Abstract: In teacher education literature, there is a special attention on the resistant nature of preservice teachers. There is a growing list of unconventional teaching methods in teacher education programs to deal with resistance. Educational drama is only one of these alternative methods that teacher educators utilized in their classrooms to facilitate learning and development of the future teachers. This ethnographic case study explored the nature of resistance in a teacher education classroom among preservice teachers toward the teacher education program, teacher educators and their choice of educational drama as instructional method. Data collection methods included semi-structured individual and group interviews, participant observation in the local settings and WebCT discussions. The data were collected during one course over 10 week period. The participants were one teacher educator and 16 preservice teachers enrolled in Masters in Education program at a regional campus of a Midwestern state university in the USA.

INTRODUCTION

The social, economical, technological and political changes in society have complicated the roles of the teachers in classrooms and society as well as those of the teacher educators (Cochran-Smith, 2004). Teacher education programs have often been criticized for falling short in preparing future teachers with their increasingly demanding task of teaching (Ben-Pretz, 2001). Ben-Pretz (2001) argues that any failure in schooling is attributed to the teachers and therefore to the teacher education programs for failing to prepare the teachers for their task. Cochran-Smith (2004) describes teacher education as a problematic and contested enterprise, troubled by enduring and value-laden questions about the purposes and goals of education in a democratic society. Teacher education literature indicates that preservice teachers’ attitudes toward the courses in teacher education are influenced by their prior beliefs about teaching and learning (Borko and Putnam, 1995). The prior beliefs that preservice teachers have become a filter through which preservice teachers evaluate the courses and instructions (Kagan, 1992). Teachers’ existing conceptions of learning and of subject matter as well as their beliefs in teaching and in themselves as teachers might create resistance in teachers to any teacher change attempts (Borko and Putnam, 1995). In teacher education literature, there is a special attention on the resistant nature of preservice teachers. There are abundant studies to show that preservice teachers come to teacher education programs with a well-developed belief system that lead preservice teachers to resist to ideas and teaching methods that contrary to their belief systems. According to Kagan (1992), teacher belief is as a particularly provocative form of personal knowledge that is generally defined as pre- or inservice teachers' implicit assumptions about students, learning, classrooms and the subject matter to be taught. Preservice teachers develop their beliefs about the nature of teaching and learning over the years of schooling which Lortie (1975) calls apprenticeship of observation, internalizing good and bad practices (Kagan, 1992). Joram and Gabriele (1998) identified three sets of beliefs that common among preservice teachers:

Because these beliefs are embedded in their life stories, the researchers argue that these beliefs are stable and resistant to change (Joram and Gabriele, 1998; Richardson, 1996).

There is a consensus among scholars that critical reflection and intentional effort to think about one’s own experience are the core issues for any innovative teacher education programs to facilitate personal and professional growth of teachers (Greenman and Kimmel, 1995). The question is how teacher education programs can get new teachers to be reflective practitioners and analyze their own experience to get deeper understanding of their students?

In order to meet the internal (teachers’ job satisfaction, sense of self efficacy, etc.) and external demands (social and political demands), teacher educators has been searching for the alternative instructional methods to bring up the quality in teacher education. Haberman (1991) argues that the shift from traditional transmission model to more powerful instructional modes is the first step in achieving success in colleges and universities. As a result of the search for more effective instructional methods to prepare new teachers for the challenges of society and the school system, researchers attempt to find ways to incorporate more unconventional teaching methodologies. There is a growing list of unconventional teaching methods in teacher education programs.

