Decolonising Our Teaching by Embracing Drama Pedagogy and Theatre in Education in Higher Education Classes

The pedagogy that characterises higher education classes tends to align predominantly to a banking approach to teaching, where the lecturer is central to the teaching process while the students are passive recipients of the knowledge with limited opportunities for critical engagement and reflection on the content presented to the class. The outcome of this approach to teaching and learning is the development of a passive citizenry with limited critical and creative thinking skills; the kind of citizenry required by a neoliberal society with its market-driven economy, capitalistic outlook, and profit-driven agenda. The implementation of drama pedagogy and theatre in education in our university classes offers the potential to subvert this narrative by tapping into the students' funds of knowledge and stimulating students to think critically and creatively as they engage with specific themes and issues covered in their university lectures. It is with this background in mind that we provide a critical reflection, in this article, on how drama pedagogy and theatre in education have the potential to contribute to decolonising teaching and learning by focusing on the development of students' critical and creative thinking skills so that they can become agents of change to confront social injustice. Through our engagement with these arts-based pedagogies, we will shed light on the crux of their epistemology, their historical background, and examine their pedagogical significance based on our personal insights and experiences, and how they could be applied within university classes to decolonise students' thinking

Theatre and Performance Studies