mission to mars: using drama to make a more inclusive classroom

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Brian Edmiston

Mission to Mars: Using Drama to Make a More Inclusive Classroom for Literacy LearningExamples from a self-contained second-grade classroom for children who have visual impairments demonstrate how using drama might make classrooms more inclusive for the literacy learning of students who have been classifi ed as having special needs.

Alice is beaming and talking excitedly. With an eager, confi dent step she’s lead-ing a man by the arm around the edge of

a volcano, telling him not to worry. Alice is nine years old. She’s been blind since birth and has cerebral palsy that severely limits the use of her right arm, but not the use of her powerful imag-ination. That imagination has taken her and her three fellow second-grade students on a mission to Mars. The man she is leading is Mr. Randolph, her classroom teacher, and they are pretending to walk on the surface of the red planet. They’re imagining that she’s one of the Martians (who, the children have decided, don’t have eyes), and that he is one of the astronaut-scientists (who, they have agreed, has been temporarily blinded in a dust storm and needs medical help).

Kevin Cordi (a doctoral student) and I (a uni-versity professor) are visiting teachers in the classroom of Mitch Randolph (a master’s stu-dent in literacy studies). As Alice is leading Mitch around the room (see Figure 1), I am sitting under a desk with William and Peter, both of whom are partially sighted. Imagining that we are astro-nauts, I am helping them decide what to do about the blue spiders they’ve discovered that have been attacking and killing Martians. Should they throw them into the volcano or try to shrink them using their hi-tech equipment? Kevin is crawling on the fl oor with Robert, who, like Alice, is also tech-nically blind, though he has more awareness of light and dark than she. They are pretending to be astronauts looking for spiders, some of which are red and not blue. “What should we do with the red spiders?” they wonder. On one of the desks sits a Brailler that displays an unfi nished reply to the President’s message (actually written by their teacher). Nearby is a television set showing the planet’s surface viewed from above (a magnifi ed

picture of a rock relayed through a video cam-era). William and Peter have studied this image close-up, searching for craters that might dam-age a spacecraft upon landing. On another desk is the children’s handmade (from fl our dough), one-foot diameter, three-dimensional map of Mars, complete with ice caps, volcano, and dust storm. Everywhere there is a buzz of excitement that has been sustained for over an hour.

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Figure 1. Alice leads Mitch around the edge of the imagined volcano on Mars.

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Copyright © 2007 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

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The examples in this article all come from a self-contained second-grade classroom for children who are classifi ed as blind or as hav-ing visual impairments. During the school year, the classroom teacher had been preparing these four students (two blind and two partially sighted) for inclusion in regular classrooms in their elementary school in an urban pub-lic school district. Over a two-year period with two different classes, he found that using drama (for times ranging between a few minutes and an hour) signifi cantly helped him move toward this goal.

In this article, I discuss how using drama might make classrooms more inclusive for the literacy learning of students who have been classifi ed as having special needs because of identifi ed impairments. I want to acknowledge unavoidable linguistic diffi culties in termi-nology: when I use terms like “disabled” or “impairments,” I never mean that people “are” disabled or impaired. Rather, I regard disability (like ability) as existing in the eye of a beholder who views from a privileged social position of what one should “normally” be able to do. Professional discourse can unwittingly encour-age us to reify labels that are always socially con-structed categories.

Drama can productively disrupt the sense of classroom normality to create spaces where chil-dren can be viewed primarily as people using their strengths in learning literacy practices, rather than as children with or without disabili-ties. However, my ideas are appropriate for all teachers, whether they are preparing children for transfer from self-contained to general educa-tion classrooms or are hoping to make language and literacy learning more inclusive in class-rooms where children with identifi ed impair-ments are working alongside other children. I develop two interrelated proposals. First, drama makes classrooms more inclusive when teach-ers draw on the linguistic, technical, social, and cultural strengths and resources of all children, including those who are considered to have spe-cial needs. Second, in drama situations, children begin to form identities as competent language users when they are consistently positioned as capable participants in shared literacy practices.

DRAMA

The type of drama I discuss that could make classrooms more inclusive for literacy learn-ing is neither adult directed role-play nor drama for theatrical performance (Bayliss & Dodwell, 2002). Drama is the use of pretend play for cur-ricular ends (Peter, 2003) that is shaped to cre-ate some dramatic form (O’Neill, 1995) where adults actively engage alongside students, both to socially imagine other spaces and worlds and to extend children’s learning (Heathcote, 1972).