Among the suggested instructional methods there are reflective journal writing (Francis, 1995; Hiemstra, 2001; Manouchehri, 2002), autobiographical writing (Braun and Crumpler, 2004; Harlin, 1999), peer discourse (Manouchehri, 2002), small group exercises, simulations (McAllister and Irvine, 2002), cultural immersion trips (McAllister and Irvine, 2002), field experiences (Rust, 1999), action research (Price and Valli, 2005), using literature and media and metaphors of teaching profession and teachers’ roles (Ben-Pretz et al., 2003; Inbar, 1996; Sumsion, 2002) and process drama (Griggs, 2001). Several authors have linked teaching profession with performing art (Whatman, 1997; Griggs, 2001) and argued that the arts are necessary tool to prepare new teachers for their future roles. Educational drama is only one of these alternative methods that teacher educators utilized in their classrooms to facilitate learning and development of the future teachers (Griggs, 2001). There is an increasing body of research investigating the role of drama in teaching and learning. The existing drama literature suggests that drama offers several opportunities for educators to promote learning and development. For example, drama allows participants to be engaged, motivated, empowered and active agents of learning (Heathcote, 1984; Wagner, 1999).

When drama is interwoven into education it promotes literacy, multiple interpretations, problem solving and collaboration among students (Styslinger, 2000). It allows the new learning to be connected to previous knowledge and gives teachers room to see children’s interests and developmental level and to facilitate further learning (Courtney, 1990; Heathcote, 1981). Other studies found that drama improves oral language (Pellegrini, 1980), reading (Isenberg and Jacob, 1983) and writing (Pellegrini, 1980; Wagner, 1998). While few studies examined the use of dramatic activities in teacher education (Brindley and Laframboise, 2002; McAllister and Irvine, 2002), most of these studies overlooked how preservice teachers experience dramatic activities as participants. The studies that investigated the use of drama in teacher education settings have mainly focused on the outcome of educational drama. While student culture is increasingly studied in grade levels, preservice teachers’ experiences and lives are often perceived in an individualistic manner and student culture in teacher education is overlooked. As a result, the knowledge in the use of educational drama in teacher education settings and preservice teachers’ perspectives as participants in dramatic activities are limited.

This study aims to focus on issues of resistance among preservice teachers against the teacher educators in the context of drama activities. In this study, educational drama provided the context in which the preservice teachers and the teacher educator interacted. Therefore, the focus of this study was the process rather than the outcome of the dramatic activities.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In this study, I observed and participated in the classroom of a teacher educator located at a regional campus of a Midwestern university in the USA during 2005 winter quarter. In this class the teacher educator used drama to achieve multiple ends, including drama as a way to explore multicultural issues, as an instructional method to teach a content area and as a model to illustrate drama techniques so that the students can emulate these techniques and incorporate in their own teaching philosophy and practices with their future students. Because drama is a negotiated and nonreproducible art form I chose an ethnographic case study approach. Ethnographic approach refers to studying cultures and human experience in its sociocultural context (Geertz, 1973; Wolcott, 1999; Zaharlick, 1992). While I aimed to gather information from an insider’s point of view, during data analysis my goal is to achieve a balance between emic (insider’s) and etic (outsider) perspectives to enable myself to do grounded interpretations (Wolcott, 1999).

The participants of the study were Dr. Erin and her 16 students enrolled in Masters in Education program at a regional campus of a Midwestern state university. In addition to Dr. Erin, Dr. Kathy and Dr. Connors provided me insights about this preservice teachers and the school context. Dr. Kathy also allowed me to observe her class during her drama practice with the same preservice teachers. Dr. Erin was an assistant professor in a Midwestern public university where she had received her PhD in Drama Education and Young Adult Literature. She was currently working on a regional campus of the same university. Other participants were 16 preservice teachers who were randomly placed in cohorts when they entered the College of Education and who took classes and participated in field experiences together during their five semester program. The majority of the students were White, middle-class and female. Two of the students were male and the rest of the students were female. Half of the students were in their early twenties and the other half was various ages from 30-40. In terms of ethical diversity, except one Asian-American female, the rest of the students were white.

