A case study of drama education for indigenous children in the alternative classroom

Abstract

The alternative classroom has recently attracted much attention as it can engage and encourage children while teaching them life skills. This study briefly investigated the impact of drama lessons on the growth of indigenous students in one of West Malaysia's orang Asli communities. It is essential in widening the option of teaching approach because it would enable educators and indigenous students to learn more about drama as an alternative approach to learning. Through drama education, the children would also be introduced to various learning experiences and classroom settings. This paper investigates how drama is used as a method in the alternative classroom for indigenous children. It hopes to prove that children will be interested in learning and be able to develop their social skills if given more opportunities. In the qualitative study, the instruments employed to investigate what transpired throughout the activities were observation and interviews. Findings of this research reveals positive outcomes of drama, categorised into learning from real-life situations. It also highlights the use of drama to improve the children's non-verbal communication. The findings can be used as a guideline for practitioners to get a general overview of how drama can be used as a teaching approach in the alternative classroom and could be a discovery for the curriculum planner to implement drama for both formal and informal learning. This study could be complemented by future research on the challenges involved in teaching drama to indigenous children. Other than this, observation periods should be longer and more frequent because social and educational progress takes time to develop. Finally, future researchers may need to think about using alternative drama strategies that would fit the children's abilities.