This study focuses on process drama for the revitalization of theater education in South Korea, and suggests its application to classes in secondary schools focusing on its educational effects.
With the advent of the special situation of COVID-19 alon...
This study focuses on process drama for the revitalization of theater education in South Korea, and suggests its application to classes in secondary schools focusing on its educational effects.
With the advent of the special situation of COVID-19 along with the 4th Industrial Revolution, the present era requires a change in the method of education. Moving with the change to the competency-based curriculum that takes place under such circumstances, the Ministry of Education paid attention to ‘theatre’ as a subject that can develop six core competencies in order to nurture ‘creative and convergent talent’, a future-oriented human resource.
For school teachers, however, theater class is limited to Korean language lessons in the elementary and middle school curriculum, and is implemented as general electives in the high school curriculum. This means that theater education is still considered unfamiliar in schools. At the same time, it creates an environment in which it is difficult to continuously discuss the theater education method linked to schools.
By recognizing these problems and analyzing them from various perspectives, the author of this study discovered the utility of process drama as a method of theater education in the larger context of school culture and arts.
Especially, this study understands the need to expand the research on process drama, which is currently focused on young children and elementary school students, to secondary school students. Furthermore, it intends to focus in discussion on the educational effectiveness that can be achieved when using process drama in secondary school drama classes.
In conclusion, this study emphasizes that education should be continuously developed and prepared for the future even in the present difficult time. It argues that breaking from the past education method which involved Korean youths simply memorizing printed knowledge and raising test scores, we should use the process drama related to convergent education to gain a deep insight into life and strive to solve the complex problems facing society.
This is based on the belief that the use of process drama is useful for revitalizing theater education in the future, as shown through the blueprint for nurturing creative and convergent talent suggested through the previous revision curriculum and major changes such as the creation of a theater curriculum that leans on it.
The implications of this study can be summarized as follows.
First, if process drama is used in a class for secondary school students, it makes it possible to have an in-depth understanding of the life of adolescence as it is a method suitable for the trend which emphasizes integrated (convergent) art education that characteristically works with future growth.
Second, process drama covers from current problems to future problems and can promote creative problem-solving of secondary school students, through the essential structures of esthetic engagement, critical detachment, and various characteristics used during activities.
In order to derive these results, this study studies the characteristics of process drama in literature and presents a case study of process drama for revitalization of domestic theater education. It is hoped that the educational effects that can be obtained through the course drama will be confirmed with this, and that various discussions will be conducted for the revitalization of theater as a school subject in the follow-up studies in the future.