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Henry Caldwell Cook and Drama Education in England

<p> This study aims to clarify the nature of the theatrical way of Henry Caldwell Cook who was the first to introduce theatre into education for English as a first language. This study critically examines the content of his original teaching method, Play Way, and attempts to appropriately place its context in the history of drama education in England in order to explore how effectively drama can be used in language education. The use of theatre for education has a long history. Commencing in ancient Greece and Rome, it has continued until the present time. However, modern drama education has no more than about a hundred years of history. It was Cook and Harriet Finlay-Johnson who opened the history of this theatrical education. Finlay-Johnson had persistently used theatre to teach all subjects, mainly because of her educational stance as an elementary school teacher. She is closely associated with the leaders of DIE (Drama-in-Education) who adhere to the same educational policy. While Cook also used theatre as a means for language education and did his best to maintain a theatrical framework, there is a fundamental difference between Cook's educational method and that of DIE. His Play Way seems to closely resemble TIE (Theatre-in-Education) in that both bring in theatre for school education. However, this similarity is superficial. In the TIE method, while the autonomy of theatre has always been maintained, theatre in Cook's method was used as a means for education to the end, although concurrently he had been able to properly grasp the nature of theatre. Behind such a view of theatre as an educational end in itself is Cook's recognition of the theatricality of human beings. His theatrical teaching tells us that when using theatre as a tool for language education, we must first correctly understand its intrinsic qualities. </p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3579948
Date20 May 2014
CreatorsYoda, Manami
PublisherKyoto University (Japan)
Source SetsProQuest.com
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typethesis

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