Jazz big band is a common extra-curricular musical activity in Western Australian secondary schools. Jazz big band offers important fundamentals that can help expand a student's musical understanding. However, the teaching of conventions associated with big band jazz has often been haphazard and can be daunting and frightening, especially for…

Reviews six recent reports on high school reform. Concludes that theatre educators must consider change and create a stronger, more vital theatre curriculum to meet the needs of all adolescents. (PD)

Presents opinions of professionals on the current state of the high school play. Participants include a playwright, play supplier, high school theater instructor, workshop leader, and play publisher. Discusses selection, production, and performance of plays. (JMF)

Those interested in critical, feminist, and anti-racist pedagogy are on a search for means to counter dominant ways of speaking about stigmatized groups. Some see promise in popular theater, which starts from the experience of those on the margins. This ethnographic study followed 12 teen mothers, a highly stereotyped group, as they wrote and…

Radio theater production has been a component of secondary and post-secondary education since the late 1920s. Since the reduction in radio theater in the 1950s, such courses have been used to prepare students for other fields--television, film, etc. Radio theater production can be approached in two ways: classic production and modern production.…

Recommends that high school social studies teachers exploit student interest in contemporary musicians to teach techniques of biographical construction. Maintains that innovative classroom practices involving non-traditional subject matter can foster intellectual growth and historical understanding. (Author/DB)

Interactive theater typically involves the presentation of a short skit tied to a socially relevant issue such as teenage pregnancy or the use of illegal substances. Interactive theater, with some cautions considered, holds much promise as an educational tool to be used by a school counselor. Cautions requiring consideration include: thorough…

New trends for visual, musical, and theatrical arts are described in this report, which is arranged into seven brief sections. The first section reports on the trend to integrate the arts into the secondary academic curriculum (a kind of mainstreaming). Specific efforts directed toward mainstreaming at the local, state, and national levels are…