Thesis (M.Ed.)--York University, 2007. Graduate Programme in Higher Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 147-151). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR38741

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 341-353).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 51-54).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 1981.

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

My thesis is about educating through play. I have been playing, experimenting, thinking, and living my thesis for eight teaching years. At times insight has come with certainty and passion; more often, insight has not come, or it has been diluted or made problematic. I have read educational philosophy, and history, and psychology; I have experimented with evaluative models; I have tried product and process approaches. No matter how fancy the language that I use, no matter how simple and direct the models I create, no matter how intricate and accountable my evaluative strategies are, teaching and learning work best when the heart is at the centre of the enterprise. Becoming educated is learning how to love: to wonder, to question, to quest. Educating is about loving, about finding ways to bring people confidence, and hope, and openness. Play bridges the opposition between order/chaos. It helps me locate the generative, constructive forces in our schools. As a reader of this thesis, I invite you to become a play director. The stories told here do not live on the pages. They do not even really live in the spaces between text and active reader. The only way for these stories to live is if they're played to life through performance. I invite you to read these stories about writing, and community, and culture in the classroom as a producer would read a playscript. To that end, this thesis is presented in the form of a performance kit which contains theory on acting and directing, specific production strategies, the scripts themselves, and background information on the generation of these scripts. I believe that this extended metaphor—teacher as director, students as players, community as audience—can serve as a useful aid to bring play back to the multi-vocal theoretical literature of our discipline and to the stories enacted daily in our classrooms.

The study was conducted to measure whether participatory drama with young adolescents, as implemented by teachers untrained in the discipline, is more effective in producing changes in creativity, literary writing, personality, and attitudes than regular programs of English used exclusively.

It was the purpose of this study to determine the effects of creative dramatics on divergent thinking in fifth grade children. The subjects (twenty-six fifth graders) were divided into control and treatment groups such that each group had an equal representation of male and female subjects. Prior to treatment, both groups of subjects were pre-tested using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, Verbal Form A. During the treatment period, the control group continued their normal school activities; while the treatment group was exposed to fifteen forty-five minute creative dramatics sessions. Following the treatment period, the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, Verbal Form B was administered to both groups.The results of the data analysis indicated that treatment had a statistically significant effect (p<.02) upon the category of originality. Therefore, it is concluded that creative dramatics has a facilitating effect on the originality dimension of divergent thinking.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2000. / Adviser: Downing Cless. Submitted to the Dept. of Drama. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 216-223). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-06, Section: A, page: 2024. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 262-275).