Classroom drama participants have a play-ful attitude to activities (that can include literacy events) as they focus more on the imagined situ-ations in “possible worlds” rather than on every-day physical and social situations (Bruner, Jolly,

& Sylva, 1976; Bruner, 1986; Lurker, 1991; Pelligrini, 1991). Drama and play “provide a forum for children [and adults] to create imaginary situations where they are ‘free’ from the constraints of concrete objects, real actions, and indeed their

own voices [and bodies]. They infuse their own intentions—their own meanings—into those objects and actions . . . in a space where ‘pretend’ identities are appropriated” (Kendrick, 2003, p. 46).

Intention and meaning shape activities and begin to create form. Children’s language and movement in Mitch’s classroom was often shaped. For example, as astronauts, they chose words carefully when they imagined they were talking to the President. Dramatic form came from a sense of dramatic anticipation that could be extended by an adult. In a later session, in preparation for their return to Earth, the chil-dren walked and stood with formality in order to deliver their prepared speech. Adopting the view-point of another astronaut, I wondered with them what the President might be doing and thinking, and then pretended to be the President meeting them.

The playful situations of drama open up pos-sibilities for adults to collaborate with children and extend their literacy practices. Fictional situa-tions create what Vygotsky (1967) conceptualized as “zones of proximal development” (or ZPDs), where “a child is a head taller” and where the often

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hidden potentials of children can be revealed. In every social situation, Vygotsky (1978) theorized that all people (including those with impairments) create ZPDs, which lie between their actual level of development and a potential level of development that shifts or becomes possible with the guidance, or cooperation, of an adult or more capable peer. Interactions with and among children through the use of objects (like clay maps), languages (includ-ing Braille and sounds that intersect with speech and writing), and movement (including gestures) can extend children’s meaning making beyond what they could do alone.

When adults engage in play with children, using objects, languages, and movements, more extensive ZPDs can open up than in everyday life. When the children in Mitch’s classroom pre-tended to be astronauts (or Martians), they took on highly competent stances that were the foundation of ZPDs and that could then be extended in interactions with adults. A ZPD could open up for an adult as well. For exam-ple, as Robert crawled on the fl oor with Kevin, he shared his extensive knowledge of spiders so that Kevin could ask how people knew the difference between poisonous and non-poisonous spiders, offer a suggestion about how to catch one with-out being bitten, and engage in a brief conversa-tion that extended their knowledge of arachnids.

INCLUSION AS FULL PARTICIPATION AND ACCESSIBILITY

If you are a classroom teacher wondering how to make your classroom and school communi-ties as fully inclusive and supportive as possible, or if you are a special needs teacher like Mitch, then the words of Mara Sapon-Shevin (2006) will provide an important checklist. She stresses that, “Inclusion without resources, without sup-port, without teacher preparation time, without commitment, without a vision statement, without restructuring, without staff development, won’t work.” Yet children need more than schools with checklists. Inclusion is more than resources, sup-port, and school commitment. As Kliewer (1998) puts it, “Inclusion is a way of looking at the world that enacts the fundamental meaning of education for all children: full participation, full member-ship, valued citizenship” (p. 320).

Accessing Meaning-Making ToolsAn inclusive view of education can begin to emerge through contrast and imagination. We might begin by an honest consideration of what barriers to inclusion already exist in our class-rooms and schools. We could do what Mitch does when he plans: imagine the world as the children experience it. “I always look at what it would be like if you had no sight,” he stresses.

Like all dedicated literacy educators, Mitch is passionate about children learning to use spo-ken and written language so that they can com-municate with others and make meaning about the world. Alice and Robert, being blind, could not think about maps from visual images, but they did learn about mapping because they had the oppor-tunity to use clay, their sense of touch, and the chance to talk with all the children in the class and with their teacher. Talk was crucial because

everyone could share what each already knew about Mars, what they had found out from the books (in English

and Braille), and how they represented ideas on their own map.

