In this paper, drawing on Bakhtin's carnival theory, I argue that teachers can play a transgressive role--similar to that of the carnival fool--by taking on a story role and by interacting with the children in the drama convention of Teacher-in-Role. The carnival notion of 'decrowning-crowning' allows me to understand how the teachers disguise and…

This article explores how multicultural policy approaches, which mandate the inclusion of culturally and ethnically "diverse" play materials in early childhood classrooms influence the pedagogical practice of educators and, in turn, children's play and social interactions. Using data collected through participant observation of…

In February 2012, London-based theatre company Collective Artistes previewed "ZHE: [noun] Undefined," a new play created by director Chuck Mike and performers Tonderai Munyevu and Antonia Kemi Coker. The play follows the true life stories of the two performers, both British Africans, living at the intersections of culture, nationality, gender and…

In this article, we consider the aesthetic, political and pedagogical strengths of a verbatim theatre performance, "The Middle Place" by Project: Humanity, a play that explores the experiences of shelter youth in Toronto, Canada. This ethnographic study moved from drama classrooms into theatres and charted audience responses to the…

Drawing on the theory of dialogism and the literature on children's culture and cultural resistance, this article investigates the contextual and textual features of the cultural making of a group of children in sociodramatic play in a Hong Kong kindergarten. Different from other, similar studies, this study reports that under the gaze of the…

This play describes how the authors become aware of the complexities of resistance and performativity in the qualitative interview process. It also illustrates how this awareness and subsequent acquisition of knowledge changed and informed the way they viewed qualitative research interviewing. More specifically, performativity is put into work in…

This paper describes a high school theatre program's project in which Anna Deavere Smith's documentary theatre work serves as the foundation for play-building for students. Research in theatre arts supports the use of play-building as a way to explore major themes of relevance to students. However, there is little research addressing documentary…

This study of a preschool classroom of 4 year old children examines underlying skills of number sense such as counting and spatial skills and Spontaneous Focusing on Numerosity. It also investigates children's patterns of engaging in spontaneous mathematical activities in free-play activity centers in relation to behaviors associated with…

The research on which this paper is based is a response to the UNESCO directive for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) 2005-2014. Educators are advised to prepare young people for sustainable development and global citizenship and the Arts should be included in programmes in ESD. This paper presents an overview of a research…

This article seeks to better understand the relation between local and traditional modes of communication and health literacy within the context of a rural West Nile community in Northern Uganda. Drawing on social semiotics (multimodality) and Bakhtin's notion of the carnival, the focus is on a group of women participating in a grassroots literacy…