The course title as Critical Reading in the Content Fields that was the focus of this research was one of the required classes for all of the students in middle school MEd program. The class was held two times a week during the quarter. Each class took 3 h. There were total 10 sessions because the students were away several weeks for field experiences. In this study I utilized ethnographic data collection methods including participant observation, face to face interviews and analysis of documents. By developing direct, respectful and sustained relationships with the group and recording and reporting the experiences of the participants, I aimed to capture the essence of the experience for all participants and practical nature of drama in this particular context. The focal issue of data collection during this study was to understanding the process that the participants go through. Although, I participated in the classroom activities, my primary position will be the observer. Merriam calls this position as Observer as participant. Through participant observation, I involved directly in the activities of the classroom, watched carefully what participants did and said, followed their example and slowly became a part of their group, activities, conversations and connections.

I attended eight class sessions during the quarter and interviewed with the teacher educator and preservice teachers regularly to get a deeper understanding of their experience. I also interviewed two more professors in the same program to explore the teacher educators’ side of the story. I monitored Web-CT discussions to follow the preservice teachers’ reflection on classroom activities and assigned readings. WebCT was an online discussion form that was a requirement of the course. As a part of this requirement, each preservice teacher was to post reflection on the web regarding classroom activities, assigned readings and other students’ postings. The major instrument of data collection was I as a participant observer. According to Merriam when researchers participate in the activities that they observe, they may have access to many people and a variety of information. As I attended the classes, my observations, field notes, impressions and feelings played a main role in data collection as well as data analysis. Creswell states, the qualitative researcher is the primary instrument for data collection and analysis. Data are mediated through this human instrument, rather than through inventories, questionnaires, or machines. In order to strength my observations, I videotaped each class session for further observation. I recorded 13 videotapes in Dr. Erin’s classes. In addition to that, I observed another professor’s class in which she used drama to teach math content and videotaped it. The second major source of data came from the informal individual and group interviews.

During the data collection process, the participants were given the choice of individual or group interviews. While group interviews provided another level of perspective for the research problem, they were not meant to replace individual interviews. I conducted 5 group interviews during the quarter. During 4 months after the quarter was over, I conducted 2 more group interviews and 6 individual interviews to reach a deeper understanding of participants’ point of view. Interviews took between 30 min to 1, 5 h depending on the availability of participants. I conducted 2 interviews with the teacher during the quarter and 4 interviews after the quarter was over. The interviews with Dr. Erin were organized around the themes that emerged from the results of the codes that I identified from data. I conducted individual interviews with two other professors, Dr. Kathy and Dr. Connor who taught the same group of preservice teachers.

In addition to the observation and interviews, the WebCT postings once a week allowed me to monitor the participants’ reflections on what went on in the classroom. WebCT was open after the class was over and I continued monitoring it to get retrospective reflections from the participants. The body of the data was consisted of audiotapes from individual and group interviews with the preservice teachers and teacher educators, WebCT postings, field notes, analytical memos and videotapes of the classroom sessions. I transcribed the interview audiotapes myself to get familiar with the data but I approach the videotapes in selective manner. I utilized the NVIVO software to organize and manage the data. I transferred all the WebCT postings, interview transcripts and elaborated my field notes into the NVIVO software. I constantly consulted with the current data to get a deeper understanding of new information. Through coding and recoding I tried to reach some themes and categories that represents the experiences and point of views of the participants.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this particular group, resistance has manifested in several ways. While it was never face to face struggle between the teacher and the students, active silence and withdrawal attitude were observable during classroom activities.

Table 1:	The content of activities

The WebCT board became a place for students to articulate their discomfort and concerns. Although, all the participants accepted the existence of resistance in this teacher education classroom, they all perceived the nature of the resistance from different perspectives. The three teachers I interviewed during this study perceived these preservice teachers as noncollaborative, judgmental and resistant to constructivist paradigm, to individual teachers and to different instructional methods. However, the students perceived themselves critical against the program, the content of the courses, the teachers and instructional methods. While the teacher educators, Dr. Erin and two other faculty members that I interviewed, this resistance was an embodiment of the preservice teachers’ beliefs and attitudes about the learning theories and constructivist instructional methods, for the preservice teachers the resistance was a result of critical thinking toward the teacher educators and their approaches to teaching.