Oliver (1990) argues that we should be assess-ing “societal disabling barriers and attitudes” rather than “individual disabilities.” He stresses that adults should work with every child’s com-munication strengths and adapt our modes of com-munication to particular children’s needs. Rather than fi xating on impairments as problematic bar-riers, we could use alternative, more multimodal approaches (Kress & Leeuwen, 2001) for shaping understanding. Children who have impairments in particular contexts make meaning in related but different ways from people who do not have those impairments (but do have others in different situa-tions). As Vygotsky (1993) showed, children with impairments develop “compensatory strategies” for learning that become unique strengths. Alice, for example, has acute hearing and picked up sounds in the room of which I was unaware.

Children’s strengths are apparent in the modes of communication that they each use or gravitate toward. When I fi rst met Alice, we communicated as much through touch, movement, objects, laugh-ter, and listening (and for me, careful watching) as with words. We also tapped into our social imag-ination. When I entered the classroom, she was

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Imagine the world as the children experience it.


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sitting alone at a desk with her hands on the clay model of Mars; she had a pebble in her left hand that she was moving in and out of indentations on its surface. I introduced myself and said I’d heard that she and the boys had been pretending to fl y to Mars. She became animated; her eyes sparkled and her hand moved the pebble around as she spoke about the map of the planet that they had made, complete with craters and ice caps on its surface. I put my fi ngers on the map and gently touched her fi ngers as I explored the surface through touch. I asked what the circular ridge was and she said it was the volcano. I had not known that there was a volcano on Mars; Alice not only knew but added that there was lava there. I asked her, “Could you land the spacecraft in the volcano?” She was ada-mant that “The lava could burn you up.” “Would you like to imagine landing the spacecraft on Mars?” I asked. She grinned. I continued, “How about if you use your hand to pretend it’s the spacecraft, and I’ll use my hand to pretend I’m on the planet,” adding quickly as I responded to a frown, “not in the volcano.” Assisting her movement in the imagined space, I made the sound of a descending space-craft, brought my hand down on to hers, and then lifted them both up and down again continuing to make sounds. She giggled, lifted her hand free, and then brought it down unaided with her own sounds on to my fi ngers. When our hands touched, I tickled her fi ngers and she squealed with delight. I said, “I was pretending to be a Martian.” I was responding to the children’s previously expressed hope that there was life on the planet. Then I asked her, “Do you think the Martian was friendly or not?” “He was nice,” she replied. By now, Mitch wanted me to meet the boys in the room, so I said to Alice, “Do you want to tell the others about the Martians?” and she responded with an emphatic, “Yes!”

My communication with Alice mostly occurred in a socially imagined space that par-alleled the everyday classroom space. It was an inclusive play space that Alice and I entered as equals. Talk, touching hands and a clay model, sounds, and hand movements were multiple modes of communication that we shared and that were our means of conceptualization about ideas that were not physically present. I used my ability to see objects and watch her—not to make mean-

ing apart from Alice, but rather to guide my deci-sions about how to make meaning with Alice.

Kliewer (1995) shows that if children without identifi ed disabilities learn to use the communica-tion modes used by those who live with impair-ments, then language and literacy practices can be as rich and complex as in any other classroom. Mitch’s classroom is fi lled with materials that are available to all children as tools to make mean-ing. There is specialized equipment, for exam-ple—machines on which the children who are blind can write Braille, that translate into Braille, and that print in Braille. But materials go beyond the hi-tech. There are also hands-on materials and art supplies so that children can make represen-tations or signs of ideas without having to rely on sight. These include, for example, large Lego and wooden blocks, fi nger paints, smelly mark-ers, puppets, cloth, and clay. When such materials

are available in drama worlds, they signifi cantly deepen and extend drama’s poten-tial for literacy meaning mak-ing. Vygotsky (1978) argues that material objects as well as

language must be available, because humans turn them into tools and signs as they draw on their cultural resources to construct meaning.

When children collaborate and interact to cre-ate an imagined community (like astronauts on a mission to Mars), they draw on their social and cultural resources, or “funds of knowledge,” in making the tools they need to engage in literacy practices (Gonzales, Moll, & Amanti, 2004). As students designed a rocket and space-rovers, spoke on the telephone with the President, or wrote email messages, they accessed their linguis-tic competencies and their abilities to use Legos, clay, and other materials, along with their knowl-edge of rockets and cars. When they imagined they were on the spaceship, they had great fun using and transforming their cultural knowledge of bathrooms, kitchens, and eating to invent those realities on the spaceship.

