Qualitative Research On Creative Drama Education Practice For Out-of-school Childre

As a special form of drama,creative drama is an activity in which children recreate,reflect on and reconstruct their existing experiences in the process of group interaction by improvising and performing with the help of body movements,vocal expressions and changes in expressions under the premise that teachers guide children to give full play to their imagination and mimicry.Compared with traditional theater,creative theater is more flexible and richer in form,not limited to scripted performances,and places more emphasis on the wisdom of improvisation,the process of participation,and the expression of children’s experiences and the establishment of an atmosphere of mutual trust in the group.This study mainly uses qualitative research methods,through interviews and observations,and in-depth fieldwork in out-of-school theater education institutions,to personally experience the emotional experiences of children’s theater educators,in an effort to identify problems and conduct in-depth analysis based on understanding and empathy.After the field research,this study selected the Qingdian Art School within the system and the Island Meow Theatre outside the system as typical cases to describe and analyze the creative theater education activities carried out by the two theater education institutions and to show the practice process as comprehensively as possible.First,this study carefully examines the overall development,faculty,teaching environment,and teaching mode of the Qingdian Art School,based on which Ms.Zhang’s classroom is selected as the object of study.As a pioneer in the implementation of creative drama education at Qingdian Art School,Ms.Zhang’s creative drama education curriculum is divided into two stages: the initial stage and the advanced stage.The initial stage is to lead children to express themselves through language and physicality,while the advanced stage is to guide children to reflect on and recreate their existing life experiences through drama creation.In addition,the annual end-of-year report of the Green Drama School provides a platform for home-school interaction and effectively enhances parents’ recognition of creative drama education;the drama workshop activities for island children broaden the dissemination of creative drama education.In addition,this paper provides an in-depth description of the development process of creative theater education activities in Island Meow Theater from scratch.The Island Meow Theater,which was established to create a theater for all people,is devoted to the educational philosophy of the theater’s founder,Oroku.Equality,tolerance,respect,acceptance,and experience are the theater’s theme words.Parent-child improvisation theater promotes the physical and mental development of children and parents together in a fun and rewarding mode.The power of Island Meow Theatre’s exploration of creative theatre localization can be felt from the observation of children’s participation and interviews with parents.Finally,based on the in-depth analysis of the existing survey,we reflect on the local practice of creative theater education and look forward to it.It summarizes the breakthroughs and innovations in creative theatre education practices of two theatre education institutions;reflects on their practical strategies from the shaping of educational concepts to the setting of activity contents and processes to the development of workshop organization forms;and points out a series of problems in the development of creative theatre education in China.Under the dual reflection on theory and practice,the development direction of creative drama education in China is explored from various aspects,including: reversing the deviation of concepts and giving a proper name to drama education;obtaining parents’ support and forming educational synergy;strengthening teacher training and providing external support;and promoting dual tracks inside and outside schools to accelerate localized development.