26). Connell,
White, and Johnston oriented to these assumptions in their discussion
of the normalisation of advantage: education policy talks freely of
disadvantage but talks hardly at all about advantage. This habit of
speech . . . means that the advantaged are tacitly taken as the norm
(1992, 459).
It is this normalisation and the assumptions that certain levels of
knowledge, the pace of content and the structure of a subjects
demands can be taken to be the same for each student, that allow
inequality to become entrenched (Teese and Polesel 2003). These
concerns regarding social disadvantage, entrenched inequality, opportunity structures and future pathways are central to the sociological
setting that informs this research.
A second setting for the study is the curricular setting of process
drama. This study is informed by recent advances in the application of
drama studies to schooling, with particular regard to the ways in which
process drama can be used by practitioners to allow students
exploration of issues that are potentially controversial or difficult to
address in the conventional classroom. It draws upon a tradition within
the field of drama education for practitioners to use the conventions of
drama pedagogy to provide opportunities for students jointly to
develop a coherent dramatic event that draws its substance from the
frailty of humanity (Bolton 1998, 177; see also Wagner 1979; OToole
1992; ONeill 1995). Perhaps a broader claim is that students are living
through drama (Bolton 1998, 178) in order to explore a scenario or
problem and develop a deeper understanding of the situation and
possible solutions. The study has also been informed by recent
research into the use of process drama in second-language settings
(Kao and ONeill 1998; Stinson and Freebody 2006). Such studies have
found that it gives students opportunities for greater freedom and
authenticity in their school talk than many other conventional
pedagogies. Findings such as this support the notion that talk is
structured differently in process drama classrooms and this difference
has the potential to allow students deeper engagement with the
themes and content being explored. Part of this greater freedom and
authenticity arises from the particular structures and conventions of

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

213

process drama. Through them, particularly the use of teacher-in-role,

the more traditional roles of Teacher and Student have the potential to
be transformed or disrupted.
In a process drama classroom, students belong to (at least) three
memberships simultaneously ! student, drama creator, and character.
This combination offers a rich environment in which to explore the
analytic settings for the study ! conversation analysis (CA) and
membership categorisation analysis (MCA). Informed by ethnomethodology, CA and MCA are concerned with the order of everyday
interactions and the ways in which participants manage those interactions and, in doing so, construct identities and assign attributions to
members of society. The combination of these three settings of inquiry
is potentially new for the fields of drama education, CA and MCA.
Developed by Sacks and colleagues (notably Schegloff and Jefferson), CA and MCA are inter-related forms of sociology that explore
aspects of everyday interactions with reference to the way participants
in interaction organise meanings, conduct repairs, and build, draw,
adapt and share understandings of social identities. CA and MCA have
emerged from a notion of order at all points ! that social order is
created by everyday actions, rather than vice versa, and that, at any
given point of interaction, social order is established, observable, and
analysable (Sacks 1992).
Jayyusi has pointed out that the use of ethnomethodology can
result in the systematic uncovering of various cultural conventions that
enable the production of sense, of practical actions, and that inform
the organization of social relations and the various practices of social
life (1984, 3). The rationale for the application of this methodology to
drama lessons stems from a desire to explore the ways in which
students and teachers use drama settings to organise, recognise, share,
and talk-into-being (Heritage 1984) particular assumptions, reasonings
or cultural practices in lessons. Embarking on a thorough analysis of the
ways in which members locally rationalise their sense-making practices
has the capacity to deliver news about the phenomena of social life
and the consequences of these practices and structures (ten Have
1999). As Heap has claimed, if some activity is important to our lives,
then knowing how it is organized may make a difference to how we
act (1990, 43). For teachers and researchers, the practices of socialisation, exploration, and expression in classrooms are important, and
should be known about so that teachers may act more deliberately,
reflectively, and, if necessary, differently.

