This study is an attempt to explore and explain tensions and anomalies associated with the role of Drama in Further Education. An initial intuitive framework suggests that there may be a natural antithesis between the expressive ideology of Drama and the instrumental ideology of Further Education. The frameworks proposed for the exploration include cultural reproduction theory, whilst Drama is perceived as carrying the dilemmas and contradictions of its marginal status. A two-by-two dichotomy is proposed which combines an analysis of Further Education milieu as potentially 'transparent' or 'opaque', and the role of Drama as potentially 'instrumental' or 'expressive'. The study moves accumulatively through three case studies. The first is an historical case assessing the extent, through two representative contrasting periods, to which the problems of Drama in Further Education can be said to reflect wider tensions and ambiguities pertaining to the role of Drama in culture at large. The second case study examines whether the legacy of Further Education is one of historical uncertainty and confusion, and whether Drama has responded in a consistent way to the cross-fire of ideas, interests and rhetorics of justification that it has found itself caught in. The third case study is an in-depth ethnography portrayal of the vicissitudes of Drama in a single institution, Sutton Coldfield College of Further Education, placed against a preliminary city-wide perspective concerning Further Education provision in Birmingham. As a contribution to theory, the thesis seeks tentative generalizations from multi-site and cross-time case studies in several areas, including cultural reproduction theory, modified to take account of sub-cultural tensions, and the moral behaviour and practical gambles associated with marginal subject areas in hostile milieu. It also takes an interactionist perspective on the ploys and strategies by which participants in the contested areas manage the problems of their potentially deviant identities, an account in which the collaborators and fifth columnists have their places. A final consideration is the extent to which the forces of social control in the colleges operate by hegemonic consent or by coercion in seeking to curb and contain Dramatic activity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:261330 |
| Date | January 1990 |
| Creators | Baughan, Lynn |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/106900/ |
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