Fase 3: Validación y aplicación 34

Gaining consensus to be able to work in a school environment involves

different levels and layers of ethical concern (Blaxter, Hughes, & Tight, 2001, p.

158; Cohen, et al., 2007, pp. 51-59). In my project, I was helped by my

supervisor to meet up with two head teachers from the outset. Next, I met the

respective class teachers one month ahead of the actual project beginning.

The purpose of the research and the length of the research project were

discussed with them. The head teachers verbally authorised me to conduct the

research in their schools and committed to offer their full support, introducing

me to the teachers whom I was to liaison closely with during the field work,

reception staff, and peripheral facilities that I could use. On my side, I

processed the Criminal Record Bureau (CRB) checks well before going into the

schools.

When coming to the actual research sites, the class teachers introduced me

as a drama teacher, Miss Lo, to the children. I was also given some brief time

to introduce myself and to explain what I was going to bring them about drama

participation in the project. The social relationship thus was built up between

researcher/teacher and respondents/students, framed within a classroom

setting (Sarantakos, 2005, pp. 18-19).

Of all the research methods that I applied, filming and photography were the

two that could possibly expose children the most when publishing research

outcomes (Norman K. Denzin & Lincoln, 2008, p. 142). I informed the two class

teachers about image recording before any actual lessons took place. I also

asked their support to find out if there were any children that could not be

filmed or photographed.

Presenting data that were collected from other research methods, such as

interviews, children’s writing and drawing, their verbal interactions in drama

activities also involved another ethical concern with regard to confidentiality

(Cohen, et al., 2007, pp. 65,66; Sarantakos, 2005, p. 21). I chose to use

pseudonyms in order not to reveal children and teachers’ identities. This choice

reassured the participants and at the same time, maintained a humane

relationship that this project had at its heart. Nevertheless, in the case of school

B, children’s ethnic identification was indicated at times when presenting

C

4: F

D

This chapter will consist of both findings and theoretical analysis of the data

collected from my four case studies, which consist of four drama schemes of

work based on four different traditional Chinese stories. I will present my

findings case by case and each will include data drawn from two schools,

examined sequentially, as the two schools were very different demographically.

The fourth case was completed in school A only.

There are three core research questions I am looking at:

a) how do two contrasting classes of English primary schoolchildren respond to

and make sense of stories drawn from the Chinese tradition, told and

performed in different ways?

b) how do they articulate, adapt and embody values provoked and engaged

with during their drama work and in related classroom activities?

c) a subsidiary question: what can I learn as an ethnic Chinese teacher-artist

from this process in order better to understand this aspect of my practice?

The findings and analysis, however, do not address the first two questions

separately because they are intimately connected. Reflections connected with

short section to specifically address it at the end of the chapter.

Structuring the chapter has been extremely challenging. My initial

investigation was guided by three prisms, namely cosmopolitanism,

transnationalism and hybridity, which guided and shaped my fieldwork. Once

the data was collected, my review was guided by an ethnographic approach,

using thick description to explain and interpret the two groups of children’s

responses to each story. While doing so, certain themes emerged which urged

me to re-scrutinise and reconceptualise under the over-arching lens of social

identity. Nevertheless, some of the themes were not applicable to both groups

of children or to each story.

Religion as a marker of identity was one of the broader themes that I

found evidence for in both groups of children. With group A, it emerged in the

third and fourth stories; with group B, it was concentrated in the third story.

Reader response theorywas a theme applicable only to school A. I have

therefore given a theorised introduction to these themes in the introduction and

pick them up later in the analysis.

Another thematic focus is entitled Gender: exploring gender differences

with regard to moral reasoning. The evidence here is drawn from school A in

analysis of this story in school A.

A brief though problematic discussion centres around ethnicity and relates

only to the introductory story with the children from school B.

Hybridity in performance is another overarching theme most specifically

with the children in school A relating to the second and the fourth stories.

The Four Case Studies:

I will now summarise the key teaching and initial research foci for each

drama scheme and the related research methods I applied in each.

The introductory story,From Bad to Good to Bad to Good, constitutes my

first case and centres around a specific Chinese understanding of life as laden

with contradictions. My initial research interests here were to see what sense

children made of this idea; if and how their understandings shifted after TiR;

and to see what role theatrical representation could play in narrative storytelling.

I analysed data from children’s dramatic representations, their writings and

drawings, from group interviews, edited transcription of the TiR and from my

own journal.

The second case is the story Monkey and the White Bone Demon. I was

interested to know how participatory drama might introduce this story to British

children in China. I wished to introduce children to some basic Chinese

conventions for characterization, integrating traditional Chinese ways of

performing into the more Western drama education tradition. Subsequently I

was interested in how children adapted, used or refused the Chinese

conventions and how their bodies articulated this. The data I used here were

edited transcripts from the lessons, images captured on video of the children’s

representations and my demonstrations and children’s writings.

The third case is the story ofLiang and his Magic Paint Brush. Here I was

particularly interested in the ambiguity of Liang, who can be seen as a hero of

the poor or as a prototype extremist. To address this point I used two activities

which provided my key source of data. I also have children’s still images, their

verbal responses in circle time and interviews.

The fourth story is aboutMazu, the Goddess of the Sea. I was interested

in how a class of white British children would respond to the concept of

polytheism; how conventional Chinese performing could illustrate the

characters and also enrich my storytelling practice; and to what extent children

would adapt the physicalisation learned here and in previous sessions to their

own representations. In order to answer these questions, I draw from edited

and children’s writings.