Drama opens up public socially imagined spaces where all children can have equitable access to communication tools, not as people who too often may be considered “other” than the norm, but as valued equal participants in a world where a person’s strengths, rather than any impairments, come to the fore.

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Drama opens up public socially imagined spaces where all

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Full ParticipationFull participation in classroom activities requires extensive social interactions among all chil-dren and adults. Language and literacy is learned through participation in social practices (Street, 1995; Bloome, Power-Carter, Morton-Christian, Otto, & Shuart-Faris, 2005) and drama can create such experiences (Edmiston & Enciso, 2002). For example, in pretending to be astronauts running a spaceship and landing on Mars, the children talked, read, and wrote as they planned, executed, and reported on their mission with full and equal membership in the community of astronauts that grew in this classroom over several weeks (see Figure 2). Though participation took account of children’s special needs, their engagement was not limited by those needs.

For Vygotsky, the social needs of a child with an impairment outweigh the individual needs. As Gindis put it, “the primary problem of a disabil-ity is not the sensory or neurological impairment itself, but its social implications” (1999, p. 335). Vygotsky (1983) used the example of a blind child to argue that “It is necessary to deal not so much with blindness by itself, as with those con-fl icts which arise for a blind child upon entering life” (p. 102).

Social participation develops children’s sense of competence. Powers, Singer, & Sowers (1996)

argue that schooling should promote children’s self-competence by developing such qualities as inner strength and resilience. But they stress that children classifi ed as disabled can only build a sense of competence through relationships, not individual autonomous acts. They theorize self-competence as a multidimensional concept encompassing self-esteem grounded in being regarded by others as worthy and balanced with a sense of self-determination and successful cop-ing in the face of diffi culties (p. 7). Pretending to be competent astronauts over several weeks and being treated as competent by their teacher was highly signifi cant for these children. Alice, who arrived in the classroom timid and with little self-confi dence, blossomed as she took on the stance of a confi dent astronaut.

Our challenge as teachers is to ensure that the life of the classroom opens up rather than closes down possibilities for participation. The confl icts we want to promote are dramatic ones, not debili-tating, frustrating ones. At the same time, all chil-dren, perhaps especially those with impairments, need to develop independence. Mitch believes that children who are blind or visually impaired should be dependent on others only for assistance to complete ordinary tasks that they cannot do alone. He wants the children to extend themselves as much as possible, minimizing dependence and opening possibilities.

Children cannot begin to participate and feel competent if they are apprehensive about navi-gating a physical place. The physical layout of Mitch’s room is predictable but not static. Mitch wants the classroom to be as “normal” a space as possible. Like Vygotsky, he believes that “com-pensation [for any disability] should take place through the experiences and opportunities that are as close as possible to normalcy” (Gindis, 1999, p. 339). At the same time, Mitch thinks about how children must make mental maps of a space without the use of visual clues, though with some assistance from him. For example, he is always careful to refer to the parts of the room and the objects in the room by name; if a child asks where something is, rather than saying, “It’s over there,” he identifi es the place by name. Because he wants the children to be able to handle changes, the basic layout of the room and supplies stays the same, but he expects the children to navigate minor changes in location. As Alice guided Mitch

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Figure 2. Students fully participate in the social practices of running a spaceship.


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around the room, undeterred by her occasional bumping into an out-of-place desk, it was hard to believe that only three months earlier she had expected other people to fetch and carry for her.

CONCEPTUALIZING DISABILITY

Our ways of looking at the world are deeper and wider than our individual views. Group norms and assumptions as well as professional discourse or cultural practices in schools are theoretical frameworks that may unwittingly undermine an intention to extend and deepen the full inclusion in school life of children with disabilities (Udvari-Solner, 1996).

