As discussed above, the moral theories of the three drama practitioners I draw upon come from broad philosophical agendas, all of which can be used to inform my own teaching and research. I will now present how they affect my thinking and practice in the present study respectively.
Firstly, Jonathan Neelands helps me to theorise a position while offering practical advice on how to conduct a drama class, specifically when I set up the contract with children in the preparatory session in the fieldwork. Moreover, he also presents an ideological connection with the kinds of discourse used in Marxist theory that I can exploit pragmatically in China. On the one hand, the ethics of justice and democracy he is concerned with are also important values promoted in the 24-word Core Socialist Values5. In my research, I try to create an equal and democratic at-
mosphere in the classroom and remind myself to be less authoritarian as a teacher in order to enhance the children’s independent thinking. On the other hand, the language used in Neelands’ writings - ‘community', ‘togetherness’, ‘social justice' and so on - fits nicely with the discourse of Marxism, which forms the philosophical foundation for the theories of education in China. Thus, on a practical level, Nee- lands provides me with a vocabulary to use selectively in the context of China in terms of moral and drama education. This will be particularly reflected in the third story-based workshop, when I explored with children the concept of community and tried to promote a sense of togetherness in the drama classroom. I will discuss this in more details in the data analysis chapter.
Secondly, I have learned from Brian Edmiston that drama has the capacity to gen- erate dialogue and help children to see things from others’ perspectives or hear their internal conflicting voices, from which they can extend or change their initial ideas by taking different views into consideration; thus, they can learn to be more thoughtful, especially in problematic situations. For example, I asked children to list both the pros and cans for a boy to save others’ lives on a stormy night in the third story-based workshop, from which they could hear the boy’s struggling inner dia-
5 According to Wikipedia, the Core Socialist Values is a set of new official interpretations of Chinese socialism promoted
at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012. The 12 values, written in 24 Chinese characters,
logue in a moral dilemma and form their own understanding of that situation in a complicated way. Moreover, I also try to engage children’s imagination to construct meaning together as Edmiston does in his practice. For instance, I asked the chil- dren to make up stories of an old man’s past to sympathize with him in the third story-based workshop, which enabled them to gain a more comprehensive view on the character through imaginative qualities.
Thirdly, Joe Winston’s belief in seeing moral life as a form of narrative and that stor- ies can be used for conveying such moral knowledge are illuminating principles for me. In my research, I taught three story-based drama workshops in each primary school, all of which were largely influenced by Winston’s work. Thus, instead of us- ing everyday, real-life events as teaching materials in the new moral curriculum in China, I based my own fieldwork on stories as Winston has suggested. In addition, Winston also suggests that children learn to reason by engaging their emotions at the same time, and dramatic contexts such as improvised dialogue can offer oppor- tunities for them to discuss both sensibly and emotionally. Therefore, unlike moral teaching's neglect of affect and emotion in China, I would also pay attention to how children learn to feel in drama in my study. Furthermore, as proposed by Winston, drama can introduce children to the domain of social ethics and prepare them to be active citizens in the future. In my study, I invited children to take on the roles of vil- lagers such as salesmen, veterinary hospital doctors and grave keepers in one session, in which they were given the chance to reflect upon how a person should behave in a public place. Such practice is in accordance with the main aim of the new moral curriculum in China, to help children become 'self-determined, liberal, democratic, equal and fair individuals', as the leading reformer Professor Lu has expected (Lu, 2004, p. 74, cited in Ping et al., 2004, p. 458).
To sum up, relying on the research tradition of using educational drama to enhance children’s moral development, the key issues for this approach might be that the learning process is playful and enjoyable; children are encouraged to work socially and make their own moral decisions, albeit within fictional contexts; they will nec- essarily explore various moral ideas as part of this process. I will attempt to fit this approach into the Chinese system and observe how it ties in with the current moral curriculum and critically consider its workings. My aim is to offer an option for ad- dressing the problems and challenges still existing in the moral curriculum reform, as stated previously.