PGCE (Secondary) - Drama – (Grad.Cert.)

Contents

As well as focusing on the drama curriculum in the first three years of secondary education, the programme covers drama and performing arts courses for pupils from 14 to 19. We pay special attention to the relationship between English and drama in the National Curriculum, and between drama and other disciplines in the arts curriculum.

In College-based sessions, you engage in practical drama at your own level and then analyse this from the perspective of participant and teacher. Starting to teach grows out of this, coupled with you observing drama in schools, re-visiting the work of key practitioners, and beginning to develop the conceptual underpinnings of classroom practice.

Drama students are placed in pairs in schools to support each other, and to engage in joint planning and team-teaching, though most of your timetable will eventually involve sole responsibility for classes. School-based tutors are heads of department or experienced drama specialists.

In the Autumn term, you have an intensive introduction to drama in education at College and begin weekly induction visits to your first teaching practice school. As the term develops, you spend four days a week in school beginning to develop teaching skills, and return to College on the fifth day for support in lesson planning, managing behaviour, and assessing and recording pupils´ progress.

At the start of the Spring term there is a similar pattern of College-based work, with a weekly induction visit to your second teaching practice school. This enables you to build on everything you have learned in the first term and to plan for your second block of school experience. You then spend five days a week in this school until the Summer half-term, getting a sense of what it means to be a full-time drama teacher. In the final weeks you return to College and complete your Career Entry Profile. You also engage in a review and evaluation of the programme as a whole.