Drew Chappell

Training Americans: Ideology, Performance, and Social Studies Textbooks

Through an analysis of activities called for in social studies texts at three grade levels, the author critically examines the links between childrens improvisational performance and social studies curricula. He asks: What is unique about the process of embodying a historical or contemporary character as part of the learning process (such as a re-enactment of the “First Thanksgiving” scenario)? How do students adopt various ideologies through playing a role? How have adult textbook writers and teachers constructed history and contemporary issues through the parameters of these performances? Using typologies and assertion development, the author finds that the activities call for young people to perform a normative U.S. citizenship. He explores some ways this performance might be disrupted through the application of extended drama and/or creative writing practices.

School as Ceremony and Ritual: How Photography Illuminates Performances of Ideological Transfer

Images of the places and activities called “school” as a formal institution are rich data for the inquiring gaze. This article focuses specifically on historical photos of school rituals and ceremonies through which young people perform particular narratives of schooling through repetitive embodied practice and in turn construct values and beliefs about themselves and wider society. In particular, we look at rituals of the habitual, coming of age ceremonies, patriotic rituals and ceremonies, and degradation rituals and ceremonies. In analysis of these photographs, we ask, what meanings are (re)performed in such rituals and ceremonies? Why are these performances important to consider in the context of young people’s identity negotiation and school reform? And, after such an analysis, how might any of the performances contain spaces for (student and teacher) agency, including resistance and transformation?

Building Social Inclusion through Critical Arts-Based Pedagogies in University Classroom Communities.

In humanities and education university classrooms, the authors facilitated counter-narrative arts-based inquiry projects in order to build critical thought and social inclusion. The first author examines public performance installations created by graduate students in elementary and bilingual education on needs-based and dignity-based rights of bilingual families at schools. The second author examines visual and performance art pieces on historical colonial practices in world history, created by undergraduate theatre students. We suggest that critical arts-based pedagogies can build classroom communities and social inclusion, particularly through collaborative counter-narrative and problem-posing research and performance practices about minoritisation in history and contemporary society.