Building Moral Communities Through Educational Drama

There is no other book like this one. Building Moral Communities fills a wide gap in the research literature on effective teaching strategies to build better social skills, conflict management competence, and deep understanding of history, literature, and social interactions and organization. Despite pleas for the infusion of more drama in classroom instruction, there is far too little authority in the form of methodologically sound and convincing research to back up the claims of drama specialists. This book is for those looking for that authority: researchers, advocates, teachers, policy makers, and doctoral students who want to look at responsible citizens. College teachers of such courses as social foundations of education, educational drama and the arts, drama across the curriculum, creative approaches to curriculum, current research method alternatives, instructional strategies, social policy issues in education, and character education will find this a valuable textbook. They will also find the descriptions of drama's use in adult classes informative and useful. Although the focus of this book is on the effects of drama, teachers of all levels and subjects will find the rich and detailed descriptions of drama in action an illuminating guide for their own practice.

BETTY JANE WAGNER is an internationally recognized authority on the educational uses of drama in the classroom and on writing instruction./e The author of numerous books in the field, she is professor in the College of Education at Roosevelt University and Director of the Chicago Area Writing Project.