Reflecting on “silly”: Exploring pre-service Foundation Phase teachers’ drama teaching and learning experiences in the creative arts module at Rhodes University

The Department of Basic Education mandates that Foundation Phase (FP) teachers teach creative arts subjects such as music, dance, drama and visual art in the FP. The BEd FP fourth year students do the creative arts drama module as part of their Life Skills 3 course. Although education programmes at universities like Rhodes offer creative arts training, the varying perceptions of student teachers often impact how creative arts subjects are taught in the FP classroom. This study follows an experiential and emancipatory framework that utilises the Drama-in-Education methodology to encourage students to reflect on their teaching and learning experiences during the experiential Creative Arts course module offered as part of their teacher qualification in year 4. The six-week content included songs, storytelling, improvisation, role-playing and teacher-in-role as pedagogical tools across the mandated CAPS FP curriculum. Data were collected in three phases. The first phase involved weekly written reflection tasks. This also involved a lesson observation and feedback from a colleague. The second data source came from the marked end-of-term reflection essays. The course evaluations were used in the third phase of the research. The research findings contribute to the enhancement of my teaching by establishing a performance teaching model for non-art-trained pre-service FP teachers. Additionally, the study contributes to the literature on learning experiences and teacher training university programmes that prepare FP teachers to be effective Creative Arts teachers. Thus, it contributes to the growing knowledge and studies on the uses of Drama-in-Education in higher education classrooms as a counter-hegemonic pedagogical approach.