The classroom activities were shaped around particular drama activities that were dubbed burka drama by the participants. Burka is a traditional Middle Eastern dress that covers women’s whole body including the eyes. The teacher of the course, Dr. Erin used story of Sharbat’s story as pretext for the drama activities. Sharbat was an Afghani woman, whose picture was taken in 1984 in a refugee camp in Pakistan and became the cover of the National Geographic Magazine in 1985. The picture made her famous world-wide but nobody knew who she was. After the fall of Taliban regime, the same photographer searched for the Sharbat in 2002 and found her married with three daughters. The purpose of the burka drama was to get students engaged in discussing about multicultural and diversity issues and to create conceptual change in the preservice teachers’ beliefs. Through Sharbat’s story Dr. Erin aimed to provide them with a fictional and unfamiliar context and a multicultural problem to get preservice teachers to think out of their thinking habits. By providing this limited context, Dr. Erin was aiming for going beyond quick and fixed answers to uncover the preservice teachers’ beliefs and help them become aware of their beliefs. She wanted to use drama as a mirror to make their thinking visible for herself and for the students.

The drama activities were as shown in Table 1. The activities were revolved around the actual burka which Dr. Erin brought to the classroom and fictionalized story of Sharbat and her daughters. In the beginning of the burka drama the students seemed to be attentive and they expressed their curiosity about burka and Sharbat’s story. As the drama progressed the students seemed less attentive and less engaged. Except one incident, resistance was often materialized as indifference, silence or apathy among the preservice teachers.

The obvious conflict between the teacher educator and preservice teachers happened when Dr. Erin asked her students to try the burka on. During the first class, after introducing the burka, Dr. Erin asked the class if anybody else would like to try. One student, Ashley, said no, and another student next to her said ok. Dr. Erin asked to Ashley to try the burka. When she protested, Dr. Erin explained that she did not have a choice as Afghani women did not have a choice. She tried it on unwillingly and walked around the classroom and told the classroom about how she felt. After she took the burka off, Dr. Erin asked the class to think about why burka was made the way it was made, explained some practical reasons by showing it and moved on to other activities. Ashley described this experience during an interview:

After the first class, Dr. Erin recognized the discomfort among the students and considered stopping the drama. Dr. Erin attributed some students’ discomfort to the unfamiliar context in which they could not get away with quick answers and got extremely frustrated. For her, the students just gave up and blamed the drama and the teacher instead of looking at the situation to question what they believed and why they felt certain way. In the class, the students accepted their ignorance about Afghani culture and social issues related to it but instead of trying to learn more about it they just dismissed the activities and got angry with the teacher for putting them in that situation.

Dr. Erin explained this situation, Many of them identified that they did not know much about the culture instead of saying, that just shows I need to think, I need to research more, I need to consider options’ they got mad and shut it down. Dr. Connor, one of the teacher educators, explains this situation as:

Although, the students appeared to be resistant to the burka drama and seemed to have negative attitude against drama in general, most of the students stated that they believe in the value of drama and they will use it in their teaching. For example, Anne wrote on WebCT:

Among the preservice teachers there were two different concerns. First, some preservice teachers were concerned about the challenges and limitations that drama presented. Most of the students shared the common attitude that drama was good for some of the content fields such as language arts and social sciences and not practical and effective for some other content fields such as math and natural sciences.

Another concern about the use of drama was that drama takes too much time and that the same objectives can be achieved with more traditional instructional methods in a shorter time and more efficiently. Also, some students identified themselves not being a drama person and considered drama as a personal choice. One of the students, Gwen posted on the WebCT, I chalk it up to me not being a language arts person and also to me being uncomfortable with all the drama because it just is not me. Similarly, Diana wrote:

The second type of concern was about the content of the burka drama and how it was applied. The preservice teachers often expressed their concern that they were afraid to be in the spotlight and to do or say something that may be offensive to the Afghani culture in this fictional community. Drama is often perceived by the students as a set of activities that put them in the spot light. Amy explained this concern on WebCT as, another issue I thought of was time or lack there of. With my experiences of trying to incorporate drama into the classroom, I have found that not ALL students feel comfortable with it. According to Amber, classroom dynamics played an important role in creating a resistant attitude toward the burka drama and the teacher. Amber said:

Despite the signs of discomfort among preservice teachers, Dr. Erin decided to continue with burka drama.

