BA (Hons) – English and Theatre Arts – University of Exeter

PGCE – Primary Education – University of Wolverhampton

MA – Drama in Education – Birmingham City University

PhD – Literacy Studies – University of South Florida

Experience

I am an experienced teacher who has taught at the primary, secondary and higher education level in the UK and the US. I have taught in state and private schools. Whilst teaching in a primary school, I noticed how ‘switched on’ the children became when they were asked to ‘push back the desks’ for drama work. I was awarded a DfE best practice research grant for the study of Macbeth through drama with my Year 6 class and during this time I undertook an MA in Drama in Education. This was a fantastic learning opportunity as it opened my eyes to the research that underpinned what I was witnessing in the classroom – students became engaged when required to use their bodies and respond to texts through movement, improvisation and drama conventions such as tableau, hot seating and writing in role. Around this time, a play that I had written and directed for the school’s drama club was chosen to celebrate the new millennium as part of a regional showcase of school theatre in the West Midlands. That was very exciting!

Many years later and whilst living in the US, I began a PhD in Literacy Studies at the University of South Florida. My research focus was drama as a literacy tool for cross curricular learning and my dissertation was a case study on teaching primary science through drama. The research became the subject of my first book published by Routledge in 2019 and this was followed by a more practical, hands-on ‘minibook’ published by the United Kingdom Literacy Association in 2021. In this book I describe how drama and movement can be used across the primary and secondary curriculum and I describe lesson plans for teaching the ideas. In January 2023, my PhD case study was published in a compendium of international research papers that investigated the learning of science through drama. I was invited to contribute my research after presenting with a team of drama researchers from Oxford Brookes University at the European Science Educational Research Association in Malmo, Sweden.

I am excited by the idea of using drama in surprising areas. A few years ago I had the wonderful opportunity to work with a team of particle physicists in developing drama workshops for visually impaired youngsters learning about particle collision at the Large Hadron Collider. And more recently I have used drama and storytelling with a young woman who came to the UK as a refugee (see blog post ‘When words are enough’).

Having taught for 30 years, the time is right for me to ‘go it alone’. I have the experience, the ideas, the creativity and the research background to apply to many different settings. I am excited at the thought of taking drama and movement into schools and the community and working with a wide variety of clients. Let’s create some drama and movement together!