60 pages
ISBN-10: 1 85856 073 X
ISBN-13: 978 1 85856 073 1

Issues in Education Series No. 1

This is the first in a series of papers on issues in education to be published by Trentham Books for the Faculty of Education at the University of Central England.

Alistair Muir's paper, based on his dissertation for the award of MA in Drama in Education, is a timely study of knowledge and change in the drama of Heathcote and Brecht. Timely given the way in which knowledge is being presented in the present National Curriculum (referred to by Alistair Muir as an empiricist approach to knowledge) where the pupils are introduced to knowledge which is partial, disembedded, factual and where the skills are functional rather than embracing the ability critically read and change the world.

In this study Alistair Muir argues that there is much that is complementary in the approaches of Brecht and Heathcote, particularly in that they both view knowledge as holistic, with no separation of thinking and feeling into artificially divided categories and where action is seen as implicit in the search for and use of knowledge. Knowledge for both Heathcote and Brecht is 'how we think and feel and believe each day' and that knowing process must relate the present with the past to prepare for action in the present/future.

He sets out to demystify Heathcote and make her usable, and explores her concern to enable people to be politically active (with a small p) in a word that is rather preordained but where we all have room to make things 'better'. He sees Brecht as having a different stance (being concerned with politics with a big lit), but both as being concerned to work artistically in a fictional world to enable those engaged with this art process to be differently in the world.