214

K. Freebody

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

Three types of talk

A first step in exploring the research questions was to identify the
different kinds of talk found in the drama classrooms. This not only leads
to more precise answers with clearer professional and theoretical
implications, but also enables more detailed commentaries and comparisons across the two sites and the two process dramas. Within the overall structure of the drama lessons that were observed and transcribed,
three distinguishable categories of talk can be initially identified:
1. Pedagogic/Logistic Talk (PLT) ! managing of school and lesson
behaviour.
PLT example:
Nick: ok (1) stop (1) talking (3) be respectful and give me eye
contact can everyone give me eye contact and just close
their mouths ok^1 dont talk to anybody it should be
relatively easy that (2) ok give me eye contact dont be
distracted by little things that might be going on around
you wherever they may be happening concentrate on me.
2. Socio-Cultural Talk (SCT) ! engaging the cultural, social and
moral potential of the lesson and aiming to create shared
accounts and public reasoning practices.
SCT example:
Trac: his parents are selfish
Lin: thats what I was just going to say
Nick: why (.) why do you say that
Trac: because hes like really smart and he wants to go and be
one of those genius people, really smart people, and the
parents dont want him to go (.)
Nick: theyre encouraging him not to go arent they (.) why
Trac: because theyre [()]
Nick:
[just prove] to me you were listening, go
on
Trac: because they were poor and they wanted him to look
after his brothers and sisters.
3. In Role Talk (IRT) ! students demonstrating their understandings
of the expectations signalled in the SCT and improvising
reactions to scenarios as they display these in role as
character-participants in the drama.
IRT example:
Val: um (.) well (.) actually my husband and I (.) weve just split
up (.) and Kelly seems to be taking it really badly

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

215

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

Carol: I see (.) um has she spoken to you openly about it or "
Val: "Ive tried talking to her but shes () she just doesnt want
to say anything about it (.) she just (.) completely (.)
ignores me
Carol: I see (.) and would you say that shes got a better
relationship with you (.) has she been able to talk to you
about things or"
Sam: "no I havent seen her very much (since we broke up).
School talk has been found to have certain structural features (Drew
and Heritage 1992; Edwards and Westgate 1987; Mercer and Littleton
2007) that were found in these sites to be common across these three
types of talk-in-interaction. For example the IRE (initiation, response,
evaluation) cycle was found in the transcripts within all three types of
talk. However, as shown below, different activities were achieved in
the different sequences in each type of talk. Breaking the data into
these three categories of talk-in-interaction allows for a more delicate
discussion of the similarities and differences between the sites and
what activities were achieved through the differing talk-in-interaction
across the sites.
The PLT in the two sites was generally concerned with making the
various activities into a lesson in school. It was found that this kind of talk
referred to two levels of relevance: relevance to school behaviour in
general, particularly what type of behaviour was expected of Good Students; and relevance to behaviour and participation in an activity, hereand-now, achieving organisation aspects such as getting into groups,
allocating roles and so on. Within these two levels of relevance, the PLT
achieved pedagogic and logistic work through the management of:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

the
the
the
the
the
the

turns of talk.
positions and movements of bodies in the classroom space.
use of materials in the classroom space.
attention of the participants.
topic relevance.
productiveness of the moral reasoning practices.

In contrast to this management of school and activity behaviours,

the SCT tended to be concerned with the development of shared
accounts of people/events/character actions, and generally included
the participants taking these accounts to be relevant, either as
planning for, or a debrief from, in-role drama work. Although differences were found, depending on the topic-at-hand and its

216

K. Freebody

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

identified connection with the in-role drama work, some identifiably

typical functions accomplished through SCT were:
. collecting points of view that might be relevant to the drama or
to the lives of the classroom members
. orienting to membership categorisation devices and categories
that might be relevant to the drama or to the teachers or the
students own lives
. providing models of appropriate justification for the students
reasoning practices through the use of categorisations, attributions, cause!effect relationships, and evaluations of the topic-athand
. monitoring the reasoning and justification of others
. negotiating aspects of moral reasoning.
An important element of SCT that has the potential to be relevant to
this research was that the teachers were not always the bearer of
knowledge or the keeper of the answers. Rather, the teachers generally
facilitated the classroom discussion, usually through managing the
turn-taking and topic selection for the groups public production of
reasoning practices. The students were given opportunities to discuss
ideas, disagree with each other, disagree with the teacher, change their
mind, and make decisions about who and what they were interested in
talking about. They then actively drew upon these out-of-role discussions when they participated in the in-role phases of the lesson.
The IRT was essentially defined as any talk that happened in role
and is therefore not defined by a common set of specific features.
Participants nonetheless, through their interactions, generally showed
that they held themselves responsible for:
. producing interactions that are compatible with standard expected norms of conversation (as outlined by Sacks, Schegloff,
and Jefferson 1974); that is, for simulating authentic conversation
. facilitating rather than obstructing the interactional options of
the other character-participants
. producing physical (bodily movement, use of space, use of props)
and verbal interactions that are recognisable by other characterparticipants as plausibly attributable to their character type (e.g.,
would a mother really say that?)
. physically and verbally interacting within the hierarchical structures of the characters being portrayed (e.g., how would a
teacher talk to a principal ! not how would Anton talk to Craig)

