Drama-based literacy program expands to focus on the learning outcomes of students with diverse abilities

The challenge

Effective early education experiences are critical for all students, but particularly for students who historically have been marginalized in schools, like emergent bilingual students and students with disabilities. Early language, literacy and socioemotional development are known predictors of subsequent academic achievement and they are all highly correlated with supportive and rich learning experiences in pre-K. 

Drama-based literacy instruction shows real potential to provide such experiences. In drama-based storytimes, students “become” story characters and physically perform character actions. This embodied learning supports language acquisition and story comprehension and recall, as well as socio-emotional knowledge, which is a predictor of school success for all students and a key facet of prosocial behavior for students with disabilities.

This project, EYEPlayADAPT (All Different Abilities Participate and Thrive), builds on Early Years Educators at Play (EYEPlay), a 10-year partnership between Arizona State University and Childsplay Theatre Company that has developed, implemented and evaluated high-quality, drama-based early literacy experiences for Arizona students in more than 100 preschool classrooms and 10 school districts.

Through EYEPlay — a strengths-based, classroom-embedded apprenticeship program — preschool teachers learn to integrate drama techniques into storytime to facilitate children’s engagement and whole-body participation. Previous work through this partnership has shown EYEPlay’s effectiveness at promoting language, literacy and socioemotional development in typically-developing preschoolers. EYEPlay teachers in inclusive preschool classrooms have also described increased participation, engagement and story comprehension during drama lessons for their students with disabilities. Yet, past partnership efforts have not focused on these students, nor have measures been sensitive enough to capture their learning.

The approach

EYEPlayADAPT, funded by the Spencer Foundation, brings together ASU, Childsplay and Phoenix Elementary School District. The ASU team is spearheaded by Katie Bernstein, associate professor, along with Scott Marley, associate professor; Erin Rotheram-Fuller, associate professor and Lauren van Huisstede, assistant research professor. 

The project will use a design-based implementation research approach, expanding existing partnership structures to focus on learning outcomes for students with diverse abilities. EYEPlayADAPT aims to: 1) Partner researchers, teachers and theater teaching artists together to transform the traditional EYEPlay curriculum into EYEPlay ADAPT, drama-based literacy programming that is inclusive for children of all abilities; 2) Center students with diverse abilities in its evaluation of learning outcomes during EYEPlay lessons by developing new observational measures to assess participation and engagement during storytime; 3) Increase local capacity among teachers to use action research, as well as drama-based instruction strategies regularly within their classrooms. 

Teachers will leave the program equipped to be peer leaders in collecting systematic data and making data-based decisions about individual and class-wide interventions. They will also be leaders in using drama-based instruction strategies to facilitate literacy and socioemotional growth for all students. ASU and Childsplay will leave the project with a set of inclusive drama strategies and inclusive learning measures that will benefit all future children and teachers who participate in EYEPlay.

Findings and impact

NA