Dominant Framing of DisabilityIn the U.S., the dominant theory and practice of how to educate people with disabilities is framed by research in the fi eld of special education (Dan-forth & Gabel, in press). The laudable intention is that the negative effects of any disability (like visual impairment) can be minimized so that the individual will be able to live as “normal” a life as possible. Experts (who do not include the class-room teacher, the child, or his or her caregivers) use standardized psychological tests that they assume will measure a child’s competencies; the results will presumably allow these experts to determine what, if any, dis-ability the child has, defi ne the child’s needs, and provide whatever assistance and services are available. A child’s Individual Education Plan (IEP) clarifi es the nature of the disability (e.g., visual impairment) and recommends specifi c “help” from a classroom teacher or itinerant teacher that will enable the child to “cope” with the disability, all with an eye toward being included in “normal” life. But the IEP does not document the abili-ties of the child, nor does it show what children are able to accomplish when they join in every-day activities with other people. Children classi-fi ed as “blind” or “VI” who are included in regular classrooms will continue to receive individualized “orientation and mobility” training (e.g., negotiat-ing familiar and unfamiliar spaces). However, they are rarely assessed in terms of how their achieve-ments can be extended by adults and other chil-dren and how their abilities can enhance others’ learning and living.

Alternative Ways to Frame “Disability”The education of children with disabilities was at the core of Vygotsky’s (1978; 1983; 1993) professional and personal life as well as his social constructionist theories, which have become mainstream in literacy education. Iron-ically, his ideas about inclusion are margin-alized by the dominant discourses within the fi eld of special education. Yet, his theories have informed the emerging fi eld of Disability Studies.

In contrast to the dominant model of disability, Disability Studies theorists argue that it is groups and societies that disable people who have impair-ments by creating physical and attitudinal barriers to their participation in activities (Barnes, Mer-cer, & Shakespeare, 1999). People are not dis-abled; rather, it is particular ways of structuring communities, like classrooms or hospitals as well as wider societal structures, that disable people. Drawing on the work of disabled activist organi-zations to develop a sociological framework, they turn the idea of “disability” on its head. Struc-tures disable to create social disadvantage when they position people with impairments as lesser than a norm they can never achieve. Exclusion-ary actions and practices are oppressive when

they deny any person full and equal participation by over-looking the unique needs and desire for agency of that indi-vidual. To pay attention to the lives of all children and cre-

ate the sort of democratic communities in class-rooms that Danforth (1997) advocates, teachers have to be able to resist and critique dominant assumptions about what’s best for children with disabilities.

IDENTIFYING WITH LITERACY PRACTICES

Drama opens up playful spaces where the locus of classroom control and expertise can shift. What-ever their actual or perceived abilities or disabil-ities in everyday contexts, children can begin to shape new identities by engaging in imagined activities (Edmiston, in press). Students’ language and literacy learning will be promoted when those activities include literacy events and practices in which students feel competent, especially when adults participate alongside them (Edmiston & Enciso, 2002).

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Identities Are Culturally Determined Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain (1998) argue that identities are formed in two comple-mentary and intersecting ways: culturally and socially. From a cultural viewpoint, identities are determined by the narratives and practices that particular groups share and that people identify with when they regard themselves as members of that group. When well-meaning profession-als reinforce children’s disability labels over time, those children may begin to socially identify themselves as incompetent outsiders in a class-room group of “not disabled” people. One ele-mentary-aged student whose “disability” became the basis of her IEP said in a recent study: “It’s good to know . . . it’s not bad to be different from the other kids in my class because before it made me think that I was stupid” (Jones, 2006, p. 16).

In contrast, Alice felt powerful and compe-tent in her identity as an astronaut. She said that she liked pretending to be an astronaut because, “I like when we do cool things like fl ying in our spaceship to Mars and talk-ing to the President.” Drama and play are so signifi cant to identity formation because, as Holland et al. observed: “Through play, imagination becomes embodied . . . our fancied selves become mate-rial” (1998, p. 236). Over sev-eral weeks, Alice and her classmates made up narratives about their adventures and life in space, expanding Alice’s astronaut identity alongside her identity as “blind.”

In their initial lengthy discussion with Mitch, the children had chosen to pretend that they were astronaut-scientists going to Mars. They decided to imagine that they were sighted people with jobs that they could never actually have in every-day life. By participating in astronaut activities, they identifi ed as members of a community that practiced literacy (Wenger, 1998). They adopted fi ctional names, took the title of “Dr.”, and used the sort of professional language that astronauts would use. The children were doing what any-one does who reads fi ction or watches a movie—they pretended to be people that they could never actually be. Yet at the same time, they identifi ed with the interests, hopes, and goals of those peo-ple. Their identities as astronauts formed as they engaged in many related professional practices,

including literacy practices like situated talk as they navigated the spacecraft around asteroids, reading and sending messages to Mission Control, and writing the story of their mission.