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

217

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

. producing interactions that have retrospective relevance to the

SCT that formed the pretext and planning phases of the unit
. producing interactions that are appropriate for the institutional
context in-school.
Through these responsibilities, it was found that participants used IRT
to advance, obstruct, shift or reinstate the plot of a drama. Although
often student-led, it is important to note that, when the teachers
were working in role, there was overlap with the PLT; that is, the
teachers used their roles to manage the students talk from within the
drama. That aside, a prominent finding was the unproblematic nature
of the in-role talk. Students, even those that had not done a process
drama before, demonstrated not only an awareness of how to recruit
the shared moral reasoning from the SCT to develop and sustain inrole interactions, but also an awareness of their responsibilities as
participants to use their in-role interactions to advance, obstruct, shift
or reinstate the plot. This was generally achieved through using their
interactions to confirm, challenge, query or act out some details of
the dramas.
These distinct types of talk-in-interaction found in the two sites
formed the framework through which the results and discussion of the
data were explored within the study. Phases and segments from each
type of talk were analysed, exploring both the particular ways the
teachers and students engaged in the lesson, and the ways in which
students oriented, organised and made public their understanding of
social order and social categories. The remainder of this paper
summarises the key differences and similarities between the sites, in
particular the ways in which students engaged with moral reasoning
practices when responding to issues related to SES.
Comparing the sites
Example 1: Moral reasoning about happiness, stress, and the deficiencies
of rich people
Students in both sites built similar shared understandings of
happiness and the necessary attributions needed in order to achieve
happiness in life. In both sites, the discussion of happy and sad lives
included explicit discussion surrounding the topic of wealth.
Students oriented to money as an attribution of Happy People. In
both sites, however, this formulation created disagreement, as many
students oriented to the category Wealthy People as somehow

218

K. Freebody

lacking in other, important qualities. For example this segment from

LSES school:
Cal:
Nick:
Cal:

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

Ann:
Cal:
Ant:
Nick:
Ant:
Nick:
Ant:
Ant:

Nick:
Kate:

Nick:
Ant:

Nick:
Liam:
Nick:
Liam:
Nick:
Liam:
Nick:

well you kind of do need money to be happy I reckon

what do you mean by that (.) cause thats a very interesting point
cause if youre not (.) if you dont have any money then youre
poor and you live in a youll like//
//you live in a bin
yeah
well not exactly if you if you//
//youre talking about (.) youre
talking about an extreme though arent you
no but//
//extreme poverty
sir, not exactly if you if you if you
((interruption))
um like (.) if youre not rich but youre not poor but youre kind
of like not well off so youre just kind of like just coping (.) it (.)
um it puts a lot of stress on the family as your parents have to
like pay a lot of bills and um like theyre always stressing about
how theyre going to get the money to keep the phone on or
electricity or like so and so (1) in order to (.) have no debts and
not have to stress about (.) needing to pay bills um I think like
having money would make you happy as you dont have to
stress about those things
ok ok (.) alright yes yes Kate sorry
yeah well like that big discussion that we had that time I cant
remember when it was but (like about happiness like) you know
how something about you cant buy a wife unless its like a mail
order wife or anything (.) but you cant just like find some partner
thing or anything (.) just to marry and you know you cant buy
them and//
//good point good point (.) last two (.) because I do
want to be quick now unless its really important Anton yeah
oh its about what Kate just said but like with um if if a guy had a
lot of money then some girls would actually go go for go to that
guy for the money like marry him so they could like put a knife
though his heart and then steal his money
right how dramatic (1) how dramatic yes
oh well
shh shh
I reckon
hang on (.) wait there (1) have a go yeah
I reckon if I was one of the richest men in the world (.) Id be pretty
happy because I could buy anything I wanted like if there was
something new that I wanted like in the shops Id just go//
//how
much is happiness can you buy that (.) how much is it

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

219

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

Ss:
Nick:
Liam:

((many interjections))
(.) a million dollars (.) 10 dollars
six hundred million (.) six billion (.) a zillion (.) a trillion I dont
know
Jeff:
whatever
Bren: million fuck-all
Nick: interesting though isnt it last shh two more (.) no last point
Sonia: alright um love is (.) love of family is totally different to money (.)
like you need family to be happy (.) right
Nick: yeah
Sonia: so if you have money (.) then (.) and no family (.) then youre not
entirely happy (1) you cant be entirely happy unless you have (.)
a family ((Chatter))
Lin:
thats true.

