This ethnographic case study of a drama-based ESL class for adult immigrants in the U.S. examines the improvisational nature of qualitative research and L2 pedagogies. Findings demonstrate the importance of attending to messiness in our research and pedagogy and the productive nature of resistance for researchers, teachers, and language learners.
Research documents that teaching L2 through drama offers many affordances (e.g. Belliveau & Kim, 2013); yet challenges in teaching and researching drama-based L2 pedagogies are also documented (Yaman Ntegliou, 2011). This four-month ethnographic case study of a drama-based ESL class at a non-profit school for adult immigrants in the U.S. examines the improvisational nature of qualitative research and L2 pedagogies. Using thematic analysis and Foucauldian theory, the study examines how participants, including the researcher, took up and resisted certain subject positions (Foucault, 1994) focusing particularly on conflict (MacLure, 2013) (e.g. students’ refusing to accept certain roles; the teacher deviating from the curriculum; changes to the research design). Findings demonstrate the importance of attending to the failures inherent in our research and pedagogy (Prendergast & Belliveau, 2018) and illustrate how resistance can be productive for teachers, students, and researchers. Rather than promoting art as a panacea for the systemic issues multilingual learners, educators, and researchers face, I examine its messiness - both its affordances and challenges. REFERENCES Belliveau, G. & Kim, W. (2013). Drama in L2 learning: A research synthesis. Scenario, VII(2). Foucault, M. (1994). The order of things: An archaeology of the human sciences. (A.M.S. Smith, Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage Books. (Original work published 1966) MacLure, M. (2013). Classification or wonder? Coding as an analytic practice in qualitative research. In R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (eds), Deleuze and research methodologies (pp. 164-183). Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Prendergast, M. & Belliveau, G. (2018). Misperformance ethnography. In M. Cahnmann- Taylor & R. Siegesmund (Eds.), Arts-Based Research in Education (2nd ed.) (pp. 99-114). New York, NY: Routledge. Yaman Ntelioglou, Burcu. (2011). ‘But why do I have to take this class?’ The mandatory drama- ESL class and multiliteracies pedagogy. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theater and Performance, 16(4), 595-616.