Identities Are Formed from Social PositioningFrom a social constructionist viewpoint, identities are formed as people consistently position oth-ers with more or less power, authority, and status. Children have little power or authority to interpret or challenge their status as disabled. Like the stu-dent quoted above, children are likely to accept how adults consistently position them. As Holland et al. (1998) show, over time, positioning creates relational identities that give people the power of social status, acceptability, and authority. A person’s identities form into a rudimentary “set of dispositions toward themselves in relation to where they can enter, what they can say [read and write], what emotions they can have, and what they can do in a given situation” (p. 143).

Children’s identities are shaped within the position-ing patterns that get estab-lished in the school, family, and other communities of their lives. Adrienne Asch (cited in Powers, Singer, & Sowers, 1996, p. xii) believes

that “who one is ‘like’ should be based as much on interests, tastes, hopes, and goals as on those characteristics that the world often sees as defi n-ing—such as race, sex, or disability.” Yet if chil-dren are repeatedly treated as incompetent and disabled and/or regard themselves in this way, they will begin to identify themselves as incom-petent disabled human beings. As Jones (2006) discovered, “Many students are left to rely on their previous and continued lack of success in school as a means of defi ning who they are as a student, devaluing themselves as a learner” (p. 14). Jones also found that classroom teachers can make a difference in how students regard them-selves as they talk with them to develop goals and strategies.

Being positioned repeatedly as competent fos-ters an identity that is motivated to develop the perspectives and habits of mind inherent in actual or imagined role models, such as an astronaut who reads and writes whenever necessary. Teach-

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If children are repeatedly treated as incompetent and disabled

and/or regard themselves in this way, they will begin to identify

themselves as incompetent disabled human beings.


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ers can support these emerging identities and rein-force children’s improving self-images. Drama gives children the chance to position themselves with much more power and authority than they would ever have in everyday life (Edmiston, 2003). By playing along with children and giving them a status that positions them as knowledge-able, teachers acknowledge students’ competence, and make them able and willing to share ideas about, for example, spiders, spaceships, or how to talk to a President.

The children in Mitch’s classroom worked for three consecutive days to make a 20-page, illus-trated public report, “Adventure to Mars,” writ-ten in English and Braille. They had every reason to be proud of their authorship, as was Mitch, who was also staggered by the intensity of their collaborative engagement in writing a retell-ing of their mission as astronauts (see Figure 3). The book ended with a summary of the celebra-tion (honoring their teamwork and their friendship with Martians) that still reverberated in the room weeks after the astronauts had returned from their mission.

The rocket landed on planet Earth. The astronauts came out. The president gave them medals. Thank you said the astronauts.

CONCLUSIONS Danforth & Smith (2005) propose that as teach-ers, we engage in a thought experiment. “Perhaps rather than contemplating inclusion we should fl ip the binary and think about exclusion. What does it tell us about us when we systematically shut off access to public space for specifi c groups, marked out conspicuously as ‘other’?” (p. 239).

Kliewer and Biklen (1995) are blunt about life for people treated as disabled. “The dominant society exercises a persistent campaign of exclu-sion against [people with disability labels]: exclu-sion from competency; exclusion from central location and therefore presence; exclusion from opportunity; exclusion from acceptance and val-ued status; and exclusion from power and self-determination” (p. 88).

Schools are one of the few places where people can not only resist exclusionary practices but also create alternative spaces where all people are val-ued for who they are and what they can do already. Lipsky & Gartner (1996) call for a restructuring of public schools that is “inclusive of all the needs, interests and experiences of the diverse range of stu-dents which it is supposed to be serving” (Ramsey, quoted in Lipsky & Gartner, 1996, p. 791). As teachers, we should aspire to such an ideal because it “both provides benefi ts for all students and serves as an exemplar for an inclusive society, one that is both diverse and democratic” (p. 792).

I turn to the inclusive practices of drama to create public spaces where all children can par-ticipate using their strengths as the people they are and want to become in imagination. Drama as an approach to literacy learning and education in general can create opportunities for adults to work with younger people in order to examine, extend, and shape how people might positively identify with social realities. Through drama, we can cre-ate “a more inclusive world where the voices of people with disabilities are supported, heard, and respected” (Kliewer & Drake, 1998).