Although in their SCT students did orient to the benefits of having

money and the problems associated with being Poor or just coping,
both reasonings were challenged by other participants. In contrast, in
both sites, love and family as attributions of Happy People appeared
to be unproblematic. Passion was also a concept drawn upon as
attributions of Happy People, often discussed in contrast to wealth. As
in this segment from HSES school:
Carol: a musician (.) so why do you think this person is the happiest
Mel:
cause hes doing something he loves
Carol: hes doing something he loves (.) how do we know that
Val:
because generally music is a very hard industry to get in to and
you know generally you (dont follow it) if you dont like it
theres no point and usually the only people that become
musicians are people that are passionate about it
Carol: so its got passion (.) would you guys think that you got passion
from over here from winning the lotto does that give passion to
your life
Em:
theres a passion for money

In the second to last turn of this segment Carol directly challenges the
group who chose the photo of the lotto winners as the happiest by
questioning their ability to have passion. Throughout many of the
discussions about happiness there was a tendency for the students to
claim the importance of having a job they enjoyed or a family they
loved instead of having money, thereby creating an either/or effect.
There was little expressed belief in either site that a Rich Person could
also have a loving family or a career they were passionate about. This
demonstrates the concern expressed by Sacks (1979) that the
occasioned nature of categories is often not realised in interactions,
and so it is assumed that what is known about one Rich Person is taken

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

220

K. Freebody

to be true of all incumbents of the category Rich People. This

conclusion suggests that there are similarities in the ways in which
students from differing SES backgrounds draw on explicit and implicit
understandings of SES and their future. Interestingly, and despite
opportunities to express, discover, build and share their understandings with one other, students in these sites did little to move beyond
previously articulated understandings of Rich Person as morally
deficient, thereby possibly reinforcing the existing stereotype.
A difference between the sites was evident in the ways in which they
oriented to wealth as a topic, or drew upon notions of wealth as a
resource. Despite students at LSES School building an explicit shared
understanding of wealthy people that was not necessarily favourable, by
drawing on implicit stereotypes of Rich People as deficient, whenever lack
of wealth was discussed, it was associated with sadness, stress, and having
to live in a bin. In contrast, at HSES School, lack of wealth was discussed
merely as not having money and still allowed for positive formulations
such as simple lives, happy personalities, family, and contentment. This
suggests that in their explicit discussions about characters without
money, students at HSES drew upon fewer implicit understandings of
the consequences of being without money may affect.
Example 2: The importance of agency
Students in the two sites created different shared moral reasonings
around agency, more specifically, the lack of agency. Drawing on the
types of categories outlined by Eglin and Hester (1992), at HSES School, in
the classroom discussions, agency was assigned as an event-consequent
attribution. Those lacking agency were powerless because of an external
force; an event, a bad decision, or a difficult life. As a result, those lacking
agency were those chosen and discussed as representations of sadness,
with a lack of agency expressed by the students as a strongly correlated
attribution for this representation. For example, Sally and Valeries
reasoning why the photograph of the prostitute is the saddest:
Val:

most people wouldnt choose to go into prostitution as a job (.)

its not really something that when youre little you dream of
doing ((giggles)) its usually because you have to (.) because like
usually you have no other option
Carol: so you think its out of desperation
Sal:
yeah like if someones just lost everything in their life like//
Carol:
//shh
everyone should be listening to Sally please (.) big loud voice
Sally so they can hear you

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

Sal:

221

like they might feel like theyve just lost everything in their life so
if theyve just been kicked out of their house and they have no
money so they just (maybe) turn into a prostitute

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

In contrast, the students at LSES School discussed agency as an ability/

competence attribution and used one of the characters lack of agency
as a reflection of her lack of ability to care for herself. This was taken to
signal that the character did not deserve to be allowed to follow the
professional pathway she desired. This is expressed in Kates opinion
that the characters inability to look after herself will keep her
dependent on her parents:
Kate:

trying to think oh yeah well Id just like, let her do her mechanic
thing and then when like theres like even when she gets
disowned she will like cause then she probably wont have any
money cause like shes never had to pay rent in her life coz shes
got a wealthy family so then when she falls back on her (.) like
falls you know (.) has no money left then shell go crawl back to
her parents

