Performing gender : using drama - in - education to explore gender identity in the grade 10 life skills curriculum

Abstract

This study investigates the use of drama-in-education (hereafter DIE) to explore the ways in which South African adolescents construct and perform gender identity. The study provides a brief outline of Life Orientation as a leaning area as part of the South African national curriculum, based on principles of outcomes-based-education, to contextualise the study. It maps the theoretical underpinnings that informs the implementation of the case study by theorising writings on power, identity and gender, with specific focus on the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. Furthermore, it conceptualises a pedagogical base for the use of drama-ineducation as methodology, by premising the work of Paulo Freire, as well as the dominant proponents of drama-in-education applicable to the case study. The theoretical underpinnings of the study, as well as drama-in-education serve to inform a critical discourse analysis of a case study conducted with Grade 10 learners in a secondary school in the Western Cape, South Africa. In the case study, this research explores ideas that influence the construction of gender identity as outlined by the Life Orientation curriculum, such as stereotypes, gender roles and power relations. The case study consists of a drama-in-education process, presented in 9 learning sessions. This study posits that DIE as a teaching methodology or instructional tool has the potential to stimulate modes of critical thought and understanding(s) of the ways in which gender identity is constructed.