For her, it was either she was to stop drama to end the discomfort of the students and forget about her concerns that some students might graduate with stereotypical attitudes or she was to continue drama and taking the risk of being disliked among her students in order to work on the issues of multiculturalism to prepare them to be better teachers. After each class she initiated discussions about what had happened in the classroom and how drama worked with different purposes. After focusing on the burka drama during first two classes, Dr. Erin moved on to other activities but she visited the burka drama occasionally by incorporating the story into other activities. Although, the burka drama did not continue after the second class its effects on the students were apparent. This drama experience had a prolonged effect on the students and their interaction with the teacher throughout the quarter and beyond. The students continued talking among themselves about that drama experience throughout the quarter and occasionally discussed it on WebCT. Similarly, the students were eager to discuss with me about their experiences with drama.

As I interviewed with Dr. Erin I realized that she also continued thinking about this experience and discussed with her colleagues to understand the students’ negative reactions and the source of their resistance to this drama. This continued interest in burka drama provided me with a context in which all participants were invested in understanding of their own experience. After the quarter was over I continued interviewing the teacher and the students about their perceptions of the drama activities in the classroom. I conducted interview in an informal way so that Dr. Erin and the students would talk about the issues that they concerned most. The burka drama was the major issue in these interviews because both Dr. Erin and the students perceived this experience as intense and intriguing. The preservice teachers told me that they were happy to talk about their experiences because they kept thinking about it and they often discussed among themselves. During the data analysis, resistance emerged as a major theme concerning the drama activities, classroom dynamics and interpersonal relationships between the teacher educators and preservice teachers as well as among preservice teachers.

Community dynamics and power issues were two other themes that emerged from data. These two themes were closely related to how resistance manifested in this class during drama activities. In this study, dramatic activities provided a context to observe preservice teachers in action. Although, this course was not a multicultural class per se, Dr. Erin formed one of the drama units, the burka drama, around the diversity issues and multicultural understanding. During the previous quarter, Dr. Erin sensed stereotypical beliefs and cultural insensitivity among the preservice teachers and used this course as an opportunity to create a discussion on how much do we embrace multiculturalism? Dr. Erin and the other teacher educators considered this group of preservice teachers as extremely resistant group and hard to work with.

But, what exactly was this group resistant against and why and how did this resistance become a part of the classroom discourse? Why was this group resistant during one educational drama (the burka drama) and why not during some other drama activities (school board meeting drama) happened during the same course with the same teacher educator?

The results of this study demonstrated that in many aspects, this particular cohort was very similar to the ones that the teacher education literature talked about in terms of resistance. When these preservice teachers found the activities relevant to what they believed to be their future roles, they were actively involved and attentive. On the other hand, when they did not see the immediate connection between the activities and their expectations, they acted in a way that teacher educators considered as resistance. During the burka drama, preservice teachers clearly could not see the relevance of Sharbat’s story with their lives and the dress burka was just too alien to them. The findings of this study suggest that resistance was often about conflict of interests.

