Writing-in-Role

Writing-in-role has a distinctive history in English classrooms. This chapter draws on data from two research projects (2015, 2021) conducted with trainee teachers to develop an understanding of aspects of the relationship between drama-in-English and writing-in-role. The writing-in-role that emerged from these projects is suggestive of a heightened awareness of the visual dimensions of the drama and literary texts that inspired it. The interactions between seeing, observing, and visualising – between embodiment, enactment, and writing – are multilayered. The emphasis in this chapter is on the effects of watching as well as making and performing, listening as well as speaking, and on how seeing supports make-believing. The evidence of a teacher's considered choices in addressing students in-role as a stimulus for writing is suggestive of the possibilities of an appeal to the imagination that might happen in the most constrained of English classroom contexts. Being able to see a significant interpretation of the narrative in bodily form appears to have supported the development of a degree of criticality in the students’ writing. These findings support the argument that embedded forms of drama-in-English should be at the heart of English teaching.