Yet drama is also a pedagogy with potential impairments. In the hands of teachers who tell children what to do and who insist on controlling movements as well as minds, it is a tool that can reify labels and blur vision. But in the hands of teachers who listen to children, who share power in negotiation, and who care about them as peo-ple, then drama can create new vistas and extend the horizons of meaning making and competency.

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Figure 3. Two students prepare the map for their “Adventure to Mars” report.


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Dorothy Heathcote’s (1978) work with peo-ple with disabilities is legendary among those who have observed it. Those who work with her experience full participation and full member-ship in shared imaginative explorations, what-ever their abilities. She notes that, “I sympathize with those who fi nd this kind of work too intru-sive, too upsetting to the developed power pat-terns” (1978). However, because she takes the ethical stance that people who are disabled also have rights, she believes that they have the right to be positioned as people with active and inter-pretive power, “the power to affect a situation and to respond in a growing complexity of ways to that situation” (p. 153). As she noted elsewhere (1972), all children, including those we fi nd the most demanding, “are not asking for less work, or easier work, they are asking for meaningful work” (p. 30).

You might feel disabled by even contemplating going on a mission to Mars, but the very able chil-dren that you’ve met in this article were eager to take on the mission and imagine themselves dif-ferently. They wanted to mean more to others than any label that had been put on them. They wanted the adults in their lives to recognize them as the powerful, competent, responsible, resourceful, caring people that they could become.

Author’s Note: I would like to acknowledge the as-sistance of Kevin Cordi, Mitch Randolph, and Samara Madrid, all graduate students at The Ohio State Uni-versity, who provided invaluable assistance in the writ-ing of this article.

ReferencesBarnes, C., Mercer, G., & Shakespeare, T. (1999). Explor-ing disability: A sociological introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Bayliss, P., & Dodwell, C. (2002). Building relationship through drama: The action track project. Research in Drama Education, 7(1), 43–60.

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O’Neill, C. (1995). Drama worlds: A framework for process drama. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Pelligrini, A. D. (1991). Applied child study: A developmen-tal approach. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Peter, M. (2003). Drama, narrative, and early learning. Brit-ish Journal of Special Education, 30(1), 21–27.

Powers, L., Singer, G., & Sowers, J. (1996). On the road to autonomy: Promoting self-competence in children and youth with disabilities. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.

Sapon-Shevin, M. Retrieved January, 20, 2006 from www.uni.edu/coe/inclusion/

Street, B. (1995). Social literacies: Critical approaches to literacy in development, ethnography, and education. London & New York: Longman.

Udvari-Solner, A. (1996). Theoretical issues on the establish-ment of inclusive practices. Cambridge Journal of Educa-tion, 26(1), 101–119.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1967). Play and its role in the mental devel-opment of the child. Soviet Psychology, 5, 6–18.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds. & Trans.). Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1983). Sobraniye Sochinenii [Collected works] (Vol. 5). Moscow: Pedagogika.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1993). The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky (Vol. 2) (J. E. Knox & C. B. Stevens, Trans.). New York: Plenum.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Brian Edmiston is associate professor of Drama, Language Arts, Literature, and Reading Education in the School of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University, Columbus.

CANDIDATES ANNOUNCED FOR SECTION ELECTIONS; WATCH FOR YOUR BALLOT

The Elementary Section Nominating Committee has named the following candidates for Section offi ces in the NCTE spring elections:

For Members of the Elementary Section Steering Committee (one to be elected; term to expire in 2011): Frank Chiki, Double Eagle Elementary School, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Debbie A. Reese, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

For Members of the Elementary Section Nominating Committee (three to be elected; terms to expire in 2008): Anna Lee Puanani Lum, Kamehameha Elementary School, Honolulu, Hawaii; Marylou M. Matoush, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina; Denise N. Morgan, Kent State University, Ohio; Jennifer Tuten, Hunter College–The City University of New York; John Underwood, John F. McCloskey Elementary School, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Elisa Waingort, Dalhousie Elementary School, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Members of the 2006–07 Elementary Section Nominating Committee are Ruby Clayton, Cold Spring School, Indianapolis, Indiana, Chair; Danling Fu, University of Florida, Gainesville; and Wendy C. Kasten, Kent State University, Ohio.

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mission to mars: using drama to make a more inclusive classroom

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