While Dr. Erin was interested in belief change, the preservice teachers were interested in practical knowledge of teaching. As a result, in this course about reading in content field, the preservice teachers had hard time to perceive the relevance of the process drama about life in Afghanistan. In the burka drama the preservice teachers were put into a situation that they could not connect the drama activities with their lives, prior knowledge and beliefs. As a result, they could not connect the activities with their immediate purposes. According to Cothran and Ennis (1997):

On the other hand, when they took the roles in drama relevant to their interests such as teachers, administrators or parents as in the other process dramas, the school board meeting and the end of the quarter drama, the students seemed to be attentive and collaborative. The resistance is about different value systems that teacher educators and preservice teachers attribute to the same practice. According to Smith (2005):

However, resistance does ot necessarily indicate that preservice teachers are unwilling to engage in the educational process. According to Cothran and Ennis (1997) student may not have been resisting engagement in education but rather were resisting engagement in a curriculum in which their heritage, values and future were not considered. The preservice teachers in this study frequently stated that it was not drama or any other teaching methods that they were critical about:

A close examination of the findings yielded interesting insights for the nature of resistance in this classroom context. Conflicting interests in the classroom seemed to have created polarization between teacher educator and preservice teachers. The preservice teachers became extremely critical against not only the teaching approach but also the teacher educators. In return, the teacher educator focused on the symptom which was resistance, rather than the underlying issues of this resistance. In this context, the teacher educator’s attempt to create cognitive dissonance in preservice teachers’ belief systems encountered with contempt and discomfort.

Preservice teachers have to be willing to examine their belief systems and assumptions on teaching and learning and teacher educators must take these belief systems into account for successful process to create cognitive dissonance (McFals and Cobb-Roberts, 2001). According to Kagan (1992):

It appears from the findings of this study that when open dialog in a safe environment is absent during an activity, process drama in this case, in a teacher education classroom, the resistance is an inevitable outcome. Before teacher educators can expect their students to value the pedagogical and content knowledge that they are teaching, they need to acknowledge and honor their students’ beliefs, interests and assumptions on what teaching and learning is about. This conclusion corresponds with Smith (2005) suggestions:

Preservice teachers’ beliefs on teaching and learning and about themselves seem to have a focal point in the success of teacher education program in preparing future teachers able and culturally sensitive (Kagan, 1992). Many researchers (Kagan (1992), Pajares (1992) and Richardson (1996) for extended review on preservice teachers’ beliefs) suggest that in order for change to happen, preservice teachers must be willing to examine their assumptions, beliefs about their teaching philosophy and to take risks to apply new ideas into their practice.

But, how can teacher educators create a context in which preservice teachers feel the need for examining their belief systems and assumptions and take risks to put new ideas into practice? In his discussion about teaching reading and writing, Vygotsky (1978) suggests that teaching should be relevant to children’s lives. Teachers should organize the materials and information in a way that they are necessary for something that children need. Writing and any other subjects should be meaningful to children.

Similarly, I argue through this study that the use of drama in a teacher education classroom should be relevant to preservice teachers’ lives, values and interests. I further argue that resistance among preservice teachers against instructional method, educational theory or even against teacher educators is a sign that preservice teachers are not playing the college game, that is they are not pretending to learn and giving what teacher educators are expecting but genuinely interested in what goes on in the classroom. Doyle (1993) goes even further and declares that resistance is a necessary component of education:

Resistance in teacher education is often attributed to preservice teachers’ preconceived beliefs regarding teaching and learning (Pajares, 1992). One of the main beliefs that Pajares (1992) identified was preservice teachers’ emphasize on learning through practice. I argue that educational drama provides preservice teachers with living through experience in which they can put their theories into practice. By experiencing other people’s lives, considering their problems, preservice teachers can make connection to their experiences, exercise what they know and possibly reassess their cultural beliefs (Brindley and Laframboise, 2002).

CONCLUSION

The results showed that when preservice teachers did not see the immediate connection between the activities and their expectations, they acted in a way that teacher educators considered as resistance. Also, when preservice teachers assumed the roles in a drama activity relevant to their interests, they were attentive and collaborative.

The resistance was found to be often about conflict of interests. Conflicting interests in the classroom seemed to have created polarization between teacher educator and preservice teachers and as a result the preservice teachers became extremely critical against not only the teaching approach but also the teacher educator. In return, the teacher educator focused on the symptom which was resistance rather than the underlying issues of this resistance.