These differences between the HSES and LSES sites are about how
students formulated understandings of SES, either explicitly or
implicitly. This suggests that students from differing SES backgrounds
interact differently, specifically with regard to the varying importance
of agency in projecting happy, prosperous futures.
Example 3: SES as topic or resource
Even when SES was not being used as an explicit topic in classroom
interactions, students and teachers drew upon their implicit shared
understandings of SES to build and reach moral, social, and dramatic
conclusions. This was found from two perspectives: firstly, the
perspective of lesson/drama subject matter, whereby both the teachers
and the students worked to reach shared understandings in discussions, or solutions within the dramatic context; secondly, this implicit
understanding of SES was found from a management perspective,
whereby the teachers drew upon their understandings of the particular
SES background of their students to make logistic decisions about
activity structures and behavioural problems.
In LSES School, particularly in the IRT, money and SES were rarely
discussed explicitly, instead, notions of SES were used as a resource, a
shared understanding of being a Doctor compared to being a Chef. This
was particularly evident in one instance where students acting as teacher
characters saw part of their role as preparing a student-character for

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

222

K. Freebody

medical school regardless of the fact that she did not want to go. In
contrast, the issue of money was made into an explicit topic at HSES
School, with part of the problem being that the central characters
parents could not afford for her to go to university. Despite the explicit
presence of lack of money as an attribution of the characters in this
situation, the solutions and the behaviour from students at this site
suggested that they did not have a well-developed understanding of the
consequences of not having money on which to draw as a resource in
order to engage with productive or realistic understandings or solutions.
This demonstrates major differences in the ways in which students
from the different sites drew on SES as a topic and resource: students at
LSES School appeared to have a complex and sophisticated understanding of the implications of SES that they drew on as a resource for
understanding problems and reaching solutions. In contrast, students at
HSES School had difficulties drawing on implicit understandings of SES
to solve problems. At one point the teacher stopped the in-role
improvisations because students were having trouble reaching solutions for a character who wanted to go to university but could not
afford to. The teacher asked the students out-of-role what they thought
might help the character. One of the students responded I dont get it
(.) I thought university was free. This demonstrates a potential lack of
implicit understanding about money and cost of living. When it came to
the research interviews, paradoxically, students at LSES School had
difficulties discussing SES as a topic whereas students at HSES School
could explicitly articulate ideas of privilege and power.
This is a significant finding because it signals differences in the
ways students from differing SES backgrounds explicitly and implicitly demonstrate their understanding of SES when engaging with
these dramatic scenarios. At HSES School, the explicit topical
understanding of the financial situation of characters led to more
immediate sympathy, and more willingness to help than was
expressed by those at LSES School, but less shared understanding
of the realities of the situation.
Conclusion
There are three major conclusions to be drawn. Firstly, students from
schools located in differing socio-economic status areas interacted
differently, in several important respects, in dramas dealing with future
life prospects and pathways. This was evident not only in the ways they
characterised and sympathised with key stakeholders in their dramas,

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

223

most notably the protagonists and the parents, but also in the ways in
which they worked towards solutions to the protagonists problems
and the differing levels of understanding demonstrated in both their
in-class interactions, and the post-drama focus groups. However, there
were also similarities documented in the analysis in the ways students
built shared understandings or personal moral reasonings within the
lessons. An example of this is the way students in both sites assembled
similar definitions of happiness, despite the discussions being in
different activities in the drama unit.
A second conclusion is that, in their classroom interactions in drama
lessons, teachers and students drew on concepts of SES as both topic
and resource. The analysis of the lessons that took place in the two
sites also demonstrates that, even when SES is not being utilised as an
explicit topic in classroom interactions, students and teachers draw
upon their implicit shared understandings of SES to build and reach
moral, social, and dramatic conclusions. This was found particularly
within the lesson/drama subject matter, whereby both the teachers
and the students worked to reach shared understandings in discussions, or solutions within the dramatic context.
Finally, the combination of CA, MCA, and drama pedagogy has
shown itself to be well suited to discovering and documenting
significant findings in and around socio-cultural topics. The use of CA
(Sacks 1992; Schegloff 2007) for the analysis of the lessons provided an
understanding of how the conversations were structured and sequenced, who controlled the turn taking and topic management, and
who managed the levels of relevance and the appropriateness of
participants utterances. This provided insight into the ways in which
teachers managed the logistics of activities while still allowing students
management of topic, opinion and relevance. The use of MCA (Hester
and Eglin 1997; Jayyusi 1984) on the data allowed for a framework for
understanding the content of the lesson and the ways in which the
moral reasonings jointly built by the teachers and students were
disrupted or sustained within the activity structures.
The use of both drama pedagogy for the research plan, and CA and
MCA for the data analysis, were effective for the study of controversial
issues such as socio-economic structures. Drama and CA/MCA provides
researchers with naturally occurring data, in environments where
participants have opportunities to explore social issues from numerous
levels, including the embodiment of particular discourses (e.g., about
SES, parenthood, responsibility) and the acting out of shared understandings negotiated through earlier classroom discussion. Such an

