Contracting In by Matthew Milburn

Jonathan Neelands has written at length about the democratic classroom and the need for children to contract into learning. In essence what he talks about in "Making Sense of Drama" (1984) is the teacher being explicit about the fact that they want to work with children to co-create drama.

This means that everyone in the room / studio would choose a particular area of human experience and choose to explore it. It means that children are empowered to shape the lesson to meet their own interests and skills and that they are respectful and negotiate with one another.

If this high ambition is to be fulfilled then children in the drama classroom need to take responsibility for their own learning.

Nearly forty years on and there appear to be very few schools (certainly in the secondary sector) that talk about co-creation of the curriculum. Teachers and students would rightly say that the curriculum is given to them; a vast body of knowledge that they somehow have to assimilate and communicate.

Many schools would argue that students taking responsibility for their own learning is at the heart of their mission. Yet levels of disillusionment amongst pupils appear to be higher than ever. There appears to be clear evidence that it is very difficult to take responsibility for something you don't much care about and have little control over.

Drama is given a tiny corner of the curriculum in KS3, it is a social art form and a space in which children should be invited and actively encouraged to explore the world as they see it.

Interested in learning more about contracting students into learning? Matthew Milburn is one of the NATD’s practitioners running a series of workshops across the country looking at engaging young people in GCSE Set Texts. Book your place on a workshop near you.