224

K. Freebody

approach has the potential to be important to drama education

practitioners as it provides a context to explore discourses relating to
social issues, as understood and oriented to by students in their
everyday classroom work.
Keywords: educational drama; process drama; socio-economic status;
conversation analysis; membership categorisation analysis

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

Note
1. For an explanation of transcription symbols see: Hutchby, I., and
R. Wooffitt. 1998. Conversation analysis. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Notes on contributor
Kelly Freebody is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at The
University of Sydney. Her research interests include drama education, social
justice, and qualitative research methods.

References
Ball, S.J., M. Maguire, and S. Macrae. 2000. Choice, pathways and transitions
post-16: New youth, new economies in the global city. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Beck, U., and E. Beck-Gernsheim. 2002. Individualization: Institutionalized
individualism and its social and political consequences. London: Sage.
Bolton, G. 1998. Acting in classroom drama. Stoke-on-Trent, UK: Trentham
Books.
Connell, R.W., V.M. White, and K.M. Johnston. 1992. An experiment in justice:
The Disadvantaged Schools Program and the question of poverty, 1974!
1990. British Journal of Sociology of Education 13: 447!64.
Drew, P., and J. Heritage. 1992. Analyzing talk at work: An introduction. In Talk
at work: Interaction in institutional settings, ed. P. Drew and J. Heritage, 3!65.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edwards, A.D., and D.P.G. Westgate. 1987. Investigating classroom talk. London:
Falmer Press.
Eglin, P., and S. Hester. 1992. Category, predicate and task: The pragmatics of
practical action. Semiotica 88: 243!68.
Freebody, P. 2007. Literacy education in school: Research perspectives from the
past, for the future. Camberwell, Australia: ACER Press.
Heap, J.L. 1990. Applied ethnomethodology: Looking for the local rationality
of reading activities. Human Studies 13: 36!72.
Heritage, J. 1984. Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hester, S., and P. Eglin. 1997. Membership categorisation analysis: An introduction. In Culture in action: Studies in membership categorisation analysis,
ed. S. Hester and P. Eglin, 1!24. Washington, DC: International Institute for

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 16:23 01 September 2014

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

225

Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis and University Press of

America.
Jayyusi, L. 1984. Categorisation and the moral order. Boston: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Kao, S., and C. ONeill. 1998. Words into worlds: Learning a second language
through process drama. Stanford, California: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Mercer, N., and K. Littleton. 2007. Dialogue and the development of childrens
thinking. New York: Routledge.
ONeill, C. 1995. Drama worlds: A framework for process drama. Portsmouth,
New Hampshire: Heinemann.
OToole, J. 1992. The process of drama: Negotiating art and meaning. London:
Routledge.
Sacks, H. 1979. Hotrodder: A revolutionary category. In Everyday language:
Studies in Ethnomethodology, ed. G. Psathas, 7!14. New York: Irvington
Publisher.
Sacks, H. 1992. Lectures on conversation. Ed. G. Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sacks, H., E.A. Schegloff, and G. Jefferson. 1974. A simplest systematics for the
organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50: 696!735.
Schegloff, E. 2007. Sequence organisation in conversation: A primer in
conversation analysis, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stinson, M., and K. Freebody. 2006. The DOL project: An investigation into the
contribution of process drama to improved results in English oral
communication. Youth Theatre Journal 20: 27!41.
Teese, R., and J. Polesel. 2003. Undemocratic schooling: Equity and quality in
mass secondary education in Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne University
Press.
Ten Have, P. 1999. Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide. London:
Sage.
Wagner, B.J. 1979. Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a learning medium. London:
Hutchinson and Co.